Another 9 slain in Brazil’s biggest city

Fox News Latino/EFE, 11/08/2012

Nine people were killed in another night of mayhem here in Brazil’s most populous city following the announcement by federal and regional officials of a new anti-crime plan, authorities said Thursday.

The violence, which had been concentrated in slums and gritty industrial suburbs, spread to the affluent Sao Paulo neighborhood of Jardins, where a gunman trying to rob a gas station died in a shootout with police.

Two other would-be robbers died and a police officer was wounded in a gunfight among cops, criminals and private security guards at a supermarket.

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Brazil study finds youth homicides have soared 346 percent over last three decades

Juliana Barbassa – The Washington Post/The Associated Press, 07/18/2012

RIO DE JANEIRO — The homicide rate for Brazilian young people under age 19 shot up 346 percent over the past three decades, according to research published Wednesday by the Latin American School of Social Sciences.

During that period, youths became a far higher percentage of Brazil’s murder victims — rising from 11 percent of the total in 1980 to 43 percent in 2010, the report said. The homicide rate for young people rose from 3.1 per 100,000 people younger than 19 years old to 13.8 per 100,000.

This means deadly violence against the most vulnerable members of Brazilian society has surpassed the 10 deaths per 100,000 that mark the accepted threshold of an epidemic, said Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, a researcher also affiliated with the Brazilian Center for Latin American Studies.

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