RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Floods and landslides devastated several mountain towns near Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, killing at least 257 people as torrents of water and mud swept through the region, burying many families as they slept.

The heavy rains also killed 13 people in Sao Paulo state on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll in Brazil’s south to at least 270.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Floods and landslides
devastated several mountain towns near Rio de Janeiro on
Wednesday, killing at least 257 people as torrents of water and
mud swept through the region, burying many families as they
slept.

The heavy rains also killed 13 people in Sao Paulo state on
Tuesday, bringing the total death toll in Brazil’s south to at
least 270.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A sparkling Christmas tree atop a hill in Rio de Janeiro’s Alemao slum is a powerful symbol of the community’s recent liberation from gun-toting drug traffickers.

The fact that the tree was funded by a major bank symbolizes something less obvious — that Rio’s heavily-populated slums, or favelas, are open for business after years being partly shut out by the city’s drugs war.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – An international human rights court condemned Brazil on Tuesday for the forced “disappearance” of 62 suspected leftist militants during its military dictatorship and said it should allow prosecutions for abuses committed during the era.

The ruling could raise a thorny problem for Brazilian President-elect Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist tortured during the dictatorship who takes office on January 1.