Miss Bumbum contestants portray Christ and his disciples Last Supper painting in their bikinis

Brazil’s Miss Bumbum beauty pageant has sparked controversy after hopefuls posed for a raunchy portrayal of iconic religious painting The Last Supper.

The photo shows eight hopefuls in the country’s popular ‘rear of the year’ contest portraying Christ and his disciplines – with the sexiest girl posing as Jesus.

Religious leaders branded the remake of the Da Vinci masterpiece “deeply disrespectful” and even Brazil’s religious intolerance commission condemned the picture.

Even one of the women involved said she regretted posing for the shot and said she had “asked forgiveness from God for a great sin”.

Daiana Fegueredo, representing the state of Ceara, was chosen to play Jesus in the photo as her bottom received the most number of phone votes, making her the frontrunner in the race for the coveted title.

But she said she now regrets agreeing to taking part:

 “I did the photo because of my contract. But I didn’t like it and I wasn’t happy about it. You can’t play around with the word of God.

I completely understand people being angry about it, because even I’m angry and I’m in it. For me it is blasphemy.”I feel really bad deep inside of me. I’m a practising Catholic. Since I did the photo my heart is tight inside my chest, I can’t sleep and I don’t stop thinking about it. I’ve already asked forgiveness from God, and I ask forgiveness from everyone else. We went too far. We were part of a great sin.”

Father Clesio Vieira, from the Volta Redonda diocese of Rio de Janeiro, said the photo has caused “great offence” to Catholics.

“Everyone’s talking about it. It has broken the boundaries of ethics and respect, all in the name of money. This isn’t creativity, it’s the vulgarisation of the sacred and is deeply disrespectful.”

Assistant bishop of Rio de Janeiro, Antonio Augusto Dias Duarte, also criticised the photos, saying he was against any images showing women’s bottoms, “whatever the setting”.

He added: “Women need to be valued for their role as a wife, mother, professional, and for her intellectual and cultural qualities.”

From Daily Mirror

Crowd Boos Brazil President Michel Temer At Opening Ceremony

Protesters jeered Brazil’s new President Michel Temer on Wednesday as he participated in the county’s Independence Day parade in Brasilia and the opening ceremonies of the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, his first official events since taking office on August 31.

Protesters at the events and in nearly a dozen other state capitals across Brazil were shouting “Temer Out” and “Usurper”.

Police in Brasilia estimated the number of protesters gathered in the nation’s capital at about 600, relatively small compared with protests that brought millions to the streets on occasion over the last two years of impeached President Dilma Rousseff’s administration.

Despite the early demonstrations, markets have given Temer and his economic team the benefit of the doubt, for now. Brazil’s real and main stock index have gained nearly 3 percent since Rousseff’s ouster, even as a new corruption scandal hit the government last week.

His team is expected to oversee a recovery of Brazil’s economy, bogged down in its worst recession in 80 years, but economists do not predict a robust turnaround over the next 12 months.

Investors also expect Temer to push through unpopular and difficult reforms of the country’s bloated pension system, burdensome tax code and inflexible labor laws.

Brazil President Dilma Rousseff impeached by Senate

Brazil's Senate has voted to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office for manipulating the budget.

It puts an end to 13 years in power of her left-wing Workers' Party. Ms Rousseff denies the charges.

Sixty-one senators voted in favour of her impeachment and 20 against, meeting the two-thirds majority needed to remove her from the presidency.

Acting President Michel Temer will serve out Ms Rousseff's term, which ends on 1 January 2019.

Mr Temer, from the centre-right PMDB party, is expected to be officially sworn in later on Wednesday.

'Coup d'etat'

Ms Rousseff had been suspended in May after the Senate voted to go ahead with the impeachment process.

She was accused of moving funds between government budgets, which is illegal under Brazilian law.

Her critics said she was trying to plug deficit holes in popular social programmes to boost her chances of being re-elected for a second term in October 2014.

Ms Rousseff fought the allegations, which she said amounted to a coup d'etat.

She argued that her right-wing political rivals had been trying to remove her from office ever since she was re-elected.

Dilma Rousseff's Short History:

• Born in 1947, grew up in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte
• Her father was Bulgarian immigrant and an ex-communist
• Joined left-wing movement against Brazil's military dictatorship which had seized power in 1964
• Detained in 1970 and imprisoned for three years
• Subjected to torture including electric shocks for her role in the underground resistance
• Came to political prominence as the protege of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2011
• Sworn in as Brazil's first female president in 2011
• Re-elected to a second term in 2014
• Impeached on 31 August 2016

"From the day after I was elected, several measures were taken to destabilise my government. And you have been systematically making accusations against me," she said when she defended herself in the Senate on Monday.

She said that she was being ousted because she had allowed a wide-ranging corruption investigation to go ahead which resulted in many high-profile politicians being charged.

Dilma Rousseff's impeachment trial in the Senate has raised important questions about Brazil's democratic institutions.

Was she ousted for having committed a crime - or was that just a pretext to remove a president who had lost control of the economy and politics?

Her fiscal manoeuvres were thoroughly examined during the sessions, but it was not just that which was on trial.

Her government policies, her U-turn on the economy after the election and corruption in her party were constantly part of the debate.

Also, as the trial unfolded, Michel Temer's interim government started its work reforming the economy and outlining new policies.

Senators - and Brazilians - knew that the question of condemning Ms Rousseff went beyond just deciding technically whether she was guilty or not.

But senators who voted in favour of her impeachment said it was Ms Rousseff and the Workers' Party who were corrupt and needed to go.

Brazilians have been divided on the issue, with many expressing their support and loyalty to Ms Rousseff while others have taken part in large demonstrations demanding that she stand down. 

Mr Temer, who will govern until 1 January 2019, has promised to boost Brazil's economy, which is going through its longest and deepest recession in the past quarter of a century.

His critics have already warned that he plans to cut many of the popular social programmes introduced by the Workers' Party.

 Source: BBC

Brazil Senate braces for Rousseff impeachment vote

Brazil's Senate was to vote Wednesday on stripping Dilma Rousseff of the presidency in a traumatic impeachment trial set to end 13 years of leftist rule over Latin America's biggest country.

Senators loyal to Brazil's first female president debated into the night Tuesday in a final attempt to halt the apparently unstoppable momentum toward her dismissal.

Despite the impassioned speeches, which followed 14 hours of testimony by 68-year-old Rousseff herself on Monday, her fate was apparently sealed.

Rousseff, from the leftist Workers' Party, is accused of taking illegal state loans to patch budget holes in 2014, masking the country's problems as it slid into its deepest recession in decades.

She told the Senate that she is innocent, saying the impeachment trial amounts to a right-wing coup d'etat.

However, huge street demonstrations over the last year have reflected nationwide anger at her management of a country suffering double-digit unemployment and inflation.

Two thirds of the Senate -- 54 of 81 senators -- must vote in favor of impeachment to convict her.

"The chances of impeachment not passing and the president being made to step down are virtually nil," political analyst Adriano Codato of Parana University said.

If Rousseff is forced from office, her former vice president turned bitter foe Michel Temer will be immediately sworn in as president until the next scheduled elections in late 2018.

The seventy-five-year-old took over in an interim role after Rousseff's initial suspension in May and at once named a new government with an agenda of shifting Brazil to the right.

- Tears and shouts -

Lawyers presenting closing arguments on Tuesday could not hold back their emotions as the clock wound down on a crisis that has paralyzed Brazilian politics for months, helping deepen national gloom over recession and runaway corruption.

A lead lawyer for the case against Rousseff, Senator Janaina Paschoal, wept as she asked forgiveness for causing the president "suffering," but insisted it was the right thing to do.

"Impeachment is a constitutional remedy that we need to resort to when the situation gets particularly serious, and that is what has happened," she said, rejecting Rousseff's coup claim.

"The Brazilian people must be aware that nothing illegal and illegitimate is being done here."

Rousseff's counsel, veteran lawyer Jose Eduardo Cardozo, retorted that the charges were trumped up to punish the president's support for a huge corruption investigation that has snared many of Brazil's elite.

"This is a farce," he said in a speech during which his voice alternated between shouts and near whispers.

"We should ask her forgiveness if she is convicted," he added. "History will treat her fairly. History will absolve Dilma Rousseff if you convict her."

- Unpopular leaders -

Recalling how she was tortured under Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s, Rousseff had urged senators during her testimony on Monday to "vote against impeachment, vote for democracy... Do not accept a coup."

However, the public reaction to her impeachment trial has been characterized by widespread indifference.

The Workers' Party under Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is credited with raising around 29 million Brazilians out of poverty.

But many now blame the party and Rousseff in particular for the country's multiple ills.

Temer, of the center-right PMDB party, has earned plaudits from investors since taking the interim post. However, it remains uncertain whether he will have voters' support to push through the painful austerity reforms he promises.

Rousseff has barely double-digit approval ratings. But Temer is hardly more popular in opinion polls.

Brazil's Dilma Rousseff to testify at impeachment trial

The impeachment trial of Brazil's Dilma Rousseff will reach a dramatic point on Monday, with the suspended president set to defend herself in the Senate.

Ms Rousseff is accused of illegally manipulating the budget to hide a growing deficit.

She denies the allegations and says the impeachment proceedings amount to a coup d'etat.

Senators are due to vote this week on whether to remove her from office for good or whether to reinstate her.

For her to be removed from the presidency permanently, 54 of the 81 senators would have to vote for her impeachment.

Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo says it has spoken to all the senators ahead of the vote and that 52 have so far declared themselves in favour of the impeachment.

Eighteen told the newspaper they were opposed to the impeachment and 11 either did not say which way they would vote or were undecided.

If Ms Rousseff, 68, is impeached, acting President Michel Temer will serve out her term, which ends in December 2018.

Mr Temer, who was Ms Rousseff's vice-president, assumed the role of acting president in May when Ms Rousseff was suspended from office pending the impeachment trial.

'Political ploy'

Ms Rousseff will be given 30 minutes to speak and is expected to give a passionate defence of her time in office.

The suspended president has in the past said that the impeachment proceedings are a ploy by her political rivals to end the 13 years in power of her left-wing Workers Party.

She has argued that moving money from the state bank to fill budget holes is not an impeachable offence and is something her predecessors in office have also done.

After giving her defence, she will be questioned by senators.

The impeachment vote is scheduled for Tuesday but analysts say it could slip into Wednesday.

On Sunday, a few hundred supporters of Ms Rousseff demonstrated in the capital, Brasilia, against her impeachment and called for the removal of Mr Temer.

But in the past months there have also been large rallies against Ms Rousseff and against corruption in politics in general.

(BBC)

In Brazil, iPhone costs $931

There is a considerable variation in iPhone prices around the world with handsets in Indonesia and Sweden also coming with hefty price tags, especially when compared with the United States. In 2016, an iPhone 6 costs around $598 in the U.S. while in Brazil, it will set you back $931.

Even though the iPhone costs a small fortune in Brazil, the price has dropped substantially in recent years, according to World Bank data reported by the World Economic Forum. In 2015, an iPhone 6 cost $1,254 and this fell to $931 this year, primarily due to the real gaining 10 percent against the dollar. Still, when an American purchases an iPhone in Brazil, he or she will have to pay 56 percent more for the device there than at home.

Olympics: Neymar crowned samba king as Farah sealed ‘double-double’

Neymar sent Brazil into ecstasy as he clinched Olympic football gold and Mo Farah sealed a rare distance double-double in a pulsating final evening of track action in Rio on Saturday.

Neymar swept home a brilliant free-kick and scored a trademark stutter-run penalty to win a shoot-out against Germany as the hosts headed towards Sunday’s closing ceremony on a high.

Later, Britain’s Farah headlined the last night of track and field as he won a thrilling 5,000m race to earn the first consecutive 5,000m-10,000m doubles in 40 years.

Matt Centrowitz produced the biggest upset when he beat defending champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria to become America’s first 1,500m champion in more than a century.

And the United States ran away with both the men’s and women’s 4x400m relays as the curtain closed on the last full day of competition, with only 12 gold medals available on Sunday.

With 294 of 306 titles decided, the United States led the medals table with 43 golds, with Britain in surprise second place with 27 to China’s 26.

China won their third Olympic Games women’s volleyball gold with a 3-1 victory over Serbia. Only the former Soviet Union — with four golds — has been more successful in Olympics women’s volleyball than China.

South Korea’s Park In-Bee won the first women’s golf Olympic gold in 116 years by a commanding five strokes, and the USA routed Spain in the women’s basketball final.

Millions of Brazilians were glued to the men’s football and celebrations were long and loud when the five-time world champions grabbed their first Olympic title at the Maracana stadium.

Victory, 5-4 on penalties after the scores were locked at 1-1 after extra time, left Neymar and his team-mates sobbing uncontrollably as they erased the nightmare of Brazil’s 7-1 World Cup semi-final defeat to Germany two years ago.

It was a fairytale finish for Neymar, who missed the 2014 defeat with a back injury and faced heavy criticism for his performances early in the Olympic competition.

“This is one of the best things that has happened in my life,” said the Barcelona star who promptly stepped down as captain.

“Now (the critics will) have to swallow what they said.”

Olympics: Brazil dump Honduras to reach football final

Neymar scored twice, including the fastest goal in Olympics history, as Brazil coasted into Saturday’s gold medal football match with a 6-0 thrashing of Honduras at Rio’s iconic Maracana.

A rematch with the Germans is in store should the world champions see off 1996 winners Nigeria in Wednesday’s other semi-final, later in Sao Paulo.

Neymar had been much criticised for his lacklustre displays in two 0-0 draws to start the tournament, but his transformation back from the nation’s whipping boy to golden boy was capped by his determination to open the scoring after just 15 seconds.

The Barcelona star hounded defender Johnny Palacios to rob possession on the edge of the Honduras box and goalkeeper Luis Lopez’s attempt to atone for his teammate’s error only ricocheted the ball off Neymar’s midriff and into an empty goal.

For a moment, Neymar’s bravery looked like it may have come at a cost as he had to be stretchered off after being winded in the challenge.

However, there was no repeat of his tears of anguish when carried off with two broken vertebrae in his back that ended his World Cup participation in a brutal quarter-final against Colombia two years ago.

The 24-year-old was soon back terrorising the Honduras defence as he teed up Luan for an effort Lopez managed to repel, before Bryan Acosta and Allans Vargas were booked for taking their uncompromising attempts to stop Neymar too far.

However, it was Manchester City’s new £27m ($36m, 31 million euros) wonder kid Gabriel Jesus who piled on the pain for Honduras with two more goals before the break.

Luan’s lovely through ball was prodded past the helpless Lopez by Jesus for his second goal of the tournament on 26 minutes.

Nine minutes later, Neymar turned provider with a precise pass down the left that Jesus burst onto before crashing the ball into the roof of the net.

Neymar was even whipping the near capacity 78,000 crowd into a frenzy as he uncharacteristically crashed into tackles, with Brazil relieved from the burden of expectation that appeared to weigh heavy on the young squad early in the competition.

Luan missed a huge chance at the start of the second period when he fired straight at Lopez with Jesus waiting for a tap-in to complete his hat-trick.

However, Brazil didn’t have long to wait for a fourth when Paris Saint-Germain defender Marquinhos took advantage of some awful Honduras marking to sweep home a corner six minutes into the second-half.

Fittingly, in their best performance of the tournament, Luan converted a fine team goal for Brazil’s fifth as Gabriel Barbosa slipped in Felipe Anderson to cross low to the far post.

And Neymar capped a fine display with his second of the afternoon from the penalty spot in stoppage time.

Victory also guaranteed Brazil a fourth Olympic men’s football medal, but after bronze in 1996 and 2008 and the shock of losing to Mexico in the London 2012 final, only gold will suffice for an expectant nation back at the Maracana on Saturday.

Rio Olympics: Nigeria to play Germany in semi-finals

Mikel Obi

Team Nigeria captain Mikel Obi scored a goal and set up Aminu Umar as Nigeria’s U-23 national team on Saturday night defeated Denmark 2-0 in Salvador to reach the semi-finals of the men’s football event of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Nigeria will now play Germany, who defeated Portugal 4-0, in the semi-final on Wednesday in Sao Paulo.

The U-23 team, the 1996 football champions of the Games, set up a clash with the Europeans, who were beaten 4-0 by Brazil in their final Group A game. Group B leaders Nigeria had defeated Japan and Sweden 5-4 and 1-0 respectively, before losing their final Group B game to Colombia 2-0.

It was a revenge of sorts for the African champions, who were thrashed 6-2 by the Danes at the Suwon Invitational tournament in South Korea in June.

Coach Samson Siasia brought on Aminu Umar for the injured Oghenekaro Etebo, while South Africa-based goalkeeper, who kept in the defeat to Colombia, also returned to the bench as Emmanuel Daniel retained his place back in the starting line-up.

Denmark had rattled the Nigerians as early as the 11th minute when Kasper Nielsson’s ferocious volley crashed against the woodwork with goalkeeper Emmanuel Daniel beaten.

But the 1996 Olympic champions stunned their European counterparts just four minutes later with Mikel grabbing the opener after good work by the dangerous Imoh Ezekiel.

Nigeria’s preparations in Atlanta as well as their participation at the Games have been trailed by controversies, with the squad arriving in Manaus from just six hours before their opener against Japan, after being stranded for days in the US.

The team skipped training on Thursday and threatened to boycott the game against Denmark on unless they were paid their outstanding allowances at the Games, as well as the unpaid five months salaries and allowances of the coaches.

They were paid their allowances before the game on Saturday.