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sexta-feira, 9 de abril de 2010

Cabral estima em até 150 corpos soterrados em Niterói e classifica situação de "estarrecedora"


André Naddeo
Do UOL Notícias*
No Rio de Janeiro

Moradores procuram pertences nos escombros do morro do Bumba

Atualizada às 15h25

O governador do Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral (PMDB), visitou na tarde desta sexta-feira o morro do Bumba, em Niterói (RJ), onde acontecem as buscas aos desaparecidos no deslizamento da noite de quarta-feira. Segundo ele, as estimativas apontam que ainda existem de 100 a 150 corpos soterrados no local.

"São cerca de 100 a 150 corpos, segundo o pessoal dos bombeiros me passou. É uma situação totalmente estarrecedora", afirmou. "A responsabilidade é de todos nós. Não só autoridades, mas de toda a sociedade. Não quero fazer catarse de culpados, essa demagogia de ocupação irregular não vale a pena", completou.

Cabral afirmou ainda que, desde que assumiu, 7.200 desapropriações foram feitas. “Ordem pública sempre traz mais direitos humanos. A gente não pode pensar que direitos humanos e ordem pública são coisas contraditórias”, disse.

O número de mortos no Estado já ultrapassa 190, sendo mais de 110 na cidade de Niterói. A Prefeitura de Niterói e a Defesa Civil já haviam apontado que cerca de 200 pessoas moravam no local, onde existiam ao menos 50 casas. Para o subcomandante do Corpo de Bombeiros, coronel José Paulo Miranda, será difícil resgatar alguém com vida.

As buscas em Niterói, cidade mais atingida, aconteceram durante toda a noite. Cerca de 300 homens, entre integrantes da Força Nacional de Segurança (FNS), policiais civis, bombeiros e policiais militares, trabalham no local com a ajuda de máquinas.

O trabalho de resgate não tem prazo para terminar e, segundo o governador Sérgio Cabral (PMDB), deve durar cerca de duas semanas. Segundo o vice-governador, Luiz Fernando Pezão, o governo do Estado pediu auxílio do Exército e da Marinha nas buscas.

Cabral também inaugurou hoje dois hospitais de campanha em São Gonçalo, onde 16 pessoas morreram por causa da chuva.

Alerta na capital
O prefeito do Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, anunciou hoje um decreto municipal que obriga o despejo de moradores em 158 bairros em áreas de risco, geralmente zonas de favelas construídas sem permissão nas encostas das montanhas.

Em entrevista à rádio CBN, Paes afirmou que se os moradores resistirem à medida a polícia terá permissão para "usar a força". "Todos devem obedecer à Prefeitura e não voltar (para suas casas) até a liberação da área risco. Não vamos brincar com isso. As pessoas têm que entender que temos que proteger vidas", disse o prefeito.

Você Manda: envie fotos ou vídeos da chuva no Rio

As mortes na cidade aconteceram no morro dos Prazeres, na comunidade Santa Maria, no morro dos Macacos, no morro do Turano, no morro das Oliveiras, no morro do Borel, na ladeira dos Guararapes, na Rocinha, no Andaraí, no Recreio, em Humaitá, em Cascatinha, na Ilha do Governador e na Quinta da Boa Vista.

Ressaca
Quase uma semana depois do começo do temporal, algumas ruas do Rio, principalmente nas colinas, continuam bloqueadas pelos desmoronamentos, embora a cidade esteja voltando a normalidade.

Hoje o dia amanheceu nublado e com uma chuva fina. A previsão é de novos temporais, que podem contribuir para piorar a situação.

Uma ressaca na orla da capital fluminense também está provocando transtornos aos cariocas. As ondas de quatro a cinco metros de altura interditaram uma das vias da avenida Atlântica, em Copacabana, que foi tomada pela areia e pela água do mar. A ressaca também provocou a interdição do Aterro do Flamengo, outra via expressa que faz a ligação entre a zona sul e o centro da cidade.

O mar da Baía de Guanabara também está bastante agitado e a água invadiu parte da cabeceira da pista do Aeroporto Santos Dumont, prejudicando parcialmente as operações no local. A travessia de barcas e catamarãs entre Rio de Janeiro e Niterói também foi afetada.

"A ressaca pode piorar ainda mais, porque a maré vai atingir o seu auge no início da tarde, então há mais riscos de mais areia e água invadindo as pistas", disse o oceanógrafo David Zee, ao ressaltar que um ciclone extratropical passou perto do litoral do Rio e aumentando o tamanho das ondas.

IML
A falta de documentos, perdidos com a chuva e com os deslizamentos de terra, está dificultando a liberação dos corpos das vítimas. A partir das 10h de hoje, dez defensores públicos do Estado do Rio de Janeiro estarão de plantão na sede do IML (Instituto Médico Legal) e na sede da Defensoria Pública para dar assistência jurídica às famílias e pedir alvarás à Justiça para sepultar os corpos que não podem ser identificados.

Área de lixão
O morro do Bumba, que hoje abriga moradias precárias, era ocupado por um antigo lixão. Em meio aos escombros é possível observar toneladas de lixo.

“Isso aqui é um lixão que se encharca muito mais rapidamente em comparação com outros morros. O solo vai ficando ensopado e ocorre a formação de gás metano. Com tudo isso, o ângulo estável fica muito menor. A prefeitura deveria ter um cadastro desta área, que é de altíssimo risco", explicou Adalberto da Silva, professor de geologia do Instituto de Geociências da UFF (Universidade Federal Fluminense).

A secretária Estadual do Ambiente do Rio, Marilene Ramos, afirmou que o deslizamento pode ter sido provocado por uma explosão ocorrida quando o gás metano do lixão entrou em contato com a atmosfera movendo a terra que já estava debilitada pelo acúmulo de água da chuva.

O prefeito de Niterói, Jorge Roberto da Silveira, visitou o morro do Bumba nesta quinta-feira e afirmou que não sabia que as casas da região tinham sido construídas sobre um lixão.

Mas, reportagem do UOL Notícias, revelou que a prefeitura da cidade não colocou em prática um plano de prevenção de riscos elaborado por pesquisadores da Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), com financiamento do Ministério das Cidades e da própria prefeitura. Finalizado em 2007, o plano custou R$ 120 mil e previa ações em vários pontos suscetíveis à ocorrência de desastres causados pela ação do tempo.

A Polícia Civil informou que abriu um inquérito para apurar eventual responsabilidade do poder público no deslizamento.

Tragédia estadual
O temporal que provocou a tragédia no Estado do Rio teve início no final da tarde de segunda-feira (5) e levou o caos à capital e à região metropolitana, que praticamente pararam na terça-feira. Segundo dados do Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (Inmet), somente na terça-feira choveu mais do que o esperado para todo o mês de abril na região.

Segundo a Defesa Civil do Estado, o número de desabrigados em municípios das regiões metropolitana, Baixada Fluminense, Baixada Litorânea e Serrana mais atingidos pelas chuvas dos últimos dias é de 3.262, enquanto que o total de desalojados já soma 11.439 pessoas. Somente na capital, são cerca de 5.000 desabrigados.

Veja as cidades do Rio de Janeiro que registraram mortes


* Com informações de André Naddeo, no Rio de Janeiro, agências internacionais e Agência Brasil.











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Rússia ameaça suspender adoções após devolução de criança por família americana


Do UOL Notícias*
Em São Paulo

A Rússia ameaça suspender todas as adoções de crianças feitas por famílias americanas depois da devolução de um garoto de 7 anos de idade, que tinha sido adotado por uma família do Tennessee (EUA). Na última quinta-feira (8), a criança desembarcou sozinha a Moscou em um voo só de ida e com um bilhete afirmando que o garoto era violento e tinha graves problemas psicológicos.

O ministro das Relações Exteriores russo, Segey Lavrov, chamou a ação como o último caso em uma série de problemas com adoções por famílias norte-americanas, incluindo três episódios em que crianças russas morreram nos EUA. No ano passado, cerca de 1.600 crianças russas foram adotadas nos Estados Unidos.

O ministério da Educação e Ciência russo, por sua vez, suspendeu a licença do grupo envolvido na adoção, a Associação Mundial para Crianças e Adolescentes, uma agência baseada em Renton, em Washington, EUA, enquanto durarem as investigações. Em Tennessee, as autoridades estão investigando a mãe adotiva, Torry Hansen, de 33 anos.

O garoto levava uma carta de Hansen, no qual ela justificava a devolução da criança por apresentar "graves problemas psicológicos". "Essa criança tem problemas mentais. Ele é violento e tem sintomas de psicopatia", dizia a carta.

O garoto, chamado Artyom Savelyev e que ganhou o nome de Justin Hansen após a adoção, foi encaminhado a um hospital de Moscou para passar por avaliação médica.

Segundo um porta-voz do Departamento de Estado dos EUA, P.J. Crowley, os Estados Unidos e a Rússia dividem a responsabilidade pela segurança da criança, e Washington irá trabalhar de perto com Moscou para ter certeza de que as adoções sejam legais e monitoradas de maneira apropriada.

Nancy Hansen, a avó adotiva do garoto, disse à agência de notícias Associated Press que ela e o garoto voaram até Washington, de onde ela embarcou a criança com uma carta da filha. Ela rejeitou veementemente as alegações russas de que o garoto teria sido abandonado. Segundo Hansen, a criança foi observada por uma aermoça da United Airlines e a família pagou US$ 200 para um homem receber a criança no aeroporto de Moscou e levá-lo ao ministério da Educação e Ciência russo.

Em Moscou, o homem entregou o garoto e seus documentos e, em seguida, deixou o local, segundo autoridades russas.

Em janeiro, Nancy Hansen teria dito a uma assistente social que o garoto não apresentava problemas. No entanto, segundo a avó, após essa data começaram a ocorrer episódios de agressões, como chutes, socos e cusparadas, além de ameaças. "Ele desenhou nossa casa pegando fogo e dizia que incendiaria nossa casa conosco dentro", disse Hansen.

Nancy Hansen disse que ela e sua filha foram à Rússia juntas para adotar um menino e acredita que informações sobre problemas de comportamento foram sonegadas pelas autoridades russas. Savelyev foi adotado em setembro passado na cidade de Partizansk, no leste da Rússia.

*Com as agências internacionais











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Barack Obama and the nuclear threat





Credible diplomacy is all about sending consistent signals, especially for a U.S. president.

In that respect, the signing of a new nuclear arms pact last week was a big win for Barack Obama and U.S.-Russian relations, particularly as world events seemed to conspire to push the two former antagonists closer together.

Effective diplomacy is also about earning consistent and supportive signals in return, not the sort of face slaps tried on the U.S. recently by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai.

Obama put them both down promptly. His presidential voice carries more weight than just a few weeks ago.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry  Medvedev, display their signatures on the new Strategic Arms Reduction  Treaty (START II) at Prague Castle on April 8, 2010. (Reuters) U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, display their signatures on the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) at Prague Castle on April 8, 2010. (Reuters)

It's an odd political world where the difference of a few congressional votes on a subject such as health care can be said to define a presidency's success.

But Obama's influence abroad is clearly greater if he is seen to be a winner at home.

And as this influence is now being directed at dramatically curtailing the world's nuclear arsenal, we may all be the beneficiaries.

The Russia deal

In the space of a very short time, Obama capped his domestic legislative success with a (SALT II) nuclear arms treaty with Russia that cuts warheads and launchers, and creates a fairly extensive mutual inspections regime.

Among other things, the signing shows Obama actually means it about nuclear build-down and that the re-set button has been pushed with the Kremlin.

The hope now is that, with Russian support, the UN Security Council will be more apt to approve sanctions against Iran over its apparent nuclear ambitions.

Obama, it is worth noting, is the first U.S. president to make nuclear disarmament a central foreign policy theme.

He seems genuinely convinced that any proliferation of nuclear weapons would be the greatest threat to world security in the foreseeable future.

That is why, this week, he is hosting a nuclear summit of about 40 key countries — though not Iran, not North Korea, and, at this point, not Israel, all reluctant to get into a global discussion of what they do or don't or ought to have in the way of nuclear weapons.

In the run-up to this summit, Obama also announced a new U.S. nuclear defence posture, which commits Washington never to employ nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state that had signed the non-proliferation treaty — unless that state was not in compliance with its obligations, a caveat that also sends a cautionary signal Iran's way.

Choosing his guy

As for Russia, Obama's pre-summit nuclear deal with Moscow is sending the signal that he has "stopped the drift" in relations between the two countries. A subtler message is that his partner of preference is President Dmitry Medvedev.

Most Western commentators claim Medvedev is just Vladimir Putin's poodle. The truth is much more complicated.

Astute Moscow observers see them not as master-slave, nor as rivals, but as a harmonious duo in basic agreement on the issues but with different emphases and styles — and also different constituencies.

Putin's patriotic brashness appeals to older, more conservative and usually rural Russians. While Medvedev's message of modernization and reform earns support among the upwardly mobile.

At the moment, the fact is that Medvedev's constituency is growing, while Putin's shelf life may be approaching. That being said, Putin is still seen as a political carnivore to Medvedev, a political vegan.

Betting on the Kremlin

After the Moscow subway bombings, it was important that Medvedev came across also as a credible tough guy, which success on the world stage — being seen as Obama's equal — can only help.

What the Washington nuclear summit is all about: A long-range,  Sejil 2 missile is test-fired somewhere in the Iranian desert in  December 2009, according to this handout photo from the Iranian  military. (Reuters)What the Washington nuclear summit is all about: A long-range, Sejil 2 missile is test-fired somewhere in the Iranian desert in December 2009, according to this handout photo from the Iranian military. (Reuters)

Russia is less interested than Obama in world nuclear disarmament and in sanctioning Iran. Its main aim is to regain its former role as a negotiating equal with the U.S.

Over the past 15 years or so, the signals from Washington have been that Moscow didn't count for much anymore, which seriously contributed to the Kremlin's sullenness in recent years.

At the same time, this new rapprochement worries those European countries whose publics still resent their decades under the Soviet boot.

That is why Obama chose to sign this new treaty in Prague, arguably the most shameful locale of Soviet Cold War diktat, to try to signal that it is time to turn the page.

He invited the leaders of the 11 EU states from Central and Eastern Europe to a Prague dinner to try to calm their concerns.

Now, he has to hope the Russian leadership won't let him down.

Krygyzstan

One test of this new relationship will be the unlikely locale of Kyrgyzstan, where America's image has taken a beating, and not just among local democrats.

A picturesque but poor state up against the Himalayas, Kyrgyzstan was the only one of the five Central Asian republics to emerge from the break-up of the Soviet Union with any real inclination for democracy.

Since then, however, the country has undergone two revolutions, the most recent just last week, to turf out initially well-intentioned leaders who inevitably fell prey to the temptations of power.

One of the hard truths about democratic transition is that it takes time and considerable restraint from well-meaning outsiders not to pick winners, but to support the long passage to the rule of law and a healthy civil society. It's a steep climb for folks who have not actually been there before.

But because of the overwhelming strategic importance of Krygyzstan to the Afghan war effort, Obama had to cut a deal with the now deposed Krygyz strongman Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to keep the lease to the Manas air base, the only staging and supply point from outside Afghanistan for the U.S. military.

Russia had actually offered Bakiyev $2 billion to end the U.S. lease of Manas. Obama had to offer the dictator a better, sweetheart deal to stay, adding an admiring personal letter to seal it.

That U.S. signal was deeply resented by the Kyrgyz democratic opposition, possibly egged on by the Russians.

Now, if he wants to keep control of that staging ground, Obama is probably going to have to take account more of Russia's views on neighbouring Afghanistan and move decisively to support democracy in Kyrgyzstan.

In the end, that is what effective American diplomacy is all about anyway.

Until now, Obama has been less than stalwart in his support for human rights and democracy abroad, and dictators everywhere, including Kyrgyzstan, have noticed.

A country such as Russia may dream of days gone by, when the superpowers were only two. Today, though China has risen, there is still only one — Washington.

But U.S. power resides mostly in the unflinching American commitment to universal aspirations and values — like ridding the world of nuclear weapons and consistently supporting human rights.

That is what the Obama era ought to be all about.








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American adoptive 'mum' abandons Russian boy with 'mentally unstable' note








t was supposed to be a new life in a new country, but for one 7-year-old Russian orphan, it's ended right where it began. Artyom Hansen, who was formerly Savelyev, moved to America, only to be rejected by his adoptive mother six months later. She bought him a one-way ticket back to Russia, along with a note saying she didn't want him anymore.


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Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US



By NATALIYA VASILYEVA and KRISTIN M. HALL , 04.09.10, 04:04 PM EDT

MOSCOW -- Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.

The boy, Artyom Savelyev, was put on a plane by his adopted grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville.


"He drew a picture of our house burning down and he'll tell anybody that he's going to burn our house down with us in it," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother "the last straw" in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the U.S.

The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported prominently. Russian main TV networks ran extensive reports on the latest incident in their main evening news shows.

The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption - the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency - for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, 33.

Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States.

"We're obviously very troubled by it," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington when asked about the boy's case. He told reporters the U.S. and Russia share a responsibility for the child's safety and Washington will work closely with Moscow to make sure adoptions are legal and appropriately monitored.

Asked if he thought a suspension by Russia was warranted, Crowley said, "If Russia does suspend cooperation on the adoption, that is its right. These are Russian citizens."

The boy arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a United Airlines flight on Thursday from Washington. Social workers sent him to a Moscow hospital for a health checkup and criticized his adoptive mother for abandoning him.

The Kremlin children's rights office said the boy was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.

"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...

"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."

The boy was adopted in September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.

Nancy Hansen, the grandmother, told The Associated Press that she and the boy flew to Washington and she put the child on the plane with the note from her daughter. She vehemently rejected assertions of child abandonment by Russian authorities, saying he was watched over by a United Airlines stewardess and the family paid a man $200 to pick the boy up at the Moscow airport and take him to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.

Nancy Hansen said a social worker checked on the boy in January and reported to Russian authorities that there were no problems. But after that, the grandmother said incidents of hitting, kicking, spitting began to escalate, along with threats.

She said she and her daughter went to Russia together to adopt the boy, and she believes information about his behavioral problems was withheld from her daughter.

"The Russian orphanage officials completely lied to her because they wanted to get rid of him," Nancy Hansen said.

She said the boy was very skinny when they picked him up, and he told them he had been beaten with a broom handle at the orphanage.

Joseph LaBarbera, a clinical psychologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, said adoptive parents are many times not aware of the psychological state of children put up for adoption.

"Parents enter into it (foreign adoption) with positive motivations but, in a sense, they are a little bit blindsided by their desire to adopt," said LaBarbera, who specializes in the psychological evaluation of children and has worked with a number of children adopted from Russia and other foreign countries. "They're not prepared to appreciate, psychologically, the kinds of conditions these kids have been exposed to and the effect it has had on them."

Russian state television showed the child in a yellow jacket holding the hands of two chaperones as he left a police precinct and entered a van bound for a Moscow medical clinic.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was "deeply shocked by the news" and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted."

Anna Orlova, a spokeswoman for Kremlin's Children Rights Commissioner, told The Associated Press that she visited the boy and he told her that his mother was "bad," "did not love him," and used to pull his hair.

Russian officials said he turned up at the door of the Russian Education and Science Ministry on Thursday afternoon accompanied by a Russian man who handed over the boy and his documents, then left, officials said. The child holds a Russian passport.

Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said the agency is looking into Friday's allegations, although it does not handle international adoptions.

Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce also said Torry Hansen was under investigation and expected to interview her Friday afternoon.

Lavrov said his ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.

"We have taken the decision ... to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the U.S.A. sign an international agreement" on the conditions for adoptions, Lavrov said.

He said the U.S. had refused to negotiate such an accord in the past but "the recent event was the last straw."

Pavel Astakhov, the children rights commissioner, said in a televised interview that a treaty is vital to protect Russian citizens in other countries.

"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad? If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad," he said.

Julie Snyder, spokeswoman for World Association for Children and Parents in Renton, Washington, said the organization is limited to what it can say because of confidentiality restrictions. She said the group is working with authorities in the U.S. and Russia.

"It's as shocking to us as to anybody else to hear about it," she said.

Despite the uproar over adoptions, placing children inside Russia remains difficult. There are more than 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.

United Airlines disavowed any responsibility and said it requires a parent or guardian dropping off a child for a flight to show an ID and to list who is picking the child up at the destination.

United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said all unaccompanied minors on the flight that arrived Thursday in Moscow were picked up by the person listed on the form.

Previous adoption failures have increased Russian officials' wariness of adoptions to the U.S.

In 2006, Peggy Sue Hilt of Manassas, Virginia, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of fatally beating a 2-year-old girl adopted from Siberia months earlier.

In 2008, Kimberly Emelyantsev of Tooele, Utah, was sentenced to 15 years after pleading guilty to killing a Russian infant in her care.

And in March of this year, prosecutors in Pennsylvania met with a Russian diplomats to discuss how to handle the case of a couple accused of killing their 7-year-old adopted Russian son at their home near the town of Dillsburg.

Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee. Associated Press writers Travis Loller in Nashville, Joshua Freed in Minneapolis and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.










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Números oficiais: 196 mortos no Rio. De 100 a 150 soterrados em Niterói.



Números oficiais: 196 mortos no Rio. De 100 a 150 soterrados em Niterói. "A responsabilidade é de todos, autoridades e sociedade" (Cabral)








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Robbie Maddison salta o Canal de Corinto na Grécia









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Mortos no RJ chegam a 192; em Niterói 100 podem estar soterrados


Plantão | Publicada em 09/04/2010 às 15h35m

Reuters/Brasil Online

RIO DE JANEIRO, 9 de abril ( Reuters) - Bombeiros resgataram nesta sexta-feira mais quatro corpos de vítimas do enorme deslizamento provocado pelas chuvas no Morro do Bumba, em Niterói, elevando para 192 o número de mortos da tragédia no Estado.

Ao menos mais 100 pessoas estariam soterradas debaixo da montanha de terra que derrubou dezenas de casas, de acordo com o governador Sérgio Cabral (PMDB).

"São cerca de 100 a 150 corpos, segundo o pessoal do Corpo de Bombeiros me passou. A situação é estarrecedora", disse Cabral a jornalistas em visita ao Morro do Bumba, onde conversou com moradores e familiares de vítimas.

"A responsabilidade pelo que aconteceu aqui é de todos nós, autoridades e sociedade", acrescentou.

O Corpo de Bombeiros e a Defesa Civil trabalham desde a noite de quarta-feira no local, onde o deslizamento soterrou dezenas de casas numa área construída sobre um lixão. Até o início da tarde de sexta foram retirados 21 corpos do local e os trabalhos devem durar de duas a três semanas, de acordo com as autoridades.

Em Niterói, a cidade mais atingida pelas chuvas, já morreram 112 pessoas por conta do temporal que começou na noite de segunda-feira. Outras 60 pessoas morreram na capital, a maioria também em um deslizamento de terra que cobriu várias casas no Morro dos Prazeres, em Santa Teresa.

O prefeito de Niterói, Jorge Roberto da Silveira (PDT), decretou estado de calamidade pública, e a prefeitura informou que vai custear o enterro de todas as vítimas da tragédia. Somente na quinta-feira foram enterradas 45 pessoas na cidade.

O governador anunciou que dois hospitais de campanha serão instalados na segunda-feira em São Gonçalo, município vizinho de Niterói onde morreram 16 pessoas, para atender as vítimas atingidas pelas chuvas na região metropolitana.

O governo dos Estados Unidos informou nesta sexta que vai enviar uma ajuda de 50 mil dólares às mais de 50 mil pessoas que ficaram desabrigadas ou desalojadas com a tragédia para a compra de kits higiênicos.

"Queremos expressar nossas condolências e oferecer nosso apoio ao povo do Rio de Janeiro durante esse período de dificuldade e mostrar nosso respeito pela força e pela perseverança do espírito fluminense na figura dos socorristas envolvidos no resgate daqueles afetados por essa tragédia", disse o embaixador Thomas Shannon em nota.

O papa Bento 16 também enviou mensagem à Arquidiocese do Rio de Janeiro prestando sua solidariedade às vítimas. "Para todos os provados por este drama... Sua Santidade Bento 16 invoca reconfortantes graças divinas em penhor das quais lhes concede paterna benção apostólica."

SURFE

No litoral da capital fluminense, ondas de até quatro metros de altura interditaram uma das vias da Avenida Atlântica, em Copacabana, que foi tomada pela areia e pela água do mar. A ressaca também provocou a interdição de uma faixa do Aterro do Flamengo, via expressa que faz a ligação entre a zona sul e o centro da cidade.

O mar da Baía de Guanabara também ficou bastante agitado e a água invadiu parte da cabeceira da pista do Aeroporto Santos Dumont, prejudicando parcialmente as operações no local. A travessia de barcas e catamarãs entre Rio de Janeiro e Niterói também foi afetada pelo mar agitado.

Dezenas de surfistas aproveitaram as condições atípicas do mar de Copacabana para se aventurar nas ondas. "A onda tem característica como se fosse oceânica. É preciso até uma prancha maior para poder surfar", disse à Reuters TV o surfista amador Marco Aurélio Souza, de 38 anos.

A previsão do tempo indica que a maré ainda deve subir mais, após a passagem de ciclone extratropical perto do litoral do Rio. "Hoje é o dia dos surfistas, até porque a população sabe que o mar está perigoso e não vai se arriscar", disse um salva-vidas na praia.

O prefeito do Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes (PMDB), autorizou a remoção compulsória de moradores de 158 locais que estariam em situação de emergência na cidade.

Nesta semana, Paes já havia anunciado que a prefeitura iria remover de 1.500 a 2.000 famílias da Rocinha e do Morro dos Prazeres, em Santa Teresa. A remoção, segundo o prefeito, será feita com ou sem o consentimento dos moradores.

(Por Pedro Fonseca e Rodrigo Viga Gaier; com reportagem de Sérgio Queiroz da Reuters TV)










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Special Report: How the U.S. cracked open secret vaults at UBS






ZURICH
Fri Apr 9, 2010 6:12am EDT

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ZURICH (Reuters)- After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, Switzerland's largest bank was teetering. UBS, which was more than three times bigger than Lehman in terms of assets, had to write down some $50 billion during that tumultuous period.

U.S.

Investors the world over breathed a sigh of relief on October 16 when the Swiss government rescued UBS. But unbeknownst to them at the time, the bank faced a potentially devastating crisis on a very different front.

One day after the bailout, top executives from UBS and Swiss regulators were summoned to a closed-door meeting in New York by U.S. officials who were conducting a wide-ranging tax fraud investigation that centered on the bank.

The UBS delegation, led by newly-appointed Group General Counsel Markus Diethelm, arrived armed with the results of an internal report highlighting instances of tax fraud within the bank, insiders told Reuters. The plan was simple: admit guilt, settle the case quickly and move on.

But Kevin Downing, the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division Attorney who had been investigating UBS since the middle of 2008, chose that meeting to drop a bombshell: he wanted the bank to disclose names of U.S. tax evaders as a condition for a settlement.

That put UBS in the nightmarish position of either breaching nearly a century of Swiss bank secrecy or risking indictment in the United States.

"UBS was already in a position of weakness from the credit crisis," said one person who attended the meeting and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "It became crystal clear at that meeting that without addressing the issue of client names, no settlement could be found."

Interviews with insiders and a review of documents reveal previously undisclosed details about how the sprawling tax case was resolved -- at several points in the process, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was involved.

The confrontation also pushed UBS closer to the brink than is commonly realized. And while the bank ultimately defused the situation by coughing up $780 million and agreeing to hand over some client names, the damage to its huge and increasingly important wealth management operation still weighs heavily on the Swiss banking flagship.

In the months ahead, UBS's new management team will try to stabilize its battered wealth management division, whose advisers have been bolting and taking clients with them.

All of this in turn has forced the bank to confront a broader, more existential question: what exactly is UBS today? An asset-gathering megabank or a leaner player, more attentive to its wealthy clients' needs.

SWISS SECRETS

For UBS and other Swiss banks, the implications of the New York meeting on October 17, 2008 were hardly trivial.

Sharing bank client data would have been against UBS's core principles: confidence, security and discretion, symbolized by the three keys of its 70-year-old logo. Doing so might also shatter wealthy clients' trust in the bank -- and in the whole Swiss financial center.

Under scrutiny by the DOJ was the so-called U.S. cross-border business of UBS. This consisted of wealth management services offered to American residents outside the United States. It operated out of Switzerland and was separate from UBS's New York-based Americas wealth management business.

In documents relating to the UBS case, the DOJ said the bank helped some 52,000 Americans hide billions of dollars of untaxed assets in secret Swiss accounts between 2000 and 2007. According to settlement documents, UBS sometimes used shell financial entities to hide the money, depriving the Internal Revenue Service of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenues.

The business was referred to by some UBS executives as "toxic waste" due to the risks it carried under U.S. law. But UBS bankers, seemingly unaware of the legal consequences, made 3,800 trips to the United States to visit these clients in 2004 alone.

The cross-border accounts were hardly a big part of the bank's business. They added up to almost $20 billion, or less than 1 percent of UBS's total invested assets of about $2 trillion (2.174 trillion Swiss francs) at the end of 2008.

The business was so small it was initially below the radar screen of Swiss financial regulator FINMA, at the time known as the Federal Banking Commission. The agency's main concern back then was the systemic risks posed by UBS's increasingly wobbly fixed-income division.

Passing on some UBS client data to the United States was possible under certain strict conditions under an existing U.S.-Swiss tax agreement. U.S. authorities put in a request for the client data to Berne, but the process was cumbersome and slow and the Department of Justice grew increasingly impatient.

The investigation was launched by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, which suspected that UBS had breached U.S. securities law. But when the Department of Justice became involved, raising the prospect of criminal prosecutions, Swiss regulators became alarmed.

Their concerns grew in April, 2008, when U.S. authorities briefly detained Martin Liechti, the Zurich-based head of UBS's U.S. cross-border business, while he was visiting Miami. Then in May, Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS financial adviser who famously admitted smuggling a diamond in a toothpaste tube on behalf of a client, was arrested. He began a 40-month sentence in January.

Those cases got the Swiss Federal Banking Commission's attention. As the summer wore on, the agency started pressuring UBS to speed things up. But the bank, still in the throes of the financial crisis, was preoccupied with its own survival.

UBS had recently removed its all-powerful chairman, Marcel Ospel, who had blessed UBS's big expansion into the United States a decade earlier and fostered the risky U.S. investments that eventually brought UBS to its knees. Peter Kurer, a well-known Swiss lawyer who had joined the bank in 2001 as its general counsel, replaced Ospel as chairman in April 2008.

Kurer took months to appoint Diethelm as UBS's top lawyer. That lengthy process did not help the bank's dealings with U.S. authorities.

Diethelm, an ambitious former chief legal officer at Swiss Re, had made his name in the legal community by negotiating a multi-billion-dollar settlement between a group of insurers and a developer of the World Trade Center.

But within weeks of taking on the job he found himself working for a nearly crippled lender that was facing indictment in the United States.

Hoping to come to the rescue in what was clearly becoming an untenable situation for UBS, the Swiss Finance Ministry sent a letter to its U.S. counterparts to make clear that Berne was willing to find a solution to the UBS case despite the obvious legal constraints.

That did not sit well with U.S. officials, who saw the letter as political interference, insiders say. The Swiss never got an official response. Instead, the next time U.S. officials contacted the bank, on November 12, it was to inform UBS that Raoul Weil, its global head of wealth management, was being indicted.

"That was a clear message," said a high-level Swiss source. "One can imagine that without the letter they would have at least delayed the indictment of Weil."

Executives inside the bank feared that Chief Executive Marcel Rohner and Chairman Peter Kurer would be next, although neither had been named in court documents, these insiders say.

The indictment of Weil, who immediately stepped down from the executive board and has denied all wrongdoing despite remaining a fugitive in Switzerland, jump-started the negotiations.

In November, the Department of Justice asked UBS to submit a collateral consequences study, normally one of the last steps before an indictment of a company. "They said: we have now the authority from the highest level of government to proceed with an indictment," the UBS source said.

Inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, officials were also alarmed. They feared the indictment of UBS could panic already jittery financial markets. But the N.Y. Fed could not interfere in the DOJ's affairs.

"UBS has to find a way to disclose the taxpayer names to DOJ in order to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of an indictment," Thomas Baxter, the New York Fed's general counsel, told a Swiss interlocutor, according to another person familiar with the discussions.

In December, UBS held an intense board meeting at which top executives examined alternatives and assessed risks. Kurer, who had recused himself because of pending UBS litigation, could not take part.

At the meeting, directors discussed the possibility of "Notrecht" -- German for emergency law, which the government could use to bypass bank secrecy rules and rescue UBS.

But the board decided that the bank should act within the parameters of existing Swiss law. "UBS had to go back to the drawing board," said one insider.

Was the Department of Justice really going to pull the trigger? Would it risk pushing over the cliff a bank with three times more employees than Lehman Brothers, about 27,000 of whom were based in the United States?

No one knew for sure, but the Swiss decided not to take the risk. On a cold night on February 18, the Swiss government convened an emergency late evening cabinet meeting in Berne and gave its blessing to a hefty $780 million criminal settlement.

More painful than the money, though, was an agreement by UBS to deliver about 280 names of serious U.S. tax avoiders. The government had essentially traded nearly a century of Swiss bank secrecy for UBS's survival.

This was done with the blessing of Swiss regulators, who had to draft an emergency regulation to bypass the court system to save UBS from the risk of failure.

A day after the settlement, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service shocked the Swiss government by demanding that UBS disclose the names of 52,000 possible U.S. tax evaders. The Swiss had clearly failed to take both the criminal and civil investigation into UBS off the table, and pressure on their treasured bank secrecy laws continued.

THE JOHN DOE SUMMONS

Finding someone to take on the job of steadying the UBS ship amid financial turmoil and a U.S. criminal investigation was not easy. "No-one wanted to talk to us because of this thing," said a senior UBS source.

In the weeks running up to the February 18 criminal settlement Kurer interviewed three candidates. One of them was German-born Oswald Gruebel, a former Chief Executive of Credit Suisse credited with turning around the second largest Swiss bank at a difficult time. Gruebel had retired with a bitter taste in this mouth after losing a battle to become chairman of the bank he had spent 22 years with.

On February 26, 2009, barely a week after the settlement of the criminal side of the UBS case, Gruebel agreed to take on the challenge. He immediately signaled a change of tune by announcing sharp cost cuts in an interview with local media. He said it would take him two to three years to rebuild the bank.

Kurer reluctantly left the bank and was replaced by former Swiss finance minister Kaspar Villiger. UBS was counting on Villiger's political ties to help it settle the remaining leg of the U.S. tax case, known as the John Doe summons.

A former trader of humble origins and no formal university education, Gruebel is an outsider in what remains a close-knit hierarchical world of Swiss banking. Born in East Germany in 1943, he fled through the Iron Curtain as a 10-year-old orphan and learned the ropes of the business on Deutsche Bank's bond trading floor in the 1960s.

A straight-talking banker with a dry sense of humor, he is described as "cold" and "tough" by close aides and tends to avoid the limelight. Yet Gruebel is admired by peers as a fighter who possesses deep knowledge of investment banking, wealth management and commercial banking at a time when most banking executives tend to be specialized.

UPHILL STRUGGLE

When Gruebel took the job of chief executive in February, the bank had just been stabilized thanks in part to a loan from the Swiss state. It was also safe from U.S. criminal charges after its February settlement.

But UBS was by no means out of the woods. It still faced a civil tax litigation that threatened the confidentiality of thousands of U.S. clients and led to an exodus of clients and financial advisers. And the bank remained far from profitable, losing over 21 billion Swiss francs in 2008, the biggest annual loss in Swiss corporate history.

The John Doe summons represented a real legal headache for UBS. While it had been possible to stretch Swiss law to settle charges of tax fraud, the summons breached new ground by targeting tax evasion, an area in which the Swiss do not offer international cooperation.

Insiders say that by early March, it was clear that without Swiss government intervention, UBS would face another damaging legal clash that threatened Switzerland's relationship with the United States.

While UBS continued talks with the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice, the Swiss foreign ministry got in on the act, sending officials to visit the U.S. State Department in late March. The following month, Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz, who at the time also held the rotating post of Swiss President, met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in Washington.

By their own reckoning, the Swiss were in a weak negotiating position: on April 2, the Group of 20 nations had put them on a list of tax havens and the U.S. administration was pressing ahead with legislation against illicit tax gains in offshore centers.

But they had a few things going for them. The U.S. State Department was grateful for the nation's diplomatic support -- such as representing U.S. interests in places like Cuba and Iran and helping to broker a deal that normalized relations between Turkey and Armenia. The pact was signed in Switzerland last October.

This, insiders said, helped create what they called a "certain atmosphere" that made it possible for Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy Rey to have numerous phone calls with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to meet her face to face three times in the run-up to the August deal.

In the end, at a crucial July 31, 2009 meeting, Clinton and Calmy Rey were able to agree a deal in principle to avert a damaging court case against UBS.

The Swiss, constrained by their red tape, could not guarantee the timing of the delivery of any client names. But the IRS was satisfied with reassurances that Swiss authorities would eventually do so.

A U.S. State Department official said the United States welcomed the deal "and the continued efforts by the Swiss government to ensure that its obligations under the UBS Agreement are met." The State Department declined further comment for this story.

UBS and the United States settled the civil leg of the case on August 19. There was no fine involved this time around, but a promise to hand over another 4,450 names within a year.

Two months later Gruebel played his ace: after weeks of secret contacts, he hired Robert McCann, a former head of wealth management at archrival Merrill Lynch, to be the new face of UBS's battered American franchise.

Within three months of starting, McCann installed a brand new team of mostly ex-Merrill executives -- known within the bank as the Wealth Management Americas Renewal Team.

STOPPING THE ROT

It has taken Gruebel less than a year to show investors and clients that the bank has regained its financial footing. This involved some tough choices. Gruebel shrunk the bank's workforce by 11,000, to 65,000. He also sold a crown jewel -- Brazil's wealth management unit Pactual -- for $2.5 billion just three years after buying it.

But the Swiss giant is still losing client money and withdrawals at its wealth management franchise accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2009. And investors balked when Gruebel said he saw no immediate recovery in inflows and predicted more withdrawals over the next few quarters.

Since the middle of 2008, a total of 225 billion Swiss francs have left the bank, according to calculations from Keefe, Bruyette and Wood's analyst Matthew Clark. That is more than 11 percent of the bank's combined wealth management assets of 2 trillion Swiss francs at the end of March 2008.

At the current rate, Morgan Stanley analyst Huw van Steenis reckons that rival Credit Suisse will surpass UBS in terms of wealth management assets by next year. "Credit Suisse Private Banking momentum means it could become larger than UBS in Swiss private banking going into 2011," said Steenis, who expects UBS to lose a further 37 billion Swiss francs this year.

Gruebel recognized early on that the loss of credibility among wealth management clients was the single biggest issue he had to deal with. At first, clients were withdrawing their money strictly because of the credit crisis. But the breach of trust that followed the tax fraud scandal in the United States only made the matter worse.

He is expected to face a tough shareholder meeting on April 14. Activist investors like the investment fund Ethos plan to challenge the bank's sizable 2009 bonuses and to vote against the discharge of UBS board members from any responsibility stemming from the credit crisis.

"Having done a fantastic job in building a global brand they were seriously damaged by the fact they went almost bust and did some serious missteps in public relations in the U.S. tax affair," said Michael Malinski, a specialist wealth management consultant who has 22 years of practical experience in the business. "If you are a potential client, unless there was a compelling reason to go with UBS, you would choose someone else."

Even though UBS suffered the bulk of its client outflows outside America, Former Paine Webber President Joseph Grano, who ran the post-merger UBS PaineWebber wealth management business in the United States before leaving in 2004, said he believes the Swiss bank's brand name in the country is beyond repair.

Gruebel's top priority is to stop the exodus of private client money. Some of the outflows are the result of clients choosing to remain with UBS financial advisers who have bolted the bank for greener pastures.

Ultimately, he must figure out what to do with the bank's U.S. wealth management business -- the old Paine Webber franchise that it bought for $12 billion in 2000 and which has been unprofitable ever since.

UBS tried to sell it repeatedly during the crisis, but could only attract low-ball offers.

With McCann on board, UBS believes it has a chance to make the business work. "If he can achieve that, keeping the unit or selling it will be a purely financial choice," said Ray Soudah, founder of Millennium Associates, a Swiss-based M&A consultancy with a focus on wealth management.

More importantly, UBS has another tough decision to make. Given the current political and regulatory pressures in Switzerland, the bank cannot continue playing a big role in both investment banking and wealth management.

Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand is drafting a proposal that would make it impossible for UBS or Credit Suisse to drag the economy down should another crisis hit the banking sector. And some Swiss political parties, including the radical ultra-nationalist SVP, the country's biggest political force, have called in the past for forcing UBS to sell its investment banking business.

Gruebel, who helped shape the universal banking model in Switzerland, is not expected to give up on investment banking so easily. Nor will Credit Suisse.

But he may be forced to curb investment banking activities, which, unlike the wealth management business, are capital intensive. And in the current financial environment, capital remains an important commodity.

ANGRY GERMANS

Ongoing heavy pressure on Switzerland by cash-strapped Western nations seeking to recoup taxpayers' undeclared cash is also not helping UBS. In the wake of its painful 2009 U.S. tax settlement, all Swiss-based private banks are attempting to kick suspected U.S. tax cheats out. But European governments are not sitting still waiting for this to happen.

Germany, whose citizens own a quarter of an estimated 726 billion Swiss francs of undeclared EU assets stashed in Switzerland according to Helvea analyst Peter Thorne, has been particularly virulent. On March 19, German prosecutors launched an investigation of Credit Suisse for allegedly aiding German clients to dodge taxes.

UBS is also the subject of a German inquiry, launched in February, that focuses on suspected fraud and tax evasion in that nation. None of this is helping the Swiss bank rebuild client trust at a time when Berne is trying to negotiate a sensitive new tax treaty with its German neighbors.

The Swiss giant is reacting to the international attacks on bank secrecy and offshore banking by narrowing its focus to the super-rich and to high-growth markets like Asia, a region where the Swiss wealth manager remains a leader. "In the U.S., UBS is just a shadow of itself. In Asia they are still the strongest. In Europe they are somewhat in between," a former UBS executive said.

Even though the bank still offers private banking services to clients, it has quietly adopted a strategy of making it less attractive for small undeclared European accounts to stick with UBS, insiders say. Banking on a strictly-confidential basis is more costly for clients, who must now travel to Switzerland, at risk of being noticed by custom police, if they want to see how their investments are doing.

The bank has also adopted a new code of business conduct and ethics clearly stating that "UBS does not provide assistance to clients in acts aimed at breaching their fiscal obligations."

And there are indications that unwanted client defections may be slowing. "Outflows persisted in the fourth quarter of 2009 but are well below the peak," said analyst Matthew Clark. "Despite everything that happened to UBS, cumulative outflows only correspond to 16 percent of the wealth management business (ex-U.S.)," he said.

"This is not a lot and this is a very resilient business," he added. "Considering everything that has happened to UBS, its wealth management business has proven remarkably resilient and there is scope to see the glass half full."

All Swiss banks appear to be counting on the government to find a solution to the "Schwarzgeld" or black money, as the untaxed money belonging to Westerners is commonly known in Switzerland.

But the stakes remain exceptionally high. In February, Gruebel said UBS alone holds about 140 billion francs of potentially undeclared assets of Western European origins. Rival Credit Suisse said for it the amount was 100 billion Swiss francs.

Even so, the highest end of the market appears safe for UBS and other Swiss banks. That is because the super wealthy use lawyers to minimize the tax impact through sophisticated watertight tax avoidance structures rather than stashing cash in a secret bank account, or they come from emerging countries that are less sensitive about tax evasion issues.

"Tax evasion is not a problem of the big guys," said one seasoned Swiss banker









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