Satellite internet service’s antennas are everywhere, from illegal mining sites to isolated Indigenous villages The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from its metal skids into the caiman-inhabited waters below. Their target, lurking in the woodland along Brazil’s Bóia River, was a hulking steel mining dredge, caught red-handed as it drilled into the riverbed, pulverising it in search of gold. Continue reading...

Millions of users shut out and 500,000 switch to rival platform Bluesky as providers enact supreme court ban One of the world’s most popular social networks, X, has gone offline in Brazil – the country with the fifth largest digital population – after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws saw it blocked by the supreme court. Millions of Brazilian X users found themselves unable to access the network on Saturday morning as internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban. Continue reading...

Social media platform to be blocked by ISPs because it did not appoint legal representative in allotted time The Brazilian supreme court has ordered that X be suspended in the country after the social media platform failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country. Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”. Continue reading...

Judge Alexandre de Moraes had ordered X to block certain accounts as he investigated fake news and hate messages Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X claims Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. Brazil’s supreme court, where Moraes has a seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Continue reading...

As demand for the tin ore cassiterite soars, special forces units of Brazil’s Ibama environment agency must play a cat and mouse game with the thousands of illegal miners pouring into Yanomami reserves In the back yard of the federal police headquarters in Roraima, the northernmost state of Brazil, giant sacks lie strewn and overflowing with a jet-black, gravel-like mineral: cassiterite. Although less high-profile than other items seized during a crackdown on illegal mining in this Amazon state – including a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter painted in the colours of the Brazilian flag – cassiterite has become so sought-after that it is nicknamed “black gold”. Cassiterite is the chief ore of tin, a less heralded but critical mineral for the energy transition. It is used in coatings for solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and solder for electronics, including wind turbines, mobile phones, computers and industrial alloys. Continue reading...