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SAO PAULO (CNS) — A Catholic prelature in Brazil's Amazon has decreed that its parishes will not accept donations from any person or company that displaces minorities or damages the earth. Bishop José Ionilton Lisboa de Oliveira of Itacoatiara has prohibited parishes, pastoral communities, groups and movements linked to the prelature -- similar to a diocese — from receiving financial resources from those he says "damage the Amazon." "We decree, for an indefinite period, that in parishes, communities, pastorals, groups and movements of the Prelature of Itacoatiara, we will not receive financial resources, in currency or other goods, from politicians,...

Face of evil: MOHSEN RABBANI The Islamic Shiite cleric active in Latin America since the early 1990s. Responsible for the 1992 and 1994 anti-Jewish massacres in Argentina. Wanted in that country and by the Interpol for the crimes. Called for Israel to be "wiped off," in 1994. 'Chief' Islamic operator of Hezbollah - Quds activities of: Islamizaton --including 'recruting converts for Islam'-- and terror networks in Latin America, resides in Brazil. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil - Pages 122-3Tom Diaz, Barbara Newman - Random House Digital, Inc., 2006 - History - 272 pagesThe man directly responsible for this cell-building...

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian law designed to ensure fair elections has kept police from arresting a 23-year-old law student who confessed to hiring hitmen to kill his mother. Adriano Saddi Lima Oliveira told police he paid 40,000 reais ($18,433) to hitmen who killed his mother Marisa, a real estate tycoon, several months ago, a police investigator told local TV. Oliveira told police his mother was squandering his inheritance going out with her boyfriend. Police wanted to arrest him but were unable to do so because of a law that prohibits anybody from being arrested five days before...

Senate Investigators Say U.N. Inspector Was Bribed by Iraq By JUDITH MILLER nvestigators for the Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee said yesterday that they had determined that one United Nations-contracted inspector had been bribed to help Iraq export more oil than was authorized under the oil-for-food program. The investigators said they would present at a hearing tomorrow what they called "overwhelming evidence" that an inspector employed by Saybolt International, the Dutch company hired to monitor oil exports under the program, had accepted more than $100,000 to help the former Iraqi government export more than $9 million worth of oil outside of...

For nearly five decades the left has been trying to impose a socialist and confiscatory land reform on Brazil. From the beginning, the so-called Catholic left, and particularly the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), has been the leading proponents and the most important driving force of that policy. With strong links to this Catholic left, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made land reform one of its main goals. For this purpose it designated Miguel Rossetto from the Workers Party's most radical wing as the Minister of Land Reform. The party also gave the government posts...