Brazil’s presidential election goes to runoff as dirty tricks allegations surface
SAO PAULO, Brazil — Former Sao Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin forced a presidential runoff election by capitalizing on Brazilians’ anger over scandals that reached ever-closer to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Alckmin — who like Silva spent Monday plotting strategy with his advisers — is now within striking distance of an upset victory Oct. 29. But whether Brazilians are ready to give up on their first working-class president remains to be seen.
A balding anesthesiologist widely known for sleep-inducing campaign speeches, Alckmin lacks the passion Silva has brought to the job. Nicknamed "chuchu” — after a flavorless green vegetable — he is strong in Brazil’s industrialized south, but has relatively little support among the poor and working classes.
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Russia slaps Georgia with sanctions even though it releases arrested officers
TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia released four Russian officers whose arrest on spying charges has angered its giant northern neighbor, but a vengeful Russia pushed ahead Monday with punitive sanctions aimed at dealing a painful blow to the economically struggling Caucasus nation.
The tension reflected Moscow’s difficult relations with Georgia, which has defied President Vladimir Putin with a pro-Western stance, hosts unwanted Russian troops on its soil and is facing two Russian-backed separatist movements that could flare up in new violence.
Georgia’s agreement to release the men — even as it reaffirmed the spying allegations against them — appeared to be a capitulation that underscored its vulnerability. To many Russians, however, the very fact that the former Soviet republic dared detain the men was an affront to Moscow’s prestige and its ability to project power and influence across an area many Russians still call "the near abroad.”
The questions now on the table are how long the sanctions will last, whether Russia will go ahead with plans to withdraw its military presence in Georgia by 2008, and whether the crisis can be ended without new violence in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The two regions have run their own affairs without international recognition since the early 1990s.<
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