BRIC Report: Brazil

Brazil's Senate is pressing ahead with the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff despite a surprise decision by the lower house's interim speaker to annul it. Renan Calheiros, the head of the Senate or upper house, said on Monday he had rejected the interim speaker's decision and that a vote in the Senate on whether to put Rousseff on trial would continue as scheduled. "No monocrotic decision can super impose a collective decision, especially when the decision was taken with the highest form of collectiveness in the house," he said. Earlier, Waldir Maranhao, who took over as acting speaker of the lower house last week, said there were procedural flaws in the April 17 vote in the chamber when it accepted the impeachment charges against Rousseff. Fitch Ratings has downgraded the rating assigned to the senior secured pass-through notes issued by Brazil Loan Trust I (the issuer) as follows: --USD661.9 million notes to 'BBsf' from 'BB+sf'; Outlook Negative. The transaction is a pass-through securitization of a 10-year amortizing loan originated by Bank of America N.A. ('A+'/ Outlook Stable) to the Brazilian State of Maranhao ('BB-'/ Outlook Negative). The loan is guaranteed on an unconditional and irrevocable basis by the Federative Republic of Brazil ('BB'/ Outlook Negative). For the third time since 2015, a Brazilian state judge has ordered a complete shut down on WhatsApp by forcing operators to block the service nationwide for 72 hours, and thus killing the main means of communication of 91% of the country's mobile users. The main question is why. Due to legal secrecy in the country, the details aren't released, but it appears that this isn't related to the first two bans in February of 2015 (issued by judge Luiz de Moura Correia from the state of Piauí) and December of 2015 (issued by a São Paulo judge). This time, it's judge Marcel Maia Montalvão, from a small town in the Sergipe state, the same judge who ordered the arrest of Facebook's vice president for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, over failure to comply with judicial orders in a drug trafficking case; an order that was later overturned by appellate court.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.