this is bbc news. i'm shaun ley and these are the headlines... pope francis presides over palm sunday mass at the vatican — just a day after leaving hospital in rome for treatment for bronchitis. authorities in the united states have been assessing the damage caused by severe storms and tornadoes. at least 21 people are now known to have died and dozens more are missing — after the severe weather left a trail of devastation. these are two of three british men the uk foreign office says it is trying to get in touch with since being detained by secret police in afghanistan. more than a hundred thousand people take part in protests across israel for the 13th consecutive week againstjudicial reforms. that's despite the government's decision to pause the legislation.

the uk's home secretary tells the bbc the government is looking at further land sites and vessels to house migrants — just days after it announced three former military sites will be used. you're watching bbc news. now it's time for global questions: lula's new brazil. hello. i'm lyse doucet. welcome to global questions in rio dejaneiro. a city famed for its soaring sugarloaf mountain and stunning copacabana beach. but the big story in brazil now is its highly charged political transition. last year's narrow election victory of leftist president lula over his far—right wing rival, jair bolsonaro, highlighted brazil's deep polarisation. gunfire. injanuary, thousands of bolsonaro supporters attacked the heart of the brazilian government. those tensions linger

and there are questions too about the loyalties of brazil's military in a country with a past history of military dictatorship. president lula confronts many crises at home, including rising inequality, and he wants brazil to play a greater role on the world stage, declaring brazil is back. what can and will he do to rebuild this country? that's global questions, lula's new brazil. applause. and now you join us in this stunning setting of guanabara bay between the sugarloaf mountain and the soaring statue of christ the redeemer.

and with me is a panel, a terrific panel of experts and our great local audience who gather here with us to ask some questions. so, let me start by introducing all of you to our panel, and all of those who are watching from home or wherever you are in the world. joao brant is notjust the secretary of digital policies at the ministry of social communications, in president lula's new team. he is the first person to hold that position. welcome to global questions. and federal deputy ricardo salles, brazilian politician, former lawyer who served as minister of the environment under the former administration of president bolsonaro. and last, but not least is oliver stuenkel, professor stuenkel, of the think tank getulio vargas foundation. he is a well—known commentator on brazilian politics and brazil on the world stage. that's our panel.

welcome. applause. and remember — you can alljoin the conversation, use the hashtag, global questions. but now it's time to start. let's go to our first question in the audience. agusto salles, your question. in lula's first hundred days since returning to power, some people see him as a saviour of the poor and some other people see him as a trickster. what directions is he taking his government? joao brant, saviour of the poor or trickster — where is president lula leading brazil now? well, i think we are back, and when we think, when we know and when we say we are back, we mean we have to look after the people that most need the state support, we have to look after 33 million people that are suffering hunger situation.

we're looking at people that are not having their households, people that don't have the basic conditions to live, that's one thing. on the other side, we also have to look at brazil as a whole, to think of development, think of a sustainable development, think of protecting the rainforest, which is a very important issue today as we see brazil leading this debate again on protecting, and especially related to climate change. so i think we have to understand brazil as — try repeating lula's good actions in the first two administrations that he had, but also, looking forward and looking to the future and understanding how to build the best way forward to us. protecting the poor, protecting the amazon. ricardo salles, how would you see the return of president lula to answer, and to agusto salles's question?

well, we all expected, i when lula was elected, unfortunately for my side, - we voted for president bolsonaro, but since lula was elected, people were expecting - to have a new lula, the lula that i could bring all the people together ito stand for the reforms that should | be done, to do whatever is necessary to regrow the economy, i do whatever things that's — including the environment, but other issues as well. i and what we are seeing now is a government that, - after 100 years, as you said, - have not presented a programme that could be supporting this development that we are all expecting. _ it's not dealing with the congress properly, it's not addressing - i the issues that brazil is expecting i to see from someone who has occupied the presidency twice. oliver, it was an extraordinary political comeback for president lula, even though it was a very narrow — breathtakingly narrow election victory. but it is also a new brazil, more than a decade since he was in power.

what kind of brazil does he have to confront now? i think it's much more difficult to govern than it was when lula was first president. it's a more polarised... from 2003 to 2010. it's a much more polarised brazil. and i think it's an angry brazil because the country has basically lived through a decade of stagnation. we refer to the �*80s as the lost decade, but actually, the past ten years have been even more frustrating from an economic point of view, and across latin america, it's difficult for governments to be popular. we've actually seen in the past 15 elections across latin america opposition victories, and congress is now much more powerful, thejudiciary is more powerful than it used to be, so the office of the president is less influential than it used to be, and that's the big challenge for the current administration. so, lots of new problems, but the old problems are still there. one of the questions which came up when we asked for questions

was the fight against corruption. no matter who's in power, it continues to plague brazil. and, joao, even though you talk about looking to the future, you have a past — the workers party has a past for decades in corruption. what can you tell our audience, people listening, watching, what you're going to do to fight against corruption in this new term? well, corruption is a big issue in brazil and was, and all — basic — all the public parties, the political parties were involved in some way on corruption and this... what have you done that you haven't done before to make sure it doesn't happen again? well, firstly, do again the good things that we had already done, and shed the light on the corruption cases that were brought up. so if you think all the corruption cases and some issues on the direct administration were brought up firstly by the internal control of the government. and, so first thing is to repeat good things, to open transparency again. we've seen the bolsonaro administration closing information about —

public information, reopening that. we don't want to sweep anything under the carpet. we have to put more bigger control to the indirect administration, to the public companies that work and that operate big budgets. of course we know that every time, in private to public spaces, that you have big budgets, you have risks to corruption, so i think we have to do better what we've done before, but of course if we had and we did have corruptions during our government, we do have to do best, and i think the commitment that lula has is really to improve and enhance the situation. i see ricardo salles looking...listening very, very carefully with half a smile! but no—one — i think what the audience can agree — no political party in brazil can take the high ground, right, when it comes to the fight against corruption. will this be something that you'll be looking for? well, first of all, i think the only

way to reduce significantly - the corruption is to reduce the size of the state — i mean, we do have a lot of public- companies who have been, once again, divided into political parties - exactly the same way that lula did before to gain power- and connections in congress, to be more effective in their policies. - they did in the past. they split the government - into different political parties. they are doing exactly the same thing. - but that's not — joao, i'lljust bring you in — listening to what president lula says, you're not going to reduce the state, you're actually going to grow the state. yeah, we don't see that as a solution. actually, like, we're talking about a situation in congress where congress is trying to move things in terms of the distribution. but congress was really, really powerful during bolsonaro's administration, controlling the budget. the budget was controlled directly by the head of congress. so we are not talking about... we have to take out the ghosts of the house. we don't see a big or a small state

as a reason for more or less corruption. we think it's separate issues that have tojoin them. just a word — just a quick word. sure. i think that... a big problem? the big problem in brazil that all presidents, even if they win a landslide, are minority presidents in congress. which they didn't. but even in this case, without a landslide, the governing party has only a very small slice of congress, and there's lots of parties, huge number of parties i like to compare with... ohh, dealmaking. so, and there are parties which are, let's say, ideologically flexible, willing to support whoever is in power, but they want something in return. let's go on to the next question. we have one from viviane viani — great name. the bolsonaro government, which had mr salles as one of its ministers, propagated a lot of fake news about science, deforestation, forest fires and climate change. how can we restore brazilians' trust in institutions in the role of science?

ok, ricardo, we're going to come to you in a minute, because it specifically mentioned you. but first to you, joao — trust in institutions, trust in the politicians, trust in the world of science — is that a priority for the new administration? well, definitely. we've been defending that during the pandemic we had this kind of situation of polemics that shouldn't be in place about weird medicines being given to try to tackle covid—19, that were really not good for covid—19... this is president bolsonaro dismissing the pandemic... yes, yes. and we see science and the fight against disinformation is actually an issue of citizenship, an issue of defending... like, we have to dispute facts. we can be thinking differently, that's fine, but we have to dispute on real facts, to dispute on what the science is showing us as the most likely

way, good way to go forward. if we don't tackle disinformation, we are actually eroding trust in our institutions, what makes people not relying even in democracy institution, democratic institutions, and so we break up kind of the pact that makes us a society, so that's serious. and viviane�*s question underlines that the former administration does have something to answer for. and if i can say you yourself, ricardo salles, you had to resign in 2021 as the environment minister because you were under investigations for — regarding that you obstructed a police probe into illegal logging, and there was that video, which i'm sure many in the audience — yes, your eyes are going up — they saw that video where you were telling the former administration, "let's exploit the pandemic, people are preoccupied by it, and we can push through some environmental deregulation." it reinforced this idea that, you know, to put it bluntly, "stuff the science" —

the science doesn't matter. well, listen, in regard i to the minister meeting at that time, i continue - to have the same position. the fact is that brazil has a lot of bureaucracy, - regulations that should be reduced, rationalised and other things, - and what i said at that ministry was "let's take advantage - on the fact that we can do things . without passing in congress at that time," because at that time, - we had a president of the chamber completely against the government. so, therefore, everything - that we tried to pass in congress were not being approved. yes, but i think viviane�*s — viviane�*s question is different, and it was that if you look at the record, that you cut the funding, the university funding into science and agriculture, research linked to agribusiness, you — president bolsonaro fired the head of the space research agency when he didn't like the figures on deforestation, the formerforeign minister

described the climate crisis as a marxist conspiracy. it all added up to being very, very dismissive of science, of experts. that's what i think viviane — viviane, that's what you're worried about? yes. yes, what she said. that's... but you contest this, all of what i quoted? yeah. why that? when you look into| the facts, isolate... but you seem to dismiss the facts, you didn't want research. no, not research, but it was — you just gave an example. - the former president i of the brazilian institute for research, he was not fired because of the numbers. - he was fired because he was leaking information to the press before - presenting officially the information. . but president bolsonaro said — he said when he gave figures for record high levels of deforestation, president bolsonaro said those are lies. no, he didn't say exactly that. what he said was it was not - the record, the highest number of deforestation was not

during bolsonaro term. i the highest number of- deforestation was in 2005 — '04, i05 and '06 - during the liberall party administration. that's what he said. we have another question, which is related, from eric. your question. during the past few years, we saw the dissemination of controversial and aggressive speeches under bolsonaro's government. what can the government do to reduce the spread of fake news and the way hate speech affects society? joao, you mentioned this a bit, but it deserves emphasising. yourjob is a newjob, specifically to do this? yeah, we're triggering actually the debate that is all over the world, is in the us, in europe — and europe just approved a digital services act, which is basically — how can we define a better environment in which this situation of dissemination of fake news is not promoted directly by the business model of the platforms. and so part of the debate is really

on public policy and regulation, and this debate, i think it's clear that we cannot have regulation that stifles freedom of expression, we have to give regulation to mitigate the effects — the bad effects of the business model of the companies, and i think that's what europe is doing quite right, and i think that's something that we have to learn from. the other thing is really to promote the truth in terms of open debate. we have to have freedom of expression, we have to have freedom of press. oliver, in some countries, it's seen as dangerous, this information, the campaigns. is there danger in brazil? was the government right to set up this new...this new communications... yeah, i think that if you look at the past two election cycles in brazil, this misinformation and disinformation, sort of purposefully articulated wrong information had a huge impact on the electoral cycle. a lot of them showed insecurity vis—a—vis basic fact, so they weren't sure exactly whether, for example,

the electoral court was doing its job, there was a lot of fake news about the military�*s supposed role and engaging in this issue... and the january 8 attack in brasilia... crosstalk. ..to some extent, certainly cannot be understood without an environment that's very vulnerable information, environment very vulnerable to fake news, so i certainly think there is a challenge that must be tackled to preserve the positive aspects of democracy, and asjoao said, in a way, it's necessary to do so without stifling free speech. ricardo salles, did you see what happened onjanuary 8, with the attacks on government buildings, as a wake—up call, an alarm bell about the dangers... it was very bad. ..in terms of the disinformation and the hate speech and the kind of things which viviane also mentioned... we are expecting to have a court — i a congress section to investigatel that profoundly, and the government

is playing a role against it. _ i mean, we want to know exactly what happened onjanuary 8, - that there's a lot of facts that we need to check, l and the government is doing all the efforts they can do i to remove the signatures who give support to that. ok, well, joao... we know exactly what happened on january 8, that was clear and open to everyone. we'll take ricardo saying "face the facts." we hope you will. i want to quickly go to a social media question, because you touched on it about the security forces, from sylvia, and i'll read her question. "one of the first measures of the new government was to change the command with the aim of depoliticising it and isolating the bolsonarismo within it. "is a change of command enough?" change of the military command. "or would a broad reform of the armed forces be necessary?" ah, i think the change of command is quite important in a situation where the previous commander was not clearly loyal to the new administration.

i also believe that that will be enough. i think we trust in the institutions, in brazilian institutions, we trust in the perception they have that they have to serve brazilian people and to respond to the brazilian general commander, who's president lula, and we see new attitudes, they are departisaning the army now because the army was quite partisan in previous administrations. you think it was? yes. ricardo salles, in the administration you were part of, you doubled the number of senior military officials. joao says that was making them — they were partial to — they're supposed to be neutral. what we did in government was to invite people, - most of them retired, tojoin government. . this is one thing, this| is completely normal. i mean, after they've been retired, they are civilians, _ like everybody else.

so there is no politicisation of the forces. _ the force is another thing, it's the institution. - it's the way they do their work, it's the way they follow - the constitution and the laws, this is the institution. - but people who join the army or the navy, and after that, i are retired, they can go wherever they want. i 0k. is that. ..oliver? yeah, i think i slightly disagree with both in a sense that i think that the change of commands is one first step, but i think more will have to be done because i think we can all agree on — there's necessity to separate the armed forces from politics, so the politicisation of the armed forces is not good, and the militarisation of politics is not good. when we look at strong democracies around the world, that separation is clear. it was not clear in venezuela and many other countries where democracy suffered because of a growing role of the armed forces in politics. i agree vis—a—vis retired army officials, the problem was that we did have a growing

amount of active duty military in government, and i think that is a challenge and i think there should be, ideally, legislation that assures that those who would like to join politics can do so, but they need to step away from their role in the armed forces. ok, we started with brazil is back, but it's back on the world stage too. yuri fernandez has a question. yuri. after the diplomatic disaster perpetrated by the last government, how likely is it and what are the possibilities for brazil to come back on the international stage under the new lula administration? briefly, joao, what does it mean on the world stage, "brazil is back"? lula is a great world leader, he has done important actions... but the world is waiting. he's just starting his third term. yes. brazil will lead the 620 from december 1. we do have — we already had meetings withjoe biden, with the german chancellor,

and in latin america, lots of different countries, and we see that as an opportunity to bring back the role that brazil has internationally, which i think... multilateralism. .. multilateralism in a — not taking sides of us and china, so building a multilateral world with multi—polarised world, and also, defending democracy as an important part of what sustains our society. ricardo is suppressing a big smile there. the question is why bolsonaro - was so bad and lula is so exciting. i mean, this is not true. i mean, lula was the guy- who symbolised and materialised the corruption in brazil. he was guilty of that - and everybody knows it. crosstalk. when he goes outside... but the court did — the court did annul the judicial decision, which is why he ran... by simply a proceeding issue, it was not on merit. _ on merit, he was convicted. without any evidence.

no, he was convicted. ok, let's look forward. we saw this week, for instance, an article from an editor, - by saying that the government is disappointed, but have - not reached any result. with these connections, with these meetings with joe biden, and also with europe, _ in both environmental and other issues as well, which shows - that this, you know, - this artificial environment that means brazil is back. and all of these things, doesn't reach the results. let's take our last question of the night, which is also on foreign policy. isabella. considering china's sensitive rapprochement with russia, how can we strengthen brazil's ties to china without weakening the relationship with the us? joao, it's tricky. the president making a big visit to china soon, but he also went to the us. can you really be friends with both? i think so, but we shouldn't think about friendship, we should think about brazilian interests. and i think it's —

china and the us are the biggest brazilian partners, and it's... and russia. yeah, but it's under the interest of the us and china to keep a good relationship with brazil, not only for economic reasons, but for geopolitical reasons. but president biden likes to say, "well, you know, if you're ourfriend, i'm concerned about china. "why aren't you supporting us with ukraine and the war against russia?" your allies will make demands on you. i know, it's part of the game, but i think brazil is for peace, and we don't believe in peace in a naive perception, we believe in peace because we really believe that under war, you don't have any solutions for the problems that you're trying to tackle. you're talking about ukraine? yes. is it going to be hard? they say there's no automatic alliances, we will choose, issue by issue, where brazil should stand. i consider that to be the most difficult challenge, the majorforeign policy challenge brazil will face, irrespective of who's in power, because... ..is how to balance... ..is how to balance,

and because brazil needs both partners, brazil, in a way, i think, is uniquely well positioned to actually implement non—alignment, it is moving closer to the oecd. it may notjoin this time, but at some stage, mayjoin as a member. it's in the g20, it's a country that is comfortable in all these meetings actually. does he really have the weight to do that? he wants to be a big player. well, i am personally very sceptical, for example, when it comes to brazil mediating in ukraine, but certainly, and in this, i agree withjoao, i think brazil — all blocs sort of want to be relatively close to brazil. all of our audience here tonight will be watching what happens with president lula and his teams, watches what's happening in the congress and in the senate, and will be watching all of us. i want to thank our audience for being with us tonight, we want to thank our panel, we want to thank all of you who joined us from home, and to remind you that this is the first of two

global questions. the next will be the following weekend in brazil's fight for the amazon. but for now, it's time to thank our panel forjoining us. thank all of you. thank you very much forjoining us. applause. hello. after the very wet month of march, april has started off on a drier note. and we'll continue to see that drier, brighter theme to the weather, not just through today, but actually over the next couple of days as well. high pressure building across the uk. there's still a bit of cloud drifting around through the rest of the day, particularly across parts of scotland, down through the irish sea, wales, the south west of england, too. just the remnants of an old weather front here. so the odd spot of drizzle, but most places looking dry. plenty of sunshine for central and eastern areas, but only nine or ten degrees close to the east coast.

typically 12 or 13 further west. some late sunshine into the evening hours. and then it's clear and dry for most of us overnight, patchy cloud tending to melt away, especially for central and eastern areas. so temperatures here down a few degrees below freezing in a few spots, just a bit milder for the likes of northern ireland and to the north west of scotland, too. but tomorrow, another dry settled day, lots of spring sunshine, more than we've got out there today, in fact, and it won't feel quite as cool around the east coast, but still ten degrees or so here whereas further inland, 12 or 13. bye— bye.

this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm shaun ley and these are the latest headlines. pope francis presides over palm sunday mass at the vatican — just a day after leaving hospital in rome for treatment for bronchitis. and these are live pictures of st peter's square . there is a camera on top of this pope bill. increasingly the pope needs to restless legs. severe storms batter the north—east of the united states after leaving a trail of devastation in the south and midwest.

at least 21 people are known to have died.