Off Leash Intel · loading
4 direct mentions across 4 briefings, with 6 linked developments.
Latest linked intelligence
A leaked video showed Flávio Bolsonaro requesting R$134 million from an unnamed jailed banker for a biopic about Jair Bolsonaro. Criticism from political allies and a 2% stock-index decline attributed to expectations that the controversy would benefit President Lula.
Unverified development · updated through
A leaked video showed Flávio Bolsonaro requesting R$134 million from an unnamed jailed banker for a biopic about Jair Bolsonaro. Criticism from political allies and a 2% stock-index decline attributed to expectations that the controversy would benefit President Lula.
Open source reportGeography
Marker precision is disclosed on selection. Country and regional centroids show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Jair Bolsonaro dossier
6 mapped developments across 1 map positions. Centroid markers show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Brazil
President Donald Trump threatened tariffs of up to 50% on Brazil beginning August 1, linking the measure to Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution, while President Lula pledged reciprocal action.
Approximate map position: country centroid. The extracted place did not have provider-resolved coordinates.
Chronology
Off Leash update 15 May STRAIT OF HORMUZ •The U.S. has been lobbying China to use its influence with Iran to convince Iran to allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and China apparently did so successfully, winning Tehran's approval for safe passage...at least for Chinese ships. •Iranian state media reported that some Chinese ships had been granted safe passage, at their government's request. Most other foreign ships are still stuck inside the Strait, and two that dared to transit without Iran's approval faced severe repercussions. •First, Iranian troops reportedly seized a vessel operating as a "floating armory" - a storage ship for weapons that private security firms use to protect client vessels from piracy or other attacks - in the Gulf of Oman. It's not clear what the Honduras-flagged Hui Chuan was carrying when it was seized, or who it was serving. •In a second incident, an Indian-flagged (and Indian-crewed) vessel, the Haji Ali, reportedly sank off the coast of Oman after a suspected drone or missile attack. The crew evacuated safely, but the livestock it was transporting from Berbera, Somaliland, to Sharjah, UAE, did not. CHINA •Presidents Trump and Xi continued their summit with smaller, private meetings this morning before Trump bade Xi farewell and left for home. •Both offered positive readouts - Trump called his visit "incredible" and Xi said it was "historic" - but there were no major breakthroughs. UKRAINE •Ukraine's anti-corruption court ordered the arrest of Pres. Zelensky's former top aide, Andriy Yermak, on money-laundering charges just days after naming Yermak as a suspect in a widening corruption probe. •Yermak maintains his innocence and plans to appeal. The charges against him could nonetheless raise awkward questions for Zelensky if and when he runs for re-election, but they're not likely to threaten Zelensky's current term. •Meanwhile on the front lines, Ukraine's military shared several videos purporting to show Russian soldiers surrending to Ukrainian ground robots, surprising even the company making the robots, DevDroid. •By using robots instead of humans to capture prisoners of war, Ukraine eliminates the risk that surrendering Russian soldiers could attack their captors by detonating a grenade - something Ukraine says has happened before. If they try that with robotic captors, DevDroid points out, they'll merely "destroy some metal, and that's all." Brazil •Leaked video caught presidential hopeful Flávio Bolsonaro - who is tied with incumbent Pres. Lula in polls ahead of October's election - asking a disgraced and now-jailed banker for R$134 million ($26.8 million) to fund a "heroic" biopic about Flávio's father, former president Jair Bolsonaro. •The revelations appalled Brazilians across the political spectrum. Even Flávio's fellow right-wingers expressed outrage: one called the recordings "a slap in the face to decent Brazilians," and another suggested replacing Flávio on the presidential ticket with his stepmom, Michelle. •Investors also believe the incident could damn Flávio's presidential aspirations: Brazil's stock index fell 2% as investors bet on Lula - whose leftist policies are bad for business - winning reelection. DRC •The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC Africa) - Africa's top health agency - declared a new Ebola outbreak in DRC's eastern Ituri province. •CDC Africa said 65 deaths and 246 cases of the hemorrhagic fever have been reported in Ituri, mainly in the gold mining towns of Rwampara and Mongwalu. •This is DRC's 17th outbreak of Ebola, which is named after the Congolese river near where it was first identified in 1974. It could be hard to contain in Ituri, where the government has failed to contain an Allied Democratic Forces jihadist insurgency.
Open source reportOff Leash update 26 Nov UKRAINE •Pres. Trump relaxed his deadline for Ukraine to agree to the peace plan its negotiators have been discussing with their U.S. counterparts. Trump's earlier (soft) deadline had been tomorrow; he now says "the deadline for me is when it's over." •That reprieve will give Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, time to meet Pres. Putin in Moscow next week to coax Putin into signing a peace deal. So far Putin has expressed little interest in peace - even on the favorable terms of the current proposal. BRAZIL •Brazil's Supreme Court ordered ex-Pres. Bolsonaro to start his 27-year prison sentence as his appeal possibilities dwindle. •Pres. Trump imposed harsh sanctions on Brazil earlier this year as punishment for prosecuting his political ally, but he abruptly lifted most of the new levies on food goods late last week - despite Brazil's defiant pursuit of Bolsonaro's conviction. •Some analysts think Trump's tariff threats backfired and gave leftist Pres. Lula a popularity boost and a chance to portray himself as an underdog standing up to a bully. VENEZUELA •Caracas was offended that several airlines - including Iberia, Gol, Latam, Avianca, TAP, and Turkish Airlines - temporarily paused flights to and from Venezuela because of a U.S. FAA warning, and Venezuela's aviation authority, INAC, ordered the airlines to resume flights within 48 hours or risk losing their flight clearance altogether. •IATA, a global aviation association, warned Venezuela that revoking clearances would backfire and further reduce "connectivity to the country, which is already one of the least connected in the region." GAZA •Hamas returned the remains of an unnamed hostage that Israeli examiners later identified as Dror Or. That leaves just two deceased hostages left in Gaza. URBANIZATION •A new UN report ranked the Indonesian capital of Jakarta as the world's most populous city, with 42 million people. Jakarta was only the 33rd largest city when the previous ranking was done in 2018, but it has since grown fast enough to outrank all 32 then-larger cities. •Dhaka, Bangladesh is now the world's second most populous city, and it's growing even faster than Jakarta is. The UN projects that Dhaka's population - currently 36 million - will surpass that of Jakarta by mid-century. •The report also noted that 45% of the world's 8.2 billion people now live in cities. That's more than twice the share of urban dwellers in 1950 (20%). •Nine of the world's 10 largest cities are in Asia; Cairo (32 million, #4) is the only non-Asian city in the top 10.
Open source reportOff Leash update 6 August GAZA •Israel is considering a plan to expand the war in Gaza and occupy the entire Gaza Strip - including the 25% it doesn't currently control. The cabinet will vote on the proposal tomorrow. •Prime Minister Netanyahu's far-right supporters love the idea, and - with ceasefire negotiations stalled and his fragile coalition at risk of fracture - Netanyahu seems to be warming to it, too. •However, some senior military figures - reportedly including Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir - have voiced dissent over fears that a full occupation would endanger the remaining ~20 living hostages and bog the IDF down for years. They prefer a more gradual approach: perhaps encircling Gaza City and other population centers first, and then selectively launching operations from there. BRAZIL •On Monday, Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered former president - and Moraes's nemesis - Jair Bolsonaro into house arrest for violating a social media ban imposed during his ongoing trial on charges of plotting a coup, which Bolsonaro denies. •Other Brazilian officials - including Moraes's fellow Supreme Court justices - were apparently surprised by the order and worry that it will complicate ongoing trade talks with the U.S., given Pres. Trump's support for Bolsonaro and vocal opposition against the charges against the former president. SUDAN •Sudan's civil war has slowly shifted west since the Sudanese Army retook control of Khartoum in March. The army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are now battling over Kordofan, which lies between Darfur (largely under RSF control) and central Sudan (largely under army control). •Human rights groups say civilians in Kordofan are suffering the consequences of being at the crossroads of the war, and civilians in El Fasher - the only part of Darfur the army controls - are starving en masse under the RSF's siege of the city. •Neither side is gaining much traction, and the conflict looks likely to grind on.
Open source reportOff Leash update 10 July AZERBAIJAN •Armenia's Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijan's Pres. Aliyev are meeting in the UAE today to finalize a peace deal ending almost 40 years of border wars. •Their detente is seen as a sign of Russia's waning influence in the South Caucasus: Moscow previously made itself indispensable in the region by alternately fueling and mediating border conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan. •With those conflicts now largely resolved (despite sporadic ceasefire violations), Russia can no longer gain leverage by mediating them. KURDISTAN •The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, released a video declaring the PKK's armed insurgency against the Turkish state over, and calling on his loyal supporters to join his "voluntary transition from the phase of armed struggle to the phase of democratic politics and law." •That's the same message Öcalan shared in a letter from jail in February, after which the PKK began the process of disbanding. That process continues this Friday, when some PKK fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan will hold a symbolic ceremony to destroy their weapons. •The truce still seems fragile, as Turkey hasn't formally agreed to any of the concessions Öcalan and the PKK seek, which include expanded autonomy for Kurds in Turkey. GAZA •Hamas said it agreed to release 10 hostages as a gesture of goodwill amidst ongoing ceasefire talks with Israel. However, its negotiators also complained that truce talks were "tough" because of Israel's "intransigence." KENYA •Kenya's Pres. Ruto is setting a great example for how *not* to handle peaceful protests or improve trust in government. •Many Kenyans have lost faith in their government and turned out to protest on Monday in commemoration of Saba Saba, the day in 1990 when Kenyans rejected Daniel arap Moi's autocratic rule and embraced multiparty democracy. •Ruto reportedly sent police to infiltrate and agitate Monday's protests, and openly admits that he ordered police to shoot protesters in the legs ("so they break and they can go to hospital on their way to court.") TRADE •The Trump administration sent new letters to at least seven more countries warning them of the tariffs they face starting Aug. 1 if they don't seal bilateral trade deals with the U.S. before then. •Trump also threatened Brazil with tariffs of up to 50% starting Aug. 1 for subjecting ex-Pres. Jair Bolsonaro - a Trump ally - to a "witch hunt" by trying him for allegedly attempting to stage a coup to stay in power. Brazil's current president, Lula, vowed to reciprocate.
Open source report