Latest news with #UesleiMarcelino
The Star
22-07-2025
- Sport
- The Star
Swimming-Marchand drops 200 butterfly, breaststroke for world championships
FILE PHOTO: Swimming - Men's 200m Individual Medley Final - Paris La Defense Arena, Nanterre, France - August 02, 2024. Leon Marchand of France celebrates after setting an Olympic record to win gold REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino/File Photo (Reuters) -Four-time Olympic champion Leon Marchand will only compete in the 200 and 400 metres individual medley events at the world championships in Singapore after opting out of the 200 butterfly and 200 breaststroke, his coach Nicolas Castel said. The 23-year-old Frenchman won gold in the 200 breaststroke, 200 butterfly, 200 and 400 IM at the Paris Games, as well as a bronze in 4x100m medley. "He won't be doing the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke," Castel told Franceinfo on Monday. "It's a choice we made because we're in a post-Olympic year and he's never had the opportunity to do a 200m medley without having a race before or after it on the same day. He wanted to test this isolated 200m medley and see what he was capable of." The swimming events at the world championships will take place in Singapore from July 27 to August 3. (Reporting by Pearl Josephine Nazare in Goa; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Yahoo
Brazil targets illegal logging in major Amazon raids
By Ueslei Marcelino PORTO VELHO, Brazil - Brazilian environmental agents seized the equivalent of more than 5,000 truckloads of timber in an operation targeting one of the most heavily logged regions of the Amazon rainforest in recent weeks, officials told Reuters. The raids kicked off a year-long project called Operation Maravalha, named after a type of sawdust, in the states of Amazonas, Para and Rondonia. The government expects Maravalha to be the largest operation of its kind in over five years. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Environmental protection agency Ibama, which led the operation, closed nearly a dozen sawmills and levied fines totaling 15.5 million reais ($2.7 million) during a two-week raid. The operation's goal is to curb illegal logging in protected areas and Indigenous lands with some of the country's highest deforestation rates, said Jair Schmitt, head of environmental protection at Ibama. Investigators are also auditing timber projects in private lands suspected of defrauding government documentation to hide the real origin of native timber obtained illegally, Schmitt added. After the raids, Ibama plans to suspend some of the timber projects that were illegally used to launder timber taken from protected areas, Schmitt said. "The idea behind this operation is for us to contain the extraction of illegal timber in the Amazon, which is the first step to deforestation," said Schmitt, as he stood near a pile of illegal timber his team seized in a rural part of Rondonia's capital, Porto Velho. After valuable timber is extracted, Schmitt said, the rest of the forest is often razed to make way for cattle pasture. Profits made from the sale of timber are often used to fund the expensive process of converting the lush forest into pastures. While roughly 90% of the timber illegally harvested in Brazil's Amazon rainforest is sold locally, some still reaches the United States and Europe, Schmitt said. Investigators in the raid in Porto Velho found wood from several Amazon species considered valuable in global markets, such as the ipe, which is also endangered. The timber seized by Ibama will be donated to government agencies and projects. Under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who vowed to protect the Amazon during his 2022 campaign, deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest fell to its lowest level in almost a decade last year. Still, conservationists warn that illegal logging and fires are still damaging the forest in ways government deforestation data doesn't fully capture.
