Brazil is to increase troop numbers in the Amazon rain forest, build nuclear and conventional submarines to protect oil fields and modernise its weapons industry.

An executive jet crashed in a heavily populated neighbourhood of Sao Paulo today, killing at least seven people and leaving a pile of smoky rubble just months after the city suffered the nation’s deadliest air disaster.

Brazil descended into air chaos again today after the nation’s leading airline cancelled dozens of flights to and from the country’s busiest airport.