A former Brazilian football star said to have orchestrated the murder of his ex-girlfriend went on trial in a case that includes claims that the young model was lured to a ranch where she was held hostage, killed and her body dismembered.

IN A snakeskin monokini and pink denim hotpants, Lea T emerges from a faux tropical portico and saunters into the bright lights.

A 114-year-old Brazilian woman is the world’s oldest living human, Guinness World ~Records said.

The power was out in the towns north of Rio in Brazil, but lightning flashes illuminated the scenes as villagers watched neighbours’ homes vanish under a wall of mud and water, turning neighbourhoods into graveyards.

At least 355 people died when walls of earth and water swept away homes in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro.

More than 300 people have died after heavy rains triggered mudslides which swamped Brazilian mountain towns.

An elderly woman was declared dead - and woke up hours later inside a coffin at the undertakers.

A STAR goalkeeper in Brazil is accused of ordering the murder of his ex-lover whose body parts were then fed to the dogs.

The Brazilian subsidiary of car giant Toyota has agreed to recall an unspecified number of Corollas due to the risk of sudden acceleration, the Justice Ministry said today.

RAINS kept pummelling Rio de Janeiro yesterday as officials in Brazil’s second largest city scrambled to restore transit after 96 people were killed by landslides and floods.

Firefighters using heavy machinery, shovels and bare hands dug for survivors today but only found bodies under a mountain of red earth and crushed lodgings - the worst of a spate of mudslides and floods which have killed at least 64 people in south-eastern Brazil.

A small army of rescuers clambered across a mountain of red earth and crushed homes today in a bid to find survivors of a massive mudslide which killed at least 26 people at an island resort in Brazil.

EU inspectors are visiting the 106 Brazilian farms allowed last week to export meat to Europe without restriction or quota.

A bus passing a vehicle in a mountainous region of central Brazil crashed head-on into an oncoming truck, killing 13 people and injuring 23, police said today.

A head-to-head bid battle for former British Steel firm Corus is due to get under way today.

THE student visa of Jean Charles de Menezes expired more than two years before he was wrongly shot by police, a British Home Office spokeswoman said last night.

Hundreds of relatives and friends of the Brazilian shot dead by police in London after being mistaken for a terrorist marched along the cobbled streets of his home town, demanding the arrest of the officers who fired the fatal shots.

Brazilian defender Serginho has died in hospital after collapsing during a match between his team Sao Caetano and Sao Paulo in the Campeonato Brasileiro.

RESCUE workers sifted through tons of thick brown mud and rubble yesterday with little hope of finding survivors of mudslides that left 27 confirmed dead and more feared buried in the central state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.

At least nine people died when an overland bus crashed head-on into another in southeastern Brazil.