Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters and journalists as he arrives to give a news conference on the new coronavirus at Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, March 27, 2020. Even as coronavirus cases mount in Latin America’s largest nation, Bolsonaro is calling the pandemic a momentary, minor problem and saying strong measures to contain it are unnecessary. (AP Photo/Andre Borges)
March 31, 2020
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Brazilian pews become trenches in fight against quarantine
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Like every Sunday, Brazilian Pastor Silas Malafaia took the stage of his Pentecostal temple in a middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighborhood. But this week, he wore a T-shirt instead of a blazer and, behind the three cameras broadcasting to his legion of YouTube followers, were thousands of empty seats.