Tribes in the Amazon rainforest have appealed against a patent granted in the United States on one of their most sacred plants, ayahuasca. It is believed to be the first time a native group has sought to revoke a plant patent on medicinal and cermonial grounds.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, March 8 (Reuters) - Brazilian police seized 662 pounds (300 kilograms) of Colombian cocaine, destined primarily for Spain, and arrested six men in the culmination of a two-year investigation, Globo TV Network said on Monday.

Three Brazilians and three Colombians were charged with drug trafficking after police on Monday raided a farm and airstrip outside Londrina, 237 miles (381 km) northwest of Curitiba, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Parana.

Most of the cocaine, thought to come from the Colombian city of Cali, was to be hidden in frozen chicken or instant coffee and shipped to Spain, the Globo TV report said. The rest was headed for Brasilia.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Shops and restaurants near the governor's palace in Rio reopened on Monday after drug traffickers forced them to close over the weekend to honour a drug lord killed by police, community leaders said.

Residents and business owners in the middle-class neighbourhoods of Laranjeiras and Cosme Velho said shootouts between rival gangs in the nearby shantytowns were common, but the forced closings showed a new level of brashness.

"I've lived in the neighbourhood for more than 20 years and I've never seen businesses shut down like this," said Thereza Amayo, a former president of the residents' association. She said it felt like they were living in a war zone.

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Rio de Janeiro police found aholiday spirit of a different kind when they discovered Santa dolls stuffed with cocaine and Christmas tree ornaments filled with marijuana in a shantytown near the city centre.

A police spokesman said on Tuesday that foot patrol officers found the stash in an abandoned backpack with wrapping paper in it at the Coroa residents' association headquarters, where toys are normally wrapped and distributed for the holidays.

The cocaine, in clear plastic bags, was hidden inside the Santa dolls under their red cloth hats. At Easter time, police found chocolate eggs laced with the drug.

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RIO DE JANEIRO -- When the judge announced the verdict just after midnight--acquitting all 10 former police officers charged in a slum massacre--the defendants fell to their knees cheering and then joyously lifted their black-robed lawyer onto their shoulders.

Shocked with disbelief, family members of the 21 victims simply turned and walked away.

"I thought that one or another could be absolved, but not all of them," said Rita da Silva, the widow of one of the victims.

Five years after hooded off-duty police massacred 21 residents of Vigario Geral, one of Rio's most violent slums, Brazil's justice system is, its critics say, earning the country another international black eye.

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Lethal police, drug lords dominate Rio's steep, stinking slums

RIO DE JANEIRO - The hillside slums of Rio are a world away from the white sand beaches of Ipanema or the Copacabana samba clubs.

People here in the favelas will vote in today's national elections. Voting is mandatory. But their concern isn't whether Brazil's president Fernando Henrique Cardoso wins re-election without a runoff.

Their aim is to survive another day, to not get killed by police or drug dealers, to muster enough energy to make it up and down the steep, stinking hills of the favelas.

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - It is the same grisly story every week. Gunmen enter a makeshift bar or a house in the slums that ring South America's biggest city and start shooting.

The body count is soaring this year - 197 fatalities in 56 multiple homicides between Jan. 1 and Aug. 21, compared with 162 dead in such massacres in all of 1997. Few of the killers are ever caught, but police are certain the booming trade in drugs is behind almost all of the bloodshed. "Traffickers are more and more violent.

They shoot at random, to them it's the same thing to kill one or ten people," San Paulo police homicide head Marco Antonio Desgualdo said. - --- Checked-by: Patrick Henry

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - President Fernando Henrique Cardoso Tuesday signed a decree that will speed the process whereby Brazil raises money to fight drug trafficking by auctioning seized assets, officials said.

``As the law stood, the auction of property taken from drug runners could only happen after a conviction, which takes on average between five and seven years,'' said Walter Maierovitch, the head of Brazil's new National Anti-Drugs Secretariat.

``When we got around to the auction, the planes and cars were junk,'' he said.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazilian military police used spades, hoes and tractors to destroy 37 acres of marijuana, one of the country's largest ever drug plantations, Globo Network television said Monday.

Police spent three days in the interior of the northeastern state of Pernambuco destroying some 65,000 marijuana plants, which were ready for harvesting and marketing across Brazil, Globo said. It did not give a precise location for the plantation.

"I've been working in the region for 10 years and I've never seen so much marijuana as there is in this area," said military policeman Jose Marcos do Santos.

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Military police in Brazil used hoes, spades and tractors to tear up 37 acres of marijuana, one of the country's largest drug plantations, Globo Network TV said Monday. Police spent three days in the state of Pernambuco destroying about 65,000 marijuana plants.Globo didn't give a precise location for the plantation.



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Brazilians spent $7 billion on illegal drugs like marijuana and cocaine in 1997, an amount equal to half the money spent fighting illegal drugs.

- --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)

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BRASILIA, July 17 (Reuters)- Brazil needs to rethink its anti-drugs policy to fight an ``emerging mafia'' of drug-runners linked to Colombia's cocaine and heroin cartels, the head of Brazil's new anti-drugs office said on Friday.

Judge Walter Maierovitch, appointed head of the new National Drugs Secretariat (SND) last month, also said Brazil would begin offering medical treatment to drug addicts to focus its police efforts on tackling traffickers.

``Up to now we have been fighting the war on the street corners and in the shantytowns. We have to fight the dirty money and the organised crime,'' Maierovitch told reporters after a meeting of state anti-narcotics chiefs.

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Brazil's president Fernando Henique Cardoso, signed a decree Friday creating a post for the country's first central anti-drug chief. Cardosa named Gen. Alberto Cardosa, who now represents the armed forces in the presidential palace, to the post.

- --- Checked-by: Melodi Cornett

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New Agency Will Coordinate Control Effort at National Level for First Time

SAO PAOLO, Brazil—Rapid increases in drug-related crime, especially drug trafficking, have prompted President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to order the creation of a special government body to coordinate drug policy.

The planned Special Secretariat on National Policies for the Control of Drugs, which would be accountable to Cardoso, will coordinate the activities of government agencies fighting drugs on three fronts: trafficking, use and production. Final plans for the secretariat's operations are expected to be presented to Cardoso this week, and the office may be operational before the end of June, officials said.

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Tuesday signed into law a bill criminalizing money laundering, in an attempt to end Brazil's reputation as a clearing house for the proceeds of organized crime.

The bill, approved by the Senate last month, provides for prison terms of three to 10 years for the crime.

The United States had long urged Brazil to introduce laws fighting money laundering.

Brazil's location close to cocaine-producing countries and its strict bank secrecy laws are believed to have attracted drug gangs, gun-runners, smugglers and corrupt officials seeking to disguise their cash.

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The decrease places the South American nation behind Colombia for the first time.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - In a war on drugs that often seems a lost cause,there is some unprecedented good news from South America.

Peru, long the world's top producer of coca leaf, saw a 27 percent fall in production last year, dropping it for the first time behind Colombia in total acres under cultivation.

Over two years, Peru's coca acreage has dropped an impressive 40 percent, and government officials are now talking seriously about eliminating illegal coca - the active ingredient in cocaine - in five years.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil's largest tobacco company on Thursday denied reports that it buys, markets and exports high-nicotine tobacco grown secretly in Brazil.

Souza Cruz, which is owned by British conglomerate B.A.T. Industries, said in a statement that it ``does not promote the cultivation or marketing of any variety of high-nicotine tobacco.''

The denial was in response to an Associated Press report that farmers in southern Brazil grow high-nicotine strains known as ``fumo louco'' -- crazy tobacco in Portuguese -- by the ton and sell them to Souza Cruz.

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