At least 15 people died and 40 were injured Sunday when a bus crashed in the Brazilian resort town of Paraty, state officials told Agence France Presse.

The accident happened on a highway linking Paraty, in Rio de Janeiro state, with the coastal area of Trinidade, a fire department spokesman said.  Rescue workers and crash investigators were at the scene.

Authorities at the Rafik Hariri International Airport thwarted an attempt to smuggle narcotics into the country en route from Brazil, through Addis Ababa and Cairo, the state-run National News Agency reported on Thursday.

The scheme was thwarted Thursday when a Swedish national tried to smuggle the ample amounts of narcotics, that almost weigh 18kg, in 12 plastic containers, NNA added.

After presenting Brazil's first ever budget deficit, President Dilma Rousseff promised Wednesday that her government will work hard to get back in the black.

"We are being straightforward. And we are showing, clearly, that there is a problem," she said at a news briefing.

Brazil's popular ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared on Saturday that he is returning to the bruising political frontlines to defend his successor, the embattled Dilma Rousseff.

"Our opponents talk about me from morning until night... Well, it's harder to kill a bird if he keeps flying. That's why I started flying again," Lula, 69, said at a rally in Sao Paulo state, a day after admitting he could even seek the presidency again in 2018.

A mother who lost her only son and a young man who narrowly escaped death are among the residents of Sao Paulo picking up the pieces after a massacre of 18 people that many blame on the police.

The killings took place in the Munhoz Junior favela, in a suburb of Sao Paulo called Osasco, a week ago. But the terror is fresh.

Brazil's embattled left staged protests in dozens of cities Thursday, but the low turnout was in sharp contrast with last weekend's mass demonstrations against leftist President Dilma Rousseff.

Four days after nearly a million people marched to call for Rousseff's impeachment, a series of leftwing gatherings were unlikely to give the Brazilian president, whose popularity ratings are in single digits, much of a lift.

A Brazilian bank didn't have a leg to stand on when it forced a client to remove his shoes and do business in his socks, a judge ruled.

Many banks in crime-ridden Brazil have tight security with metal detectors and, on entering the Caixa Economica Federal (CEF) branch in Sao Paulo state, Lourivaldo de Santana was asked to empty his pockets.

Brazilians clamoring for President Dilma Rousseff's overthrow should think twice, analysts say, warning that the trauma of impeachment could undermine 20 years of building democracy in the Latin American giant.

The depth of anger against Rousseff was undeniable Sunday when almost a million people poured into the streets across Brazil chanting "Dilma out!"

Protesters took to the streets of Brazil Sunday, kicking off nationwide rallies expected to draw hundreds of thousands demonstrating against corruption and economic slowdown, and calling for President Dilma Rousseff to step down.

Organizers promised large demonstrations in the capital Brasilia, the 2016 Olympic host city Rio de Janeiro -- where an Olympic bicycling test event had to be rerouted -- and in the country's financial capital Sao Paulo. 

Masked gunmen killed at least 20 people during a series of shootings overnight in the Sao Paulo suburbs, press reports from Brazil's biggest city said Friday.

A spokesman for the police in Sao Paulo, home to some 20 million people, said only that "there were fatalities, but we cannot yet confirm the number."