At least 700 inmates have taken control of a prison in southern Brazil, beheading two people and throwing two others off a roof:
Brazil has the world’s fourth largest prison population, with half a million inmates in facilities meant to hold 300,000. Our correspondent says that, across the country, many poorly resourced jails are in effect run by powerful crime gangs. Earlier this year the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called for an investigation into the high number of violent deaths in Brazil’s prisons after previous riots at a jail in the north of the country left dozens of people dead.