Brazilian notaries public must register same-sex civil unions as marriages if the couple requests it, the country's National Council of Justice said Tuesday.

The council that oversees the country's judiciary said in a statement that notaries public cannot refuse to marry gay couples or convert a same-sex civil union into a marriage if that's what the pair wants.

The council based its decision on a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that recognized same-sex civil unions. The court said at the time that gay couples are entitled to same legal rights as heterosexual pairs when it comes to alimony, retirement benefits of a partner who dies and inheritances, among other issues.

Those opposed to the council's ruling can file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Fourteen of Brazil's 27 states so far have legalized same-same marriages.

Efforts in Congress to approve a bill legalizing gay marriage across the nation have been thwarted by conservative evangelical legislators.

Gay rights movements cheered the council's decision.

"It is a major step that will ensure equality among heterosexual and homosexual couples," Carlos Magno Fonseca, president of the Brazilian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Association told reporters.

Last year, 1,277 same sex couples registered such civil unions with notaries public.

Rio de Janeiro State Health Department/AP

This May 6, 2013 image released Wednesday, May 8, 2013, by Rio de Janeiro State Health Department, shows the spear that was accidentally shot through the mouth of Elisangela Borborema Rosa, in the coastal city of Arrial do Cabo, Brazil.

A 28-year-old woman miraculously survived after her husband accidentally shot her in the mouth with a harpoon, Brazilian officials said Wednesday.

The Rio de Janeiro State Health Department said in a statement that the woman's husband was cleaning his spear gun when it went off, firing a harpoon that hit her cervical spine.

Elisangela Borborema Rosa was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery after Monday's incident in the coastal city of Arraial do Cabo.

The statement quotes neurosurgeon Allan da Costa as saying that the harpoon came within 1 centimeter (less than half an inch) of killing the woman. He said he expects a full recovery.

A police officer in Arrial do Cabo said by telephone that officials are looking into the case.

"Everything indicates it was an accident, but we are investigating. We don't think the husband tried to kill her," said the officer, who cited department policy in declining to let her name be used.

"But once she fully recovers we will be able to question her and get a clearer picture of what happened."

Civil Police via AFP / Getty Images

Mugshots released by Brazil's Civil Police showing Jonathan Froudakis de Souza, 20, left, and Wallace Aparecido Silva, 22, who allegedly raped an American tourist in a minibus in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday.

An American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public transport van while her French boyfriend was shackled, hit with a crowbar and forced to watch the attacks after the pair boarded the vehicle in Rio de Janeiro's showcase Copacabana beach neighborhood, police said.

A third man, aged 21, was arrested for the attacks, which took place over six hours starting shortly after midnight on Saturday, police said in a Tuesday statement. Two men aged 20 and 22 had already been taken into custody for the attacks, police said, and a young Brazilian woman has come forward to say that she, too, was raped by the same men in the van on March 23.

"The victims described everything in great detail, mostly the sexual violence," police officer Rodrigo Brant told the Globo TV network. "Just how they described the facts was shocking — the violence and brutality. It surprised even us, who work in security and are used to hearing such things. Their report shocked us."

The incidents raise new questions about security in Rio, which has cracked down on once-endemic drug violence in preparation for hosting next year's football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The city will also be playing host to World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage that will be attended by Pope Francis and is expected to draw some 2 million people in late July.

Officials from the local Olympic and World Cup organizing committees didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The attack also drew comparisons with the fatal December beating and gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus. Six men beset a 23-year-old university student and male friend after they boarded a private bus, touching off a wave of protests across India demanding stronger protection for women. Officials there say tourism has dropped in the country following the attacks.

In the Brazil case, a police statement said the suspects forced other passengers to get out of the van and then raped the female tourist inside the vehicle, which was one of a fleet of vans that serve bus routes and seat about a dozen people.

Such van services are often linked to organized crime in Rio, particularly the militias largely composed of former police and firemen that control large swaths of the city's slums and run clandestine services such as transportation and sell cooking fuel and illegal cable TV hookups. In general, tourists avoid the vans and opt for regular buses or taxis.

Sexual assaults on tourists are not common in Rio, with muggings and petty crime reported more frequently.

During the assault, the two foreigners were driven to the poor neighborhood of Sao Goncalo, where the two suspects were apprehended, a police statement said.

Reports said the two foreigners had been studying Portuguese in Rio for about a month and both left Brazil following the attack.

The police statement said that one victim's cellphone was found in the suspects' possession. The suspects had also used a debit card belonging to one of the victims at two gas stations, it said.

The Globo television network broadcast surveillance camera images of two men filling up the white van and showed police images of a crowbar the suspects used to beat and intimidate the victims. The victims positively identified the two suspects.

In an interview with Globo television, commanding officer Alexandre Braga, who heads the Rio police unit specializing in crimes against tourists, said the suspects had gone on a sex crime spree.

"The characteristics of both crimes, both the Brazilian case and the one with the foreigners, lead us to believe that they [the suspects] wanted to have a 'party of evil,' in quotes," Braga said. "The principal motive appears to have been the satisfaction of their lust."

He added that the robbery and other crimes appear to have been "secondary."

Multiple calls to police seeking further details on Tuesday were not immediately returned.

In Brazil, more than 5,300 cases of sexual assault were reported between January and June 2012, according to the country's Health Ministry.

Related:

Female tourists shun India after gang-rape, murder

Six arrested in India for gang-rape of Swiss tourist

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 1, 2013 5:26 PM EDT

Lauro Alves / Agencia RBS via AFP - Getty Images

An aerial view of the Taim Ecological Station on fire, in Rio Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil, on March 27, 2013.

A wildfire that started on Tuesday has consumed around 1,400 acres of a protected ecological station in southern Brazil. The fire at the Taim Ecological Station is at risk of spreading further, Agence France-Presse reports, since there is limited access to water. 

Lauro Alves / Agencia RBS via AFP - Getty Images

Slideshow: Nightclub fire in Brazil

Yuri Weber/ Agencia O Dia via Reuters

An interior view of the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil, after it was destroyed by a fire on Jan. 27.

Launch slideshow

Shoes, bottles and slices of lime lay scattered around the blackened remains of a dancefloor in Brazil on Monday – signs of how quickly a Saturday night student party turned into one of the world’s worst nightclub fires.

End-of-summer celebrations were in full swing at the Kiss club in the university town of Santa Maria when a band’s pyrotechnic display set fire to the sound-proofed ceiling and started a fire that choked dozens to death and saw dozens more trampled in the ensuing panic.

The image of the burned, empty building was in stark contrast to the town’s packed gymnasium where relatives of the victims gathered late on Sunday to mourn after the mortuary became overwhelmed with bodies.

One woman fell to her knees in grief at the coffin of a relative, while others waited to identify their loved ones.

In total, at least 233 died - 120 men and 113 women - while 92 people are still being treated in hospitals, Reuters reported.

About 50 funerals were expected to take place at the municipal cemetery in Santa Maria on Monday, according to Brazilian television news broadcast Zero Hora.

The cemetery opened early, at 7:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. ET), and was planning to conduct burials at half-hour intervals, O Globo reported, saying the army had helped dig graves.

A Brazilian nightclub owner and two members of a band have been arrested by civil police investigating the blaze, newspaper Diario de Santa Maria reported Monday. A fourth person is also being sought, the newspaper said.

It said businessman Elissandro Spohr, also known as ‘Kiko’ – one of the owners of the Kiss nightclub in the city of Santa Maria – was detained “on a temporary basis.”

Marcelo Arigony, a police inspector, said the arrests were "provisional" and that there was not yet a criminal accusation. He declined to confirm the identities of those arrested, saying the investigation "is still quite precarious."

Sphor's lawyer, Jader Marques, told the Diario de Santa Maria that his client was present in the club with his pregnant wife at the moment that a spark from the pyrotechnic flare or fuse handled by the band lit the soundproofing on the ceiling.

The main door of the nightclub was locked at the time, fire chief Guido Pedroso de Melo told O Globo.

He added that firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble getting inside the nightclub because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance.”

Survivors and the police inspector Marcelo Arigony said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club, according to the AP, perhaps fearing that patrons would leave without paying their tab.

But Arigony said the guards didn't appear to block fleeing patrons for long. "It was chaotic and it doesn't seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died," he told the AP.

In a radio interview, the band’s guitarist Rodrigo Martins said the fire began shortly after the band took to the stage at 2.15 a.m. local time Sunday.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working," he said, adding that the accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Updated at 1:23 a.m. ET: At least 233 people were killed after a band’s fireworks show sparked a rapidly moving fire in a packed nightclub in southern Brazil and fleeing patrons were unable to find their way out, local police said.

The bodies removed from the Kiss nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria were taken to the Municipal Sports Center gymnasium for identification, police said.

Major Gerson da Rosa Ferreira, who led rescue efforts at the scene for the military police, told Reuters that the victims died of asphyxiation or from being trampled. 

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello told the Associated Press by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim.

Officials earlier counted 232 bodies that had been brought to the gymnasium in Santa Maria.

In addition to the number of deaths, more  than 100 people were injured, police said, and most remain hospitalized. Police officials had reported earlier in the day that 245 people were killed. The death toll could still rise, police said later, from the people who are injured.

Fire brigade colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo told O Globo newspaper that rescuers had difficulty entering the premises because of "a barrier of bodies" at  the entrance to the club.

Television footage monitored by Reuters overnight showed people crying outside the club as shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit. 

Agencia RBS via AP

People help a man injured in a nightclub fire in Santa Maria city, Brazil, on Sunday.

Rodrigo Moura, who the newspaper Diario de Santa Maria identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000 people and patrons were pushing and shoving to escape, the AP reported. Police estimated the crowd at some 900 revelers.

Fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that club bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving, Reuters reported.

The club's management said in a statement it would help authorities with their investigation, Reuters reported.

One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews TV reported. 

"It was really fast. There was a lot of smoke, really dark smoke," survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29, told Globonews TV. "We were only able to get out quickly because we were in a VIP area close to the door." 

President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile and visited families of the victims at the Municipal Sports Center, where relatives were gathering to identify the bodies. She met with relatives of the injured at Hospital de Caridade de Santa Maria.

Rousseff declared a national three-day mourning period for victims of the fire. 

“Sad Sunday!” Tarso Genro, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul state where the club is located, tweeted. “We are taking all of the possible and appropriate actions,” the tweet read, according to a rough translation by NBC News. “I will be in Santa Maria later this morning.”

The precise cause of the fire was still under investigation, authorities said. But Luiza Sousa, a civil police official in Santa Maria, told Reuters that the blaze started when someone with the band ignited what was described as a flare, which then set fire to the ceiling. The fire spread "in seconds," Sousa said. 

The tragedy in Brazil recalled other nightclub disaster. A fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used on stage by the rock band Great White set ablaze foam used for soundproofing on the walls. A Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 killed nearly 200 people. 

Reuters noted that Brazil's safety standards and emergency response capabilities are under particular scrutiny as the country prepares to host the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Summer Olympics. 

The Brazilian state’s Health secretary, Ciro Simoni, told the news service that emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

Farmers from the Brazilian northeast carry out a demonstration holding cattle skulls in front of the Planalto Palace in Brasilia Dec. 4, 2012. The protesters are demanding the cancellation of their debts and help from the government to alleviate the effects of the drought that rages over the region this year.

Brazil's Northeast is suffering its worst drought in decades, threatening hydro-power supplies in an area prone to blackouts and potentially slowing economic growth in one of the country's emerging agricultural frontiers.

Lack of rain has hurt corn and cotton crops, left cattle and goats to starve to death in dry pastures and wiped some 30 percent off sugar cane production in the region responsible for 10 percent of Brazil's cane output.

Thousands of subsistence farmers have seen their livelihoods wither away in recent months as animal carcasses lie abandoned in some areas that have seen almost no rain in two years.

"We are experiencing the worst drought in 50 years, with consequences that could be compared to a violent earthquake," Eduardo Salles, agriculture secretary in the northeastern state of Bahia, said in an emailed statement.

Dams in the Northeast ended December at just 32 percent of capacity, according to the national electrical grid operator. That puts them below the 34 percent the operator, known as ONS, considers sufficient to guarantee electricity supplies.

As reservoir levels fell, state-controlled Petrobras imported nearly four times more liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the first nine months of 2012, a back-up for hydro-power generation that has hurt the firm's profits.

Brazil's reliance on hydro-power to generate electricity has fallen to 67 percent of all electricity generated from about 75 percent five years ago, according to the government-run energy research group EPE.

But the low water levels have still set off alarm bells in a country with a history of energy shortages that crimped economic growth as recently as a decade ago.

President Dilma Rousseff dismissed talk of an energy crisis on Dec. 27, calling the idea of Brazil potentially needing to ration energy "ridiculous."

However, there have been some signs of strain already. In October, the Northeast experienced its worst blackout in more than a decade, knocking Bahia state's important petrochemical industry offline.

A spokesperson at Brazil's agriculture ministry said the federal government has not calculated the financial cost or the loss to crops expected from the drought. However, the ministry is trying to mitigate the economic impact by making additional lines of credit available to small farmers, the official said.

Crop supply agency Conab is also sending corn to the region in hopes of saving livestock.

Bahia state officials, however, said the measures were not enough and on Dec. 30 asked for more federal resources to help some 20 million people living in the semi-arid tropical region stretching north from Minas Gerais state.

"The last comparable drought in the region was in the early 1980s ... even if rains come in the next few days it's not going to make a difference for some areas," Celso Oliveira, a meteorologist with Sao Paulo-based Somar, told Reuters.

The states that have received the least rainfall are Bahia, Brazil's fourth most populous state, Pernambuco, whose capital Recife is one of 12 host cities for the 2014 soccer world cup and an important port, and Piauí, Oliveira said.

Even with likely crop losses in the Northeast, Brazil still expects an overall record soybean and strong corn harvest this season thanks to sufficient rainfall over the main center-west and southern producing areas.

The government's Conab agency says Bahia should produce 3.76 million tonnes of soybeans this season, out of the 82.6 million tons it expects from Brazil's overall crop.

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