Brazil's Rousseff scrambles for votes to avert impeachment

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff hunkered down at her residence on Saturday for last-minute negotiations with wavering lawmakers in an effort to secure crucial support the day before an impeachment vote that could lead to her removal from office. In a video and a newspaper column, Rousseff - Brazil's first female president - strongly denied she had committed an impeachable crime and called the bid to oust her "the biggest legal and political fraud" in the country's history. "We are facing the threat of a coup, a coup without guns that uses more destructive methods like fraud and lies to try to destroy a legitimately elected government," she wrote in the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper's Saturday edition.