BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil's Senate voted Thursday to impeach President Dilma Rousseff after a months-long fight that laid raw the country's fury over corruption and economic decay, hurling Latin America's largest country into political turmoil just months before it hosts the Summer Olympics.

Rousseff's enraged backers called the move a coup d'etat and threatened wide-scale protests and strikes. Her foes, meanwhile, insisted that she had broken the law, and that the country's deep political, social and economic woes could only be tackled with her on the sidelines.

The 55-22 vote means that Rousseff's ally-turned-enemy, Vice President Michel Temer, will take over as acting president later Thursday while she is suspended. The Senate has 180 days to conduct a trial and decide whether Rousseff should be permanently removed from office.

"Did anyone think that we would get to 2018 with a recovery under this government? Impossible," said Jose Serra, the opposition Social Democratic Party's failed presidential candidate in the 2010 race that brought Rousseff into power. "The impeachment is just the start of the reconstruction."

Rousseff's impeachment ends 13 years of rule by the Workers' Party, which is credited with lifting millions out of abject poverty but vilified for being at the wheel when billions were siphoned from the state oil company Petrobras.

Analysts say Rousseff got herself into trouble with a prickly manner and a perceived reticence to work with legislators that may have alienated possible allies. Rousseff, however, has suggested that sexism in the male-dominated Congress played a role in the impeachment.

Temer, a 75-year-old career politician, has promised to cut spending and privatize many sectors controlled by the state. For weeks, he has been quietly putting together a new Cabinet in expectation of taking over, angering Rousseff supporters who accuse him of being in on a plot to oust her.

During the debate, Humberto Costa, the Workers' Party leader in the Senate, brandished a photo of Rousseff from her days as a young Marxist guerrilla during the country's 1964-1985 dictatorship. The image showed her at the military proceedings against her.

Demonstrators shout pro-government slogans during a vigil in Support of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Photo: Andre Penner / Associated Press

Costa called the impeachment the second unjust trial Rousseff had endured, and that impeachment was a bid by Brazil's traditional ruling classes to reassert their power over the country and roll back Workers' Party policies in favor of the poor.

"The Brazilian elite, the ruling class, which keeps treating this county as if it was their hereditary dominion, does not appreciate democracy," Costa said.

Rousseff, 68, was impeached for her alleged mishandling of the federal budget. Critics said she used accounting tricks to hide ballooning deficits and bolster an embattled government. Brazil's first female president, who was tortured under the country's dictatorship, has frequently blasted the impeachment push as modern-day coup, arguing she had not been charged with a crime and previous presidents did similar things.

When the impeachment measure was introduced last year in Congress, it was generally viewed as a long shot: as late as February, consultancies like Eurasia were predicting it wouldn't even make it out of committee in the lower Chamber of Deputies.

But momentum built over several months, as Brazilians seethed over numerous corruption scandals linked to Petrobras and daily announcements of job losses added to growing desperation. The economy is expected to contract nearly 4 percent after an equally dismal 2015 and inflation and unemployment are hovering around 10 percent, underscoring a sharp decline since the South American giant enjoyed stellar growth for more than a decade.

The Senate action came after the lower house voted 367-137 last month in favor of impeachment.

Polls have said a majority of Brazilians supported impeaching Rousseff, though they also suggest the public is wary about those in the line of succession to take her place.

Temer has been implicated in the Petrobras corruption scheme as has Calheiros, the Senate head who is now No. 2 in the line of succession. Former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who had been second in line, was suspended from office this month over allegations of obstruction of justice and corruption.

Rousseff has vehemently denied her administration's financial sleight of hand moves constituted a crime and argued that such maneuvers were used by prior presidents without repercussions. She has stressed that unlike many of those who have pushed for impeachment, she does not face any allegations of personal corruption.

The impeachment process, Rousseff says, amounts to a coup aimed at undoing social programs that have lifted an estimated 35 million Brazilians out of grinding poverty over the past years.

Temer, of the centrist Democratic Movement Party, insists he would expand the popular social programs, though he has also signaled that fiscal rigor is needed to dig Brazil out of its current fiscal hole.

Adding to Brazilians' economic worries, the investigation into a multibillion-dollar kickback scheme at Petrobras has ensnared dozens of elite politicians and businessmen across the political spectrum. Although Rousseff herself hasn't been implicated, top officials in her party were and that tarnished her reputation.

The president "is having to pay for everything," Sen. Telmario Mota de Oliveira said, arguing that Brazil's problems shouldn't be all pinned on her.

Story: Jenny Barchfield and Mauricio Savarese / Associated Press

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Big Turnout for Protests Urging Ouster of Brazil's President

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia's government said Thursday that two more pieces of debris, discovered in South Africa and Rodrigues Island off Mauritius, were "almost certainly" from Flight 370, bringing the total number of pieces believed to have come from the missing Malaysian jet to five.

The aircraft mysteriously disappeared more than two years ago with 239 people on board, and so far an extensive underwater search of vast area of the Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast has turned up empty.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the two new pieces were an engine cowling piece with a partial Rolls-Royce logo and an interior panel piece from an aircraft cabin — the first interior part found from the missing plane.

An international team of experts in Australia who examined the debris concluded that both pieces were consistent with panels found on a Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777 aircraft, Liow said.

"As such, the team has confirmed that both pieces of debris from South Africa and Rodrigues Island are almost certainly from MH370," he said in a statement.

All five pieces have been found in various spots around the Indian Ocean. Last year, a wing part from the plane washed ashore on France's Reunion Island. Then in March, investigators confirmed two pieces of debris found along Mozambique's coast were almost certainly from the aircraft.

The jet, which vanished on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is believed to have crashed somewhere in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean about 1,800 kilometers off Australia's west coast. Authorities had predicted that any debris from the plane that isn't on the ocean floor would eventually be carried by currents to the east coast of Africa.

Though the discovery of the debris has bolstered authorities' assertion that the plane went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, none of the parts have thus far yielded any clues into exactly what happened to the aircraft and precisely where it crashed. Investigators are examining marine life attached to the debris to see if it could somehow help them narrow down where it entered the ocean, but haven't discovered anything useful yet.

The most recent confirmed debris includes a piece discovered by an archaeologist who spotted it while walking along South Africa's southern coast, and another part found by tourists on Rodrigues Island, off Mauritius.

The Australian Safety Transport Bureau said in a technical report that the interior part, identified by its decorative laminate, is a panel from the main cabin and believed to be part of a door closet.

The most critical clues lie within the elusive underwater wreckage, which would hold the coveted flight data recorders, or black boxes. The data recorder should reveal details related to the plane's controls, including whether aircraft systems that might have helped track the plane were deliberately turned off, as some investigators believe.

But so far, crews have combed more than 105,000 square kilometers of the search zone to no avail. They expect to complete their sweep of the area by the end of June.

Story: Eileen Ng / Associated Press

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Debris in Mauritius to be Examined by MH370 Investigators

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Malaysia to Inspect Debris Found on Thai Beach for MH370 Link

CHICAGO — Rep. Tammy Duckworth lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq, then went on to hold leadership roles in the Illinois and U.S. Veterans Affairs departments.

Yet, the Democratic Senate hopeful now finds her record on helping military veterans under attack by her opponent, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, as he tries to hold on to a seat Democrats believe is key to their efforts to regain the Senate majority.

Kirk, one of the GOP's most endangered incumbents, has accused Duckworth of failing to protect veterans in her care and putting her political ambitions ahead of her duties. He's also touted the more than two decades he served in the Navy Reserve and his own high-profile efforts to highlight problems at the VA.

This week his campaign launched an online ad featuring a hearing on a lawsuit two Illinois VA employees filed against Duckworth, accusing her of retaliating against them when she led the agency – complaints that have twice been dismissed. Kirk also has repeated claims by two whistleblowers who say Duckworth ignored their reports of misconduct at a federal VA hospital west of Chicago.

Trying to take down Duckworth on veterans' issues is a bold move for Kirk, with even some Republicans saying they don't think voters will buy it.

The strategy also could backfire. Kirk acknowledged during his 2010 Senate bid that he had exaggerated some of his own military record. And he risks alienating voters who see Duckworth as a hero.

Garrett Anderson, who lost part of one arm and suffered traumatic brain injury in a roadside-bomb attack in Iraq, said Duckworth was the first service member the U.S. Army sniper spoke to when he woke up from a coma at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2005.

The 39-year-old University of Illinois graduate student plans to vote for Kirk this fall for a simple reason: Anderson is a Republican. But he said the ads targeting her are out of bounds and called Duckworth "a nice person" who has a strong track record of looking out for veterans.

"I've seen a few of (the ads) and I don't like them because she served her country very well, and she's a decorated war veteran," Anderson said.

Kirk's campaign says Duckworth's record is a legitimate area for criticism, and that there's no shortage of people who agree.

They point to two employees at Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital near Chicago who say they took their concerns to Duckworth and other Democrats but heard nothing, and to an Illinois Auditor General report of the state Department of Veterans' Affairs that found inadequate financial controls and programs that were supposed to be implemented but weren't during the time Duckworth was leading the office.

The two other employees, whose lawsuit is in court Thursday, say she tried to fire one employee and gave another a bad review that cost her raises after the women complained about facility leadership at an Illinois VA home, where they still work. Duckworth was appointed to lead the Illinois VA in 2006 by now-imprisoned ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"Of course Duckworth is a war hero, and that's what makes this entire court case even more tragic," said Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl. "These VA employees only wanted to prevent veterans from being abused, but instead were ignored and punished by Duckworth while American heroes suffered,"

Deputy campaign manager Matt McGrath called it "a cynical and desperate ploy." He said Duckworth gets most of her own health care at Hines and is "deeply familiar" with issues at VA medical centers.

Duckworth was born in Thailand to a Chinese mother and an American father, who fought with the Marines in Vietnam. She joined ROTC during graduate school and later signed up with the Illinois National Guard. She was co-piloting a Black Hawk in 2004 when Iraqi insurgents hit it with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Among her accomplishments, her campaign says, is launching the first 24-hour hotline for suicidal veterans and introducing legislation to improve mental health treatment that was signed by President Obama.

Jon Soltz, who leads the liberal political action committee VoteVets, which is backing Duckworth, said the group is prepared to spend significant money to attack Kirk.

"It's just a very dangerous strategy for them to continue to try to define Tammy Duckworth in this way, when if you just look at a picture of her you can see she's a war hero," Soltz said.

Anderson, who works at the University of Illinois' Center for Wounded Veterans in Higher Education, doesn't believe either candidate has clear offered a plan for veterans.

"They haven't given us a blueprint of what their objectives are," he said.

Story: Sara Burnett / Associated Press