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/ 23 February 2009
Brazil’s five-day Carnival got into high gear on Sunday with its famous parades in Rio de Janeiro adding extravagance to lusty street parties.
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/ 31 December 2008
At first glance, the ”City of Music” appears to be in perfect harmony with Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s lyrical capital of Carnival.
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/ 1 September 2008
Officials from the G20 group of nations wrapped up a weekend meeting on Sunday that examined the effects of slowing world economic growth.
A Rio de Janeiro tour company could be in trouble for giving tourists too intimate a view of life in the city’s notorious slums, including photo opportunities with drug gang leaders. The Brazilian city’s tourism chief said on Monday that the company, Private Tours, could be stripped of its licence.
Brazilian star striker Ronaldo revealed on Monday that he was ”incredibly ashamed” over last week’s encounter with a trio of transvestites, which he believes will mark him for life. ”I’ve cried a lot. I was incredibly ashamed,” Ronaldo (31) said in an interview with TV Globo published in the press on Monday.
Ronaldo went into hiding on Tuesday after an encounter with cross-dressing sex-workers that prompted police to investigate whether to charge one with trying to extort money from the three-time Fifa player of the year. The AC Milan striker, in Brazil recovering from a knee surgery, cancelled two TV appearances, and local media said he will continue physiotherapy at his home.
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/ 4 February 2008
Gargantuan animal effigies and honed dancers wearing nothing but a bit of glitter between their legs turned Rio into a fantasy land overnight as the city’s world-famous carnival parades got under way. The processions are the high point of Brazil’s five-day pre-Lent celebrations.
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/ 4 February 2008
Brazil’s Carnival parades got off to a majestic start on Sunday night as dancers dressed as monarchs, courtiers and even roast pheasants at a royal feast shimmied their way through Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome. Beauty queens wearing little more than plumed headdresses gyrated on top of giant floats as singers chanted ”The kingdom has moved, my Rio has bloomed”.
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/ 29 January 2008
A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend. The Viradouro samba organisation plans to feature the display when it marches in the Sambadrome parade strip on Sunday, despite objections from a local Jewish group.
The Amazonian rainforest and the Andes mountains could replace the African desert as South America vies to stage the Dakar Rally. Argentina, Brazil and Chile are looking into the possibility of hosting the race later this year and there are also talks about a race through several South American countries and climate zones.
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/ 27 November 2007
A stadium collapse that killed seven people highlighted the crumbling state of Brazil’s soccer arenas less than a month after the country was chosen to host the 2014 World Cup, architects said on Monday. The victims fell 15m through a 3m wide hole that opened in the concrete stands of the Fonte Nova stadium in Salvador.
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/ 26 November 2007
At least eight people were killed in Brazil when a section of the stand at a football stadium collapsed as fans were celebrating minutes after a match ended. Dozens of people were also injured, some of them seriously, in the accident late on Sunday in Salvador, the capital of the north-western state of Bahia, media reports said, citing authorities.
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/ 22 November 2007
Brazil came from behind to beat Uruguay 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier on Wednesday but were upstaged by Paraguay and Ecuador, who both went on scoring sprees. Luis Fabiano scored both goals as Brazil overcame their smaller neighbours in São Paulo on a night when they were heavily indebted to goalkeeper Julio Cesar.
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/ 15 October 2007
Brazilian and Argentinian palaeontologists have discovered the largely complete fossil of a new species of giant dinosaur that roamed what is now northern Patagonia about 80-million years ago. The herbivorous Futalognkosaurus dukei measured between 32m and 34m from head to tail.
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/ 28 September 2007
Brazil’s march to the final of the Women’s Soccer World Cup final in China is doing far more than just helping the growth of the sport in the South American country where it was once banned by law. A stellar performance by Marta saw Brazil demolish tournament favourites the United States 4-0 in the semifinal on Thursday.
At least eight people were killed and more than 100 injured when a packed passenger train ploughed into a slow-moving train on Thursday in a northern suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Officials said the death toll could go higher. ”It is a tragedy,” said fire department chief Pedro Marcos.
Old habits die hard and that’s certainly the case for former triple Formula One champion Nelson Piquet, who has lost his driving licence for repeated speeding offences. As punishment the 54-year-old Brazilian has had to suffer the indignity of being sent back to school to brush up on the rules of the road.
Lack of infrastructure in the Pan American Games venues upset fans in the first two days of competition. Traffic jams and difficulties buying food and finding bathrooms inside the venues prompted about 100 fans to protest to organisers on Friday. ”We want to eat! We want to eat!” they chanted at the Riocentro complex.
The Brazilian and Mexican governments have tentatively approved the use of genetically modified corn seed, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website. However, environmental activists are already accusing Brazil’s technical commission on biosecurity of ignoring public safety concerns.
Army troops have been moved in to control access to one of Brazil’s top tourist attractions, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer monument, after police broke up a huge embezzling scam. Federal police arrested 20 people on Thursday for allegedly embezzling $150Â 000 to $250Â 000 a month from funds tourists paid to visit the fabled landmark.
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/ 20 February 2007
Brazil’s Carnival has always been a raucous affair and beauty queen Angela Bismarchi took it another step further on Monday night when her only item of clothing fell off mid-parade. Bismarchi quickly conjured up a thong and laughed off the incident with an old Brazilian saying: ”A well prepared woman is worth two.”
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/ 19 February 2007
Thousands of Brazilian dancers, singers and musicians kicked the annual Carnival bash into high gear on Sunday with a spectacle of floats, costumes and Latin beats. At the Sambadrome, the 13 top samba schools were grabbing the spotlight for about an hour each over two nights, featuring about 5 000 performers each.
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/ 29 January 2007
The Brazilian government has announced multimillion-pound plans to build tourist guesthouses — pousadas — in one of the most notoriously violent corners of Rio de Janeiro. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva revealed the plans recently as part of a development project in Rocinha, Rio’s largest shantytown.
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/ 23 January 2007
As the rich and slim flocked to waterfront convention centre for Rio de Janeiro’s glitzy biannual fashion show, prostitutes in a downtown square took to a cobblestone catwalk for a show of their own. Sex workers from Davida, a Brazilian organisation that defends the rights of prostitutes, strutted through the streets wearing their new line of fall/winter clothes.
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/ 14 November 2006
Brazil’s Minister of Health, Agenor Ãlvares, has admitted that the public health system is imbued with racism, stirring up more controversy over policies for specific treatment plans targeting Brazilians of African descent. There are clear signs of discriminatory practices, the minister said two weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro.
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/ 31 October 2006
Former Brazilian national team coach Carlos Parreira admitted for the first time that he made mistakes in preparing his squad for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, in a published interview on Monday. Parreira, now the national coach of South Africa, said he regrets having taken his star-studded squad to the Swiss town of Weggis.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces a tough run-off for a second term in office with a rejuvenated opposition after a string of political scandals have dented his popularity. Lula fell just short for a first round victory, polling 48,6% of the vote, compared to 41,6% of his closest rival Geraldo Alckmin.
A street parking attendant in Brazil’s crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro was charged with sawing a woman in two over a parking-space dispute, police said on Wednesday. The 29-year-old male suspect was arrested on Tuesday night and confessed to murdering businesswoman Edna Souza (51) in a house she was trying to rent, a police spokesperson said.
Bolivia has suspended its project to reclaim control over its oil and natural gas, throwing the nationalisation programme into chaos. In a statement released last Friday, Bolivia’s Hydrocarbons Ministry announced that the ”full participation” of the state energy company, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos, was ”temporarily suspended due to a lack of resources”.
Brazil’s 1994 World Cup-winning coach Carlos Alberto Parreira has accepted the post of South Africa coach with the task of taking Bafana Bafana through the 2010 World Cup final, it was reported on Wednesday. The 63-year-old agreed the deal with the South African Football Federation on Tuesday, according to his lawyer.
South Africa’s hopes of tempting Brazil’s former World Cup-winning coach Carlos Alberto Parreira to take over their national team have hit trouble, media reports claimed on Saturday. O Globo television said that negotiations have stalled over the exact nature of Parreira’s responsibilities.
Telling your 71-year-old grandmother you plan to construct a gigantic replica of a uterus on her doorstep must be one of the least pleasant tasks for any grandson. That, however, is the bind of Igor de Vetyemy, a young Brazilian architect behind a controversial project to build a museum inspired entirely by sex on one of the world’s most famous beaches.