Sorted by date Results 1 - 12 of 12
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rio de Janeiro's main beaches bustle with commotion on sunny weekends. But activity ground to a near standstill on one stretch of sand. People held up their phones to record athletic feats they'd never before witnessed, or even imagined. The game? Footvolley, a combination of soccer and beach volleyball. The athlete? A 3-year-old border collie named Floki. Floki sparks wonder among bystanders, because he hangs tough in a game that even humans struggle to get a handle on. Footvolley rules are essentially the same as b...
SAO PAULO (AP) — It's a showdown between the world's richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice. The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, has threatened to suspend social media giant X nationwide in the coming hours if its billionaire owner Elon Musk doesn't swiftly comply with one of his orders. Musk has responded with insults, including calling de Moraes a "tyrant" and "a dictator." It is the latest chapter in the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. The deadline for compliance is f...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Two days after Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco's 2018 assassination, her widow sat down with the chief of the state's civil police, Rivaldo Barbosa, who pledged to do everything in his power to hold the guilty parties to account. In fact, the man Brazilian media once exalted as "Rio's Sherlock" had the exact opposite intent, according to newly revealed allegations. Federal Police arrested Barbosa on March 24 — over six years later — for allegedly helping orchestrate Franco's killing and taking money to ob...
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — His legions of fans call him "the madman" and "the wig" due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair. Javier Milei refers to himself as "the lion." The 53-year-old economist has rocked Argentina's political establishment and become president of South America's second-largest economy. A few years ago, Milei was a television talking head whom bookers loved because his screeds against government spending and the ruling political class boosted ratings. His election success has come from inserting himself into what h...
BELEM, Brazil (AP) — The Amazon rainforest is a massive area, twice the size of India and sprawling across eight countries and one territory. It's a crucial carbon sink for the climate, has about 20% of the world's freshwater reserves and boasts astounding biodiversity, including 16,000 known tree species. But governments have historically viewed it as an area to be colonized and exploited, with little regard for sustainability or the rights of its Indigenous peoples. Now, as those governments seek to clamp down on a Wild West atmosphere of r...
ALTO RIO GUAMA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil (AP) — The Indigenous adolescents danced in a circle under the thatched-roof hut from nearly dawn to dusk while parents looked on from the perimeter. Some of the adults smoked tobacco mixed with the wood from a local tree in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. The seemingly endless loop of the procession, taking place over six long days this month, was leaving some Tembé Tenehara youngsters with swollen and bandaged feet. They were receiving little to eat and spending each night sleeping in hammocks slung in...
Bocaina de Minas, BRAZIL (AP) — Down a dirt road in the mountains of Minas Gerais, Pelé's home state, Jorge Tavares received the news of the star's death from a 4 a.m. newscast. As a boy, Tavares and his cousins listened to Pelé's World Cup games on the radio. His dazzling performance inspired them to play a game they had never seen, at first using a ball of socks and string. "He leaves a legacy, a person of color who was crowned king of soccer, and he also brought a lot of peace outside Brazil," Tavares, a 67-year-old school-van driver, sai...
MANGARATIBA, Brazil (AP) — All the locals knew the island just west of Rio de Janeiro was teeming with cats. They left food and even brought tourists. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and human support dried up, resulting in a gruesome scene witnessed by fishermen: a group of cats devouring others' corpses. Furtada Island, referred to widely as "Island of the Cats," is 20 minutes by motorboat from the city of Mangaratiba, at one extreme of Brazil's Green Coast, a vast swath of mountainous tropical forest and sandy coves dotted with h...
HAVANA (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping through the leadership of Latin America, with two more presidents and powerful officials testing positive this week for the new coronavirus, adding a destabilizing new element to the region's public health and economic crises. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, 65, announced his illness Tuesday and is using it to publicly extol hydroxychloroquine, the unproven malaria drug that he's been promoting as a treatment for COVID-19, and now takes himself. Bolivian interim President Jeanine Añez, 53...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — After months of touting an unproven anti-malaria drug as a treatment for the new coronavirus, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is turning himself into a test case live before millions of people as he swallows hydroxychloroquine pills on social media and encourages others to do the same. Bolsonaro said this week that he tested positive for the virus but already felt better thanks to hydroxychloroquine. Hours later he shared a video of himself gulping down what he said was his third dose. "I trust hydroxychloroquine," h...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic accelerated across Latin America on Friday, bringing a surge of new infections and deaths, even as curves flattened and reopening was underway in much of Europe, Asia and the United States. The region's two largest nations — Mexico and Brazil — reported record counts of new cases and deaths almost daily this week, fueling criticism of their presidents, who have slow-walked shutdowns in attempts to limit economic damage. Brazil reported more than 20,000 deaths and 300,000 confirmed cases, makin...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Cases of the new coronavirus are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Brazil as Latin America's largest nation veers closer to becoming one of the world's pandemic hot spots. Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and at least four other major cities have warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse, or already too overwhelmed to take any more patients. Health experts expect the number of infections in the country of 211 million people will be much higher than what has been reported b...
