Tom Cruise makes visit to Rio's Maracana stadium
Tom Cruise took time off from promoting his latest movie in Brazil by visiting Maracana stadium and meeting former Brazilian soccer star Zico.

Bolt to run 150-meter race at Copacabana beach
Usain Bolt will have Copacabana beach in the background when he tries to break his 150-meter world best in a street race this weekend in Rio de ...

Disabled surfers brave the waves in Brazil
One minute, Renata Glasner is watching the waves crash on Leblon beach from her wheelchair. The next, she's plowing through the turbulent waters on ...

Carlos Slim's company wins Olympic TV rights
Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, secured the Latin American broadcast rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics on Friday. The IOC ...

Indians, police clash in Rio over World Cup preps
Pandemonium broke out in the shadow of Rio de Janeiro's Maracana stadium on Friday as riot police raided an old museum that authorities want razed ...

Museum to showcase contemporary Latin American art
Long a cultural backwater, Rio de Janeiro has taken another leap toward becoming an art hot spot with this week's opening of a museum built around one ...
Brazil's new oil revenue law goes into effect
A new oil law that gives a greater share of royalty revenues from Brazil's vast oil fields to non-producing states went into effect Friday and ...

Brazil's booming beauty market draws investors
Looking good has always been serious business in Brazil. Now it's big business, too. A flush new middle class and a population strong on working ...

Rio de Janeiro's samba schools vie for title
Carnival revelers danced until dawn on Tuesday as Rio de Janeiro's samba schools held their annual sequin-drenched parade competitions at the city's ...

Rio teacher out to prove 'gringos' can samba, too
With their gyrating hips and feet that move so fast they dissolve into a blur, samba instructor Carla Campos' students are barely distinguishable from ...

Papal resignation sparks global disbelief, grief
From the parishes of Poland to the churches of Chile, Roman Catholics around the world were stunned Monday at the first papal resignation in six ...

Hundreds toil for months for Rio's Carnival parade
There's nothing glamorous about the industrial warehouse reverberating with the zap of soldering metal, the clatter of hammers and an earsplitting ...

Rio's samba dancers stars by night, workers by day
It's a life of stark contrast: By day, Diana Prado is a supervisor at an insurance company's drably lit call center cramped with blue cubicles.

Brazil's Carnival moves beyond samba
The crowd gathering Saturday was a typical Rio Carnival mix: a sprinkling of superheroes, girls in cute bunny outfits, zombies and princesses, a group ...

As Carnival fever seizes Rio, some seek escape
As samba queens get final touch-ups on their sequins and feathers and hundreds of thousands of revelers take command of Rio's streets for Carnival's ...
IOC asked to probe court interference in Brazil
The ousted presidents of two Brazilian sports federations have filed complaints with the IOC claiming they were removed from their posts after illegal ...

Rio Carnival goes to dogs at canine street party
The crowd at the Blocao Carnival street party Sunday was a decidedly mixed one. Roughly half the revelers were humans, the other half dogs, though the ...

Bolivia mining town erects huge statue of Virgin
The Carnival celebrations in this Andean mining city already rival Brazil's Rio de Janeiro for color and culture, if not for size. Now Oruro has ...

Brazil nightclub fire prompts regional reaction
Brazilian authorities inspected and shuttered night spots around the country on Thursday as part of a crackdown on unsafe public spaces after a deadly ...

Brazil police: Outdoor flare started club fire
Penny-pinching by a band known for its onstage pyrotechnic displays may have cost more than 230 people their lives at a nightclub in southern Brazil, ...

Neglect, errors to blame in Brazil nightclub fire
There was no fire alarm. There were no sprinklers or fire escapes. And when a band member tried to put out a fire that had been started by ...

FIFA, IOC send condolences to Brazil fire victims
FIFA and local organizers canceled an event celebrating 500 days to go until the 2014 World Cup because of a nightclub fire that killed more than 230 ...

Brazil: bar codes on sidewalks give tourist info
Rio de Janeiro is mixing technology with tradition to provide tourists information about the city by embedding bar codes into the black and white ...

Rio de Janeiro's favelas find a place on city maps
Look at most maps of Rio de Janeiro. The beaches are easy to spot, as are the iconic ocean-front neighborhoods of Copacabana and Ipanema. In the ...
Brazil police inspector removed from post
A Rio de Janiero police inspector has been removed for making disparaging remarks about female officers on his Twitter account. Inspector Pedro Paulo ...