DIARLEI RODRIGUES

A hospital worker dances with a clown from the "Roda de Palhacos" cultural project during a carnival party at the Servidores do Estado Federal Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Clowns and musicians bring the joy of Carnival to sick children in a Rio hospital
Clowns complete with red noses and tutus sung Carnival songs to sick children on the pediatric ward of a Rio de Janeiro hospital on Tuesday, bringing the ebullient festivities normally found on the streets straight to the young patients and their carers.
 
Performer from the Unidos de Padre Miguel samba school dance during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
A samba school rises to Rio Carnival’s top league, bringing an economic boom to its poor residents
Carnival always breathes life into the economy of Vila Vintem, on Rio de Janeiro’s west side, but this year there’s even more, with its Unidos de Padre Miguel samba school back in the top parade league for the first time in 57 years.
 
Transgender woman Negriny Venture, of the Paraiso de Tuiuti samba school, prepares to rehearse for the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
A Rio Carnival parade will tell the story of a trans woman nearly burned at the stake
A Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro will present the story of a trans woman nearly burned at the stake in the 16th century as a means to spotlight trans people’s struggle in Brazil, where more of them are reported killed than anywhere else.
 
Health workers carry an injured woman after a fire destroyed a factory that produces Carnival costumes for the lower division samba schools in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Diarlei Rodrigues)
At least 10 hospitalized in fire at Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival costume factory
A fire in a factory that produces costumes for the carnival in Rio de Janeiro has left 10 people hospitalized, health authorities said. The blaze on Wednesday cast a shadow over preparations for what is known as the world’s biggest show.
 
A bear named Baloo eats frozen fruit at the BioParque do Rio amid the Summer heat in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Rio’s thirsty zoo animals get icy treats to cool down in Brazil’s stifling summer heat
A Rio de Janeiro zoo is giving ice pops to a bear, a jaguar, wolves and monkeys for some welcome relief from Brazil’s stifling summer heat. The ice pops are part of the animals’ well-being program to provide thermal comfort.
 
An Indigenous Tembe mother and daughters take photos on their smartphones outside a school in the Tenetehar Wa Tembe village, located in the Alto Rio Guama Indigenous territory of the Paragominas municipality in the Para state of Brazil, May 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
New Brazil law restricts use of smartphones in elementary and high schools
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has signed a bill restricting the use of smartphones at school, following a global trend for such limitations.
 
A fur seal stands on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Not quite the ‘Girl from Ipanema’, a fur seal’s rare appearance on Rio’s famous beach turns heads
A fur seal was spotted on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday, attracting attention from locals and tourists.
 
Brazil's first lady Rosangela da Silva and Foreign Affairs Minister Mauro Vieira, attend the inauguration of the G20 Social Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Brazil launches a G20 social summit to highlight needs of low-income people
Brazil has launched what it calls a social summit ahead of next week’s Group of 20 meeting of the top economies. It’s the first such event focused on drawing civil society input ahead of annual summit.
 
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, at the UN headquarters. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Brazil’s Lula talks climate at UN, but Amazon fires back home undermine his message
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the U.N. General Assembly with a call on the world to do more to combat climate change.
 
Faithful from various religions participate in the Defense of Religious Freedom march at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. The march seeks to bring attention to religious intolerance in the country. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Hundreds march in Brazil to support religious freedom as cases of intolerance rise
Practitioners of various religions have marched down Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach. They gathered Sunday to support religious freedom in Brazil. Over the past six years, cases of intolerance have doubled.
 
A humpback whale breaches off the coast of Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Thursday, June 20, 2024. The whale-watching season has begun for tourists taking part in expeditions to get close to the humpback whales coming from Antarctica in search of warm waters to breed and have their babies. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Whale-watching excursions off Rio de Janeiro’s coast begin captivating tourists
Rio de Janeiro is famous for its beaches and vibrant parties in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. The city now has a growing attraction for winter: humpback whales.
 
FILE - Fish carcasses cover the shore of Jacarepagua lagoon in front of Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 29, 2015. Eight years after the 2016 Olympic Games, a private concessionaire is working to recover the aquatic ecosystem in Rio's western zone. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)
An overdue Olympic pledge to restore Rio de Janeiro’s lagoons is finally taking shape
When Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympics in 2016, videos of the extensive lagoon complex surrounding the Olympic Park were everywhere.
 
An aerial view of a mangrove recovered from deforestation in the Guapimirim environmental protection area on Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Wednesday, May 22, 2024. Four years ago, the Mar Urbano NGO planted 30,000 mangrove trees in the deforested area, that today reach up to 4 meters high. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Rio de Janeiro bay reforestation shows mangroves’ power to mitigate climate disasters
At the rear of Rio de Janeiro’s polluted Guanabara Bay, thousands of mangroves rise as tall as 13 feet, or about 4 meters, from a previously deforested area.
 
Young women and their coach Dioguinho bring it in for a team huddle at the start of a soccer training session run by the Bola de Ouro social program, at the Complexo da Alemao favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 16, 2024. Young women are participating in soccer programs led by community trainers, where they receive both sports and personal development training. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Young women in Rio favela hope to overcome poverty and violence to play in Women’s World Cup in 2027
Young Brazilian female footballers are hopeful that their country playing host to the 2027 Women’s World Cup will boost the sport in the South American nation.
 
Youth perform a street dance style known as passinho for their social media accounts, in the Rocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. The passinho, or “little step”, created in the 2000s by kids in Rio’s favelas, was declared an “intangible cultural heritage” by state legislators, bringing recognition to a cultural expression born in the sprawling working-class neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Brazilian dance craze created by young people in Rio’s favelas is declared cultural heritage
The passinho is a Brazilian dance style created in the 2000s by kids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. And it has been declared an “intangible cultural heritage” of the state of Rio, bringing recognition to a cultural expression born in the working-class neighborhoods.
 
Children hold drawings that represent their experiences of living in the Mare favela at an event to launch the book titled “I was supposed to be at school” in the Mare favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, March 25, 2024. Dozens of kids and teenagers from one of Rio de Janeiro's most violent favelas gathered on Monday to celebrate their most important piece of work yet: a book that aims to show authorities how they see police violence in their Maré community from a young age. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Book of kids’ drawings reflect regular violence shaping their lives in a Rio de Janeiro favela
Dozens of kids and teenagers from Rio de Janeiro’s Mare neighborhood gathered for the launch of a book in which they show, with their own words and pictures, how violence in their poor, bayside community weighs on their young lives.
 
Augusto Cesar, a city worker who combats endemic diseases, pours larvicide down a home's drain where mosquitoes can breed, to help eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito which can spread dengue, in the Morro da Penha favela of Niteroi, Brazil, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
In Rio, rife with dengue, bacteria-infected mosquitoes are making a difference
Since Rio de Janeiro declared a public health emergency after an outbreak of dengue fever last month, the city has ramped up testing capacities, opened up a dozen of dengue health centers and trained medical staff to attend the ever-growing needs of its population.
 
Residents cross a submerged road in a boat after deadly rainfall in Duque de Caxias, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state confronts flood damage after heavy rain kills at least 12
Neighborhoods in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state are flooded more than a day after torrential rains that killed at least 12 people.
 
Women shout slogans while holding signs with a message in Portuguese that says: "No rights to less", during a demonstration in support of democracy on the one year anniversary of rioters storming government buildings in support of outgoing, former President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. Rioters stormed the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court buildings, and Bolsonaro has been under investigation by the Supreme Court over his role in the mayhem. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Brazil observes anniversary of the anti-democratic uprising in the capital
Brazil has observed the anniversary of last year’s uprising in the capital when thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings and called for a military intervention to remove President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from office.
 
Pedestrians stand across the street from the food and bar kiosk "Nana 2" on the beach in the Barra de Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023. Three of four doctors who were shot overnight at the bar have died. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
3 doctors fatally shot and 1 wounded at a Rio beach, and the motive remains unclear
Gunmen in Rio de Janeiro have killed three doctors and wounded a fourth in a gangland-style hit while the men were at a beachside eatery.
 
Gilgres Santos, the father of five-year-old Eloah Passos, carries his daughter's remains for a burial at Cacuia Cemetery two days after she was killed by a stray bullet in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, Aug. 14, 2023. Passos died on Saturday, Aug. 12, while at home in the Dende favela. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
5-year-old buried in Rio after being killed during protest against police violence
A 5-year-old girl has been buried in Rio de Janeiro, two days after she was fatally shot as shantytown residents protested against alleged police violence.
 
A northern muriqui monkey jumps from a tree at the Feliciano Miguel Abdala Natural Heritage Private Reserve in Caratinga, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. The northern muriqui is a critically endangered species that is unusual among primates in that they display egalitarian tendencies in their social relationships. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
A scientist’s 4-decade quest to save the biggest monkey in the Americas
The emerald-green canopy shifts and rustles as a troop of willowy, golden-gray monkeys slides through the Atlantic forest, a tropical ecosystem even more threatened than the Amazon.
 
First major Brazilian cities resume classes amid pandemic
The cities of Manaus in the Amazon rainforest and Duque de Caxias, in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan region on Monday resumed in-person classes at private schools, the two largest cities to do so since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Brazil’s Carnival beat fades, making way for virus shelter
A month ago, Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome was the site of a massive Carnival party bursting with samba music and smiling faces.
 
Rio’s Christ statue closes and state of emergency decreed
Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue closed to the public at day-end Tuesday and will remain closed for at least a week to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
 
Brazil’s biggest favela seeks foreigner ban on virus fears
The latest attempt to impose controls on travel is a small territory: the hillside neighborhood of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s largest favela is a geographic bowl with brick homes covering its slopes and overlooking the Atlantic ocean.