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Structural problems close Rio stadium to fix before 2016 Olympic games
DestinationsRio de Janeiro’s Joao Havelange stadium, scheduled to host the athletics at the 2016 Olympic Games, is to stay shut for 18 months while the roof is repaired, a committee of engineers said on Friday. The stadium, completed six years ago, was closed in March because of structural damage to the roof in a major [...]
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German tourist shot in Rio amidst safety worries ahead of big sports events
DestinationsA German tourist was shot and seriously wounded in the stomach on Friday in one of Brazil’s largest slums, where drug traffickers still control areas despite a crackdown in 2011. Frank Daniel Benjamin, 25, was shot in an alley of the poorest section of the Rocinha slum on Rio de Janeiro’s south side, a police [...]
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Brazil World Cup building: Spending boom on stadiums while sewage suffers
DestinationsMonica Piaia’s catering company in downtown Cuiaba, the capital of the Brazilian grain-belt state of Mato Grosso, is doing so well that she has tripled her staff and acquired a third building since 2010 to handle a sixfold increase in demand. The reason for her success is clear. A stone’s throw from her headquarters, where [...]
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The tourist attraction soaring above Rio’s most talked about shantytowns
DestinationsTiana Martins stepped gingerly into the red cable-car gondola, giggling from nerves as the doors slid shut, the ground dropped precipitously beneath her feet and she sailed off over the conglomerate of bare-brick shacks that is the Alemao complex of shantytowns. Three years ago, the communities below made national news as law enforcement swarmed up [...]
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The horses, lizards and Onassis heirs that make Lufthansa a pet flying expert
TransportAristotle Onassis’s only surviving descendant is providing a boost to Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s cargo unit with a regular contract to transport dozens of show jumping horses to Brazil at a cost of as much as $1.3 million. Athina Onassis de Miranda, the main heir to her shipping magnate grandfather, funds the transfer of horses to [...]
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Rio succeeds in pressing Google to remove the word “favela” from its maps
DestinationsGoogle has reportedly removed the word “favela” from some of its maps of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil after pressure from the city hall and tourist boards. Hundreds of the shanty-town communities sprawl over the hillsides and in undeveloped parts of the city, and were previously identified on maps using the Portuguese word favela. In [...]
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Rio safety fears ahead of World Cup after violence directed at tourists rises
DestinationsA late night outing turned into a six-hour-long nightmare after an American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public transit van in Rio while her handcuffed French boyfriend looked on helplessly, in an incident that’s shocked this resort city as it gears up to host next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. [...]
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Rio de Janiero emerges as Latin America’s burgeoning art hotspot
DestinationsLong 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 of the world’s premier collections of contemporary Latin American art. Casa Daros, a 12,000-square-meter (129,000-square-foot) space in an impeccably renovated 1866 mansion, will house some of the works [...]
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Rio’s by-the-hour motels get incentives to upgrade for World Cup
DestinationsRio de Janeiro is granting tax breaks to motels that convert from red velvet and ceiling mirrors to single beds and conference tables as a means of boosting lodging capacity in the city that will host the 2016 Olympics. Incentives include a 40 percent property-tax reduction and a services tax reduction through 2015 for motels [...]
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The next four years will make or break Rio as global tourist destination
DestinationsRio de Janeiro will have global exposure during the 2016 Olympic Games. Martine Ainsworth-Wells explains why it could be a platform that lures swathes of future tourists, or one that makes them determined to stay away entirely. Rio de Janeiro, the self-styled “Cidade Maravilhosa” – Marvelous City. Mention it to friends who have visited and [...]
