Unidos da Tijuca Wins at Carnival in Rio

Unidos da Tijuca samba school won for the first time in 74 years

View more photos below

Carnival in Rio Pictures

My favorite samba dancer Adriana Bombom

View more photos below from Carnaval in Brazil.

Please note partial nudity in some photos.

It's Almost Time for Brazil Carnaval 2010

Brazilian model Luiza Brunet dance during a Imperatriz Leopoldinense samba school rehearsal for the 2010 carnival on Marques de Sapucai avenue.

A member of the Uniao da Ilha samba school, which this year pays tribute to 'Don Quixote of La Mancha', works on a float dedicated to Spanish writer Miguel Cervantes.

Members of the Vila Isabel samba school practice at Samba City in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

picture source:gettyimages

It's that time of year again Carnaval Time in Brazil here are some pictures from samba school rehearsals and float preparations .


"The Carnival of Brazil, properly spelled "Carnaval" in Portuguese, is an annual festival in Brazil held forty days before Easter. "


"This carnival is heavily influenced by African-Brazilian culture. Crownds follow the trio elétricos floats through the city streets. Also in northeast, Olinda carnival features unique characteristics, part influenced by Venice Carnival mixed with cultural despections of local folklore."


"Modern Brazilian Carnival originated in Rio de Janeiro in 1641, when the city's bourgeoisie imported the practice of holding balls and masquerade parties from Paris. It originally mimicked the European form of the festival, later absorbing and creolizing elements derived from Native American and African cultures."


"By the 1970s, four main types of carnival groups developed in Bahia: Afoxês, Trios Elétricos, "Amerindian" groups, and Blocos Afros. Afoxês use the rhythms of the African inspired religion, Candomblé. They also worship the gods of Candomblé, called orixás. An Electric Trio is characterized by a truck equipped with giant speakers and a platform where musicians play songs of local genres such as axé. "


Click here to view full history of Carnaval in Brazil

"Warriors Of Brazil" Opening Night

Dancers perform at the Capoeira stage show "Warriors Of Brazil" at the Theatre Royal on January 19, 2010 in Sydney, Australia.

Mode Vendredi - Fashion Fridays

David Agbodji for Calvin Klein Spring/Summer 2010 Ad

Zoe Saldana New Face of Avon Fragrance

Brazil Fashion Rio Fall Winter 2010 Collections

Super Model of The World Winners and Runner Ups

Georgie Badiel for Forever 21 Twelve by Twelve Collection

Rio de Janeiro wins right to stage 2016 Olympic Games

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee announced Friday. It is the first time South America would host an Olympics event. The city has budgeted $14.4 billion to the effort, the largest amount of any of the four finalists, according to IOC figures.

The final vote was down to Rio and Madrid, Spain. In earlier voting, Chicago, Illinois, and then Tokyo, Japan, were eliminated from contention.

After the cities made their presentations to the IOC on Friday, the IOC members sat down to cast their votes in a secret ballot.

Ninety-seven of the IOC's 106 members are eligible to vote in the first round; seven must sit out that round because they represent one of the countries bidding for the Games.

A city must receive a majority of votes in order to win. If no city receives a majority, voting moves on to a second round, with the city receiving the lowest number of votes being eliminated, an IOC spokeswoman said. source

Paula Lima, Brazilian Singer

Paula Lima (born in São Paulo, 1970) is a Brazilian singer and composer whose music is influenced by bossa, percussion, samba, Brazilian soul and international funk music.source

Brazilian, Brazil

"Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil), is a country in South America. The country has the largest population of African descent outside of Africa."

"Brazil obtained 37% of all African slaves traded, and close to 4 million slaves were sent to this one country. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations once the native Tupi people deteriorated."

"The Africans brought to Brazil belonged to two major groups: the West African and the Bantu people. The West African people (previously known as Sudanese, and without connection with Sudan) were sent in large scale to Bahia. They mostly belong to the Ga, Adangbe, Yoruba, Igbo,Fon, Ashanti, Ewe, Mandinka, and other West African groups native to Guinea, Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria. The Bantus were brought from Angola, Congo region andMozambique and sent in large scale to Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and the Northeastern Brazil."

"The blacks brought to Brazil were from different ethnicities and from different African regions. Gilberto Freyre noted the major differences between these groups. Some Sudanese peoples, such as Hausa, Fula and others were Islamic, spoke Arabic and many of them could readand write in this language. Freyre noted that many slaves were better educated than their masters, because many Muslim slaves wereliterate in Arabic, while many Portuguese Brazilian masters could not even read or write in Portuguese." Read more here / source

Afoxé Oyá Alaxé- Oyá é mulher forte

Afoxé Oyá Alaxé is a social organization, educational and cultural-religious african city of Recife-PE.

"Afoxé, also call of Candomblé of street, is one cortejo of street that leaves during the carnival. Afro-Brazilian with roots in the people is about a manifestation iorubá, where its integrant ones are tied with a place of fetichism of candomblé. The term afoxé comes from the language iorubá. He is composed for three terms: , nominal prefix; fo, means to say, to pronounce; xé, means to become fullfilled itself." source

French aircraft missing off Brazil

An Air France passenger jet with 228 people on board has gone missing over the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

The aircraft dropped off radar screens after it took off from Rio de Janeiro on the Brazilian coast on Monday, airport authorities said.

Air traffic control lost contact with the flight at 06:00 GMT on Monday, shortly after it took off.
A spokeswoman for the Paris airports authority confirmed that the aircraft had not arrived at its destination, where it was due to land at 09:10 GMT. Continue reading

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro 2009 & Carnival in Trinidad 2009

source: corbis

source: corbis and trinisoca

Here are the pictures from Carnival in Rio De Janerio Brazil Feb 20-Feb 24 2009 and Trinidad and Tobago. Click here to learn the history of Carnival in Rio De Janerio. Click here to learn the history of Carnival in Trinidad.

Brazilian tribes 'win' land case

Brazil's supreme court appears set to rule in favour of a group of indigenous tribes in their battle to retain control of land also claimed by farmers.

Eight out of the 11 judges said on Wednesday they will rule that the Raposa Serra do Sol tribal reservation in the Amazonian state of Roraima can remain a single unbroken territory.
The farmers had petitioned the court to have the reserve broken up so they could continue living on land which had been designated an indigenous territory by the government in 2005.
However final judgement in the case will not take place until all the judges give their verdict, which may not be until February.

Indigenous leaders and their supporters say that the decision - if made official - would set a precedent protecting the rights of their people and protect the reservation from being targeted by loggers, prospectors and rice farmers. Continue reading here