Major tourist sites in Rio de Janeiro, including the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the Brazilian city, reopened to the public on Saturday after being closed for five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The reopening of the Christ [monument] symbolizes the reopening of Brazil to tourism,” Brazilian Minister of Environment Ricardo Salles said at a ceremony at the base of the statue.
Visitors would be required to wear masks and maintain social distancing, and would not be allowed to lie on the ground — as many do in attempting to get the best angle for photos at the feet of the huge Art Deco statue with its arms outstretched.
Photo: AFP
Located atop the 710m Corcovado hill in the center of Rio in Tijuca national park, the monument offers a spectacular panoramic view of the city. Since social-distancing measures forced its closure in March, Christ the Redeemer has continued to function as a religious sanctuary, offering public masses and holding vigils.
Also reopening to the public on Saturday were the Pao de Acucar cable car, which offers its own panoramic view of the city, the AquaRio aquarium and the gigantic Rio Star, Latin America’s largest Ferris wheel.
Brazil’s National Confederation of Goods, Services and Tourism has estimated that the country’s tourism sector has lost 154 billion reals (US$28.4 billion) over the past five months, operating at only 14 percent of its capacity.
The state of Rio de Janeiro, with 17 million inhabitants, has registered more than 14,500 deaths and nearly 190,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, according to official statistics.
The state capital, which in June began a gradual economic reopening, has seen 33 deaths and 1,365 new cases in just the past 24 hours.
Brazil, with 107,232 deaths and more than 3.3 million cases to date, is the second-hardest-hit country in the world, after the US.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the disease as a “little flu” and railed against lockdown measures imposed by state governors.
He has been slammed by experts for his stance — but nearly half of Brazilians believe he is not responsible for the death toll, according to a survey published by the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper on Saturday.
Forty-seven percent of those surveyed by the Datafolha Institute answered that Bolsonaro “is not to blame” for the high number of deaths, compared with 41 percent who consider him “one of the culprits (but not the main culprit),” and 11 percent who see him as the “main culprit.”
The survey also showed that Bolsonaro remains more popular than ever.
With no certainty about when a vaccine might be available, Rio authorities have announced a new format for the year-end celebrations that traditionally bring millions of people to Copacabana Beach for a huge fireworks display.
This year, the authorities are working to organize a series of smaller celebrations around the city and are urging people to watch the events online.
Rio’s world-famous carnival, with its huge street parties, also risks being canceled by the pandemic.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS