Carnival

A mother watched helplessly as her two children were trapped upside down on an amusement ride at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock on Saturday.

Latin American countries began their yearly four-day Carnival festivities, an especially significant celebration to Brazil.

Jerônimo Rodrigues, the Gov. of Bahia, Brazil, is celebrating his successful efforts to ban water pistols at this year’s upcoming Bahia Carnival. 

Seven people were saved by Missouri firefighters Friday after becoming stuck on a carnival ride that left some suspended 40 feet in the air.

At least six people have been killed after a car was rammed into a large crowd of festival-goers in Belgium on Sunday morning.

A Ferris wheel operator at a Florida carnival was allegedly attacked by a woman before being pummeled by a crowd of bystanders, according to a video posted on Twitter.

Venezuela abruptly ended a strict lockdown, an attempt to fight the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, this week after dictator Nicolás Maduro announced the official start of carnival season.

London police have secured extra stop and search powers and deployed knife detection arches and extra armed officers equipped with acid attack kits for the Notting Hill Carnival, as homes and shops in the area board up fearing damage.

Witnesses speaking to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee on Tuesday argued that the Obama administration aided Cuban government profits, ignoring demands from justice from American citizens, as it sought closer ties to the communist regime.

Germans are braving rain, high winds and tight security to celebrate this year’s Carnival season.

Brazil’s tourism industry is already suffering from the international alarm over the Zika virus outbreak that has infected 1.5 million people, with tour operators and hotel bookers experiencing an increase in the number of cancellations, particularly on the part of pregnant women who were planning to travel.

An American researcher, who identified the Zika virus as a potential threat in 2009, tells the journal Wired that it would have been impossible to attain funding to research Zika exclusively five years ago, as few believed it had the potential to cause an outbreak as large as that currently underway in Latin America.

On Friday, two puppeteers in Spain were jailed, without bail, for staging a satirical puppet show during the Carnival celebration. The show included both violence deemed inappropriate for children and a message described as “praising terrorism,” which is illegal in Spain.

Brazil will feature forty refugee children in its largest parade celebrating the national holiday Carnival, including children from Syria, Sudan, Angola, and Libya. The children will march in a procession expected to draw thousands, even amid Latin America’s Zika virus pandemic.

The Brazilian government made efforts to warn revelers before the annual Carnival celebrations to protect themselves from the Zika virus by wearing long-sleeved clothing and avoiding kissing and sexual contact, particularly pregnant women.