At least 13 people drowned when a boat capsized earlier today on a tributary near the mouth of the Amazon river in Brazil. Most of the passengers were asleep below-deck when the overcrowded boat flipped over, due to strong river currents.
"Sex on the Beach" was an entirely different kind of cocktail for a pair of young Brazilian lovers and the large crowd of onlookers who witnessed their unabashed water sports on Carnival Saturday.
At the root of the unimaginable tragedy in Brazil — in which 234 people died and at least 120 others were hospitalized in a fire at a nightclub called Kiss — is wanton carelessness for others. According to police in Brazil, the fire was ignited by flares that were intended for outdoor use. Why did Gurizada Fandangueira, the band playing that night, set off those flares inside the club? Because they were cheap.
Brazilian authorities have arrested three people with ties to the nightclub fire that killed at least 233 people yesterday. They are one of the club's co-owners, the chief of security and a member of the band Gurizada Fandangueira, which was performing when the fire broke out. Police are also apparently searching for Kiss nightclub's other owner as well.
Officials say at least 232 people died in a nightclub fire overnight in Brazil, and that number is expected to climb.
Early New Year's Eve, police in Brazil's Alagoas state thwarted a potential jailbreak when they captured a cat attempting to smuggle various escape tools into a medium-security prison. According to Google's probably very accurate translation of the State of Alagoas' official statement on the matter, the small black and white cat was found with " two saws, two drills for concrete, a headset, a memory card, a cell phone, three batteries and a mobile phone charger" taped around its stomach.
When police phoned up Jose Marcos Araujo and told him his brother had been shot to death, he figured that meant he would never see Gilberto alive again.
A woman running for city council in the northwestern Brazilian town of Itacoatiara was arrested on Sunday — election day — for allegedly distributing packets of cocaine to residents who promised to vote for her.
A housewife from the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul was awarded R$10,000 (~US$4,800) in damages for finding an unfurled condom inside a can of Knorr tomato paste.
Lending further credence to the maxim that everybody's a DJ now, Paris Hilton kicked off her highly unanticipated world DJing tour in Brazil over the weekend, playing an hour-long set for a potentially coerced audience in Sao Paulo.
Three people in Brazil killed and ate at least three women as a ritual of their religious sect. The cannibals, who have confessed to the crime, say that a voice told them to kill evil women. It's unclear if the voice also told them to use the extra human meat to stuff empanadas, which they then sold to their unwitting neighbors.
