Rio de Janeiro
Carnival returns: Rio’s iconic Carnival returned in style this week after a two-year absence due to the coronavirus pandemic. Performers clad in colorful feathers danced in the city’s Sambadrome as revelers cheered the return of the festival, while raucous street parties were flooded with opponents of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of Brazil’s October election. “Carnival is politics, too,” José Leonardo da Silva, a 43-year-old psychologist, said after hitting the beach dressed as a box of Viagra—a reference to the defense ministry’s widely mocked purchase of tens of thousands of erectile dysfunction tablets. In polls, Bolsonaro trails leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by 9 percentage points.