Rio de Janeiro has kicked off Carnival celebrations as the mayor hands the city key to King Momo for a playful five-day reign.

U.S. stocks climbed near their all-time high after oil prices eased further on hopes that Israel’s war with Iran will not damage the global flow of crude.

When Spanish actress Penélope Cruz announced that “I’m Still Here” was the winner of best international film at the Academy Awards, Brazilians roared at home and on the streets, where Carnival festivities have been ongoing since Saturday.

Brazil’s Carnival muse this year isn’t one of the divas or drum queens parading with the Rio de Janeiro samba schools.

Brazil’s Carnival revelry is ramping up, from the raucous street parties to the glitzy parades.

Rio de Janeiro’s mayor handed over the key to the city to its Carnival monarch.

A fire in a factory that produces costumes for the carnival in Rio de Janeiro has left 10 people hospitalized, health authorities said.

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Local public health officials in Rio de Janeiro have been scouring the city's neighborhoods and even its junkyards for signs of standing water where mosquitoes can lay their eggs.

To thunderous applause, Rio de Janeiro’s mayor coronated King Momo, marking the beginning of the symbolic Carnival monarch’s five-day reign over the revelry.

Carnival season 2024 is entering its final days in New Orleans with big parades on the city's main thoroughfares and smaller, offbeat walking clubs strolling the old French Quarter.

Rio de Janeiro city authorities have declared a public health emergency in the city because of an outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue fever.

New Orleans’ annual Carnival celebration has entered its high-intensity home stretch with a beefed-up police presence and a weather-scrambled parade schedule.

It’s Carnival season in New Orleans and that means the morning lines outside popular bakeries are long and the pace inside is brisk to meet customer demand for king cake.

Two men stranded in a kayak in the Gulf of Mexico are counting their blessings after they were rescued by a cruise ship.

With their purple, gold and green colors and toy babies hidden inside, king cakes are staples of Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.

The countdown to Mardi Gras has begun in New Orleans.

A cruise operator that failed to cancel a voyage from Sydney that led to a COVID-19 outbreak has been ruled negligent in an Australian class-action case.

The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for a man who fell from a cruise ship off the coast of Florida. The Coast Guard says that the 35-year-old passenger fell from the Carnival Magic ship around 185 miles east of Jacksonville on Monday.

Carnival Cruise Lines says that one of its ships that navigated rough seas off the South Carolina coast has resumed sailing on its next cruise. Terrified passengers on the Carnival Sunshine took to social media over the Memorial Day holiday weekend to post video of water pouring through a flooded hallway on a cabin level and pictures of on-board stores in shambles as large waves swelled on the sea.

As Carnival approaches in Rio de Janeiro, members of samba schools perfect their minutely-timed dances and rhythms.

Wall Street closed out a miserable September with a loss of 9.3%, the worst monthly decline since March 2020.

Rio de Janeiro’s samba schools have begun putting on this year's delayed Carnival parades, the first after a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19-pandemic.

Stray bullets in separate shootings have killed two people who were visiting New Orleans for the festivities leading up to Mardi Gras.

Party-minded people dressed in traditional purple, green and gold filled New Orleans' streets for the city's first full-dress Mardi Gras since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The pandemic has disrupted Carnival in Rio de Janeiro for a second straight year.

Artists, florists, actors, technicians and drivers are putting the final touches on their costumes, lavish flower arrangements and giant floats for the Carnival in the French Riviera city of Nice.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell helped usher in the city's Carnival season by sampling a city delicacy — king cake — at a morning event.

Mayors across Brazil are divided on whether to maintain end-of-year festivities and February’s legendary Carnival in spite of the ongoing pandemic.

A woman who tested positive for COVID-19 while aboard a Carnival cruise ship from Galveston has died, according to reports.

A Carnival cruise on which 27 people tested positive for COVID-19 just before the ship made a stop in Belize City this week is headed back to Galveston, Texas.

Two of Carnival’s massive cruise ships have returned to the Port of Galveston after a hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A reveller stands in front of a political carnival float depicting Russia's President Vladimir Putin fighting with opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the streets of Duesseldorf, Germany, Monday, Feb. 15, 2021. Because of the coronavirus pandemic the traditional 'Rosenmontag' carnival parade are canceled but eight floats are pulled through the empty streets in Duesseldorf, where normally hundreds of thousands of people would celebrate the street carnival. But organizers in Duesseldorf, one of the German Rhineland's main Carnival strongholds, didn't want to let Rose Monday in 2021 go completely without the traditional caricatures of current events. “It's a small signal that we're alive,” float builder Jacques Tilly told the German news agency dpa. Another depicted the brain flying out of the head of an activist against coronavirus restrictions.

A woman dressed as a superhero and wearing a mask to curb the spread of the new coronavirus performs in the "Desliga da Justica" street band in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021. Their performance was broadcast live on social media for those who were unable to participate in the carnival due to COVID restrictions after the city's government officially suspended Carnival and banned street parades or clandestine parties. “When everyone is immunized, we are going to have the biggest Carnival that Brazil has ever seen. One of the biggest street party associations, Blocos da Sebastiana, this year organized workshops on Carnival makeup and instruments and offered playlists of their music. “We would like to be partying on the street but we can’t.” said Rita Fernandes, president of Blocos da Sebastian.

A carnival reveler is watched by public order guards at the "Alter Markt" where normally tens of thousands of revelers dressed in carnival costumes would celebrate the start of the street carnival in Cologne, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. This year all carnival celebrations are banned due to the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)BERLIN – Germany’s renowned Carnival celebrations got underway Thursday but without any of their usual raucous revelry. One of Germany’s first superspreader events stemmed from a Carnival celebration in a town west of Cologne last February where many people came in contact with an infected man. Cologne festival committee President Christoph Kuckelkorn told Germany’s dpa news agency that Carnival could emerge from this year purified, returning closer to its roots from the increasingly commercial, excessive celebration it had become.

In a normal year, Rios Sambadrome would be preparing for its great moment of the year: the worlds most famous Carnival parade. But a week before what should be the start of Carnival, the pandemic has replaced pageantry. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)RIO DE JANEIRO – In a normal year, Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome would be preparing for its great moment of the year: the world’s most famous Carnival parade. Rio’s hotel occupancy rate normally reaches about 80% in the hot summer months and 100% during Carnival. It's now at roughly 50-60%, according to Alfredo Lopes, the president of Rio’s Hospitality Workers Union.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020, file photo, Mondo Kayo parades down Chartres Street during Mardi Gras, in New Orleans. The Mardi Gras season always starts on Jan. 6 and ends on Fat Tuesday, which this year falls on Feb. 16. The Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc is a club that annually pays homage to the fallen French hero with a parade through the French Quarter on the official start of the Carnival season. In Mobile, Alabama, dozens of parades, balls and other events also have been canceled. The city on the Gulf of Mexico calls itself the birthplace of Mardi Gras since celebrations began there a few years earlier than in New Orleans.

The benchmark S&P 500 index finished with a gain of 16.3% for the year, or a total return of about 18.4%, including dividends. And the S&P 500 rose or fell by at least 1% on twice as many days in 2020 than it did, on average, since 1950. The electric car maker jumped 743.4% in 2020 for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. All told, the S&P 500 set 33 record highs in 2020. The S&P 500 rose 24.03 points, or 0.6%, to 3,756.07, an all-time high.

Carnival cruises won’t sail out of Galveston — or most U.S. ports — anytime soon. The company said it is canceling sailings from all ports except its home ports of Miami and Port Canaveral, Florida. The CDC said it knows of 3,689 reported coronavirus cases and 41 deaths linked to cruises in U.S. waters between March and September. Even before the CDC announced its decision, the cruise industry had voluntarily suspended U.S. sailings through Oct. 31. Carnival rival Norwegian Cruise Line said Thursday that it hasn’t canceled any scheduled cruises and remains optimistic it can resume U.S. operations soon.

A "quadra" or court, which this time of year is usually filled with Carnival performers practicing their dance moves, sits empty in the Unidos de Padre Miguel samba school, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, Sept. 24, said it has delayed its annual Carnival parade, saying the global spectacle cannot go ahead in February because of Brazils continued vulnerability to the new coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

The samba schools are community institutions, and the parades are just one detail of all that,” Luiz Antonio Simas, a historian who specializes in Rio’s Carnival, said in an interview. As the number of infections grew, the samba schools that participate in the glitzy annual parade halted preparations for the 2021 event. Nearly all of Rio’s samba schools are closely linked to working class communities. “Carnival is our life.”The last year Rio’s Carnival was suspended was 1912, following the death of the foreign relations minister. A statement from the agency Thursday provided no further clarity on the fate of the Carnival street parties.

SAN ANTONIO – We’re all bummed we can’t go to the State Fair this year. That’s why Adeina Anderson, of Creative Lifestyles with Adeina, is bringing the fair fun to you! Watch the video above to learn how to make easy carnival games at home, like DIY goldfish bowls and the ring toss. Anderson also shares how to make easy funnel cake. You can find more crafts on her website.

GALVESTON, Texas – Despite all the warnings and worry about the coronavirus, at the Port of Galveston on Thursday, it looked like business as usual. Thousands of people were seen boarding the Carnival cruise ship Dream, bound for Mexico. Ann Bedford and her husband Michael took their two daughters on the cruise and are not concerned about the coronavirus appearing on their cruise ship. The latest: What you should know about coronavirus cases in Texas“I am not afraid. Track live coronavirus updates with real-time map of confirmed cases, deathsOnly time will tell what the economic outlook for Galveston will be, in the coming weeks.