The British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, operated by a charter airline named LaMia, declared an emergency and lost radar contact just before 10 p.m. Monday (0300 GMT) because of an electrical failure, aviation authorities said.
The aircraft, which had departed from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, was transporting the Chapecoense soccer team from southern Brazil for the first leg Wednesday of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.
Athletes from 206 nations and a refugee team are in Brazil to compete in 31 sports and be watched by a global audience of billions. The build-up has been dominated by a Russian doping scandal, the Zika virus and issues with the city’s security, infrastructure and venues. But it is time for the sporting action to take centre stage.
The Games – held in South America for the first time – officially take place between 5 and 21 August, but they have actually already started. The opening ceremony is at midnight BST on Friday night but the action kicked off two days ago with the women’s football. Defending Olympic men’s tennis champion Andy Murray will be Great Britain’s flag bearer inside Rio’s Maracana stadium on Friday.
An estimated three billion people will watch the ceremony, which has taken five years to produce and includes 300 dancers, 5,000 volunteers and 12,000 costumes. Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen and Briton Dame Judi Dench are confirmed to have roles in the production before the 207 competing teams take part in the Parade of Nations.
There will be 10,500 athletes from a record 207 teams competing in Rio, including the Refugee Olympic Team, while it will be the first time Kosovo and South Sudan have taken part in the Games.
The Refugee Olympic Team will compete under the Olympic flag and has 10 members – five from South Sudan, two from Syria, two from DR Congo and one from Ethiopia.
With 554 athletes, the United States has the largest Olympic team, but 100m runner Etimoni Timuani, who is the only athlete from the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu. The Rio Games will be the first to feature Olympians born since the year 2000 – and the youngest is 13-year-old Nepalese swimmer Gaurika Singh.
The build-up to Rio has been overshadowed by events in Russia, after the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report into state-sponsored doping in the country.
It seemed at one stage that no Russian athletes would be at the Games after Wada recommended a blanket ban.
But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said individual sporting federations must rule on whether Russians can compete.
Their decisions were then ratified by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) before a three-person IOC panel made the final decision.
On Thursday, the IOC cleared 271 Russian athletes from the country’s original entry list of 389, though its track and field athletes have been barred by the sport’s governing body.
Plenty.
Brazil is in a deep recession and political crisis, while protests marred the arrival of the Olympic torch in Rio on Wednesday.
A New Zealand jiu-jitsu athlete claims he was kidnapped in Rio, while Chinese state media criticised security after women fencers were robbed and shooting team members found “unauthorised payments” on their credit cards.
Brazil has drafted in 85,000 security personnel from 55 countries who will be stationed at the sport venues, Olympic Village, airports and main roads – almost twice as many as were at the 2012 London Olympics. There is also 200km of security fencing being used.
More than 500,000 tourists are expected to come to the Games and organisers say more than one million of the 7.5 million tickets remain unsold.
There have also been issues with the Olympic Village and the sailing venue.
Australia initially refused to move into the village, in the Barra da Tijuca neighbourhood, citing electrical problems, gas and water leaks among other issues in their building.
When they did eventually move in, the team were evacuated for a small fire and returned to their rooms to find essential equipment had been stolen.
At the sailing venue in Guanabara Bay, a taskforce removed 25.4 tonnes of floating rubbish during last year’s Olympic test event.
But Rio officials admit they have failed to keep up promises to clean the water and the Associated Press says swallowing just three teaspoons of water from the bay is likely to lead to illness.
This is not the first time a host city has been criticised for its preparations, but the IOC says Rio is now “ready to welcome the world”.
Brazil is at the centre of an outbreak of Zika virus, that is spread by mosquitoes and can lead to birth defects. It is so serious the World Health Organisation has recommended pregnant women avoid travelling to the Games – but mosquitoes are rare in August and in June it recommended the Games not be moved or cancelled. That advice has not stopped a number of the world’s top golfers and tennis players withdrawing, citing Zika fears.
Competitions will take place across 32 venues in Rio, with football matches also scheduled for the cities of Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Manaus, Salvador and Sao Paulo.
There are 306 events in 31 Olympic sports but none are bigger than the 100m sprint final and the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt.
The Jamaican is aiming for an unprecedented triple triple, as he tries to win the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay titles for the third time – and his battle with American sprinter Justin Gatlin is likely to be a highlight of the Games.
USA swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, will be looking to add to his 18 gold medals.
American tennis player Serena Williams could win her fifth Olympic medal, while Team USA’s star-studded basketball team will be aiming for their third consecutive gold.
Brazil’s Barcelona striker Neymar will once again carry the hopes of the home nation as they go for gold in the men’s football.
Among those who miss out are top tennis players Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka, NBA stars Stephen Curry and LeBron James and a number of golfers.
Rio marks the return of golf and rugby to the Olympics.
Golf is returning after a 112-year absence but without more than 20 of its top players.
The top four male golfers Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson have all withdrawn because of Zika fears.
In fact, only four of the top 10 will be in Rio – and McIlroy said he probably will not even watch television coverage of golf at the Games, preferring “track and field, swimming, diving, the stuff that matters”.
Rugby sevens will be making its debut at the Olympics, although rugby union featured regularly at the Games until 1924.
Great Britain’s athletes have been set a minimum target of winning 48 medals, which would make Rio their most successful overseas Olympics.
Sport statistics company Infostrada is forecasting Team GB will finish fourth in the Rio 2016 medal table with 51 – 18 gold, 16 silver and 17 bronze.
World champion Mo Farah will be attempting to defend his 5,000m and 10,000m titles.
Fellow defending Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill will be up against team-mate Katarina Johnson-Thompson in the women’s heptathlon.
Nicola Adams, who became the first British woman to win Olympic boxing gold in London, will be out to defend her title, while cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins could become Britain’s most decorated Olympian with gold in the men’s team pursuit.
Swimmer Adam Peaty, taekwondo’s Bianca Walkden, cyclist Laura Trott, sailor Giles Scott and shooter Amber Hill are among Britain’s gold medal prospects in Rio.
Rio is four hours behind the UK and most of the gold medal events will be late evening/early morning so be prepared to become a night owl or an early riser.
Britain’s first gold medal could go to Chris Froome or Lizzie Armitstead as they go in the men’s and women’s road race on Saturday and Sunday.
Swimming dominates the early part of the Games with the track and field events starting on Friday, 12 August.
The highlight of the action inside the Olympic Stadium is the men’s 100m final at 02:25 BST on Monday, 15 August, so set your alarm clocks.
Saturday, 13 August sees a potential London 2012 ‘Super Saturday’ repeat, with Ennis-Hill in the heptathlon, Farah in the 10,000m and Greg Rutherford in the long jump.
♦ Culled from the BBC
When a new elevated bike path in Rio collapsed in April, hit by a fluke wave, the deaths of two people weren’t just seen as a tragedy. The collapse became an irresistible metaphor for the state of Olympic readiness in Brazil.
As Rio prepares for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, which open Friday night, the bike path is not the only disaster to serve that purpose. There were also the body parts washing up on the shore where beach volleyball games will be played, the toxically polluted bay that will host swimming and sailing events, and the skydivers who fell to their deaths trying to recreate the Olympic rings.
The concerns about Rio de Janeiro’s readiness are understandable: Brazil has the unenviable task of hosting an Olympics at the intersection of more crises than many nations see in a decade. The good news is that the Games themselves probably won’t seem like a disaster. The bad news is that they could end up worsening Brazil’s already deep problems.
Rio is struggling even more than other host cities because its economic fortunes have changed dramatically since it won the right to host the games in 2009. Rio began planning the Olympics when Brazil was in the middle of an economic boom. But now it’s hosting them during what could be the worst recession the country has ever experienced.
Brazil spent the late 2000s on an economic hot streak. While Europe and the United States were mired in a recession and slow recovery, Brazil’s economy — by 2011, the world’s sixth largest — was expanding. The poverty rate dropped from 25 percent in 2003 to 9 percent in 2013. Incomes went up. Unemployment in its biggest cities fell from near 13 percent in the early 2000s to below 5 percent in 2014.
When the International Olympic Committee awarded the games to Rio, the choice was seen as a way to help the country continue growing and to give South America its first host city. If Brazil had continued to grow, that strategy might have worked out.
But beginning in 2011, Brazil’s growth started to slow. Prices for the country’s main exports, such as soy, oil, and sugar, fell; a massive scandal involving the state-run oil company engulfed the government and hurt consumer confidence. Wages fell. Unemployment began to rise. In the first quarter of 2016 alone, the country’s economy shrank nearly 6 percent. Inflation has soared, and Brazilians are finding it harder and harder to pay back the household debt they took on when economic times were good.
A struggling economy made it more difficult to complete the expensive infrastructure and logistical projects needed to host the Olympics. By 2014, the International Olympic Committee was suggesting that Rio was less prepared than any host in history.
Coordination between the city, state, and federal governments was difficult. Construction projects were running behind. The state of Rio had planned to spend $4 billion to clean up the polluted Guanabara Bay, where some events will be held; in the end, it spent just $170 million.
In June, the acting governor of Rio de Janeiro state declared a state of financial disaster in order to rearrange its budget and requested nearly $900 million in federal funding.
The economic calamity has also created many other problems. Police budgets in Rio state have fallen by one-third, and crime rose 15 percent in the first four months of 2016 when compared with 2015. Striking police officers held a sign at the international airport reading, “Welcome to Hell … Whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe.”
All of this — combined with the more typical construction delays that frequently plague Olympic hosts — would be enough to make the games a challenge. But the perception that they are doomed to fail has been worsened by political and public health crises in Brazil.
The economic crisis has been intertwined with a political crisis that brought down the Brazilian government. President Dilma Rousseff is facing an impeachment trial, officially on charges of manipulating figures to make the economy seem better than it was during the 2014 election but also because she’s extraordinarily unpopular. A verdict must be reached by the end of August or early September.
Her vice president, Michel Temer, is serving as president during the trial, but it’s so far unclear if Rousseff will actually be ousted. Meanwhile, about 60 percent of Brazilian members of Congress are also under investigation for corruption. The political instability makes it even more difficult for Brazil to address its plummeting economy.
The Zika virus has layered on yet another crisis. Brazil, and Rio de Janeiro in particular, has been hit harder than anywhere else in the world by the mosquito-borne illness, which can cause serious birth defects as well as more minor symptoms. As of July 29, Brazil has had more than 165,000 Zika cases this year, nearly one-quarter of which have been in the state of Rio.
The good news is that it’s winter in Brazil, mosquito season is ending, and the number of new cases is dropping fast. It’s unlikely that many athletes or visitors to Rio will be infected with Zika, as Vox’s Julia Belluz explained.
Neither the political crisis nor the Zika virus is likely to have a major day-to-day impact on the Olympics. But both have added to the general perception that things in Brazil are pretty bad — and it’s reasonable to wonder if a country dealing with the triple threat of a deep recession, political instability, and a widespread epidemic can really pull off hosting a major international event.
The good news for Rio is that nearly every recent Olympics has been preceded by hand-wringing about poor preparation and predictions of disaster.
Athens for the 2004 Olympics was so disorganized and behind schedule that officials took out an insurance policy to help mitigate the risk of having to cancel the event altogether. And the week before the Beijing Olympics opened in 2008, the city shut down factories and dramatically reduced traffic in a last-ditch attempt to improve air quality. In 2012, presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who served as the chief executive of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, made what was then considered a devastating gaffe when he implied London might not be ready in time.
And Rio, like the other cities, seems to be on a path to get many things done. The chronically overdue construction of a new subway line got to completion just in time — it opened Monday. The velodrome, the venue that took the longest to build, is finished. About 80 percent of tickets had been sold as of August 1 — meaning Rio is lagging behind the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, but on par with Athens in 2004 and Atlanta in 1996 — and the event is 95 percent of the way to its revenue target.
That doesn’t mean the city should be blindly optimistic. The pollution in Rio’s waterways is serious: The locations for the rowing and sailing races are ridden with viruses that could sicken athletes if they inadvertently end up swallowing water, according to an investigation from the Associated Press. Five times in the past 13 months, Copacabana Beach, where the marathon swimming and triathlon will take place, had so much rotavirus in the water that if it were located in California, it would have had to post water quality warnings.
Olympics officials are continuing to assert that the water will be fine. The other problems are less serious: The athletes’ village is reportedly in bad shape, but the Sochi Olympics started with journalists’ complaints that their hotel rooms had no wifi and sometimes no lightbulbs. These are of course annoyances for the people who endure them, but they’re not usually enough for the games themselves to be remembered as a disaster.
Even if the Olympics come off seamlessly — and at this point, Brazil could benefit from very low expectations — it won’t necessarily be a victory. Athens is a useful parallel here: After the chaotic preparations, the fact that the games were held at all might have seemed like a huge success. But the Athens Olympics piled on to Greece’s ballooning public debt, contributing to the country’s economic crisis a decade later.
For Brazil, the risk isn’t just that something will go badly, embarrassingly wrong in Rio. It’s that the country spent billions of dollars, amid a period of economic crisis, in exchange for an uncertain promise of publicity and a bigger role on the global stage.
The biggest beneficiaries of Olympic spending, as Alex Cuadros documented in the Atlantic, have been the elite who own land in the wealthy suburb of Barra de Tijuca. The athletes’ village will become a gated community, not subsidized housing. Brazil has hidden its favelas, famously crime-ridden poor neighborhoods, from international visitors flooding into town; it hasn’t been able to improve lives there in the way it hoped to when it won the Olympic bid.
While it’s far from certain that athletes will catch rotavirus from the polluted bay or Zika from mosquitoes, the deeper problems in Brazil aren’t going to be improved — and may well be worsened — by hosting the games.
The International Olympic Committee “brings its circus to town for 17 days and then, after the final fireworks end the most expensive party in the world, leaves, never to return,” soccer journalist Peter Berlin wrote for Politico Magazine. “The host must clear up the broken bottles.”
♦ Culled from VoxWorld
Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer called on his country to rally behind his government of “national salvation,” hours after the Senate voted to suspend and put on trial his leftist predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, for breaking budget laws.
Temer, a 75-year-old centrist now moving to steer Latin America’s biggest country toward more market-friendly policies, told Brazilians to have “confidence” they would overcome an ongoing crisis sparked by a deep economic recession, political volatility and a sprawling corruption scandal.
“It is urgent we calm the nation and unite Brazil,” he said, after a signing ceremony for his incoming cabinet. “Political parties, leaders, organizations and the Brazilian people will cooperate to pull the country from this grave crisis.”
Brazil’s crisis brought a dramatic end to the 13-year rule of the Workers Party, which rode a wave of populist sentiment that swept South America starting around 2000 and enabled a generation of leftist leaders to leverage a boom in the region’s commodity exports to pursue ambitious and transformative social policies.
But like other leftist leaders across the region, Rousseff discovered that the party, after four consecutive terms, overstayed its welcome, especially as commodities prices plummeted and her increasingly unpopular government failed to sustain economic growth.
In addition to the downturn, Rousseff, in office since 2011, was hobbled by the corruption scandal and a political opposition determined to oust her.
After Rousseff’s suspension, Temer charged his new ministers with enacting business-friendly policies while maintaining the still-popular social programs that were the hallmark of the Workers Party. In a sign of slimmer times, the cabinet has 23 ministers, a third fewer than Rousseff’s.
A constitutional scholar who spent decades in Brazil’s Congress, Temer faces the momentous challenge of hauling the world’s No. 9 economy out of its worst recession since the Great Depression and cutting bloated public spending.
He quickly named respected former central bank governor Henrique Meirelles as his finance minister, with a mandate to overhaul the costly pension system.
ROUSSEFF DEFIANT
The Senate deliberated for 20 hours before voting 55-22 early on Thursday to put Rousseff on trial over charges that she disguised the size of the budget deficit to make the economy look healthier in the runup to her 2014 re-election.
Rousseff, 68, was automatically suspended for the duration of the trial, which could be up to six months. Before departing the presidential palace in Brasilia, a defiant Rousseff vowed to fight the charges.
In her speech, she reiterated what she has maintained since impeachment proceedings were launched against her last December by the lower house of Congress. She denied any wrongdoing and called the impeachment “fraudulent” and “a coup.”
“I may have made mistakes but I did not commit any crime,” she said.
Rousseff’s mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who now faces corruption charges, stood behind her and looked on dejectedly. Even as outgoing ministers wept, Rousseff remained stolid.
“I never imagined that it would be necessary to fight once again against a coup in this country,” Rousseff said, in a reference to her youth fighting Brazil’s military dictatorship.
“This is a tragic hour for our country,” said Rousseff, an economist and former Marxist guerrilla, calling her suspension an effort by conservatives to roll back the social and economic gains made by Brazil’s working class.
The Workers Party rose from Brazil’s labor movement in the 1970s and helped topple generals who had held power for two decades ending in 1985.
In the heady days of Lula’s presidency, starting in 2003, it helped lift millions of people out of poverty before running into recession and scandal, with many of its leaders now tainted by corruption investigations and criminal convictions.
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