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Tree-mendous lights! Rio inaugurates 80-metre floating Christmas tree along Botafogo Beach

Tree-mendous lights! Rio inaugurates 80-metre floating Christmas tree along Botafogo Beach

"Rio de Janeiro kicked off the holiday season with an 80-metre floating Christmas tree off Botafogo Beach, dazzling crowds along the shoreline. Footage captured on Sunday shows a spectacle celebrating the inauguration, with thousands of people lining the streets to watch the fireworks display. Once switched on, the structure cycles through a spectrum of colours, creating a vivid backdrop framed by Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain. "Seeing the tree and fireworks already brings that warm feeling in your heart, knowing that Christmas is just around the corner, and feeling that Christmas spirit amidst the happiness Christmas brings us," a visitor said. "It becomes one more tourist attraction that draws a lot of attention, and I believe now, toward the end of the year, this tree will attract even more tourists," added a second. The tree, roughly the height of a 30-storey building, features 2.3 million LED lights, 1,300 strobe lights and 10,000 streamers. Placed about 100 metres offshore, it can be visible from more than 700 metres along the beach. It sits on a reinforced barge designed to withstand coastal winds and weighs as much as around 1,800 cars. Organisers expect up to 650,000 visitors this season. City authorities deployed several measures, including underground walkways, the closure of Avenida das Nacoes Unidas, 105 surveillance cameras, and hundreds of sanitation workers along the streets. On weekends, visitors can enjoy free mini‑shows, live music, and a choreographed Water Ballet across the bay, running every 30 minutes. A festive food village also opened on Sunday, operating from afternoon to midnight."

‘Ungrateful’ mum-of-3 blasted after moaning about family members she ‘despises’ at Christmas

‘Ungrateful’ mum-of-3 blasted after moaning about family members she ‘despises’ at Christmas

A MUM-of-three has sparked a festive firestorm online after admitting there’s one thing she “really, really despises” about Christmas and it’s left people calling her “ungrateful.” Holly Hickford posted a video confessing that, every year, the run-up to Christmas sends her stress levels sky-high… but not for the reason most people expect. The frazzled mum...

No soap, no tents, no food: Rohingya families fight for survival as aid plummets

No soap, no tents, no food: Rohingya families fight for survival as aid plummets

In Bangladesh, over a million people in the world’s largest refugee camp depend on aid – and cuts mean new arrivals are not even given shelter The light of a single lightbulb powered by a backup generator lasts just long enough for Noor and Sowkat to see the faces of their newborn babies for the first time. The two children were born on the same night on a crumbling foam mattress, its corners ripped to shreds by the thousands of women who have gone into labour here in Camp 22’s makeshift delivery room. The newborns have just become the youngest residents of the world’s largest refugee camp, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which is struggling to operate in the face of a 63% deficit in humanitarian aid funding. Continue reading...