Protests against the Rio Olympics must be understood in the context of the growing global reaction to both the way these mega-events are organised and the entities promoting them.
Aedes aegypti: bringing you Zika, dengue and Chikungunya.
Ian Jacobs/Flickr
An architect rides through the streets of Rio amidst a cacophony of drills and jackhammers. He wonders: Is it worth it? What will the legacy of all this construction be?
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as PPK, became president arguably because his citizens are fed up with corruption. Scandal-plagued Brazil offers a template for how he could tackle it.
The countries who regularly top the medal table spend millions on training and developing athletes, money that poorer countries simply can’t afford to spend on their sporting stars.
A colorized 1937 photograph of a shantytown on the outskirts of Seattle.
photoretrofit/Reddit
Like Brazil’s favela dwellers, America’s working poor felt a sense of pride and community in their shantytowns – and desperately resisted the powerful interests that sought to demolish them.
An aerial view of the Christ the Redeemer statue and Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
Ricardo Moraes/Reuters
The strongest resistance to the United Nations resolution to promote LGBTI rights came from Muslim and African states. Many of these countries still criminalise same-sex relationships.
Changing a centuries-old format will take some big thinking.
vittoriocarvelli/DeviantArt
With the one-city format no longer viable, an Olympics expert proposes a radical new vision for the format of the Olympic Games. It actually makes a lot of sense.
It’s unclear what South Africa’s attitude will be to negotiating new deals with the UK and the EU. In the past seven years it has lost its appetite for trade deals, particularly with the developed world.
Bolivia midfielder Jhasmani Campos deflects a pass from Argentina forward Sergio Aguero.
Reuters
To celebrate 100 years of football’s oldest international competition, South American fans have flocked north, sticking two fingers up to Donald Trump.
Brazil’s economy was once considered ready to take flight. What happened?
Academics have sent an open letter to the World Health Organisation calling for the Olympics to be postponed or moved because of the Zika threat. They’re overreacting.