A familiar Lynchburg landmark is getting a fresh look. Construction is already underway at City Stadium, where city officials and project partners are rolling out a $5.25 million plan to upgrade fan spaces and bring new family-friendly attractions to the historic ballpark.

This week, communities across the country and around the world are marking important cultural and religious events.

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.

The 2025 Toyota Sienna and 2025 Kia Carnival Hybrid are not just the only two traditional hybrid minivans; they are two of the best minivan choices out there.

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.

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.

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.

One of the valley’s longest-running events comes to a close Saturday.

The Galax Volunteer Fire Department is excited to bring back the Fireman’s Carnival. The carnival opened on Wednesday and will run until July 2.

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.

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 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. A subdued Carnival season begins Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, after the coronavirus pandemic put an end to the crowd-heavy balls and street parades that draw thousands of people to the city every year. The Mardi Gras season always starts on Jan. 6 and ends on Fat Tuesday, which this year falls on Feb. 16. The season is usually marked by extravagant balls and parades where costumed riders throw trinkets to the mobs of people packed along the parade routes. 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.

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.

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.

The Carnival Dream departed Galveston, Texas, Thursday on a four-day cruise when a guest went overboard. GALVESTON, Texas - The Coast Guard is searching for a 26-year-old man who was reported overboard from a Carnival cruise ship Thursday evening. The Carnival Dream departed Galveston, Texas, Thursday on a four-day cruise when the guest went overboard, Carnival said in a statement to CNN. A 22-year-old man with autism was on a cruise to Mexico with a nonprofit organization that works with disabled adults when he climbed over a deck rail and went missing, according to the cruise line. Days earlier, a 26-year-old man went overboard from a ship 35 miles south of the Florida Keys, sparking search and rescue efforts.