Families can enjoy festivals, carnivals and classic cars

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.

Who’s ready for a carnival?

Checkout what's happening at this annual event that's fun for the whole family

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.

Events for weekend of September 8-10.

Events for weekend of September 1-4.

Festivities will run between 4-9 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, then from noon to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

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

WDIV takes viewers live, right in the middle of all the excitement at the annual “Hob Nobble Gobble presented by Ford” at Ford Field on Friday, November 18. It’s the first big party of the holiday season celebrating “America’s Thanksgiving Parade presented by Gardner White.”

The festival includes an expansive midway with entertainment for all ages.

It’s a long weekend of sunshine and celebration with the 4th of July just around the corner.

It’s a long weekend of sunshine and celebration with the 4th of July just around the corner.

More start of summer festivals plus throwback concerts that will take you back in time!

It’s summer festival season with many local communities hosting big celebrations.

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.

Frozen Elephant offers unique elephant ear toppings the whole family will enjoy.

A thrill ride has been dismantled and an investigation started after the machine appeared to tip and pitch with riders aboard at a popular festival in northern Michigan.

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.

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.

Want to experience a Caribbean Carnival right here in Michigan? Jason Carr and Kim Degiulio chatted with Sophia Chu, festival manager, and Ralph Taylor, costume designer with Mardi Gras Productions, about the first Caribbean Fest in Lathrup Village. On Friday, September 13th, the festival will hold a VIP reception from 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. at the Lathrup Village Community Center. For $10, you can experience Caribbean food, drinks and get up close and personal with the performers and costume designers. Filled with live music, food vendors, and performances, Carnival Fest has something for everyone to enjoy.