It’s a breezy opening day of the 2025 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo!

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.

When the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is open, there are as many people on the grounds as there are residents in the entire City of Pearland.

A fire in a factory that produces costumes for the carnival in Rio de Janeiro has left 10 people hospitalized, health authorities said.

The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo runs from March 4 through March 23, 2025, bringing weeks of rodeo action, live entertainment, and exciting new carnival foods.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, along with RCS (carnival), Allied Universal, Andy Frain Services, ASM Global and Aramark are hosting a job fair for seasonal positions during the 2025 rodeo. Part-time positions include concessions cashiers, bartenders, waitstaff, event staff, carnival ride and game attendants, and security.

Have you ever wondered why the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is such a big deal around here?

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.

Ever wonder what it takes to get the carnival up and running at Rodeo? We're getting a look at how thousands of stuffed animals and toy prizes are made.

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 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, along with RCS (carnival), Allied Universal, Andy Frain Services, ASM Global and Aramark are hosting a job fair for seasonal positions during the 2024 rodeo. Part-time positions include concessions cashiers, bartenders, waitstaff, event staff, carnival ride and game attendants, and security.

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.

Need a vacation to the Caribbean? Carnival Cruise Line is expanding, offering a 10-day Western Caribbean cruise out of Galveston starting in 2025.

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.

Dust your boots off, and head on down to Pasadena for fun events for all ages now through October 1st!

Here’s a First On 2 inside look at the Port of Galveston’s newest terminal and our Traffic Expert Anavid Reyes was the first reporter to get to walk through the 150,000 square-foot facility.

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.

Attention rodeo-goers, grab your little cowboys and cowgirls for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s second-ever Sensory-Friendly Carnival Experience.

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 Carnival Cruise Line passenger died after contracting Covid-19, the company confirmed Tuesday.

Carnival Vista said they have implemented a fleetwide mask policy following a “small number” of COVID-19 cases that were reported on board a cruise ship Wednesday.

Carnival Corp. is still losing billions while it waits for cruising to recover from the pandemic.

You’ve probably seen them, or perhaps visited one, a traveling carnival, which is usually set up in the parking lot of a mall.

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.

HOUSTON – Carnival has canceled all cruises from U.S. ports through April 30, 2021, the cruise line said. The cruise line said travelers should look for an email or check with their travel agent for more details. “As we confer with industry partners and regulators on the protocols and procedures that will guide our operations when we resume sailing, we will continue to make information available (here),” the post reads. “Thank you for your continued understanding and support.”Carnival has repeatedly pushed back sail dates locally and across the U.S. as the COVID-19 pandemic has continued. MORE ON CARNIVAL CRUISES AND THE PANDEMIC.

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.

GALVESTON – If you were looking to catch a Carnival cruise out of Galveston soon, you’ll have to wait. On Thursday, Carnival Cruise Line stated that some of its cruises from all U.S. homeports, except Miami and Port Canaveral, are canceled for November and December due to COVID-19 concerns. The cancellation applies to all cruises that were planned to sail out of the Port of Galveston. “Losing a cruise line is big for the Galveston industry,” Newman said. And while we are not making any presumptions, once cruising is allowed, we will center our initial start-up from the homeports of Miami and Port Canaveral,” said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line.

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.

HOUSTON – Unless the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. can be contained sooner, Americans won’t be cruising out of the country until after Halloween. Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Disney Cruise Lines are among dozens that have extended the cancelation of sailings from North America through October 31. A late 2019 Economic Impact study from CLIA revealed that cruise activity supports nearly half a million jobs in the US and generates about $53 billion annually in economic activity throughout the country. “Each day of the suspension of U.S. cruise operations results in a loss of up to $110 million in economic activity and 800 direct and indirect American jobs,” CLIA wrote on its website Wednesday. “The impact of the suspension is particularly profound in states that depend heavily on cruise tourism, including Florida, Texas, Alaska, Washington, New York and California.”

HOUSTON – Bookings for Carnival Cruise Line shot up 600 percent after announcing cruises would begin on August 1, according to Cruise Planners, a cruise booking company. A check of Carnival’s website shows a Western Caribbean cruise aboard the Carnival Dream is scheduled to set sail from Galveston as soon as August 8, with several subsequent cruises to depart through the month and into next year. However, plans are just plans, as Carnival noted on social media, saying in part:Update on important information regarding our service pause extension. Posted by Carnival Cruise Line on Monday, May 4, 2020“Any resumption of cruise operations – whenever that may be – is fully dependent on our continued efforts in cooperation with federal, state, local and international government officials,” a news release said. “In our continued support of public health efforts, any return to service will also include whatever enhanced operational protocols and social gathering guidelines that are in place at the time of the resumption of cruise operations.

GALVESTON – One local couple booked what they hope would be a fun cruise. However, they did not expect an adventure to get answers from the Carnival cruise line. On March 30, the couple learned that Carnival was canceling the trip on Facebook than they received an email. To try to get more information on their refunds, they turned to Facebook and were shocked at what they read. "Carnival was responding, telling some people it could be 3-6 months, telling others well it could be 6-9 months," Debbie said.

The Strandcam in Galveston caught a lit-up Carnival cruise ship with the words “We will be back” on Friday night. Carnival is among one of many cruise lines to suspend outbound cruises for 30 days earlier this month. Princess Cruises announced a 60-day suspension in global operations from March 12 to May 10. The Strandcam is located in the Strand National Historic Landmark District which in the late 1800s and early 1900s, “was the heart of Galveston,” Galveston.com says. More coronavirus coverageTIPS: The tired parents’ guide to getting kids through this extended spring breakCOURSES: Scholastic is offering free online courses so your kids can keep learning while schools are closedPERSONAL STORY: ‘I had COVID-19 and here’s my story.’ Woman shares details of coronavirus experienceGIVE BACK: How to help Houstonians in need during the coronavirus outbreakHIRING: See which Houston-area grocery stores are hiring temporary workers in high-demandSOCIAL DISTANCING: 25 ideas to keep social distancing from dooming your weekendsQUESTIONS ANSWERED: Here are answers to 48 of your most pressing coronavirus questions

So, you’re taking the kids to the carnival at the Houston Rodeo?

Two Carnival cruise ships collided in Cozumel, MexicoPublished: December 20, 2019, 1:43 pmThe Carnival Glory and Carnival Legend collided Friday morning while at port in Cozumel, Mexico, leaving one passenger injured.