Photos: Rio opens Olympics with celebration and serious message
With fireworks forming the word "Rio" in the sky and supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmering to the tune of "The Girl from Ipanema," Rio de Janiero jubilantly welcomed the world Friday to the first Olympic Games in South America.
After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth opened the two-week games of the 31st Olympiad with a high-energy gala celebration of Brazil's can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting pot history.
The low-tech, cut-price opening ceremony, a moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political woes, featured performers as slaves, gravity-defying climbers hanging from buildings in Brazil's teeming megacities and -- of course -- dancers, all hips and wobble, grooving to thumping funk and sultry samba.
But Brazil also packaged its party with solemnity, lacing the fun and frivolous show with sobering messages about global warming and conservation. Images of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, swirling in the Earth's atmosphere were followed by projections of world cities and regions -- Amsterdam, Florida, Shanghai, Dubai -- being swamped by rising seas. The peace symbol, tweaked into the shape of a tree, was projected onto the floor of the Maracana Stadium that filed with thousands of athletes from the 207 teams.
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