A pilot waves a Brazilian national flag during the arrival of the Olympic flame in Brasilia, Brazil, … Brazil on Tuesday started the 95-day Olympic torch relay which will end at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in August for the 2016 Olympic Games opening ceremony.
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But the scene is a far cry from the past few years she has spent as a refugee, pushed from her home by the bloody Syrian civil war.
A student in secondary school in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, Hanan jogged with the flame along a packed street in the Brazilian capital as a crowd cheered and swayed to music. However, a two-thirds majority is needed to remove her completely from office, making the final outcome harder to predict. Rousseff, a one-time Marxist guerrilla who was tortured by the military dictatorship in the 1970s, has all but lost the ability to govern in recent months.
“The most important thing in sport is to have fun and make friends”, said Hanan before taking up the flame. We know there is political instability.
The relay across Brazil will involve 12,000 torchbearers.
After a six-day trek across Greece, the flame that was lit last Thursday by the sun’s rays at the birthplace of the Games in Ancient Olympia was presented to the Brazilian organisers. She is helping her family of 11 settle into the country, which her father credited with allowing him to “turn back into a human being”.
In a brief speech at the torch lighting ceremony, Rousseff said the torch relay would put Brazil’s beauty on display, but she also laced her comments with guarded references to her fight for political survival.
“I’m going to visit other refugees and send the message to be strong and don’t be afraid”, she said.
“What Brazil most needs now is unity, the very symbol of the Olympics”, he said before his turn in the relay. It will be the first time the Olympic Games have been held in South America. The team´s composition will be announced in early June.
BRASILIA, May 4, 2016 (Xinhua) – A firefighter carries the lamp of the Olympic flame to the Mane Garrincha National Stadium in Brasilia May 3, 2016. While the team has yet to be announced, it is expected to be made up of five to 10 athletes from who have been displaced from their homelands.
The commission’s newly-appointed president, Atila Nunes, echoed Paes’ sentiments, saying the global scrutiny of the Olympic projects helped guarantee they are free from corruption.
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The ongoing conflict in Syria is the main driver of the current global refugee crisis.
