Wasted Daily News

RIO DE JANEIRO – You’ve got mail — and possibly an STD. The Brazilian Health Ministry has created a Web site to let people inform partners they’ve got a sexually transmitted disease via an e-mailed virtual postcard. The official in charge of the ministry’s STD and AIDs programs notes that many people have a hard time telling partners they’re infected. Read the rest of this entry →

Rio de Janeiro police arrested two fellow officers on Thursday accused of extorting money from two American tourists who happened to be San Francisco cops on vacation.

“One of the victims identified the officers and they are under administrative arrest for now,” a police spokeswoman in Rio said. The crime-ridden city is swarming with tourists during the Pan American Games, which end on Sunday.

The U.S. tourists were leaving a night club in Rio’s Copacabana beach neighbourhood before dawn on Wednesday, when two uniformed police officers approached them and searched them for drugs. At night, the neighbourhood is a red-light district with several brothels and strip joints. Read the rest of this entry →

After 3,272 miles of exhaustion, sunburn, delirium and piranhas, a 52-year-old Slovenian successfully completed a swim down the Amazon River Saturday that could set a world record for distance — something he’s already done three times before.

After nine weeks, Martin Strel arrived near the city of Belem, the capital of the jungle state of Para, ending a swim almost as long as the drive from Miami to Seattle. Strel averaged about 50 miles a day since beginning his odyssey at the source of the world’s second-longest river in Peru on Feb. 1.

By Thursday evening, he was struggling with dizziness, vertigo, high blood pressure, diarrhea, nausea and delirium, his Web site said. But despite having difficulty standing and being ordered by the doctor not to swim, Strel was obsessed with finishing the course and insisted on night swimming. Read the rest of this entry →

Rio de Janeiro hospitals have been sending obese people to share medical test equipment with horses at the local race track, drawing complaints from activists who say the practice is humiliating.

“When people weigh more than the standard equipment can support they have to be directed to the Jockey Club, which is the only place in Rio where they have the appropriate equipment,” a spokeswoman for the Rio state health secretariat said on Wednesday.

Patients needing stomach reduction surgery require a tomography, or multiple X-raying of body sections, which is normally carried out inside a chamber. Read the rest of this entry →