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Tear gas once again filled the air outside a gleaming stadium in Brazil as the police in the northeastern city of Fortaleza blocked an estimated 35,000 protesters from approaching the venue where the national team, known as the Seleção, met Mexico on Wednesday afternoon in a tune-up for next year's World Cup.
Before the day was over, though, the protesters had the last laugh, as placards echoing their demands were waved by fans inside the grounds, several leading players voiced their support for the protests and the authorities in some parts of Brazil started to back away from the planned increases in bus fares that were the initial catalyst for the demonstrations.
Vide o broadcast by TV Globo before Wednesday's match in Fortaleza offered aerial views of the vast crowd filling a road near the Castelão stadium. Images posted online showed a festive atmosphere among the protesters before the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd along Avenida Alberto Craveiro.
Brief video clips posted on YouTube by observers in the crowd showed the protesters singing the national anthem and waving placards demanding that the government spend money on education and health care as freely as it has on stadiums.< /p>
An ESPN reporter, Lucas Borges, captured ground-level video of police officers retreating as protesters knocked over some metal barricades blocking the road, and of the pitched battle that followed as volleys of tear gas shells were fired at the demonstrators. A Terra TV report from the scene showed tear gas being fired as protesters chanted, “No violence!â€
Video taken by a participant in the rally showed protesters suffering the effects of the gas.
Bloggers also shared images on social networks of others in the crowd who were injured by rubber bullets.
Inside the stadium, before kick-off, supporters of the national team who sympathized with the demands of the protesters were careful to make it clear that they did not hold the players responsible for the government's lack of investment in less glamorous projects.
As Kety Shapazian, a reporter and copy editor at Diário do Comércio in São Paulo, noted on Twitter, news agencies captured dozens of images from inside the stadium showing supporters of the national team waving signs in favor of the protesters' demands.
At a news conference before the match, ESPN Brazil reported, two players, David Luiz and Hulk, and the national team's coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, indicated that they were on the side of the protesters. Three other star players, Neymar, Dani Alves and Marcelo, used their Instagram accounts to post messages of sympathy for the demands of those in the streets.
The Fortaleza news site O Povo reported that the demonstration outside the stadium on Wednesday was organized on Facebook by a group protesting Brazil's spending on stadiums for the World Cup as a “bread and circus†distraction from pressing social problems. Those protesters, and the fans who brought placards into the stadium calling for a more fair distribution of the country's wealth, were unlikely to be mollified by an account of just what Brazilian taxpayers had gotten for the millions of dollars spent to renovate the Castelão stadium. According to world soccer's governing body, FIFA, the improvements included luxuries like “an underground car park with 1,900 spaces, executive boxes, a V.I.P. area, media center, mixed zone and fully refurbishe d dressing rooms.â€
As The Times's Simon Romero reports, demonstrators also blocked traffic in São Paulo, the nation's largest city, where there was some violence and looting during a massive and mainly peaceful protest Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, as news accounts of the protests began to focus on looters who had taken advantage of the police preoccupation with crowd control and on the minority of violent protesters, supporters of the demonstrations pointed to a YouTube video explainin g their reasons for taking to the streets, and shared remarkable images of thousands of peaceful and orderly demonstrators who had packed the streets of São Paulo the night before.
As my colleague Simon Romero reports, Brazil is braced for another round of protests on Thursday, with demonstrations planned for dozens of cities, even after the authorities retreated from plans to raise bus fares across the country in the face of massive street protests.
The size and intensity of the demonstrations has created an instant demand in the global media for English-speaking academics and journalists who can explain the root causes of the protests to the rest of the world. Less often heard are the voices of the protesters themselves, and Brazilians who sympathize with their demands.
That makes the work of two contributors to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo's blog “From Brazil,†particularly valuable. Reporting from the streets of São Paulo this week, the filmmaker Otavio Cury and Dom Phillips, a British journalist based in Brazil, have produced two video reports, with English subtitles, in which Brazilians explain in clear terms the frustration and anger behind the movement.
In one video recorded on Monday night, a 46-year-old maid named Maria Lucia who was trying to make her way home through that night's demonstration in São Paulo stopped to explain why she supported the protests. The second video report amplifies the voices of eight protesters who marched that night in a crowd estimated at more than 65,000.
Mr. Cury offered one more, wordless, glimpse of the energy on São Paulo's streets in a brief video clip of a protest marching band recorded during a demonstration Tuesday night.
Heavy rains have contributed to flooding in parts of the Canadian province of Alberta, where officials said Friday that about 75,000 people have been displaced from their homes. Swollen waterways burst banks, streets were flooded and in at least once instance the wreckage of a house was swept away by raging waters in the Bragg Creek area.
Heavy rain fell in the past 48 hours, in some places as much as normally falls in six months in the affected area in southern Alberta. In Calgary, the Bow River was described by the mayor, Nah eed Nenshi, as looking “like an ocean,†while the Elbow River is spilling over the top of a dam near the city.
There were power outages, road closings and mandatory evacuations, and officials said they have not even started to assess the extent of the damage to property owners.
A reporter on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said CBC staff members have been ordered to evacuate their Calgary studios.
About 75,000 residents in Calgary have been evacuated or displaced, some staying with family, friends or strangers rather than emergency shelters.
Dong Kim, a resident of Calgary, recorded footage from the banks near the Louise Bridge on Friday.
Another resident, Andrew Morrison, recorded the fast-moving waters in the southwest of Bragg Creek in Alberta and in the streets of Bragg Creek itself.
CTV News footage showed resident ial areas and waterways swamped with water.
The Canadian government said that the military was being sent in to help as a state of emergency was declared for southern Alberta; 1,200 troops were being used as entire communities were submerged.
Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.
Lat Updated, Saturday, 8:53 a.m. One day after peaceful protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities descended into chaotic street battles between protesters and the police, and tensions boiled over between factions within the demonstrations as well, a congressman who once helped Brazil win a World Cup railed against the cost of staging next year's tournament.
Speaking in a video posted on YouTube (not yet subtitled in English), the former soccer star Romário threw his support behind the demonstrations and criticized what he called waste and mismanagement on an epic scale in the preparations for the 2014 World Cup.
Romário, a Socialist Party member who represents Rio de Janeiro in the federal congress, said that the more than $3 billion spent so far on building and renovating stadiums for the tournament could have paid instead for 8,000 new sch ools, 39,000 school buses and 28,000 sports facilities for the public. “The money spent in Mané Garrincha Stadium†in the capital, BrasÃlia, he added, “could have been used to build 150,000 homes for people of low income, medium income or no income.â€
Romário, the hero of Brazil's 1994 triumph, also criticized the role played by soccer's world governing body, FIFA, which he called “a state inside of the state.†He said that after the Confederations Cup, a test run for next year's tournament that is now under way, “some things that didn't work will need to be redone, and some new things for the World Cup will need to be done. And who determines what needs to be done? The true president of Brazil today, named FIFA.â€
Later in the video statement, he added: “Our country's current president, named FIFA, will arrive, will collect a profit of four billion reais,†or nearly $2 billion. Normally, a profit like that woul d cost a business about $500 million, Romário said, but FIFA “won't pay it. That is: it will come, it will mount its circus, won't spend anything and will take everything.â€
Romário, who grew up in poverty in one of Rio's favelas, or slums, is not known for understatement. In 1995, after he scored three times in a triumphant return to his home city, he told reporters as he walked off the pitch: “There are many kings in the world, but only one God. I am Romário. I am God.â€
His latest comments, however, seemed to channel widespread anger at lavish spending on the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio at a time when money for public services is in short supply. At least three other former stars of the national team have spoken in favor of the protests this week.
Just one day earlier, another legend of the Brazilian game, Pelé, was forced to retreat from comments in which he had called on his compatriots to focus on supporting the national team in the Confederations Cup and “forget all of this mayhem that's happening in Brazil, all of these protests.â€
After video of those remarks spread online this week, Pelé posted a message on Twitter, enraging protesters, expressing his support for the protest movement.
As The Financial Times reported, another legendary goal scorer, Ronaldo, added his voice to the chorus this week, writing on Twitter, “I feel pride when I see peaceful and democratic protests throughout the country.â€
Earlier in the week, Ronaldo, too, was lambasted by protesters after old video of him defending the spending on stadiums and saying, “You can't hold the World Cup with hospitals,†resurfaced online.
On Twitter, Ronaldo said that he had made those comments two years ago, before Brazil's economy slowed, and complained that the video posted online had been edited so that his comments were presented out of context. He added, “I'm not responsible for the spending of public money, and I reject corruption.â€
One of Ronaldo's teammates on the Brazilian squad that won the 2002 World Cup, Rivaldo, a lso posted comments on Twitter this week calling the protests justified. “It's shameful to spend so much money for this World Cup and leave the hospitals and schools in such a precarious state,†Rivaldo wrote. “At this moment we aren't in shape to host the World Cup, we don't need it, we need education and health.â€
The retired star concluded by explaining that he was still pained by the memory of how his own father had died after failing to receive medical attention in a public hospital in Recife after a car accident.
As my colleagues Simon Romero and William Neuman report, at rallies in scores of Brazilian cities on Thursday, more than a million protesters “vented their frustrations peacefully - even joyfully at times, singing and celebrating what they call a mass awakening across the country,†but “a violent subset has stormed public buildings and set fires, smashing storefronts, bus shelters, traffic lights and some A.T.M.'s.â€
Video of singing, chanting crowds appeared online later, including one clip of a festive atmosphere in Feira de Santana, a city in the northeastern state of Bahia.
There were similar scenes early Thursday evening in Rio, where hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets.
Later, however, the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in Rio and other cities, including Porto Alegre in the south.
A video report on the protests and clashes in Rio, recorded by Otavio Cury and Dom Phillips for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo's blog “From Brazil,†gave a particularly vivid sense of how the mood changed there late Thursday.
Video taken at a pro test in São Paulo on Thursday night by Vincent Bevins, who edits the “From Brazil†blog, captured a less graphic but still unsettling scene of conflict. The brief clip shows part of the crowd chanting against the participation of socialists wearing red shirts, apparently in the mistaken belief that they were members of Brazil's governing Workers Party. The men being subjected to verbal abuse from someone wearing a Guy Fawkes mask in the video were, according to Mr. Bevins, in fact members of a group that “organizes invasions of disused buildings downtown and was active in the much smaller protests last week which were attacked by police.â€
The sky was a clear blue above the Dayton International Airport in Ohio on Saturday, and Jane Wicker, a veteran aerial daredevil, or wing walker, was where she loved to be: hanging from the wing of a vintage biplane performing stunts at an annual air show.
Suddenly, Ms. Wicker's plane jerked earthward and hit the ground in a fiery ball. Ms. Wicker and her pilot, Charlie Schwenker, were killed.
No one else was hurt or killed in the crash, which occurred at the Vectren Dayton Airshow at about 1 p.m., a statement on the show's Web site said. No cause was given, but the statement said the Federal Aviation Authori ty was on the scene investigating.
Both Ms. Wicker and Mr. Schwenker began performing aerial acrobatics over two decades ago. Ms. Wicker began her career as a wing walker in 1990 after answering a classified advertisement placed in The Washington Post by the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., according to a biography on her Web site.
During her typical act, Ms. Wicker would leave the cockpit in mid-flight and walk along the wings, hanging on without the aid of a safety strap or tether as the plane dove and rolled.
“I'v e always been the kind of person that gets bored easy,†Ms. Wicker said in an interview with a local television station on Friday. “I'm never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything's going to be just fine.â€
In video taken during the performance on Saturday, Ms. Wicker is shown hanging upside down from the plane's lower wing and then moving into a seated position as the plane rolls over. In an instant, though, the plane appears to turn sharply downward before hitting a grassy field as bystanders scream.
A statement on Ms. Wicker's page on Facebook said she and Mr. Schwenker had been “tragically killed,†but provided few other details.
“We ask for your prayers for the families and privacy of all involved and allow them time to grieve and work through these events,†the statement said.
Follow Michael Schwirtz on Twitter @mschwirtz.
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It seemed like a spectacular flip-flop: Microsoft on Wednesday reversed a couple of controversial policies about how its new Xbox One game console will operate, both of which would probably have slammed the brakes on the used games business.
Gamers shrieked with the fury of a thousand dying aliens out of “Halo†over the Microsoft policies. Players love being able to finish a game, trade it in for credit at a GameStop or another retail store and buy another one to keep feeding their game habits. Game publishers, on the other hand, get hives over used games because they haven't been able to make any money from the resale of secondhand titles.
Microsoft's reversal on Wednesday may quiet some of the criticism it has received in recent weeks. It will no longer require that the Xbox One be plugged into an Internet connection, which, among other things,would have pr evented players from making copies of games and giving or selling game discs to others.
Microsoft previously said that it would allow games publishers to opt out of allowing the resale of Xbox One games and to let them charge fees associated with that process. Now it says it won't impose any restrictions on the resale of games.
The company's reversal has only postponed changes that will most likely result in used games fading away, though.
That's because it's a question of when, not if, the physical discs on which most console games are now delivered go away. Mobile and PC games have already ushered in the era of downloadable games. People who buy games online can't typically resell them because of the licensing restrictions that apply to digital media, just as they can't resell movies they buy on iTunes.
In an important and overlooked development, Microsoft recently showed just how seriously it inten ded to nudge its customers toward the digital downloading of games. The company said digital versions of Xbox One games would be available on the same day that disc-based versions of those same games went on sale.
“I think this discussion about the used games business two or three years from now will be largely irrelevant,†said Evan Wilson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities who follows the games business.
In the meantime, Microsoft's change bought some breathing room for GameStop, one of the few mass retailers dedicated to selling games and a company that is seeking to adapt to the digital future through various initiatives. In its most recent quarter, 30.7 percent of its sales and nearly half of its gross profits came from used game products.
On Thursday, the day after Microsoft announced its reversal, GameStop's shares rose 6.25 percent to $40.94.
7:56 p.m. | Updated
A working group assigned by the Federal Aviation Administration to research the use of electronics on airplanes is expected to recommend relaxing the ban on portable devices during takeoff and landing.
But the group has postponed its final report until September, two months after its original deadline.
The group is expected to endorse permitting a wider use of devices during takeoff and landing, including tablets and smartphones used only for data, said a member of the panel, who declined to be named because members are not permitted to speak publicly about internal discussions. Talking on cellphones will still be prohibited during all phases of flight, the person said. These recommendations are outlined in a draft document that the panel member has seen.
News of the draft document was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.The panel hopes to allow “gate-to-gate†use of electronics, the person said, meaning devices could be left on in a limited “airplane mode†from the moment the gate door closes on the tarmac until the plane arrives at the gate of its destination.
But panelists are still concerned about the use of electronics during landing, the person said, so the recommendation could change.
The advisory group was supposed to deliver its findings by July 31, but it asked the F.A.A. for an extension until September, which the agency granted.
“The F.A.A. recognizes consumers are intensely interested in the use of personal electronics aboard aircraft. That is why we tasked a government-industry group to examine the safety issues and the feasibility of changing the current restrictions,†a statement from the F.A.A. said. “We will wait for the group to finish its work.â€
Over the last two years the F.A.A. has come under increased pressure to relax the rules for devices on airplanes. Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has threatened to introduce legislation to overturn the rules if the F.A.A. does not act.
“It's good to see the F.A.A. may be on the verge of acknowledging what the traveling public has suspected for years - that current rules are arbitrary and lack real justification,†Senator McCaskill said on Friday.
In December, the Federal Communications Commission urged the F.A.A. to relax the rules for devices on airplanes during takeoff and landing, noting that the use of electronics can “empower people to stay informed and connected with friends and family.â€
Not everyone supports lifting the ban. Some s ay there are good reasons to prohibit the use of electronics on planes beyond the question of whether they produce electrical interference.
“The broader picture here is that all carry-on items are to be stowed completely for considerations of physical safety: reduced likelihood of loose objects in the cabin,†David Carson, a former co-chairman of a group commissioned by the F.A.A. in 2006 to explore the dangers of devices on planes, said in an e-mail. “There is also the factor of reducing distractions so passengers are more likely to pay attention to flight attendant announcements.â€
The F.A.A. created the working group last year. The group, which first met in January, comprises people from various groups related to the industry, like Amazon.com, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Association of Flight Attendants, the F.C.C. and aircraft makers.
Under the current F.A.A. guidelines, travelers are told to turn off their tablets and e-readers for takeoff and landing. The rules date to 2006, before tablets and smartphones were commonplace. Under those standards, the F.A.A. permits passengers to use electric razors and audio recorders during all phases of flight.
Airline stewards have also been asking for a change in the rules. In an interview last year, Stacy K. Martin, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents more than 10,000 flight attendants, said the current rules were too stringent and flight attendants did not want to police passengers. “We're not going to be able to get anything done if we have to ask people if they're wearing sunglasses or computer glasses and if their watch is a computer,†he said, a reference to wearable computers that passengers may soon be wearing on flights.
Last year, the F.A.A. began approving the use of iPads in the cockpit for pilots in place of paper navigation charts and manuals.
A study recently released by the Airline Passenger Ex perience Association and the Consumer Electronics Association found that as many as 30 percent of passengers said they had accidentally left a device on during takeoff or landing. In 2010, 712 million passengers flew within the United States, which means roughly 214 million people accidentally left a device on at least once during takeoff and landing.
A yearly report compiled by NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System has not found any evidence that consumer electronics interfere with a plane's avionics.
Some of the best trash-talking in tech may be over. The Oracle Corporation and Salesforce.com, two of the more contentious competitors in software, are about to announce a close alliance involving software delivered via cloud computing.
“Larry and I both agree we need to unite our clouds,†said Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “Oracle is a very important part of our strategy.â€
Next week, according to people familiar with the agreement who were not authorized to speak on the record, Oracle and Salesforce will announce that their products will be able to easily share data.
That way, customers can use things like customer contact and product details that they have on Salesforce with Oracle's applications, which include similar sales and people-management software. The data sharing could make both products more attractive to buyers, because it will increase what companies can do with the software.
It is surprising, g iven the sometimes warring personalities who run both companies. In October 2011, Oracle all but kicked Mr. Benioff out of a conference that Mr. Benioff had paid $1 million to speak to, after Mr. Benioff criticized the onstage performance of Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive. Such payments to appear onstage at another company's corporate event are common, but getting kicked off is not.
“Larry was not prepared,†Mr. Benioff said at the time. “You don't have somebody over to your house to tell better jokes than you.â€
Since the break between the two, Mr. Benioff said, “I've met with Larry a number of times, and I've never been more excited about our relationship with Oracle - he's doing a great job.â€
Mr. Benioff is a former Oracle executive, and Mr. Ellison is an early investor in Salesforce. Salesforce applications rely on Oracle's database.
More importantly, in the last two years software delivered over the cloud has become a common part of business, forcing many companies to change. I.B.M., for example, recently said it would pay $2 billion to beef up its cloud offering, and has reorganized its applications to better address the managers of smaller corporate departments.
Salesforce, which once operated as something of an upstart, is feeling the increased competition, and has broadened from sales software to online marketing and advertising products.
“There's a definite change of tone around here,†said a Salesforce executive, “It's shocking; we're growing up.â€
For its part, Oracle is battling an image not of growing up, but of growing old. On Thursday the company announced lower than expected earnings, which it ascribed to a tough econ omy overseas. Cloud-based software grew well, but remains a small part of its overall revenue. The company also said it would raise its dividend and announced a big stock buyback, behaviors usually undertaken by tech companies when they begin to grow more slowly. Oracle officials declined to comment on the record about the Salesforce deal.
Oracle has been among the most solitary of tech companies, relentlessly acquiring others, trash-talking with the best of them, and scrapping in multiple high-profile court battles. In a call with analysts after Thursday's earnings announcement, Mr. Ellison belittled both SAP, a longtime competitor, and Workday, a cloud company.
Like I.B.M., Oracle appears to be going after a much bigger market of smaller-sized deals by lining up with Salesforce and others. Like many companies, it has often struck alliances while competing, but rarely with such public vigor.
On Monday, Mark Hurd, Oracle's co-president, will make a joint an nouncement with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, and Satya Nadella, the head of Microsoft's server and tools business, which also includes its substantial cloud computing business. That announcement is expected to include making Oracle's products more broadly available in Microsoft's cloud, but will probably not involve Oracle's latest database.
Earlier this month, Oracle announced a partnership with Dell intended to give it access to more small and medium-size businesses. Mr. Hurd appeared in a video at a Dell event to announce that deal.
The sky was a clear blue above the Dayton International Airport in Ohio on Saturday, and Jane Wicker, a veteran aerial daredevil, or wing walker, was where she loved to be: hanging from the wing of a vintage biplane performing stunts at an annual air show.
Suddenly, Ms. Wicker’s plane jerked earthward and hit the ground in a fiery ball. Ms. Wicker and her pilot, Charlie Schwenker, were killed.
No one else was hurt or killed in the crash, which occurred at the Vectren Dayton Airshow at about 1 p.m., a statement on the show’s Web site said. No cause was given, but the statement said the Federal Aviation Authority was on the scene investigaing.
Both Ms. Wicker and Mr. Schwenker began performing aerial acrobatics over two decades ago. Ms. Wicker began her career as a wing walker in 1990 after answering a classified advertisement placed in The Washington Post by the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., according to a biography on her Web site.
During her typical act, Ms. Wicker would leave the cockpit in mid-flight and walk along the wings, hanging on without the aid of a safety strap or tether as the plane dove and rolled.
“I’ve always been the kind of person that gets bored easy,! †Ms. Wicker said in an interview with a local television station on Friday. “I’m never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything’s going to be just fine.â€
In video taken during the performance on Saturday, Ms. Wicker is shown hanging upside down from the plane’s lower wing and then moving into a seated position as the plane rolls over. In an instant, though, the plane appears to turn sharply downward before hitting a grassy field as bystanders scream.
A statement on Ms. Wicker’s page on Facebook said she and Mr. Schwenker had been “tragically killed,†but provided few other details.
“We ask for your prayers for the families and privacy of all involved and allow them time to grieve and work through these events,†te statement said.
Follow Michael Schwirtz on Twitter @mschwirtz.