Extraterrestrial toucan birds, neon green spacemen waving Brazilian flags and legions of scantily clad women and men dancing a furious samba opened the final round of Rio de Janeiro's extravagant Carnival parades Monday night.

The annual spectacle pits the city's 12 best samba schools against one another in ornate parades that include over 2,500 participants each and cost more than $3 million to produce. The efforts are judged in 10 categories, with a winner announced later in the week, laying claim to nothing more than a year's worth of bragging rights.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on Friday said his government has Brazil's support for a meeting of the South American Unasur group to discuss instability in his country.

Denouncing the protests that have swept Venezuela since February 4, leaving at least 17 dead, Jaua said Brazil had reacted positively to his call for a Unasur meeting.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff welcomed on Monday a German government proposal to create a European communications network to rival that of the U.S. National Security Agency.

Speaking in Brussels, Rousseff said she shared concerns expressed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently called for the establishment of a European communications network to rival the U.S.'s NSA.

Brazilian campaigners Thursday handed in a one million names-strong petition asking asylum for U.S. intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In a comic take on efforts to give the former National Security Agency employee a refuge, a man clad in a giant papier mache head bearing Snowden's likeness tried to grasp a giant passport held by another campaigner purporting to be Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

Faced with searing heat, no air conditioning and a ban on wearing shorts to work, a male civil servant in Rio swapped his trousers for his wife's skirt.

Andre Amaral Silva, 41, decided to take sartorial action as the thermometer Tuesday hit 40.8 (105.4 Fahrenheit) and picked out a long black skirt from his wife's wardrobe.

At least nine firefighters and rescue workers were killed in Buenos Aires Wednesday when the wall of a warehouse engulfed by flames collapsed on top of them, officials said.

Authorities said the dead included six members from a federal police firefighting unit, a volunteer firefighter and two members of Argentina's civil guard.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday announced a minor cabinet reshuffle effective Monday, with two of those leaving expected to run for governor in next October's polls.

Chief of Staff Gleisi Hoffmann will be replaced by Aloizio Mercadante, a leading figure of the ruling leftist Workers Party (PT) and currently education minister, Rousseff's office said in a statement.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Thursday secured a White House explanation of new U.S. spying policies, after his nation reacted with outrage to revelations by fugitive leaker Edward Snowden.

Figueiredo was briefed on reforms of National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping programs proposed by President Barack Obama, by the president's national security adviser Susan Rice.

Cuban President Raul Castro Tuesday railed against U.S. spying as he opened a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders, a group set up by Venezuela's late anti-Western leader Hugo Chavez to counter U.S. influence.

The meeting -- which began with a moment of silence for the late leader -- was hosted by Chavez's closest ally, communist Cuba, in a major diplomatic coup for a country Washington has tried to isolate through a five-decade-old trade embargo.

A pedestrian overpass spanning a busy road in Rio de Janeiro collapsed after being struck by a truck on Tuesday, killing four people below, officials said.

The shattered metal walkway fell onto the Linha Amarela (the yellow line), one of the main access roads to downtown Rio.