Rio’s Christ Statue Will Get a Face-Lift

Like the Statue of Liberty several years ago, Rio de Janeiro’s famed Christ the Redeemer statue is to undergo a face lift.

Visitors to Brazil should not be disappointed, then, to see nothing but scaffolding where they otherwise would have viewed the huge figure of Christ with outstretched arms that dominates the skyline high above the city.

Time, wind, rain, marine air and pollution from decades of car exhaust fumes have taken their toll on the 125-foot statue atop 2,400-foot Corcovado mountain.

The Brazilian subsidiary of the Royal Dutch Shell oil company and Brazil’s Globo media empire recently signed an agreement to spend $2 million to restore the monument for its 59th anniversary in October.

Engineers will repair at least 26 cracks running down the body of the statue and peel away parts of its facade to clean the steel plates underneath that have grown rusty from years of seeping moisture.

Long a symbol of Brazil for millions of people worldwide, the monument was designed by architect Heitor da Silva Costa as a tribute to the nation’s Roman Catholic culture. It was hauled up the mountain, piece by piece, in the early 1930s.

Its head alone weighs 35 tons and its arms stretch 75 feet from fingertip to fingertip, as if embracing the spectacular view of Guanabara Bay and the city of 4 million below.

Barcelona, the host city for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, has some misgivings over whether it will be able to build enough new hotels to handle the influx of visitors, but it has a good interim solution.

During the Games the city plans to anchor 16 ships in the port to be used as floating hotels.

So you think you’ve had problems clearing customs?

Consider the dilemma facing officials at a Swiss-Italian customs post near Como, Italy, not long ago when they were confronted with a 10-foot chunk of the Berlin Wall.

The relic was being imported by a Lomardy cement works that had bought it for $28,000 with the idea of displaying it in a planned museum.

For 36 hours, customs officials debated whether or not the object should be subject to duty. Should it be classified as an archeological remnant or a simply a cargo of building materials?

Perhaps it was a work of art? After all, the piece was covered in pictures and slogans sprayed on it by German graffiti artists.

Unable to agree, officials finally admitted it duty-free.

According to a report by the International Civil Aviation Organization, flying became more dangerous last year. The number of passengers killed rose 13% over 1988 and about a third of those perished in bomb and other attacks, the ICAO said.

The number of accidents of scheduled airliners involving fatalities--28--was the same as that in 1988, but the number of passenger deaths jumped from 729 to 825.

The Montreal-based institution, a specialized agency of the United Nations with 162 member countries, recorded 14 attacks last year on passenger aircraft, resulting in 279 deaths. In 1988 there were 12 attacks on aircraft, killing 300 people.

Paris will get another 600 taxis over the next three years following complaints from tourists that taxis are much more scarce in Paris than in most other capitals.

Only 14,600 taxis serve a population of 6 million in Paris and its inner suburbs, the result of a quota in effect since 1967.

The government decided to break with tradition after several months of pressure from the tourism ministry, which has been flooded with complaints from foreign visitors.