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Pele gets resting place in world’s tallest vertical cemetery

Photo: NELSON ALMEIDA / AFP

| By AFP |

Pele was a footballer like no other, and his final resting place will be exceptional, too: a large replica stadium complete with artificial turf inside the world’s tallest vertical cemetery.

The Brazilian football great, whose funeral was held Tuesday after his death last week at age 82, bought his mausoleum 19 years ago inside the Memorial Ecumenical Cemetery, a veritable high-rise that holds the Guinness World Record for the tallest cemetery on Earth.

Located in Santos, the southeastern port city where “The King” played most of his storied career, the cemetery has a total area of 40,000 square meters (430,000 square feet) and features a 24-hour restaurant, a chapel, an automobile museum, a small fish pond and an aviary.

Located on the first floor, Pele’s 200-square-meter mausoleum will be decorated like a football stadium, with his embalmed body resting in a coffin displayed in the middle of the artificial turf, surrounded by gilded images from his glory days, a spokesman for the cemetery said.

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Edson Arantes do Nascimento — Pele’s real name — had spoken openly about his planned resting place, saying in 2003 that he liked the spot because it “doesn’t look like a cemetery” and gave him a feeling of “spiritual peace and tranquility.”

The striking white building was conceived by late Argentine businessman Jose Salomon Altstut, who broke ground on the project in 1983.

Officially inaugurated in 1991, it has a total of 18,000 interment spaces, and became the first vertical cemetery in the world to provide space for mausoleums.

The cemetery’s website says clients are allowed to “create a decorated space” in their mausoleums, which can even include en-suite rest areas for mourners.

Pele’s late father, aunt, brother and daughter are already interred in the same place, as well as Antonio Wilson Honorio, nicknamed “Coutinho,” his teammate at Santos FC in the 1960s.

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The cemetery sits a stone’s throw from Santos’s Vila Belmiro stadium, where Pele first dazzled the world as a 15-year-old phenom, on his way to scoring a record 1,281 career goals and becoming the only player in history to win three World Cups.

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On Wednesday, September 17, Bolsonaro’s doctors confirmed the diagnosis. The announcement comes shortly after the former leader was convicted of orchestrating an attempted coup.

According to his physician, Claudio Birolini, Bolsonaro has “squamous cell carcinoma, which is neither the most benign nor the most aggressive form — it is intermediate.” Birolini warned, however, that this type of skin cancer “can carry more serious consequences.”

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“If we compare the last 20 years of Paraguay with those of the Argentine Republic, we will find almost diametrically opposite results,” Milei told lawmakers during a special session of Parliament on the second and final day of his official visit to Asunción.

“While you have not stopped growing, we have deepened our decline. If we understand incentives as the engine of capitalism, Paraguay focused on preserving and strengthening them, while Argentina dedicated itself to chaining, directing, and suffocating them,” the right-wing leader stated.

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Trump administration launches large-scale immigration operation in Chicago

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump intensified a large-scale immigration operation in the Chicago area with the arrival of additional Border Patrol agents on Tuesday and the presence of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem during a raid.

Noem posted a video on her X account showing the immigration operation, in which DHS reportedly removed “violent criminals” from the streets. The footage shows Noem observing the arrest of a man taken into custody at his home early Tuesday morning at an undisclosed location.

“I was in Chicago today to make it clear that we will not back down,” the secretary wrote. “Our work is just beginning,” she added.

The warning from Noem was echoed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Gregory Bovino, who posted a video on X Tuesday showing multiple Border Patrol vehicles arriving in the city with the caption: “Chicago, we are here!”

Bovino, who led the immigration crackdown in Los Angeles implemented since last June, said the team will remain in Chicago to continue the mission they started in California.

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Operation “Midway Blitz” is currently focused on the Chicago metropolitan area and its suburbs. Activists and residents have reported sightings of masked agents and unmarked vehicles in predominantly Latino neighborhoods.

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