Is Rio Ready for the Olympics?.
LEMON: Well, believe it or not, the 2016 summer games are just two months away. But in the wake of a storm of bad news in Brazil, is Rio ready? CNN's Ivan Watson has more.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's hard not to be seduced by Rio de Janeiro, this spectacular city soon to be the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Two months before the start of the games, construction crews are putting in the final touches at the Olympic venues.</s>GUSTAVO NASCIMENTO, HEAD OF OLYMPIC VENUE MANAGEMENT: Everything is going to be ready on time. We're going to deliver the bark (ph) fully commissioned the 24th of July.</s>WATSON: But despite Rio's beauty, the city and Brazil as a whole are facing some pretty daunting challenges, a whole series of unexpected setbacks leading some to wonder, are Rio's Olympics somehow cursed? Just days ago, a warning from more than 100 international doctors calling for the games to be postponed or moved because the mosquito borne Zika virus could threaten an expected half a million foreign visitors. That view rejected by the World Health Organization, which does advise pregnant women to avoid the Olympics entirely because of the risk of severe deformities to unborn children. And then there's the political and economic crisis. Turmoil after Congress suspended Brazil's elected president in an impeachment process last month and high-level corruption scandals during the worst economic recession in generations, which has left more than 10 million Brazilians unemployed. The economic hardship aggravating Rio's endemic problems with violent crime, daily gun battles between police and drug gangs in the city's impoverished [inaudible], as well as a surge in robberies. This month members of the Spanish Olympic sailing team mugged at gun point.</s>FERNANDO ECHEVARRI, SPANISH OLYMPIC SAILOR: And we just turned around to see what was happening and we saw the pistols.</s>WATSON: Olympic sailors also worried about Rio's notoriously polluted bay, a dumping ground for much of the city's raw sewage.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't want to swim in it.</s>WATSON: Rio's Mayor warns this isn't a first world city.</s>EDUARDO PAES, MAYOR OF RIO DE JANEIRO: Don't came here expecting that everything will be, you know, perfect. We live in a country that has economic crisis, comes with lots of inequality, with all of the problems that we've seen concerning corruption, bribes, but the city will be much better than it was when we got the games.</s>WATSON: But even one of the Mayor's new infrastructure projects is now a deadly failure. This brand new spectacular Cliffside bike path was supposed to be a showcase project for the Olympics. Instead, it became a tragic setback when the waves took out part of the trail, killing two people last month. In the turbulent run-up to the Olympics, a virtual storm of bad news that leaves you wondering what could possibly happen next. Ivan Watson, CNN, Rio de Janeiro.</s>LEMON: We'll be right back.