"More than a month has passed since Venezuela’s devastating earthquakes, and the constant sound of heavy machinery still echoes through the hardest-hit neighborhoods of La Guaira on the northern coast. Dust from collapsed buildings hangs in the humid air. Garbage has piled up. Families camp outside homes deemed too dangerous to enter. Water trucks weave through damaged streets."
"Recent studies show that microplastics are already present in a variety of Amazonian environments: Major rivers such as the Amazon, urban streams, floodplain areas and mangroves in the Amazon’s Mouth."
"The world’s largest meat company is backing away from its climate and deforestation commitments after claiming for several years that reducing its greenhouse gas emissions was a key goal."
"Abelardo de la Espriella, the apparent winner of the presidential election, has vowed to expand oil, gas and mining production, alarming activists in the world’s deadliest country for environmental defenders."
"A business controlled by the American billionaire Ira Rennert reached a $150 million settlement in the United States with 1,373 Peruvians who claimed they were poisoned by lead and other toxic substances while growing up near a Peruvian smelter, lawyers for the plaintiffs said on Wednesday."
"Trump’s EPA is planning to weaken restrictions on oil and gas wells that produce very little energy but release vast amounts of methane. Oil billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand, a major Trump donor, is set to reap the benefits. Society as a whole will deal with the environmental costs."
"Brazil’s government announced Wednesday that it will invest $75 million in the BR-319 highway cutting through the Amazon rainforest, a project environmentalists say could accelerate deforestation and worsen climate change."
"The hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has created a global public health crisis. But the driver of it is a rodent that weighs about an ounce, and climate shifts this year that have helped increase the odds of transmission."
"Indigenous organizations from across the Amazon and Latin America sent a letter Monday to the United Nations warning that organized crime — including illegal mining, drug trafficking and logging — is driving violence and accelerating environmental destruction in rainforest communities. However, they urged governments to avoid heavily militarized responses in Indigenous territories."
