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Animals seized from Brazilian jungles by wildlife traffickers, then confiscated by well-meaning officials and animal rights activists, frequently face even more problems than they had before, says a biologist from the University of São Paulo.
The blame for Haiti’s staggering death toll from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12—the toll is expected to rise to over 200,000— lies at the feet of that country’s c0nstruction industry, says a Berkeley, Calif. engineer.
Former garment workers in Thailand and Argentina have joined forces to launch an anti-slave labor clothing line called No Chains.
A current Brazilian bill could amplify the nation’s already stringent abortion restrictions. The “fetal rights” measure gives “absolute priority” to fetuses and extends constitutional rights to the “unborn.”
A vast experiment in urban planning is underway in Brazil’s urban jungle metropolis of Manaus. At the center of the urban expansion is the construction of a 2.2-mile bridge that is to connect the city to industrial cities and towns across the Rio Negro—the largest left tributary of the Amazon.
It is an astonishing instrument by any measure—by far the largest such telescope on earth and capable of spotting rocky, earth-like planets up to 100 million million miles away.
Hotel construction projects and a boom of vacation homes along Costa Rica’s Pacific coast is threatening the country’s famed bio-diversity and its ecotourism model, a newly published research project says.
Seething members of the Xákmok Kásek indigenous community in Paraguay asserted before an international court this month that they were slowly being squeezed out of existence.
The route to Machu Picchu is open again, two months after devastating rains wiped out the main rail route from Cuzco and damaged the famous Inca Trail.
China’s search for natural resources is taking it to Latin America, and bringing considerable economic clout at a time when U.S. trade with the region is steadily declining. In Peru, China has locked in control of copper production with its multibillion-dollar purchase of a mountain that holds most of Peru’s copper reserves, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Venezuela, meanwhile, has sealed a new agreement that will increase crude oil exports to China to one million barrels daily by 2012, reports Portworld.com. Other Chinese investments in Latin America include $1 billion for a hydroelectric plant in Ecuador and a $10 billion loan to Brazil’s national oil company, The New York Times reports. China is now Latin America’s second largest trading partner, with trade increasing by almost 40 percent in 2008, up to $140 billion, according to China Daily, while a Foreign Policy magazine essay states that China is signing currency swap agreements worth more than $100 billion.