"Accelerating glacial melt in the Andes caused by climate change has set off a gold rush downstream,
letting the desert bloom. But as the ice vanishes, the vast farms below may do the same."

"One. That is the total number of locally transmitted Zika cases confirmed in the continental United States this year, as of mid-August. That single case, recorded on 26 July in Hidalgo County in Texas, which borders Mexico, contrasts with hundreds of cases of local transmission last year."

"President Donald Trump’s America First rhetoric is doing no favors for U.S. ethanol producers, who are hoping to avoid a trade fight with fuel buyers in Brazil."

"A prominent land rights activist has been shot dead by five gunmen at a hospital in Brazil where he was recovering from a previous assassination attempt."

"A sudden and abnormal warming of Pacific waters off Peru has unleashed the deadliest downpours in decades, with landslides and raging rivers sweeping away people, clogging highways and destroying crops."

"Ancient indigenous peoples had a far more profound impact on the composition of the vast Amazon rainforest than previously known, according to a study showing how tree species domesticated by humans long ago still dominate big swathes of the wilderness."