"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."

"One of the world's largest sources of climate-warming methane gas is a landfill protruding from hills on the outskirts of Chile's capital of Santiago, a recent study by the UN environment agency shows."

"Labor prosecutors in Brazil filed a lawsuit Wednesday against meatpacking giant JBS, accusing the company of buying cattle from farms where workers were held in slavery-like conditions."

"On a busy tourist strip in Orlando, behind noisy bars and souvenir shops, 21 sloths in crates reached the end of a grueling international trip. Soon, they would all be dead."

"Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva, a globally recognized climate leader, said she was stepping down Wednesday from her role in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration to run for Congress later this year."

"Pugapia and her daughters Aiga and Babawru lived for years as the only surviving members of the Akuntsu, an Indigenous people decimated by a government-backed push to develop parts of the Amazon rainforest. As they advanced in age without a child to carry on the line, many expected the Akuntsu to vanish when the women died."

"A bill banning the sale and use of plastic and metallic glitter has yet to go through in Brazil as the capital’s sandy shores bear cost of carnival’s shine"

"Increased activity by the fin whale - the world's second-largest whale species - along Chile's northern coast during feeding season is highlighting a growing threat of collisions with ships and fishing net entanglements, marine experts and conservationists warned this week."