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Advocates fear situation could escalate in Javari valley, a region plagued by violence and poor healthcareMore than 100 Indigenous people in Brazil’s Javari valley have been diagnosed with flu-like symptoms, raising fears that the situation could escalate into an epidemic.The valley, where Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips were killed in 2022, is home to the largest population of Indigenous people in...

Despite major progress in Brazil and Colombia, deforestation led by farming still cleared an area nearly equal to Switzerland The destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate in 2023, despite dramatic falls in forest loss in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, new figures show.An area nearly the size of Switzerland was cleared from previously undisturbed rainforests last year, totalling...

French president tells Brazil forum both parties need to be ‘much stronger’ on biodiversity and climateEmmanuel Macron has called a proposed trade agreement between the EU and South America’s Mercosur bloc a “very bad deal” that lacks proper climate considerations.“As it is negotiated today, it is a very bad deal, for you and for us,” the French president told Brazilian businessmen in São Paulo...

Heavy rainfall brings landslides to country’s south-east. Elsewhere, a wild temperature fluctuation in IberiaBrazil was hit by devastating floods over the weekend that have so far claimed 20 lives in the resultant landslides and mudslides. There was heavy rainfall in parts of the south-east, including Rio de Janeiro, Petrópolis and the larger Espírito Santo region, with hourly rainfall totals of about 20mm recorded in...

Xinjiang in north-west recorded minus 52.3C, while Badu in south recorded 38C – the largest temperature contrast recorded in a single countryChina’s Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country, experienced record-breaking low temperatures of -52.3C on 18 February, surpassing a 64-year-old record for the region. The figure was just shy of the lowest national temperature of -53C, which was recorded in the...

Activist Davi Kopenawa says miners are returning after eviction operations were scaled back, and others never leftThousands of illegal miners are resisting government attempts to evict them from Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory, the renowned activist and shaman Davi Kopenawa has said, nearly a year after operations to displace them began.President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made expelling an estimated 20,000 illegal gold and tin...