International
August Amazon fires remain near highs under Bolsonaro
AFP
The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon as the burning season opened in August fell slightly from 2020, but remained close to the near-decade highs seen under President Jair Bolsonaro, new data showed Wednesday.
Brazil’s space agency, INPE, recorded 28,060 fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month — down 4.3 percent from August 2020, but well above the average of 18,000 for the decade before Bolsonaro took office in 2019.
The far-right president, who has pushed to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining, has presided over a surge of deforestation in the Amazon.
Under his administration, Brazil’s share of the Amazon has lost around 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) of forest cover a year — an area nearly the size of Lebanon.
That is up from around 6,500 square kilometers per year during the previous decade.
The number of fires has surged, too.
“The amount of fires registered each August has reached absurd levels since 2019,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, of environmental group Greenpeace, condemning a new “Bolsonaro standard” of destruction.
Fires often increase in the Amazon when dryer weather arrives from around August to November, as farmers, ranchers and land speculators fell trees, then burn them to clear the land.
Scientists say natural wildfires are virtually non-existent in the famously wet Amazon.
In 2019, Bolsonaro’s first year in office, a sharp rise in Amazon fires caused worldwide outcry and fueled fears for the future of the world’s biggest rainforest, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.
INPE recorded 30,900 fires in August 2019, up from 10,421 the year before.
The agency’s figures go back to 1998. The worst August on record was 2005, with 63,764 fires.
Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), said this year’s fire season would depend on climate factors such as rainfall.
But “we are still at about the same level as in 2019,” she told AFP.
“It’s like we’re getting used to these very high numbers.”
Environmentalists are also concerned over a sharp increase in fires in the huge Pantanal wetlands south of the Amazon, around a quarter of which was devastated by fires last year.
The region is again facing a record drought this year.
International
Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.
“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.
“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.
Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links

A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”

The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
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