Over 100 dolphins have been found dead in a tributary of Amazon river in Brazil this past week. Experts suspects the deaths may have been caused by severe drought and rising heat. At least 70 of the remains were found floating on Thursday when the temperature of Lake Tefe's water reached 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) — more than 10 degrees higher than the usual average for this time of the year. Warming water a concern Low river levels during a severe drought have heated water in stretches to temperatures that are intolerable for the dolphins, experts believe. Following a decline for a few days, the water temperature again soared to 37 degrees Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) on Sunday. The region around the lake is a key habitat for mammals and other aquatic species. Large amounts of fish have also died according to local media reports. The scientists are working to rule out other causes like bacterial infections as they do not know with certainty that drought and heat are to blame for the rise in dolphin mortality. "We have around 900 river dolphins and 500 Tucuxis (in the Tefe Lake) and in one week we have already lost around 120 animals between the two of them, which could represent 5% to 10% of the population," Miriam Marmontel, a researcher from the Mamiraua environmental institute, said. Threatened species The Amazon river dolphins — some pink in color — are a unique freshwater species found only in the rivers of South America. A slow reproductive cycle makes their populations especially prone to threats. The freshwater dolphins, or "Tucuxis," are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species. "Ten percent is a very high percentage of loss, and the possibility that it will increase could threaten the survival of the species in Lake Tefé," Marmontel warned. Researchers on Monday were still recovering dead dolphins in the region where dry rivers have also impacted impoverished riverside communities, beaching their boats on the sand.

A passenger plane carrying 14 people crashed in Brazil's Amazon rainforest on Saturday, killing all on board, according to a local official. What do we know so far?  Amazonas Governor Wilson Lima said the plane had come down in Barcelos in the northern part of Brazil. "I deeply regret the death of the 12 passengers and two crew members who were victims of the plane crash in Barcelos on Saturday," Lima said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Local media reported that the small Embraer PT-SOG aircraft — a twin-engine turboprop — took off from Manaus, which is the biggest city in the Amazon. It was attempting to land in Barcelos during heavy rain when it crashed. According to reports those on board were Brazilian tourists on a fishing trip. Local television network Globo News broadcast visuals of the aircraft lying on a muddy road with the front part covered by foliage. Brazil's air force dispatched a team from Manaus to gather data and secure any evidence that could be used to investigate the circumstances of the crash.

Four indigenous children who survived 40 days in the Colombian Amazon after a plane crash have been released from the hospital, authorities said on Friday. After a monthlong treatment, the siblings were doing "very well," the director of the country's Family Welfare Institute told journalists. "They are actually very well," director Astrid Caceres said, adding the children had all gained weight. Lesly, 13, Soleiny, 9, Tien Noriel, 5,  and Cristin, 1, were the only survivors after the small plane they were passengers in crashed in the jungle.  Their mother and two other adults died in the incident.  Understanding of the forests helped the kids survive The four children who were rescued currently showed no physical effects from the 40 days they spent in the Amazon, Caceres said. She added, even little Cristin is "completely recovered in terms of physical development." Officials and relatives praised the Indigenous children's knowledge of the jungle and Lesly's courage for their survival in the jungle with its many inherent dangers — including snakes, predatory animals and armed criminal groups.  It took around 200 military and Indigenous rescuers with search and rescue dogs to track them down. They were rescued on June 9 and taken to a military hospital in Bogota for treatment.  The Family Welfare Institute will temporarily take custody of the children because of a "complex family situation" that has seen a custody dispute between the two younger children's father and their maternal grandparents.

The giant retailer said it had "hired rapidly" over the past few years. It also cited the "uncertain economy" as a reason for its latest round of job cuts. Giant retailer Amazon announced on Wednesday it was cutting 18,000 jobs, as part of a previously announced layoff wave. The company's Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a public staff note that annual planning "has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we've hired rapidly over the last several years." The 18,000 layoffs include both the recent ones and the ones previously announced in November. They will mostly impact the company's e-commerce services such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, as well as the human resources organizations. Amazon has over 1.5 million employees, making it the second largest private employer in the US, after Walmart. Biggest cuts in company history The cuts, rolling since November last year, are considered the biggest in the company since it launched in 1994. As many strong economies flirted with recession and battled unusually high inflation in 2022, several tech companies struggled to sustain their businesses. That contrasts a surge in revenues they achieved during the pandemic. The social media giant Meta, which runs Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, announced in November last year that it was laying off 13% of its workforce. However, the Reuters news agency suggested that Amazon's job cuts surpassed that of other tech giants, Meta included. Analysts see the cuts as the end of a so-called tech boom which has reigned over the last decade.

The Amazon rainforest is regarded as one of the so-called tipping elements capable of destabilizing the global climate. A loss of 20-25% of forest cover in the Amazon basin could be enough to bring us to the tipping point. Recent studies have shown that around 18% of the Brazilian Amazon has already been cleared — and around 60% of the rainforest's total area lies within the territory of Brazil. After several years in which deforestation rates dropped significantly, they rose again sharply after the right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro took office as president of Brazil on January 1, 2019. In October 2021, activists and Indigenous groups even filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court over Bolsonaro's environmental policies. However, legal experts have said it could be years before the ICC even decides whether or not to accept the suit. Deforestation up during Bolsonaro's presidency Rainforest clearance is monitored using satellite imagery from Brazil's world-renowned National Institute for Space Research. Its images show that the area deforested each year has risen sharply since Bolsonaro took office, to more than 10,000 square kilometers (around 3861 square miles). In 2021, the area deforested was greater than 13,000 square kilometers. Prior to 2019, there had been a 10-year period in which the rate of deforestation dropped. Before that, though, rates were just as high as under Bolsonaro — sometimes considerably higher. This was also true of the first years of the presidency of leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which began in 2003. Lula is Bolsonaro's main rival in the upcoming Brazilian election on October 2. He has campaigned on a promise to increase environmental protections, if he wins. "It's true that deforestation in the Amazon was very high in the 2000s," said Erika Bechara, an environmental law professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo. "However, a significant decrease was achieved from 2009 to 2018, thanks to the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon and other measures. So it was disappointing to see how deforestation exploded again. Under the current government, things have gone backward instead of forward." Increase in forest fires linked to deforestation Devastating forest fires have ravaged the Amazon region in recent years, with those in 2019 and 2020 being especially memorable. The fires were registered by the National Institute for Space Research, yet in some instances Bolsonaro denied their existence. He accused the research institute and environmentalists of wanting to harm Brazil and rejected assistance from abroad. Bolsonaro only sent in the military to help firefighting efforts at a very late stage. As a result, the president became the target of massive international criticism. Major fires are again raging in the Brazilian Amazon this year. The fires are directly connected to deforestation. Generally, after trees are felled, the deforested areas are set alight to create new pastures and farmland. "The Amazon rainforest is not a region where fires would normally break out of their own accord on a regular basis. Most of the fires in the Amazon are caused by humans," said ecologist Divino Vicente Silverio. He added that the dry seasons have been lasting longer and becoming more extreme, and that this could be intensifying fires and causing them to burn out of control. The data from the National Institute for Space Research reveals that the area of the Amazon that has burned under Bolsonaro's presidency is in fact no greater than most previous years. In 2019, it was around 72,450 square kilometers; 77,400 square kilometers the following year. In 2015, around 93,680 square kilometers burned, and in 2005 the figure was far higher, at 160,860 square kilometers. "While it is true that we have not seen peak levels of fires under Bolsonaro, what we are seeing is the return of a strong correlation between fires and deforestation," said Silverio, who is a professor at the Federal Rural University of Amazonia. "By contrast, in preceding years the relationship between the two was weaker, and in some years, such as 2005 and 2015, the burning of large areas of forest was more a consequence of extreme drought. This is also apparent from the fact that in those years, unlike the rates for fires, the deforestation rates went down." In 2019 and 2020, however, there weren't any extreme weather conditions in Brazil that would have caused the forest to burn particularly easily, he added. What has Bolsonaro done to protect the rainforest? The right-wing populist Bolsonaro is regarded as a climate change skeptic and a friend of the powerful agriculture lobby. He makes no secret of the fact that he sees the Amazon region primarily as an area for economic exploitation, and wants to open up more of its terrain for farming and mining. Indigenous groups and environmentalists have frequently complained that threats against them have increased since Bolsonaro took office — in part, they say, because the president has created a climate that emboldens farmers to seize land illegally, and encourages loggers and gold miners to enter protected areas. Weakening of environment and control authorities Under Bolsonaro, the annual budget of the Environment Ministry and its subordinate institutions has been slashed. According to the Brazilian nongovernmental organization Observatorio do Clima, the 2021 budget was the smallest in two decades. The Environment Ministry is responsible for the environmental authorities IBAMA and ICMBio, which monitor violations of environmental regulations. Not only have their activities been hampered by a lack of funds, they have also been deprived of certain powers, while employees who made themselves unpopular were suspended. Amazon Fund shelved This fund was set up in 2008 to help finance the protection of the rainforest and biodiversity. It was deemed to be a success, with Norway as its biggest donor. Germany and other countries also contributed. However, many countries stopped making payments in 2019, increasingly doubtful that the new Brazilian government actually intended to go on protecting the rainforest. "Brazil doesn't need the money," Bolsonaro said at the time. Environmental organizations have said that the Amazon Fund accumulated around 2.9 billion reals (€568 million/$550 million today) before the payments ceased, and that since Bolsonaro shelved the fund because he didn't like NGOs having a say in how the money was used, the money has not been retrieved. Bolsonaro said at the time that the NGOs needed to be reviewed, but nothing has happened since. Action plan neglected According to environmental law professor Erika Bechara, the Bolsonaro government is no longer following the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon, and has no alternative plan for the Amazon region. This, she said, is also the subject of a lawsuit before Brazil's Supreme Court. "The judgement is still pending, but Federal Judge Carmen Lucia is of the opinion that the current government is systematically violating several constitutional principles by reducing controls, not having an effective plan to combat deforestation, not using the entire budget available for environmental protection, and not protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples," she said. Changes to the CONAMA National Environmental Council The council is composed of politicians from federal, state and local governments, as well as representatives from business, nongovernmental organizations and civil society. It debates guidelines and standards, which it then proposes to the Brazilian Congress. However, as Bechara explained: "A decree issued in 2019 significantly reduced the number of members, from 94 to 21, disproportionately reducing the share of organized civil society." As a result, social participation in CONAMA's decisions has been diminished.

In an office at the World Trade Center in the northwest neighborhood of Bengaluru, Manish Tiwary is busy sipping black coffee and making strategies for Amazon to change the way India buys and sells.   He was recently elevated as country manager to handle consumer business in India and oversee day-to-day operations at the e-commerce giant.   For Tiwary, 52, who hails from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, it has been a meteoric rise -- the trajectory set in place by the emphasis on education, work and frugality in his growing-up years. We are meeting virtually, given Tiwary's tight schedule, even though I am also in Bengaluru. It is afternoon and I have lunch by my side, but it will lie untouched during our black coffee-laced conversation.   We begin from the beginning: His childhood years, a good part of which was spent in a hostel -- from Class 4 to 12 at Delhi Public School, RK Puram, New Delhi. Both his parents worked for the Tatas and their job took them to different parts of the country.   A computer engineer from BIT-Mesra, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management- Bangalore, Tiwary, too, was expected to follow them to Tata. Instead, he took up a job at consumer goods firm Hindustan Unilever in 1995 -- "a dream come true," he says.   "My parents were devastated to know that I would not join the Tata group," recalls Tiwary. "They forced me to go for an interview at Tata Steel for a marketing job. As luck would have it, they (Tata) did not accept me. So, that's what sent me back to selling soap." His first posting was at Korba, the industrial hub of Chhattisgarh, where he paid a princely sum of Rs 8 a month as room rent.   At Unilever, Tiwary proved to be a stayer, working with the fast-moving consumer goods major for over two decades in different capacities and across different categories and channels: In India, in the Gulf and in North Africa.   Before joining Amazon in 2016, he headed Unilever's business in the Gulf region, which was a large multi-country operation across diverse legal entities.   His last role was as managing director for Unilever (Gulf), looking after a cluster of 34 countries in North Africa and West Asia while operating from Dubai. The role prepped him well for his task at Amazon India, where he now heads an army of over 100,000 employees.   With the pandemic having accelerated the shift to e-commerce, the tech giant is aggressively scaling up its operations.   Under Tiwary's watch, Amazon is transforming into more than a shopping platform for Indians. The company started out in India in 2013 with 100 sellers. It now has over a million from across the country.   It is focusing on vernacular language and a voice-based shopping platform that aims to be inclusive and accessible to the next 500 million users who mainly reside in 'Bharat', India's small towns and cities.   Besides the streaming video and music services it offers, it has launched miniTV, a free, ad-supported video streaming service for Amazon app-users in India who are looking for short films.   It is also betting big on social commerce, tapping social network communities to drive e-commerce sales.   It recently acquired homegrown women-focused social commerce startup GlowRoad for an undisclosed sum.   Amazon Pay, its digital payment arm, is rapidly scaling up its e-payments, credit and financial services.   The company has also forayed into online delivery of food and medicine, plus launched Amazon Academy for students preparing for various examinations.   "For all of us at Amazon, it is 'Bharat first'," says Tiwary. "We are keeping the Indian customer at the centre of what we are doing."   Indeed, at the inaugural Amazon Smbhav summit in January 2020, the company pledged to digitise 10 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), generate $10 billion in cumulative exports from India and create 2 million jobs here by 2025.   Tiwary says they've already digitised over 4 million small businesses and local stores, are on track to enable $5 billion in cumulative exports and have created over 1.16 million direct and indirect jobs in India, with 135,000 new jobs added in the last one year alone.   While the going is good, there are also some big leadership tests in front of Tiwary. For instance, trade bodies such as the Confederation of All India Traders and Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh perceive Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart as a threat to local retailers and have taken the matter to various courts.   They have alleged preferential treatment to sellers like Cloudtail and Appario in which Amazon had a stake.   In April this year, the investigative arm of the Competition Commission of India reportedly carried out search-and-seizure operations at multiple premises linked to two sellers of Amazon.com Inc, in connection with an investigation launched against e-commerce players over preferential treatment.   Tiwary insists the company treats all its sellers in a fair and transparent manner, and helps every small and medium business.   "If there was any preferential treatment, why would we have a million sellers, and counting?" he asks.   "We are building an infrastructure where a seller sitting in Hosur (Tamil Nadu) can sell products to someone in Arunachal Pradesh."   "Before e-commerce, who could compete with the well-distributed brands?" he asks. "Take the D2C (direct-to-consumer) unicorns today. I have a feeling that 40 per cent of them are there because of their early success on Amazon."   Regarding the CCI probe, Tiwary says e-commerce is a new industry that needs a stable policy and that Amazon follows the law of the land.   "The government does understand what we have managed to (achieve)," he says. "CCI is a government body, and it has every right to get into a few areas. I don't see it as negative."   Since 2020, Amazon is also fighting a legal battle with Future Retail to stop the Kishore Biyani-led retailer's $3.4 billion deal with Reliance Industries Ltd.   Amazon has alleged the deal breached Future's agreement with the e-commerce firm. During one of the court hearings in 2020, a lawyer who appeared for Future Retail likened Amazon to East India Company.   Amazon's lawyer countered this, saying the 'East India Company' rhetoric didn't hold as the e-tailer had invested $6.5 billion across India and created 900,000 jobs.   In December last year, Tiwary too reportedly got summons from the Enforcement Directorate for alleged violation of forex norms when Amazon pumped in Rs 1,431 crore (Rs 14.31 billion) to acquire 49 per cent stake in Biyani's Future Coupons.   Tiwary was asked to appear since Amazon country head Amit Agarwal reportedly excused himself saying he had moved to the US.   So, has the legal battle with Future impacted Amazon's growth in India? Tiwary says Amazon's success in India will be decided by consumers and sellers.   "There are some allegations, but those are misleading attempts by a few people," he says. Meanwhile, earlier this year, India soft-launched the open network digital commerce (ONDC) to democratise and transform the e-commerce landscape -- and to also check the dominance of US-based players such as Amazon and Walmart, some industry-watchers say. But Tiwary is unperturbed.   E-commerce penetration in India, he says, is very low and Amazon is engaging with ONDC. The company, he adds, is completely committed to the government's vision of digitisation, which includes kiranas, local stores, and small and medium businesses.   Amazon is also in a fierce battle with rivals such as Flipkart, Reliance's JioMart and Tata for a big bite of India's booming $45-$50 billion e-commerce market, which is expected to touch $350 billion by 2030.   The stakes are high. Tiwary knows that. "We are not in this country for 10-20 years," he says. "If you look at what we are building here, it is for the next 50-100 years. So we're not in a hurry."     Source: Rediff.com

Even amid raging controversies and allegations, e-commerce major Amazon is bullish on the Indian market, and is "absolutely" compliant with laws and regulations in the country, where it has outlined firm commitments around job creation, exports and MSME digitization, according to a top executive. Manish Tiwary, Country Manager - India Consumer Business at Amazon India told PTI that the company is "not impatient" as it does not have to "prove anything in the next six months on how we are bigger or better", and is, in fact, working steadily on its stated goal of transforming the way India buys and sells in a sustainable manner, to create a positive impact in the country. Earlier this week, in a major setback to Amazon, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) rejected the US e-commerce giant's appeal against an antitrust suspension of its investment deal with Future Group, saying the retailer had not made full disclosures at the time of seeking approval. NCLAT also upheld a Rs 200 corer penalty imposed on Amazon by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and asked the e-commerce major to deposit the same in 45 days. It supported the CCI findings that Amazon did not make full disclosures regarding the deal with Future Retail NSE -4.76 % subsidiary -- Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL).   Amazon is also fighting a bitter legal battle with Kishore Biyani's Future Group. Tiwary declined to comment on NCLAT order, or disclose the next course of action for Amazon. "...it is something which has just come out. So the right people are looking at the order. I haven't been able to spend time on it. So I don't have any comment at this stage," Tiwary said. Amazon India has grown from 100-odd sellers and one warehouse in the country, at the beginning of its journey nine years ago, to a level where it has about 11 lakh sellers, 23 crore-plus products being sold, and 60 warehouses (fulfillment centers). "So every sign should give you the confidence that Amazon continues to be very, very bullish on the Indian market and the prospects. We are not impatient. We don't have to prove anything in the next six months of how we are bigger or better, because nine years back we had told ourselves we want to change the way India buys and sells in a sustainable manner to create a positive impact in the country," the Amazon senior executive said. The investments made by Amazon across the ecosystem, be it Prime Video, AWS, shopping or payment, reflects company's optimism about the Indian market. "I would re-emphasize, we are as bullish as we were nine years back...actually we've been in the country in terms of providing technology support for more than 20 years. So we continue to be very bullish. All you have to do is look at the investments across the ecosystem," Tiwary asserted. In May this year, Amazon India announced that it has cumulatively created more than 11.6 lakh direct and indirect jobs, enabled nearly USD 5 billion in cumulative exports, and digitised over 40 lakh MSMEs in India. In January 2020, the company had pledged to digitise 1 crore MSMEs, enable USD 10 billion in cumulative exports and create 20 lakh jobs in India by 2025. Amazon had said it is well on track to fulfil these pledges, while in fact doubling its export pledge from India, to now enable USD 20 billion in cumulative exports from the country by 2025. "If you look at our pledges, which are anchored around digitization, exports and employment, many things which are very high on the government agenda....I stay focused on serving the customers, serving the sellers, and making sure we make progress on the three pledges on digitisation, job employment, and exports...all of it to be achieved by 2025 so that is where our focus is," he said. Asked if the company is in compliance with all the laws and regulations in India, Tiwary emphasized "absolutely and far beyond". "Without any iota of hesitation or doubt, the...people who work in Amazon are very proud to work in Amazon not because we meet the letter of the law or the spirit of law, we go far beyond, be it customer service or sustainability," he said.   Source: The Economic Times

Netflix, Amazon and other video streamers are betting big on India, tantalized by the huge growth potential offered by its more than 1.3 billion people. Netflix slashed prices by up to 60%. Its popular mobile-only plan now costs 149 rupees ($2) per month, down from 199 rupees On December 14. A basic subscription that allows a user to watch content on any device has been cut to 199 rupees from 499 rupees. Its veryexpensive plan, which allows for simultaneous viewing on up to four devices, has been reduced to 649 rupees from 799 rupees.   But the reductions might not have gone far enough. The Los Gatos, California-based entertainment giant does not offer annual subscriptions, unlike cheaper rivals Amazon Prime Video and Walt Disney's Disney+Hotstar, which sell yearly plans for 1,499 rupees to access top services in these platforms that offer access to all content. Amazon subscribers also enjoy faster and free deliveries through the conglomerate's e-commerce platform, among other benefits.   SonyLIV dangles an even cheaper annual plan in front of India's highly price-conscious consumers, 999 rupees, while ZEE5 currently sells 12-month packages for 499 rupees. Analysts say Netflix is trying to reach a wider audience with its price cuts as the premium service's pace of subscriber growth has been unimpressive.   "Netflix has to up the ante! It was more expensive than Amazon and Disney and is falling behind in the subscription numbers," Vineeta Dwivedi, head of digital communications at the Mumbai-based S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, told Nikkei Asia. "Everyone is acing the content game, but the prices have to be comparable. Ultimately, it's about the numbers, and India remains a price-sensitive market which offers a huge and growing user base."   Tapobrati Das Samaddar -- founder of Wordloom Creative Ventures, a company that deals with media, education and performing arts -- concurs. "No matter how much they loved [the content on Netflix], the general public might have thought twice or thrice before investing into its [basic 499-rupee monthly plan] because other platforms were providing far more affordable options," she told Nikkei. "Netfllix's premium pricing was not helping it grow its viewership." Source: NIKKEL ASIS

Global and Indian firms are flexing their industrial muscle to help the world's second biggest population battle coronavirus, coming to the rescue of a public health system buckling under the weight of surging infections and deaths. Amazon.com, Intel and Google, as well as Indian firms Tata Sons, Reliance Industries and JSW Steel have pitched in with everything from airlifts of medical equipment and funding pledges to making medical oxygen. "What we need is better planning with the recognition that government's capacity is limited and therefore requires private participation," said economist Madhura Swaminathan of the Indian Statistical Institute in Bengaluru. Hospitals struggling with a massive second wave of infections are turning away patients as beds and oxygen supplies run out, and social media brim with desperate calls for help in finding supplies of oxygen and drugs such as remdesivir. A record increase in deaths over the prior 24 hours carried India's toll past 200,000 on Wednesday, a situation that experts blame on lack of oxygen supplies and infrastructure challenges. On Tuesday Amazon said it would ship 100 ICU ventilator units to India from the United States. It had earlier worked with partners to airlift more than 8,000 oxygen concentrators and 500 ventilators from Singapore, relying on its massive global logistics network to hasten procurement, a spokeswoman said. Google promised $18 million in new funding for India, including advertising support for public health campaigns. India's largest steel maker by market value, JSW, has stopped making some of the construction raw material as it diverts resources to turning out liquid oxygen instead. From April 21 to 23, JSW supplied 898 tonnes of oxygen each day from its plants, equivalent to about 13% of the combined daily demand for 6,785 tonnes of the life-saving gas in India's 20 worst-hit states. JSW said it was building large COVID patient centres around its plants, so that they can be serviced via a pipeline. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries tweaked manufacturing at its oil refineries to produce hundreds of tonnes of oxygen for hard-hit areas such as Maharashtra, India's richest and worst-hit state. Tata Group, one of India's oldest conglomerates, imported 24 cryogenic containers to transport liquid oxygen, while its Tata Steel unit ramped up oxygen supply. "The government single-handedly cannot deal with this crisis any more, it is very important that the corporate sector gets into motion," said Kunal Kundu, India economist at Societe Generale in Bengaluru. "We need all the help we can get." Economist Swaminathan called for the scope of private sector contribution to be widened beyond the merely voluntary. "Anybody who has surplus funds and equipment should step in to help," she added. "In terms of logistics, beds, oxygen, hospitals, the private sector has to be asked to do its task as part of policy." Source: The Star AH

Seven South American countries have agreed measures to protect the Amazon river basin, amid global concern over massive fires in the world's largest tropical forest, reports BBC. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname signed a pact, setting up a disaster response network and satellite monitoring. At a summit in Colombia, they also agreed to work on reforestation. More than 80,000 fires have broken out in the Amazon rainforest this year. "This meeting will live on as a co-ordination mechanism for the presidents that share this treasure - the Amazon," said Colombian Presiden Iván Duque, who hosted the summit in the city of Leticia. Meanwhile, Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra said: "Goodwill alone is not enough anymore." The seven nations also agreed to put more efforts into education and increase the role of indigenous communities. The countries were represented in Leticia by presidents, vice-presidents and ministers. Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took part by videolink because he was preparing for surgery. What's the background to this? The Amazon is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming, and 60% of it is located in Brazil. The number of fires between January and August 2019 is double that of the same period last year, according to the country's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). President Bolsonaro has drawn intense domestic and international criticism for failing to protect the region. Environmentalists say his policies have led to an increase in fires this year and that he has encouraged cattle farmers to clear vast swathes of the rainforest since his election last October. Bolivia has also seen fires rage across the forest near its borders with Brazil and Paraguay. Meanwhile, Brazil's leading meat export industry group and agricultural businesses have joined an environmental campaign calling for an end to deforestation in public lands in the Amazon and demanding government action. Several international retailers have said they are suspending purchases of Brazilian leather because of the links between cattle ranching and the fires devastating parts of the Amazon rainforest. Source: UNB AH