The Economist Latin America August 3, 2019

Politics Russia’s main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was taken from prison to hospital to be treated for what the authorities called an allergic reaction but supporters said may have been poisoning. He was later returned to prison, where he is in custody for organising an illegal protest, according to the Kremlin. More than 1,000 people were arrested at a demonstration in Moscow demanding that independent candidates be allowed to stand in a citywide election. More protests are planned. Boris Johnson spent a busy first week as Britain’s prime minister. He created a new office to administer lifelong support for veterans of the armed forces; pledged resources for several projects; and promised to open the spending taps for public services. This included a pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on…

Politics Russia’s main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was taken from prison to hospital to be treated for what the authorities called an allergic reaction but supporters said may have been poisoning. He was later returned to prison, where he is in custody for organising an illegal protest, according to the Kremlin. More than 1,000 people were arrested at a demonstration in Moscow demanding that independent candidates be allowed to stand in a citywide election. More protests are planned. Boris Johnson spent a busy first week as Britain’s prime minister. He created a new office to administer lifelong support for veterans of the armed forces; pledged resources for several projects; and promised to open the spending taps for public services. This included a pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on the streets…

ALTHOUGH ITS cradle is the sparsely wooded savannah, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber and sublime inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America. Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be…

ALTHOUGH ITS cradle is the sparsely wooded savannah, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber and sublime inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America. Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may…

AMERICA’S ECONOMY is caught in two stalemates. The first involves its central bank. On July 31 the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the first reduction since 2008. The Fed is determined not to let the economy succumb to a recession. But nor will the economy warm up enough to let the Fed raise rates to normal levels. The other stalemate is with China. Talks this week in Shanghai confirmed that the trade war is unlikely either to end soon or escalate soon. All the signals point to continuing sluggish expansion in America which, after 121 months, is already the longest on record (see Finance section). Less well appreciated is that such tepid conditions have a potential silver lining for the billions of people…

AMERICA’S ECONOMY is caught in two stalemates. The first involves its central bank. On July 31 the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the first reduction since 2008. The Fed is determined not to let the economy succumb to a recession. But nor will the economy warm up enough to let the Fed raise rates to normal levels. The other stalemate is with China. Talks this week in Shanghai confirmed that the trade war is unlikely either to end soon or escalate soon. All the signals point to continuing sluggish expansion in America which, after 121 months, is already the longest on record (see Finance section). Less well appreciated is that such tepid conditions have a potential silver lining for the billions of people living…