Brazil

Cuban-American pop star Gloria Estefan may have one of those game changing albums on her hands with the release of Brazil305, a re-examination of some of her most familiar songs through the lens of her life-long love of Brazilian music and rhythms.

First the town disappears from Google Maps. Then a UFO appears — and a water truck is riddled with bullet holes. Bacurau is a community portrait, a horror thriller and a work of political filmmaking.

When Pollan decided to write about caffeine, he gave it up — cold turkey. "I just couldn't focus," he says. "I was irritable. I lost confidence." Caffeine reshapes the brain in surprising ways.

As a composer, Guinga's written hits for Brazilian superstars like Elis Regina. As a musician he's set the bar for classical guitarists far beyond his native country.

Even before the synod began, traditionalists were angered by the suggestion that, to offset a shortage of priests in the Amazon, married men might be ordained to serve in remote communities.

Researchers say there's been a huge rise in the number of fires compared to last year. That's likely linked with a similar leap in deforestation since President Jair Bolsonaro took office.

As a U.S. Department of Energy plane flew over the Amazon rainforest, it sipped and sampled air in real time. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientist Manish Shrivastava sampled the air over the Amazon to come up with a scientifically accurate baseline of pre-industrial air.

Is your destination too dangerous? How do you protect yourself from health threats? With its tropical beaches and a memorable national park, Venezuela was a popular destination for American tourists a decade ago. But years of political and economic turmoil have left its tourism industry in tatters.