Suriname

(Newser) - Desi Bouterse, a military strongman who led a 1980 coup in the former Dutch colony of Suriname and returned to power by election three decades later despite charges of drug smuggling and murder, has died. He was 79. President Chan Santokhi on Wednesday reflected on Bouterse's outsize legacy in...

(Newser) - The Amazon region has lost 10% of its native vegetation, mostly tropical rainforest, in almost four decades, an area roughly the size of Texas, a new report says. From 1985 to 2021, the deforested area surged from 190,000 square miles to 482,000 square miles, unprecedented destruction in the...

(Newser) - After his boat sank, a Brazilian fisherman reportedly survived 11 days in the shark-infested Atlantic Ocean by taking refuge inside a floating freezer. Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues departed on what was supposed to be a three-day fishing trip in early August. But off the coast of northern Brazil, his 23-foot-long wooden...

(Newser) - Earlier this month, Puerto Rico announced its first death from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition causing temporary paralysis that, in this case, was linked to the Zika virus. Now incidences of Guillain-Barre are said to have risen in seven countries in tandem with outbreaks of Zika, per a study in the...