"Brazil's Bolsonaro calls surging Amazon fires a 'lie'", 11th August 2020

...Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday angrily denied the existence of fires in the Amazon rainforest, calling it a "lie," despite data produced by his own government showing that thousands of fires are surging across the region.

Bolsonaro last year similarly denied a spike in fires that provoked a global outcry, with the right-wing populist trading barbs with French President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders.

But in a speech to other South American leaders on Tuesday, Bolsonaro challenged foreign representatives to fly over the Amazon saying that traveling by air from the far flung cities of Boa Vista to Manaus, you would not see a single flame...

Foreign pressure is mounting on Brazil to protect the world's largest rainforest, an ecosystem vital to preserving climate change because of the vast amount of carbon dioxide that it absorbs.

Global investors managing more than $2 trillion have threatened to pull their investments out of Brazil's meatpackers, grains traders and government bonds if Bolsonaro's administration doesn't take action on Amazon destruction...