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Severe Drought Has Returned to The Amazon

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
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Severe Drought Has Returned to The Amazon

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP
In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year - The AP

Holder of one-fifth of the world's fresh water, the Amazon is beginning the dry season with many of its rivers already at critically low levels, prompting governments to anticipate contingency measures to address issues ranging from disrupted navigation to increasing forest fires.

“The Amazon Basin is facing one of the most severe droughts in recent years in 2024, with significant impacts on several member countries,” stated a technical note issued Wednesday by the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, which includes Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, The AP reported.

In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year. Historically, the driest months are August and September, when fire and deforestation peak. So far, the most affected countries are Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, according to ACTO.

On Monday, Brazil’s federal water agency decreed a water shortage in two major basins, Madeira and Purus, which cover an area nearly the size of Mexico. The next day, Acre state declared an emergency amid an impending water shortage in its main city. In June, neighboring Amazonas state adopted the same measure in 20 of its 62 municipalities that are mostly only accessed by water or air, even in normal times.

These steps were taken more than two months earlier than in 2023, when most of the Amazon basin suffered its worst drought on record, killing dozens of river dolphins, choking cities with smoke for months and isolating thousands of people who depended on water transportation. The measures are used to increase monitoring, mobilize resources and personnel and request federal aid.

The depth of Madeira River, one of the largest Amazon tributaries and an important waterway for soybeans and fuel, went below 3 meters (10 feet) near Porto Velho on July 20. In 2023, that occurred on Aug. 15. Navigation has been limited during nighttime, and two of Brazil's largest hydroelectric plants may halt production, as happened last year.

In the Amazonas town of Envira, nearby rivers have become too shallow to navigate. Local officials have asked elders and pregnant women to move from riverine communities to the city center because otherwise medical help may not be able to reach them. Farmers who produce cassava flour can’t get it to market. As a result, this Amazon food staple has more than doubled in price, according to the local administration.

Another concern is fire. There were around 25,000 fires from January until late July — the highest number for this period in almost two decades. In the Amazon, fires are mostly human-made and used to manage pastures and clear deforested areas.

In Acre, the drought has already caused water supply shortages in several areas of its capital, Rio Branco. These communities now depend on trucked-in water, a problem experienced the previous year. Between the two droughts, severe flooding hit 19 of the state's 22 municipalities.

“It's been two years in a row of extreme events,” Julie Messias, Acre's secretary of environment, told The Associated Press. “The result is that we are facing a threat of food shortage. First the crops were flooded, and now the planting period is very dry.”

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413,793 KitKat Candy Bars Stolen en Route from Italy to Poland

FILE - A KitKat chocolate bar in Rugby, England, on July 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver, File)
FILE - A KitKat chocolate bar in Rugby, England, on July 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver, File)
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413,793 KitKat Candy Bars Stolen en Route from Italy to Poland

FILE - A KitKat chocolate bar in Rugby, England, on July 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver, File)
FILE - A KitKat chocolate bar in Rugby, England, on July 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver, File)

Swiss food giant Nestlé says about 12 tons, or 413,793 candy bars, of its KitKat chocolate brand were stolen after leaving its production site in Italy earlier this week for Poland.

The company, based in Vevey, Switzerland, said in a statement Friday that “the vehicle and its load are still nowhere to be found.”

The shipment of the crunchy bars, made of waffles covered with chocolate, disappeared last week while en route between production and distribution locations. The chocolate bars were to be distributed throughout Europe.

The missing candy bars could enter unofficial sales channels across European markets, the company said, but if this does happen, all products can be traced using the unique batch code assigned to individual bars.

A spokesperson for KitKat said that as a result, consumers, retailers and wholesalers would be able to identify if a product is part of the stolen shipment by scanning the on-pack batch numbers. If a match is found, the scanner will be given clear instructions on how to alert the company, which will then share the evidence appropriately.

“Whilst we appreciate the criminals’ exceptional taste, the fact remains that cargo theft is an escalating issue for businesses of all sizes," The Associated Press quoted KitKat as saying in a statement.

“With more sophisticated schemes being deployed on a regular basis, we have chosen to go public with our own experience in the hope that it raises awareness of an increasingly common criminal trend,” the statement added.

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Virus Kills Tiger Cubs in Indonesian Zoo

Jelita, a Bengal tiger, is seen in its enclosure at Bandung Zoo in Bandung, West Java, on March 26, 2026. (Photo by Timur Matahari / AFP)
Jelita, a Bengal tiger, is seen in its enclosure at Bandung Zoo in Bandung, West Java, on March 26, 2026. (Photo by Timur Matahari / AFP)
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Virus Kills Tiger Cubs in Indonesian Zoo

Jelita, a Bengal tiger, is seen in its enclosure at Bandung Zoo in Bandung, West Java, on March 26, 2026. (Photo by Timur Matahari / AFP)
Jelita, a Bengal tiger, is seen in its enclosure at Bandung Zoo in Bandung, West Java, on March 26, 2026. (Photo by Timur Matahari / AFP)

Two Bengal tiger cubs born in Indonesia's Bandung Zoo last year have died from a viral infection, a conservation official told AFP on Friday.

The cubs, two males named Huru and Hara, were born last July to tigress Jelita, who remains in good health.

According to the conservation agency of West Java province, the cubs were infected at birth with the Feline Panleukopenia virus (FPV), which can sicken wild and domestic cats and is particularly dangerous for young animals.

Hara died on the 24th, two days after falling ill, and despite veterinary efforts to save him, Huru followed two days later, agency spokesman Eri Mildrayana told AFP.

The cubs had suffered from diarrhea, vomiting and lethargy in the days before they died.

Bandung mayor Muhammad Farhan, in a social media post Thursday, said the news had left him "very sad."

"This is an important lesson for us. The step that we can take right now is to improve biosecurity," he wrote on Instagram.

The US National Institutes of Health says FPV is also referred to as "cat plague" or "feline distemper" and usually occurs in unvaccinated or improperly vaccinated captive felines.

The Bandung Zoo in West Java has been closed for months due to what officials have described as internal management problems.

In 2017, activists demanded the zoo's closure after skeletal sun bears were pictured begging for food from visitors and eating their own dung.

AFP was unable to reach Bandung city authorities in charge of running the zoo.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Bengal tiger is an endangered species, with fewer than 4,000 still in the wild -- mostly in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan.

Varieties

Meet the Artemis Crew in NASA's First Astronaut Mission to the Moon in More than a Half-century

Artemis 2 crew members, from left, Mission Spc. Jeremy Hansen, of Canada, Mission Spc. Christina Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover pose for a photo after the crew’s arrival at the Kennedy Space Center Friday, March 27, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)
Artemis 2 crew members, from left, Mission Spc. Jeremy Hansen, of Canada, Mission Spc. Christina Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover pose for a photo after the crew’s arrival at the Kennedy Space Center Friday, March 27, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)
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Meet the Artemis Crew in NASA's First Astronaut Mission to the Moon in More than a Half-century

Artemis 2 crew members, from left, Mission Spc. Jeremy Hansen, of Canada, Mission Spc. Christina Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover pose for a photo after the crew’s arrival at the Kennedy Space Center Friday, March 27, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)
Artemis 2 crew members, from left, Mission Spc. Jeremy Hansen, of Canada, Mission Spc. Christina Koch, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover pose for a photo after the crew’s arrival at the Kennedy Space Center Friday, March 27, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

The four astronauts making NASA’s next lunar leap bear little resemblance to the Apollo era.

The Americans who blazed the trail to the moon more than half a century ago were white men chosen for their military test pilot experience. This first Artemis crew includes a woman, a person of color and a Canadian, products of a more diversified astronaut corps.

None of them were alive during NASA’s storied Apollo program that sent 24 astronauts to the moon including 12 moonwalkers. They won’t land on the moon this time or even orbit it, but the out-and-back journey will take them thousands of miles deeper into space than even the Apollo astronauts ventured, promising unprecedented views of the lunar far side, The AP news reported.

Here’s a look at the Artemis astronauts whose mission aims to pave the path for future moon landings:

Commander Reid Wiseman Leading the nearly 10-day mission is a widower who considers solo parenting — not rocketing to the moon — his biggest and most rewarding challenge.

Wiseman, 50, a retired Navy captain from Baltimore, was serving as NASA’s chief astronaut when asked three years ago to lead humanity’s first lunar trip since 1972. His wife Carroll’s death from cancer in 2020 gave him pause.

He’d spent more than five months at the International Space Station in 2014, and his two teenage daughters, especially the older one, had “zero interest” in him launching again.

“We talked about it and I said, ‘Look, of all the people on planet Earth right now, there are four people that are in a position to go fly around the moon,” he said. “I cannot say no to that opportunity.”

The next day, homemade moon cupcakes awaited him, along with his daughters' support. The toughest part isn’t leaving them — “it's the stress that I’m putting on them,” he said.

Open with his daughters about everything, he recently told them where he keeps his will.

Pilot Victor Glover As one of NASA’s few Black astronauts, Glover sees his presence on the mission as “a force for good.”

The 49-year-old Navy captain and former combat pilot from Pomona, California, makes it a habit to listen to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon” and Marvin Gaye’s “Make Me Wanna Holler” from the white-dominated Apollo era.

“I listen to those for perspective,” he said. “It captures what we did well, what we did poorly.”

The ability for him now to offer hope to others is “an amazing blessing and a privilege.” Despite having one spaceflight behind him — an early SpaceX crew run to the International Space Station — he finds himself in new personal territory. His four daughters are in their late teens and early 20s, “and I spend as an much time and thought preparing them as NASA does preparing me.”

He’s hyper-focused on running “our best race so that we can hand the baton off to the next leg” — a 2027 practice docking mission in orbit around Earth between an Orion crew capsule and one or two lunar landers. The all-important moon landing would follow in 2028 with yet another set of astronauts.

Mission specialist Christina Koch The last time Koch blasted into space, she was gone almost a year, so she’s not sweating a quick trip to the moon and back.

The 47-year-old electrical engineer from Jacksonville, North Carolina, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman — 328 days. She took part in the first all-female spacewalk during her lengthy stay at the space station in 2019.

More than any one individual, “it’s about celebrating the fact that we’ve arrived to this place in history” where women can fly to the moon, she said.

Before she got called up by NASA, Koch spent a year at a South Pole research station. Between that and her space stint, she feels she's “inoculated” most of her family and friends.

“So far, I haven't gotten too many nerves from folks. Maybe my dog, but I've reassured her that it's only 10 days. It's not going to be as long as last time.”

Her and her husband's rescue pooch is named Sadie Lou.

Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen The Canadian fighter pilot and physicist is making his space debut, stressful enough, but also serving as his country's first emissary to the moon.

“Maybe I'm naive, but I don't feel a lot of personal pressure.”

Hansen, 50, grew up on a farm near London, Ontario, before moving to Ingersoll and pursuing a flying career. The Canadian Space Agency selected him as an astronaut in 2009, and he was named to the Artemis crew in 2023.

He realizes only now how much effort it took to send men to the moon during Apollo.

“When I walk out and I look at the moon now, it looks and feels a little bit farther than it used to be,” he said. “I just understand in the details how much harder it is than I thought it was watching videos of it.”

Dangers still loom — something he’s shared with his college-aged son and twin daughters. “The most likely outcome is that we will come back safe. There’s a chance we won’t, and you will be able to move through life even if that happens,” he assured them.