SAO PAULO (AP) — The medals were billed as the most sustainable ever produced. To match the festive spirit of South America’s first Olympics, officials from Brazil, the host country for the 2016 games ...

From above, the Amazon rainforest appears as a dense, emerald-green paradise, but as the plane descends, the damaged landscape becomes visible with its gaping wounds carved by illegal gold mining.

New film documents a shadow world: the illegal gold mines of the Peruvian Amazon. When Sarah duPont first visited the Peruvian Amazon rainforest in the summer of 1999, it was a different place than it ...

As gold prices have skyrocketed, a boom in mining across the Amazon Basin has flourished, leaving a deep environmental footprint. Illegal mining has become one of the main drivers of deforestation in ...

Following years of escalating violence by illicit mining operations in the Amazon, Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Safety has sent federal police, a joint military-civilian unit, environmental ...

Río Huepetuhe gold mine in Peru in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler The extent of gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon has surged 400 percent since 1999 due to rocketing gold prices, ...

To match the festive spirit of South America's first Olympics, officials from Brazil, the host country for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, boasted that the medals hung around the necks of athletes ...