On Friday Brazil’s national space research institute INPE released its annual preliminary estimate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The data shows some 7,900 square kilometers (3050 square miles) of rainforest were cleared between August 1, 2017 and July 31, 2018, a 13.7 percent rise of over the 6,947 square kilometers cleared a year earlier. The loss represents an area 134 times the size of Manhattan’s land mass. (Source: Mongabay)