The Amazon is becoming a desert

TicToc Tonight

Greetings, TicToc readers! End the day smarter with our Thursday debrief:

Parkland students' bold gun proposal
Sarah Sanders heading to Fox News
Mural depicts Lady Liberty's ICE arrest

But first...

The crushing loss of biodiversity

What's happening? The Brazilian government is pushing back against global criticism of its environmental policies as a record number of fires rip through the Amazon rainforest.

How? Environment Minister Ricardo Salles announced the creation of an Amazon task force of police, armed forces, indigenous, farming and mining groups in response to "a growing deterioration of Brazil's preservationist image."

But also, Bolsonaro's senior foreign policy adviser Filipe G. Martins criticized the media's "irresponsible disregard for basic data" and defended Brazil's record on deforestation.

What Bolsonaro said: A day after he had baselessly accused foreign NGOs of lighting fires, he suggested Brazil can't afford to fight them: "There aren't the resources. The chaos has arrived."

What are the potential impacts? Deforestation has already killed off 20% of the Amazon, and the fires during its dry season could spell catastrophe for its rich biodiversity: "We're losing species we don't even know exist," said a representative from Greenpeace Brasil.

Highly quotable

"Returning to nature." The first divers in 14 years to reach the site of wreckage from the Titanic found something shocking: It's rapidly decaying due to more than a century's worth of salt corrosion and metal-eating bacteria.

"Coordinate influence operations." Google said it disabled 210 YouTube channels this week that spread disinformation about the Hong Kong protests, following similar moves by Facebook and Twitter.

"Something clever." French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Angela Merkel's 30-day Brexit challenge for U.K. PM Boris Johnson to find a way forward on the Irish border question, describing the backstop as "indispensable."

$ignificant figures

$16.3 trillion. The cost of Bernie Sanders's newly unveiled climate change plan that calls for the U.S. to reach 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030.

$120 million: How much Eminem's music publisher is seeking in a lawsuit against Spotify over copyright infringement for allegedly streaming hundreds of the rapper's songs billions of times without a license.

20 hours: The duration of test flights Qantas Airways will run to Sydney from New York and London to see how the human body holds up before commercial flights start.

Wait, what?

Pepe for the people. If you ask the Anti-Defamation League, Pepe the frog is a hate symbol. But in Hong Kong, the alt-right cartoon has emerged as an unofficial mascot, standing in as an anti-authoritarian icon.