From Our Own Correspondent

Journalists in Africa like to play a game where they take language often used in Western reports on African stories ("armed militias", "strongmen", "rigged elections") and apply it to the US. This has become more tempting, and yielding more ironies, recently. There is a further similarity in South Africa: could ex-president Jacob Zuma be a "proto-Trump"? Andrew Harding teases out the parallels. China, too, is watching the US elections closely. And opinions are quite divided. Not, however, between those who are pro-Trump and pro-Biden, but between those who are pro- or anti-Trump. And, as Stephen McDonell reports, the pro-Trump camp unites some unlikely bedfellows, from Hong Kong activists and Falun Gong believers to Communist party leaders. In Brazil, fires are burning again in the Amazon, to turn land that's been deforested into pasture. Jair Bolsonaro's government supports turning the rainforest into ranches. But with the Pantanal wetlands badly affected this year too, what does this mean for the future o