William deBuys writes:  Last month China announced that it would ban ivory imports for a year, while it “evaluates” the effectiveness of the ban in reducing internal demand for ivory carvings on the current slaughter of approximately 100 African elephants per day. The promise, however, rings hollow following a report in November (hotly denied by China) that Chinese diplomats used President Xi Jinping’s presidential plane to smuggle thousands of pounds of poached elephant tusks out of Tanzania.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has launched its own well-meaning but distinctly inadequate initiative to curb the trade. Even if you missed the roll-out of that policy, you probably know that current trends are leading us toward a planetary animal dystopia, a most un-Disneyesque world in which the great forests and savannahs of the planet will bid farewell to the species earlier generations referred to as their “royalty.” No more King of the Jungle, while Dorothy’s “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” will truly be over the rainbow. And that’s just for starters.

The even grimmer news that rarely makes the headlines is that the lesser subjects of that old royalty are vanishing, too. Though largely unacknowledged, the current war is far redder in tooth and claw than anything nature has to offer. It threatens not just charismatic species like elephants, gibbons, and rhinos, but countless others with permanent oblivion.   Illegal Traffic in Wildlife

Paolo Prada writes: Close to a million demonstrators marched in cities and towns across Brazil on Sunday to protest a sluggish economy, rising prices and corruption – and to call for the impeachment of left-wing President Dilma Rousseff.

The protests in the continent-sized country come as Brazil struggles to overcome economic and political malaise and pick up the pieces of a boom that crumbled about the time Rousseff took office in 2011.

Rousseff, now early into her second four-year term, is unlikely to face the impeachment proceedings called for by many opponents. A fifth year of economic stagnation and a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at state-run energy company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, has fueled their anger.

But for a president narrowly re-elected just five months ago, the protests are a sign of a polarized country increasingly unhappy with its leadership, especially as the hard-won gains of the recent boom begin to succumb to an economic slowdown.

The unexpectedly large demonstrations also promise to embolden opposition parties and restive allies, including the leaders of both houses of Congress, who are nominally part of Rousseff’s ruling coalition, but nonetheless are hindering efforts to pass reforms intended to jump-start the economy.

In a press conference Sunday night, two members of Rousseff’s cabinet recognized the rights of protesters, but downplayed the importance of the demonstrations, saying they were expressions of discontent by those defeated at the polls.

They also sought to discredit those who suggest impeachment. Miguel Rossetto, one of Rousseff’s top aides, criticized what he called the “intolerance” of those opponents and likened their demands to coup efforts.

In a statement posted online Sunday, Aecio Neves, a centrist who was defeated by Rousseff in October, said the demonstrations marked a day when Brazilians “went to the streets to reunite with their virtues, their values and also with their dreams.”

Sunday’s gatherings were mostly calm, with little of the violence that tarnished a wave of massive demonstrations in 2013, when Brazilians protested billions of dollars of spending, even as the economy faltered, to host the 2014 World Cup.

But if less vehement, the rallies Sunday possibly matched those of two years ago in scale. Estimates for the size of the crowds differed, but most calculations suggested roughly a million protesters nationwide.

In Sao Paulo alone, state police in late afternoon said that a million had turned out to march along skyscraper-lined Avenida Paulista, the heart of Brazil’s financial capital and biggest city. A private pollster later said it was only 210,000.

Earlier, more than 10,000 residents of Rio de Janeiro poured onto the Copacabana waterfront. Most dressed in the blue, green and yellow of Brazil’s flag. Crowds sang the national anthem and shouted “Dilma, out!”

“People feel betrayed, said Diogo Ortiz, a 32-year-old advertising worker, who called the Petrobras scandal “a national and international disgrace.”

Many protesters hail from the country’s wealthier classes, who traditionally have opposed the ruling Workers’ Party.

Underscoring class divisions, marchers said Rousseff and the ruling party have instigated the polarization by pitting their traditional supporters, the recipients of popular social welfare programs, against the rest of Brazil.

The party “is inciting the people against the people,” said Helena Alameda Prado Bastos, a 61-year-old editor in Sao Paulo.

The Workers’ Party, opponents complain, for too long ignored critiques that its heavy spending, subsidized lending, protectionist policies and corruption have sapped the vitality that led to average growth exceeding 4 percent during the decade before she took office.

Although the party also presided over those good years, during two terms of Rousseff’s predecessor, economists say she failed to adjust policies when a global commodities boom ended and sapped once-soaring export revenue.

Rousseff herself has not been accused of wrongdoing in the corruption probe, but many blame her for lax oversight of Petrobras, especially during years she served as the company’s chairwoman, prior to becoming president.

The ongoing scandal stems from a scheme through which prosecutors say Petrobras contractors paid kickbacks to corrupt executives and some Workers’ Party members.

So grim are Brazil’s economic prospects that many economists expect it to slip into recession. Investors, meanwhile, fear the country could lose its investment-grade status.

Inflation is running at a 10-year high, while Brazil’s currency, the real, has lost over 22 percent of its value against the dollar this year.

Benamin Kam Lin writes: The chairman of one of China’s top state-owned automakers, FAW Group Corp, and a senior provincial official are being investigated for “violating party discipline”, the Communist Party said on Sunday, employing its usual euphemism for corruption.

After taking over as party and military chief in late 2012, President Xi Jinping declared war on corruption at all levels in China, vowing to go after powerful “tigers” and lowly “flies”. Scores of senior officials have been brought down by the campaign, including former security tzar Zhou Yongkang.

Xu Jianyi, 61, chairman of state-owned China FAW Group Corp, and Qiu He, 58, deputy head of the party in southwestern Yunnan province, are being investigated for “serious violation of (party) discipline and laws”, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on its website. It gave no further details.

FAW Group Corp, which counts Faw Car Co Ltd as one of its units, is one of China’s biggest automakers which has joint ventures with Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors in China.

Faw Car shares fell as much as 5.6 percent to more than a two-week low. The news also hit its other units with Tianjin FAW Xiali Automobile Co Ltd down as much as 3.6 pct and Changchun Faway Automobile Components Co Ltd declining as much as 2.2 pct.

Both Xu and Qiu hold a rank equivalent to a cabinet vice minister.

Qiu is well-known in China for ambitious projects and his autocratic and eccentric management style, demanding discipline from his staff. Once seen as a political rising star, his style won both praise and criticism.

Foreign automakers seeking to manufacture cars in China must form joint ventures with domestic partners and are restricted to 50 percent ownership limits, an arrangement generally seen as the cost of doing business in the world’s largest car market.

Such requirements expose companies to unknown risks at their JV partners and extend beyond the auto sector. Founder Securities, a joint venture partner of Credit Suisse AG, had assets frozen after accusations of embezzlement and its chairman later disappeared.

Caixin, a weekly magazine, said Qiu is being investigated for urban construction projects in Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan, when he was the city’s party boss from 2007 to 2011.

China’s top prosecutor told the annual full session of parliament that prosecutors investigated 4,040 civil servants at the county level or above in 2014, or an average of 11 a day. The 11-day meeting ended on Sunday.