Roberto A. Ferdman

In most other places in the world, crowdsourcing technology is being used to map everyday complications like traffic and weather. Apps like Waze (acquired recently by Google) and Weathermob allow users to help create up-to-the-minute databases of conditions on the ground by merely sharing information about their local commute. But in Lebanon, where violence and armed clashes are increasingly threatening citizens’ daily commutes—thanks partly to the overspill of refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria—it’s being used to map gunfire.

In 2010, Eike Batista announced that he would soon become the world’s richest man, and it didn’t seem particularly hyberbolic. Brazil’s economy was thriving, and investors around the world were lining up to invest in his commodities empire, which consisted of six highly successful public Brazilian companies, including OGX, the country’s second largest oil company, and MMX, one of its largest miners. By 2012, his wealth stood at some $30 billion, making him the seventh-richest man in the world.

Even as its economy slows, China’s investment in real estate and infrastructure has lost little steam. A common problem for developers, though, is that especially in and around major cities plum land parcels are often already occupied. The solution? Evict the residents. Sometimes developers or local governments compensate or relocate those they kick out, usually offering less than the original property’s value. Sometimes they don’t.

While insurance companies in the US, UK and Europe make the bulk of their money covering cars, homes and other material goods, their African counterparts are cashing in on the continent’s custom of hosting pricey funerals.

Argentina’s national statistics bureau, Indec, announced late Thursday (August 15) that the country’s monthly inflation clocked in at 0.9% for the month of July, led by a spike in the cost of leisure and entertainment during vacation season. That brings the official annualized rate—the number anticipated for the full year—to 11.2%.

After months of speculation, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto finally laid out his plan to overhaul the country’s struggling energy sector on Monday (Aug. 12). The question had been whether or not he would allow for privatization of the oil industry. And he answered it—sort of.

One of the most powerful functions of a country’s central bank is its ability to set interest rates at which it lends money to a handful of qualified banks. Such monetary policy is a principal tool for steering a country’s economy, and central banks around the world rely on a committee to deliberate over and collectively decide on where to set interest rates. Except for New Zealand, that is.

Brazil’s Arisvaldo de Campos Pires is like any other maximum security penitentiary—inmates’ crimes range from armed robbery to murder, and armed guards patrol almost every inch of the prison. Except there’s one small quirk: many of the facility’s prisoners are becoming professional knitters.

Update (Aug. 22): This article was originally headlined “Europe’s tallest residential building has no elevators.” It appears that we, like many other media outlets (but that’s no excuse), got it wrong. The InTempo building does have elevators—and elevator shafts—adequate for its full 47 stories. As the blog Microsiervos explains (link in Spanish), all the numerous reports of the supposed fiasco trace back to an article in El País (Spanish), which says, citing anonymous sources, that on the architects’ original plans, rooms for housing the elevator motors on the roof of the building weren’t big enough. If this was true, it has apparently been fixed since. At least one blogger has taken the elevator up to the 45th floor (Spanish) and posted photos. We apologize to InTempo for the error.

What was supposed to be a good year for champagne is turning out to be a great year. France’s agriculture ministry revealed Thursday (Aug. 8) that champagne production, which was supposed to increase by 11% this year, is actually slated to jump by a whopping 56% compared to 2012.

Rhino horns in Vietnam, elephant tusks in Africa, turtles in Thailand, and drugs and dirty money just about everywhere: these are but a few of the laundry list of illegal goods being trafficked across country borders these days.

The numbers: Not great. Nestlé, the world’s biggest food group, reported a 3.7% rise in net income (pdf) for the first half of 2013 as against the same period last year. Total revenue rose 5.3% from a year earlier, to $49.1 billion, slightly lower than analyst forecasts of $49.5 billion. The company lowered its full year forecast to around 5% sales growth, from its original target of 5-6%.

When Warren Buffett burst onto the Twitter scene back in May, the social-media world went berserk. In less than 30 minutes, Buffett amassed over 30,000 followers; and despite having tweeted only twice since, he already has more than half a million. But Buffett’s willingness to interact with social media is a far cry from the CEO norm.

Brazil’s national statistics bureau, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), said the country’s CPI index—used to measure inflation—fell to 6.27% from 6.7% last month, in a report out this morning. The biggest drops came in food and beverages, clothing and transportation prices, which have been a source of public unrest over the past couple months.

Some 20 kilometers (12 miles) outside of Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, a crew of 20 excavation experts are feverishly digging for gold—some 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) of it, thought to be worth roughly $453 million. The gold, they believe, was buried over 150 years ago.

The time has nearly come for Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to unveil his plan to reform Mexico’s heavily protected energy sector. But is Mexico ready?

Bribery is a serious problem in Brazil. Convictions for the crime have jumped 30% in the last five years, and a record 1,600 people, including 100 public officials, were arrested last year on counts of illegal money-giving. But Brazil is looking to curb that—at least at the corporate level.

When Argentina’s statistics bureau (Indec) announced that the country’s GDP expanded by 3% in the first quarter of 2013, opposition leaders were livid. The number, which few outside of president Cristina Kirchner’s government believed, came during a stretch of severe inflationary pressures and poor economic activity. The country’s first quarter trade surplus shrank by $688 million, and the central bank lost $2.84 billion in international reserves in the first quarter of 2013. In response, several Argentina opposition groups joined forces to come up with their own numbers.

Earlier this summer, heavy floods displaced tens of thousands of people in central Europe. The flooding was particularly severe in parts of eastern and southern Germany, where thousands of homes were destroyed. Out on the streets, many towns and cities are still working to recover from the damage. But behind the the scenes, there’s a different kind of repairing going on: a team of forensic scientists is reconstructing more than 100,000 euro banknotes worth more than $4 million that were damaged in the floods.

Like many other countries in the Latin America, Uruguay is considering legalizing marijuana. But its government isn’t just looking to save money on police enforcement or drive down marijuana prices through legal competition. It wants to make marijuana one of its many state-run monopolies.

The country that helped propel record growth in Latin America is threatening to undo it.

Chile, the world’s largest copper producer and exporter, boosted its copper output by 6.5% year-on-year in June. That’s a welcome sign for a country as dependent on its mining sector as Chile. (Mining accounts for 15% of Chile’s economic output.) But while the numbers for June were better than expected, few think Chile’s copper production will continue growing as fast as it has in recent months.

This item has been corrected.

Pope Francis’s compassionate stance toward gay priests—”Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?” he said last night—is perhaps his most surprising statement to date. But since taking over the papacy in March, Francis has repeatedly made clear that he is not a typical modern pope. Here are some other progressive comments he has made.