When Barack Obama took his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, for a stroll around the Martin Luther King memorial on June 29th, the sky over Washington was cloudless. There was no hint, either, of the heavy weather caused by revelations two years ago that American spooks had spied on Ms Rousseff's e-mail. She reacted by calling off a state visit, plunging relations into a wintry gloom. Nobody expects that upset to be forgotten, but the rapport between the presidents (pictured, with a ranger) has warmed. So too have political ties, including in sensitive areas such as climate-change diplomacy. The leaders exchanged vows to generate 20％ of their countries' electricity from renewable sources (other than hydro-power) by 2030. For Brazil, some recent emollience in American foreign policy smoothed the path to reconciliation: it felt easier to make up with an American president who is exchanging embassies with Cuba (see page 24) and pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.
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