- Why Chile’s deadly wildfires didn’t touch the neighborhood of Botania The Washington Post
- Chile’s wildfire death toll rises above 130 » Yale Climate Connections Yale Climate Connections
- Chilean Church Seeks ‘Spiritual Reconstruction’ After Deadly Fires | News & Reporting ChristianityToday.com
- Wildfires that are turning neighborhoods to ash are likely Chile’s deadliest on record, UN agency says CNN
- The Fingerprints on Chile’s Fires and California Floods: El Niño and Warming The New York Times
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- Child victims are the forgotten voices of Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 to 1990 The Associated Press
- Five decades on, Chile still grapples with legacy of Pinochet dictatorship • FRANCE 24 English FRANCE 24 English
- Opinion: Allende’s dream and Pinochet’s coup are not Chile’s past. They are its present The Globe and Mail
- ‘Like a phantom’: Chile grapples with ghosts of the disappeared Al Jazeera English
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Scientists unearth megaraptors in Chile’s Patagonia
Scientists in Chile’s Patagonia region are unearthing the southernmost dinosaur fossils recorded outside Antarctica, including remains of megaraptors that would have dominated the area’s food chain before their mass extinction.
Fossils of megaraptors, a carnivorous dinosaur that inhabited parts of South America during the Cretaceous period some 70 million years ago, were found in sizes up to 10 meters long, according to the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
“We were missing a piece,” Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters. “We knew where there were large mammals, there would also be large carnivores, but we hadn’t found them yet.”
The remains, recovered from Chile’s far south Rio de las Chinas Valley in the Magallanes Basin between 2016 and 2020, also include some unusual remains of unenlagia, velociraptor-like dinosaurs which likely lived covered in feathers.
The specimens, according to University of Chile researcher Jared Amudeo, had some characteristics not present in Argentine or Brazilian counterparts.
“It could be a new species, which is very likely, or belong to another family of dinosaurs that are closely related,” he said, adding more conclusive evidence is needed.
The studies also shed more light on the conditions of the meteorite impact on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that may have triggered the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago.
INACH’s Leppe pointed to a sharp drop in temperatures over present-day Patagonia and waves of intense cold lasting up to several thousand years, in contrast to the extremely warm climate that prevailed for much of the Cretaceous period.
“The enormous variation we are seeing, the biological diversity, was also responding to very powerful environmental stimuli,” Leppe said.
“This world was already in crisis before (the meteorite) and this is evidenced in the rocks of the Rio de las Chinas Valley,” he said.
Scientists unearth megaraptors, feathered dinosaur fossils in Chile’s Patagonia
Jan 16 (Reuters) – Scientists in Chile’s Patagonia region are unearthing the southernmost dinosaur fossils recorded outside Antarctica, including remains of megaraptors that would have dominated the area’s food chain before their mass extinction.
Fossils of megaraptors, a carnivorous dinosaur that inhabited parts of South America during the Cretaceous period some 70 million years ago, were found in sizes up to 10 meters long, according to the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
“We were missing a piece,” Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters. “We knew where there were large mammals, there would also be large carnivores, but we hadn’t found them yet.”
The remains, recovered from Chile’s far south Rio de las Chinas Valley in the Magallanes Basin between 2016 and 2020, also include some unusual remains of unenlagia, velociraptor-like dinosaurs which likely lived covered in feathers.
The specimens, according to University of Chile researcher Jared Amudeo, had some characteristics not present in Argentine or Brazilian counterparts.
[1/5] A man works at the area where scientists discovered megaraptor fossils at ‘Guido’ hill in the Chilean Patagonia area, close to Torres del Paine park, in Magallanes and Antarctic region, Chile in this undated handout photo provided by the Instituto Chileno Antartico on January 16, 2023. Instituto Chileno Antartico/Handout via REUTERS
“It could be a new species, which is very likely, or belong to another family of dinosaurs that are closely related,” he said, adding more conclusive evidence is needed.
The studies also shed more light on the conditions of the meteorite impact on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that may have triggered the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago.
INACH’s Leppe pointed to a sharp drop in temperatures over present-day Patagonia and waves of intense cold lasting up to several thousand years, in contrast to the extremely warm climate that prevailed for much of the Cretaceous period.
“The enormous variation we are seeing, the biological diversity, was also responding to very powerful environmental stimuli,” Leppe said.
“This world was already in crisis before (the meteorite) and this is evidenced in the rocks of the Rio de las Chinas Valley,” he said.
Reporting by Marion Giraldo; Writing by Sarah Morland, Editing by Alistair Bell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Scientists unearth megaraptors, feathered dinosaur fossils in Chile’s Patagonia
By Marion Giraldo
(Reuters) – Scientists in Chile’s Patagonia region are unearthing the southernmost dinosaur fossils recorded outside Antarctica, including remains of megaraptors that would have dominated the area’s food chain before their mass extinction.
Fossils of megaraptors, a carnivorous dinosaur that inhabited parts of South America during the Cretaceous period some 70 million years ago, were found in sizes up to 10 meters long, according to the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
“We were missing a piece,” Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters. “We knew where there were large mammals, there would also be large carnivores, but we hadn’t found them yet.”
The remains, recovered from Chile’s far south Rio de las Chinas Valley in the Magallanes Basin between 2016 and 2020, also include some unusual remains of unenlagia, velociraptor-like dinosaurs which likely lived covered in feathers.
The specimens, according to University of Chile researcher Jared Amudeo, had some characteristics not present in Argentine or Brazilian counterparts.
“It could be a new species, which is very likely, or belong to another family of dinosaurs that are closely related,” he said, adding more conclusive evidence is needed.
The studies also shed more light on the conditions of the meteorite impact on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that may have triggered the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago.
INACH’s Leppe pointed to a sharp drop in temperatures over present-day Patagonia and waves of intense cold lasting up to several thousand years, in contrast to the extremely warm climate that prevailed for much of the Cretaceous period.
“The enormous variation we are seeing, the biological diversity, was also responding to very powerful environmental stimuli,” Leppe said.
“This world was already in crisis before (the meteorite) and this is evidenced in the rocks of the Rio de las Chinas Valley,” he said.
(Reporting by Marion Giraldo; Writing by Sarah Morland, Editing by Alistair Bell)
In possible sign for US, Chile’s flu hospitalizations were highest in three years — but vaccine was 49% effective against hospitalization
CNN
—
In a possible warning sign for the US and other Northern Hemisphere countries, Chile’s 2022 flu season started much earlier than usual and brought more hospitalizations than during the pandemic, but the effectiveness of the vaccine against hospitalization was estimated to be almost 50%, according to a new study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers look to the Southern Hemisphere when trying to forecast what the North American flu season might look like, and they’ve noted that the southern season has been particularly bad this year.
I
n the study, published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers found that flu numbers in Chile were at epidemic levels in the first six weeks of the year – much earlier than in 2017, 2018 or 2019, when the flu season began in April or May. This year’s numbers dipped in weeks seven through 17 before rising to epidemic levels again in May and peaking in June.
Chile’s flu hospitalization rates were “substantially higher” this year than in 2020 and 2021, the researchers say. Those pandemic years were marked by especially low numbers of viral illnesses around the world because of Covid-19 mitigation measures, and experts have warned that the lifting of those measures – and reduced exposure to viruses during the pandemic – will bring infection numbers back up.
However, compared with the prepandemic years of 2017-19, this year’s flu hospitalization rates in Chile were “substantially lower.” This is partly credited to the vaccination of more than 92% of residents who were prioritized because of their age or underlying medical conditions, a group that made up 41% of the total population.
The flu vaccine used in Chile, which included a match for the dominant A(H3N2) virus, was found to be 49% effective at preventing hospitalization. The shot used in the Northern Hemisphere includes the same virus clade and antigen as the Southern Hemisphere vaccine, the researchers say, so it may be similarly effective if the same virus dominates.
Flu vaccination can prevent infection, and among those who still become sick with flu, vaccination can reduce the severity of illness and risk of hospitalization.
The researchers say their findings should reinforce the need to prepare for an “atypical season,” and they urge health officials to encourage everyone to get vaccinated and avoid close contact with people who are sick.
According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, flu activity has already been on the rise in the US about a month earlier than usual. Overall respiratory illness activity was “very high” in Washington, DC, and “high” in seven states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
More than 4% of laboratory tests were positive for flu in the second week of October, more than doubling over the past two weeks, but not yet at last year’s peak positivity rate. Hospitalizations for flu are also ticking up, but are also not yet at last year’s peak.
So far, US flu vaccination rates are lower than they’ve been at this point in the season for the past few years – about 116 million doses of flu vaccine have been distributed, compared with 129 million at this point last year and 141 million in 2021.
Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center, told CNN on Thursday that people should get vaccinated against Covid-19 and flu and try to prevent any respiratory illness, especially while hospitalizations are rising due to RSV and other viruses.
“Making sure that your kids and anyone over six months of age in your family are getting their flu vaccines this year is even more important because we haven’t seen a lot of influenza the last couple of years, and so everyone’s going into this season with less immunity, less protection from prior infections,” Rajapakse said.
Chile’s president reveals changes to senior team after constitution failure | Chile
Two days after Chileans emphatically rejected a new constitution, president Gabriel Boric has reshuffled his cabinet as he attempts to ride out a fresh period of uncertainty.
On Sunday, 62% of Chileans voted against a progressive new constitution which would have replaced the current document drafted under Gen Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in a historic plebiscite.
The result was a shattering blow to Boric, 36, and his youthful generation of leftist leaders. As the fallout commences, Chile is gripped by uncertainty and political wrangling as the country’s future comes under the microscope.
“This is one of the most difficult moments I have had to face politically,” the president said on Tuesday as he unveiled changes to his senior team.
Six new ministers were appointed, including the presidency’s secretary-general, and ministers for energy, health, science and social development.
The changes maintain the female majority in Boric’s cabinet, but tip the balance towards the more moderate democratic socialist bloc – and away from the young generation of politicians and former students leaders from among whom Boric emerged to become Chile’s youngest ever president in December’s election.
Carolina Tohá, a respected former mayor of Santiago, has replaced interior minister Izkia Siches, who became the first woman to hold the post when Boric took power in March.
Tohá is a prominent figure in the centre-left Party for Democracy, one of the groups which formed the broadly centrist coalition to guide Chile through its delicate transition to democracy in the 1990s and 2000s.
“After the plebiscite result, it is clear that these young politicians need the help of the older generation to improve their relationship with the opposition,” said Miguel Ángel López, an academic at the University of Chile’s faculty of government.
“Boric still has the opportunity to implement changes, but they will not be framed in the radical way in which his agenda had originally described them.”
The 1980 constitution remains in force while leaders seek consensus on the route.
The coordinators of the successful “reject” campaign have called for a new constitutional process, but that would require a four-sevenths majority to be reached in both houses of Chile’s congress before a new convention can be elected to draft a new proposal.
Boric has reiterated his commitment to continuing efforts at constitutional reform, and invited the leaders of the country’s political parties to a meeting at La Moneda on Tuesday.
The proposed constitution, which now has no legal standing, was drawn up over a year of hard-fought negotiations by a gender-equal convention and presented in July.
It enshrined gender parity and reproductive rights, promised action on climate change, and recognised Chile’s Indigenous peoples constitutionally for the first time in the country’s history.
But these values are not guaranteed to be carried forward.
“None of these elements are guaranteed to be part of a new constitutional process,” said Tania Busch Venthur, a constitutional expert at Andrés Bello University in Santiago.
“The only thing we know for sure at the moment is that any changes will have to be made according to the rules set out by the 1980 constitution, and they will depend on the will of politicians.”
The campaign against the constitutional proposal was able to coalesce widespread support by casting doubt on its shakeup of the political and judicial systems, and criticised some of the rights it promised Chileans.
More than 13 million people turned out vote on Sunday as part of an exemplary electoral process, reinforcing the widespread dissatisfaction with the proposal drafted by the convention.
Yet in October 2020, 78% of Chileans voted in favour of a new constitution.
Although that enthusiasm appears to have evaporated, many Chileans remain in favour of a new constitution – just not the proposal they were offered in Sunday’s plebiscite.
It now falls upon Boric to guide Chile through a new chapter in a turbulent period for the country and reach an agreement that can win the support of society at large.
Chile’s Constitutional Assembly presents proposal for new constitution to Chilean president
Chileans will decide whether to adopt or reject the constitution in a nationwide plebiscite on September 4.
“I know, and all of Chile is conscious that this hasn’t been easy. And it’s that, dear compatriots, democracy isn’t easy,” Boric said after receiving a copy of the draft document.
“Regardless of the legitimate differences that may exist regarding the content of the text which will be debated in the next months, there is something that all Chileans have to be proud about — that in the moment of the most profound political, institutional and social crisis that our homeland has lived through in decades, Chileans opted for more democracy, not less,” he said.
The proposed constitution marks a departure from country’s existing constitution, which was written under the influence of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman´s neoliberal model. Despite many amendments, a majority of Chileans blame it for the country´s stark inequalities.
The proposed new constitution emphasizes social and ecological factors, enshrines the rights of Chile’s indigenous peoples and envisages a new national healthcare system.
The process towards potentially replacing the constitution inherited from the late General Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled the country from 1973 to 1990, was sparked by a metro fare increase three years ago.
Massive protests and riots throughout the country in the fall of 2019 forced then-president Sebastián Piñera to agree to a referendum on rewriting the constitution.
In October 2020, more than 78% of Chilean voters approved the constitutional change and in June 2021, they cast their ballots again to pick the members for a constituent assembly.
The center-left and right-wing coalitions that have shared power since the return to democracy in 1990 both took a serious blow, obtaining only 16% and 24% of seats in the assembly respectively.
Independents and newcomers from left-wing political parties and social movements in contrast had their hour of glory, gathering 60% of the votes.
Now the country is preparing to vote on the constitution they drew up, which could ring in widespread changes in Chilean society.
Meet ‘Fiona’ the pregnant ichthyosaur, Chile’s oldest marine reptile mom
In the shadow of a massive Patagonian glacier, paleontologists have unearthed a rare fossil find: an ancient marine reptile that died while pregnant. This dolphin-like creature, called an ichthyosaur, is the first of its kind to be discovered in Chile, where it was retrieved from a dig site near the Tyndall Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.
“This site is really unique, because it’s capturing a time period in Earth’s history where we don’t have a very good fossil record for marine reptiles,” Erin Maxwell, an ichthyosaur specialist and curator of marine reptiles at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany who helped excavate the fossil, told Live Science.
Ichthyosaurs (which translates to “fish lizards”) dominated the seas beginning in the early Triassic period, about 251 million years ago, and they lived concurrently with dinosaurs until about 95 million years ago, according to the University of California Berkeley. These formidable marine reptiles mostly ate ancient, hard-shelled squid relatives, as well as some types of fish and smaller ichthyosaurs. The smallest ichthyosaur species grew to measure around 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) long, while the largest reached nearly 69 feet (21 meters) from snout to tail, according to National Geographic.
At 13 feet (4 meters) long, the Tyndall ichthyosaur is a medium-sized specimen that dates to around 129 to 139 million years ago, in the early part of the Cretaceous period (about 145 million to 66 million years ago).
Related: Image gallery: Ancient monsters of the sea
The fossil came to Maxwell’s attention when it was first found in 2009 by paleontologist Judith Pardo-Pérez, who joined Maxwell’s research group in Stuttgart shortly after the fossil’s discovery. Pardo-Pérez — now a researcher at the GAIA Antarctic Research Center at the University of Magallanes (UMAG) in Punta Arenas, Chile — and her colleagues who found the ichthyosaur specimen dubbed it “Fiona” after actress Cameron Diaz’s ogre character in the movie “Shrek” (Dreamworks, 2001), because the fossil’s preservative oxide coating turned it green, like its plucky ogre namesake.
But it took 13 years for scientists to finally excavate and study Fiona’s remains, which Maxwell said isn’t uncommon.
“There is often a very large lag between discovery of the fossil and study of the fossil,” Maxwell explained In this case, the delay was partly due to location: the Tyndall Glacier is extremely remote, and so every fossil from the site — including 23 other ichthyosaurs that were discovered alongside Fiona — had to be carefully airlifted out by helicopter after excavation. Sadly, many more fossils were left behind. “We have almost a hundred ichthyosaurs in the Tyndall Glacier fossil deposit and many of them, unfortunately, will never be excavated, due to the difficulty of access, being in risk areas (cliff edge), and lack of funds,” Pardo-Pérez said in a statement.
Specimens like Fiona, which fossilized during pregnancy, are especially useful for paleontologists because they offer a glimpse of multiple stages in the life cycle of that species. “We can tell, for instance, how many embryos those species might have had, and how large they were at birth,” Maxwell said. The first known pregnant ichthyosaur fossil, discovered in 1749 and scientifically described in 1842, confirmed that ichthyosaurs produce live young rather than laying eggs like most modern reptiles do, she added.
Maxwell hopes that the find will help drum up enthusiasm for South American paleontology, which has historically been overlooked in favor of North American, Russian, Chinese, and Western European sites. “We really only have a picture of what’s going on in half the globe for the Mesozoic [252 million to 66 million years ago],” she said. “So these finds are very, very important to help bring a global perspective to our understanding of Cretaceous oceans.”
Originally published on Live Science.
Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier | Chile
Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier.
The 35-year-old leftwing former student leader won 56% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, cruising past his ultra-conservative opponent, José Antonio Kast, who took 44.2%.
The triumph of Boric, who belongs to a generation deeply opposed to the extreme economic model bequeathed to Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship, comes two years after a rise in metro fares triggered huge protests and demands for drastic changes to the political and economic system.
The president-elect, who will be sworn in on 11 March, said the time had come for a radical overhaul of Chilean society and its economy.
“Men and women of Chile, I accept this mandate humbly and with a tremendous sense of responsibility because we are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said in front of a vast crowd packed into a Santiago boulevard.
“I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year. That is why I want to promise you that I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardise it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people’s daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families.”
Boric said his generation wanted to have their rights respected and not be treated “like consumer goods or a business”, adding the country would no longer allow Chile’s poor to “keep paying the price” of inequality.
He added: “The times ahead will not be easy … Only with social cohesion, refinding ourselves and sharing common ground will we be able to advance towards truly sustainable development – which reaches every Chilean.”
The new premier said he would be “the president of all Chileans … and serve everyone”.
Boric also highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight the climate crisis by blocking a proposed mining project in the world’s largest copper-producing nation.
He also called for an end to Chile’s private pension system – the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by Augusto Pinochet.
Boric thanked each candidate in turn – including Kast – and reinforced his commitment to Chile’s constitutional process, a key consideration for many as the country embarks upon this latest chapter in a turbulent period of transition.
The new administration is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.
It was the first country in South or Central America to break with US dominance during the cold war and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course three years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of rightwing military rule that quickly launched a free-market experiment throughout the region.
Kast won the first-round vote on 21 November by 2 percentage points, but Boric was able to prevail on Sunday by expanding beyond his base in Santiago and attracting voters in rural areas. In the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, Boric trounced Kast by almost 20 points.
Ghosts and old divisions returned to haunt the bitterly fought campaign, during which Kast – who has a history of defending the military dictatorship – sought unsuccessfully to caricature his rival as a puppet of his Communist party allies who would upend Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy.
However, Kast proved unexpectedly magnanimous in defeat. After tweeting a photo of himself congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph”, he visited Boric’s campaign headquarters to see the new president. Kast, a father of nine, also said: “Gabriel Boric can count on us.”
Chile’s outgoing president, the conservative billionaire Sebastián Piñera, held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three-month transition.
In Santiago’s subway, the flashpoint for the 2019 protests, young supporters of Boric waved flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name while jumping and shouting as they headed into the city centre for his victory speech.
“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”
On a sweltering day in Chile, voting was marred by public transport difficulties across the country, although the government claimed it had done everything in its power to guarantee voters could reach polling stations.
Turnout for the vote – in which 1.2 million more people cast their ballots than in the first round – was nearly 56%, the highest level since voting ceased to be mandatory nine years ago.
Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office, and only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.
“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Piñera,” said Cynthia Arnson, the head of the Latin America programme at the Wilson Center thinktank in Washington.
“Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”
The markets reacted less enthusiastically, with Chile’s peso falling and its dollar-denominated stock index slumping 10% on Monday. The peso’s 2% fall left it down nearly 20% since Chileans elected a constitutional assembly dominated by leftwing and independent representatives in May to redraft the country’s market-oriented constitution.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report