• See the dozens of new species this deep-sea robot just discovered
• Underwater robot discovers more than 100 new species in Chile
• Inspired by llamas, the desert, and Mother Earth, these craftswomen weave sacred textiles

• Chile: Transcendental Meditation improves students' graduation rates - El Mercurio reports on new published study
• Consciousness-Based Education in universities and schools in Chile
• Chile reports on progress in Consciousness-Based Education

• Chile announces unprecedented water rationing plan as drought enters 13th year
• Drought, pesticides take a toll on Chile's crucial honeybees (+AP video)
• Chile's record-breaking drought makes climate change 'very easy' to see

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

See the dozens of new species this deep-sea robot just discovered
24 March 2024 - Alien-looking lobsters, sponges, urchins, sea stars and sea lilies are among the creatures deep-sea explorers found off the coast of Chile. (more)

Underwater robot discovers more than 100 new species in Chile
19 March 2024 - This past January and February, scientists Dr. Javier Sellanes and Dr. Erin Easton led a team of international researchers, organized through the Schmidt Ocean Institute, to a remote region of the southeast Pacific. There they began to uncover strange new worlds thought to be unlike anywhere else. With the crucial help of an underwater robot, over a hundred new species have potentially been discovered. (more)

Inspired by llamas, the desert, and Mother Earth, these craftswomen weave sacred textiles
4 October 2023 - In northern Chile, Teofila Challapa learned to weave surrounded by the hills and sandy roads of the Atacama Desert. ...Among the 3 million Aymaras who live along the borders of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, the Earth is known as 'Pachamama.' Homages and rituals requesting her blessings are intertwined in everyday life. (more)

5,400-year-old 'Great Grandfather' cypress tree may be oldest in world
16 June 2023 - Scientists have discovered a Patagonia cypress tree in Chile known as 'Great Grandfather' or Alerce Milenario is ... an estimated 5,484 years old -- likely taking the award for oldest living tree. (more)

From dump to urban wetland, wildlife returns to river in Chile's capital
2 November 2022 - Birds, fish, and flowers are returning to a river that cuts through Chile's capital after a decade-long effort transformed it from an eyesore filled with wastewater to an urban refuge for nature and wildlife. Mauricio Fabry, head of the regional government's environmental office, said it is working with local districts to officially declare Santiago's Mapocho River an urban wetland, with legal protections to safeguard environmental gains. (more)

Mapuche solstice ceremonies highlight sacred rivers
23 August 2022 - A ceremonial dip in the frigid waters of the fast-flowing Pilmaiquen River in southern Chile was the culmination of the multiday celebration of We Tripantu, one of the most sacred holidays for the Mapuche, the country's largest Indigenous group. Coinciding with the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, the late June 'new year' festivities mark the 'new rising of the sun' and signify 'he change and renovation of life, in all senses,' said Amanda Huichalaf. (more)

Chile's first electric bus factory aims to ease fossil fuel dependency
22 July 2022 - Electric buses built by a Chilean company are now operating in the world's top copper-producing nation, as the country seeks ways to reduce its use of fossil fuels and achieve its environmental goals. Reborn Electric Motor, located about 84 kilometers (52 miles) south of Chile's capital Santiago, aims to produce 200 electric busses a year, enough to keep some 65,000 tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere. (more)

Chile could be home to world's oldest tree, study suggests
26 May 2022 - A lush green forest in southern Chile might be home to the world's oldest tree after a new study found that an ancient alerce tree known as 'great grandfather' could be more than 5,000 years old. Scientists were not able to determine an exact age based on tree rings because of the tree's massive trunk. Jonathan Barichivich, the scientist who led the study, said the sample they extracted and other dating methods suggest the tree is up to 5,484 years old. (more)

On a remote island, a music school flourishes
9 March 2021 - Pianist Mahani Teave returned home to Easter Island to teach children music. (more)

Chile: Batman prowls streets of Santiago delivering food to homeless
18 August 2020 - A stranger disguised as Batman is prowling the streets of Santiago delivering food to the homeless, providing sustenance and light-hearted solace to those in need following months of lockdown in the Chilean capital. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Chile: Transcendental Meditation improves students' graduation rates - El Mercurio reports on new published study
18 June 2013 - An article appearing in El Mercurio, a major newspaper in Chile, several days ago featured a new study published in the journal Education which found greatly improved graduation rates in students who practised Transcendental Meditation. The students attended an urban school in the USA. El Mercurio also interviewed Rafael de la Puente, director of the Transcendental Meditation programme in Chile. (more)

Consciousness-Based Education in universities and schools in Chile
15 October 2007 - Dr Jose Luis Alvarez, Raja of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace, recently reported that two large universities and their associated schools are introducing and very much appreciating the value of Consciousness-Based Education for their students. (more)

Chile reports on progress in Consciousness-Based Education
25 July 2007 - Professor Carmen Montellano, Director of Consciousness-Based Education in Chile, reported on the most recent developments in her nation, during the commencement ceremonies of Maharishi University of Enlightenment. (more)

Consciousness-Based Education in Chile
3 July 2007 - Raja Luis, Raja (Administrator) of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace recently reported on the development of Consciousness-Based Education and rising Invincibility in Chile where a group of 400 Yogic Flyers is required to create national invincibility. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Chile announces unprecedented water rationing plan as drought enters 13th year
12 April 2022 - As a punishing, record-breaking drought enters its 13th year, Chile on Monday [11 April] announced an unprecedented plan to ration water for the capital of Santiago, a city of nearly 6 million. ... the capacity of the Maipo and Mapocho rivers that supply the capital with most of its water and have seen dwindling water levels as the drought drags on. (more)

Drought, pesticides take a toll on Chile's crucial honeybees (+AP video)
24 February 2022 - A drought has gripped Chile for 13 years and the flowers that fed Carlos Peralta's honeybees around the central town of Colina have grown increasingly scarce. ... 'If the bees die, we all die. ... The bee is life,' he said, referring to the insects' key role in pollinating plants both wild and commercial, helping Chile maintain its role as a major fruit exporter. ...Andres Gonzalez, a regional expert on biodiversity for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said a reduced population of pollinating insects 'has to do ... with the use of pesticides and fertilizers, monocultures, droughts caused in great part by climate change and by bad management of (water) resources.' Those factors, along with parasites, have hit bee populations globally. And Chile has seen its exports of honey plunge over the past four or five years -- a decline also aggravated by transport difficulties caused by the pandemic. (more)

Chile's record-breaking drought makes climate change 'very easy' to see
10 August 2021 - A punishing, decade-long drought in Chile has gone from bad to worse due to a scorching July, a month which typically brings midwinter weather showering the capital Santiago in rain and snow. But a lack of precipitation this year has left the towering and typically snowcapped Andes above the city mostly bare, reservoir levels low and farm fields parched. The scenes, government officials say, are clear evidence of global warming. (more)

Decade-long drought in Chile wipes out hives as bees are left without flowers
1 November 2019 - [Beekeeper Pablo Alvarez], secretary of Casablanca's beekeeper association, says he had already lost half his hives by early spring. His story is typical of beekeepers large and small in much of central Chile, where a punishing, decade-long drought is making life difficult for honey bees, according to government officials, beekeepers, and industry experts interviewed by Reuters. (more)

Chile's President announces water crisis team amid 'intense' drought
5 September 2019 - [Chile's] government has declared water shortages in more than 50 communities across three regions of its normally lush central belt so far this year, and an associated agricultural emergency across more than 100. Chile's President Sebastian Pinera on Thursday [5 September] announced the creation of a working group of government agencies, academics, and industry players to tackle the worst drought in 60 years which has spiked this year amid record lows of rainfall. (more)

Chile's Southern Patagonia Ice Field ruptured by climate change: scientists
23 May 2019 - Chile's 12,000 square kilometer (4,633 square mile) Southern Patagonia Ice Field split in two and is likely to continue to fracture amid climate change, according to a team of Chilean scientists who were in the region in March. (more)

Chill waters, arid land: climate change arrives on Easter Island
27 March 2019 - Easter Island is one of the six heritage sites most vulnerable to climate change in the world. The famed island is starting to feel the impact of climate change, from the cooler waters caused by fluctuating global temperatures to a record drought, which has drained the island's wetlands and put its freshwater reserves at risk. Added to this are more intense swells, soil loss due to erosion, booming tourist activity, and the pollution by tons of plastic garbage that revolve around the most remote inhabited island in the world. (more)

Chile battles devastating wildfires as international help pours in
25 January 2017 - The worst wildfires in Chile's modern history are ravaging wide swaths of the country's central-south regions . . . Forest fires are a regular feature of Chile's hot, arid summers, but a nearly decade-long drought combined with historically high temperatures have created tinder-dry conditions. The country last week declared a state of emergency. (more)

Chile's environmental regulator to sanction salmon companies
20 December 2016 - Chile's environmental regulator said on Tuesday that it started a sanctioning process against the local units of two salmon companies, Australis Seafoods and AquaChile, for their handling of a deadly algal bloom. ... After a 'red tide' algal bloom killed all the biomass at two salmon farms operated by AquaChile and one owned by Australis in Chile's southern Los Lagos region, the companies improperly disposed of the dead fish, the SMA said. ... Thousands of local fishermen blamed the salmon industry for a posterior algal bloom, which further decimated local marine life and endangered their livelihoods, after they dumped the dead and decaying salmon into the Pacific Ocean. (more)

Chile's head of Transparency International resigns after 'Panama Papers'
4 April 2016 - The president of the Chilean branch of Transparency International resigned on Monday after documents from a Panamanian law firm showed he was linked to at least five offshore companies. Delaveau was among tens of thousands of people named in a leak of four decades' worth of documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specialized in setting up offshore businesses. While Delaveau is not accused of illegal activity, the leaks called into question his post at Transparency International, a German-based organization that seeks to monitor and root out corporate and political corruption worldwide (more)