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SNIPPET: "SANTIAGO – One person was injured and several windows were destroyed when a small bomb exploded at a bank branch in the Chilean capital, police said. The blast occurred at 2 p.m. at a branch of Banco de Credito e Inversiones inside a Marriott hotel in Santiago’s affluent Las Condes neighborhood."

Local police are investigating a shooting incident, shots fired at the vehicle of Israel’s ambassador to Chile. Ambassador David Dadon and a security agent were heading to the vehicle on Tuesday, in Santiago, the capital of Chile. Damage was reported to a window and splash guard behind one vehicle tire. Police were summoned immediately, and the determination was made that the damage was caused by gunfire. There were no eyewitnesses and people interviewed by police insist they did not see anything out of the ordinary. Police are investigating two possible angles, a terror incident or a stray bullet. Gabriel Zaliasnik,...

Chile detected the H1N1 swine flu virus in turkeys, authorities said, the first time the virus has been found outside humans and pigs, but said there was no indication the disease had spread to other parts of Chile. The country's farming and livestock agency SAG said yesterday the flu outbreak had been controlled at the two farms 120 km west of the capital Santiago and notified the World Organization for Animal Health. "We call on the public to consume turkey products with confidence," a SAG statement said. It added that laboratory results ruled out the presence of H5N1 or bird...

Chile detected the H1N1 swine flu virus in turkeys, authorities said on Thursday, the first time the virus has been found outside humans or pigs. Chile's farming and livestock agency SAG said the flu outbreak had been controlled at the two farms 75 miles (120 km) west of the capital Santiago.

SANTIAGO (AFP) – A middle-aged leukemia patient has became Chile's first patient to receive stem cells from an umbilical cord in a radical procedure that could cure the disease, health officials here said Thursday. The 48-year-old man received the transplanted cells on Monday from samples stored in the so-called "Bank of Life" institute, said doctors at Santiago's Catholic University Hospital, where the operation was performed...

Ecuador aligns itself with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba In speeches against imperialism and neoliberalism, the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia, Evo Morales, and the Ecuadoran President-Elect Rafael Correa, who should assume the government of his country Monday, expressed common ideological and political agreement Sunday. Chavez, Morales, and Correa, who also exalt the figure of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, met together in Zumbahua, an indigenous [Ecuadoran] locality 90 kilometers south of Quito, for a symbolic inauguration of Correa before the indigenous peoples [of Ecuador]. In a speech before a multitude congregated in the central plaza, Correa emphasized that "[Latin]...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

Augusto Pinochet--Some Perspective By Humberto Fontova Tuesday, June 9, 2009 To read the mainstream media you’d think that in Sept. 1973 Augusto Pinochet’s villainous henchmen, while twirling their pointy black mustaches and snickering maliciously, overthrew a Chilean “president” (Salvador Allende) somewhere on the order of Jimmy Carter. Then these ghouls lined up 3,000 harmless sociology professors and innocent leftist parliamentarians and shot them—for the sheer heck of it. The real story, as you might imagine, is a tad more complicated—despite the media and academia’s Black Legend regarding Chile.

SANTIAGO, Chile – Police say two suitcases carried by a woman who was about to fly from Chile to Spain were made of cocaine. .. the drug "was not hidden in the luggage. This time the suitcases were the drug." .. the suitcases were made of a substance combining cocaine with resin and glass fiber. .. a "chemical process" could be used to separate out the drug.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- During the emerging economies' commodities boom a few years back, Chilean Finance Minister Andrés Velasco was a wet blanket at the fiesta. Chile, the world's largest copper producer, was reaping a bonanza from the quadrupling in the metal's price. Mr. Velasco insisted on squirreling away a large chunk in a rainy-day fund. As the savings swelled above $20 billion -- more than 15% of Chile's economic output -- Mr. Velasco faced growing pressure to break open the piggy bank. In September, protesters barged into a presentation by Mr. Velasco, carrying an effigy of him and shouting, "The...

A Mexican defender caused outrage by coughing and spitting in the face of a Chilean opponent after growing tired of swine flu jibes.   Chivas' Hector Reynoso also emptied his nose on Sebastian Penco after allegedly being called a leper by the Everton Vina del Mar forward.  The Mexicans were in Chile for a tie in the Copa Libertadores - Latin America's equivalent of the Champions League - and had reported discrimination from locals when they went out shopping in the run-up to the match.   Reynoso, 28, said: 'In the market place, people got out of our way,...

LIMA -- Public health authorities of South American countries took precautionary measures to fend off a possible pandemic after a deadly swine flu virus claimed dozens of lives in Mexico and infected at least 11 people in the United States. In Peru, experts with the Health Ministry said the ministry had initiated a nationwide precautionary plan to deal with potential threats, though no suspicious cases have been reported so far in the country. The Chilean Health Ministry expressed concern over the situation and drafted a contingency plan for epidemic prevention. It also ordered a public health alert that included health...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

If you like doing laps in the swimming pool, you might want to stock up on the energy drinks before diving in to this one. It is more than 1,000 yards long, covers 20 acres, had a 115ft deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water. The Guinness Book of Records named the vast pool beside the sea in Chile as the biggest in the world. Acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest swimming pool, the lagoon measures 1,013 metres in length and covers an area of eight hectares But if you fancy splashing...

It's's a hot act that becomes a world record: "Ghost chile," the world's spiciest chile, seems to suit the palate of a 28-year-old Indian woman. She smeared its seeds on her eyes before gobbling up 51 fire-hot chiles in two minutes for an entry into Guinness World Records. Anandita Dutta Tamuly performed the feat Thursday, cheered on by celebrity British chef Gordon Ramsay, who was visiting India's northeastern Assam state for a television shoot in his new global food series. The thumb-size chile pepper was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chile. It has more...

The mingling of lightning and ash seen below may be a "dirty thunderstorm." The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms. -National Geographic Two of nature’s most spectacular forces produced an incredible brew in the skies of Chile as a volcanic eruption met a lightning storm. Tonnes of dust and ash from the eruption of the Chaitén volcano poured into the night sky just as an electric storm passed overhead. The resulting collision created a spectacular...

On the rugged roadway approaching Fray Jorge National Park in north-central Chile, you are surrounded by desert. This area receives less than six inches of rain a year, and the dry terrain is more suggestive of the badlands of the American Southwest than of the lush landscapes of the Amazon. Yet as the road climbs, there is an improbable shift. Perched atop the coastal mountains here, some 1,500 to 2,000 feet above the level of the nearby Pacific Ocean, are patches of vibrant rain forest covering up to 30 acres apiece. Trees stretch as much as 100 feet into the...

CHILE, March 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A judge has provoked outrage in Chile by awarding custody of two children to their homosexual father, after he left his wife to live with his male lover. In addition, the judge has ordered the abandoned wife to make child support payments to the husband. According to Chilean media accounts, the woman (referred to anonymously as "A.G.L.") was deprived of custody of her two children, 10 and 17, when she failed to appear at a single custody hearing. Her husband, "C.P.W.," had previously abandoned her to live with his homosexual lover. Her children reportedly...

Ghost girl appears in Chilean video Posted by Javier Ortega 16 January 2009 In Chile, a woman named Cecilia Muñoz went on a ghost hunting expedition to a building that is notorious for reports of a ghost of a little girl that is said haunts the basement level of the building. Cecilia and her mother decided to make a visit and do some amateur ghost hunting of their own. Given that there was no real activity captured the first few hours, her mother suggested that she go down to the basement with a group of children. The mother theorized that...

Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemencyBy PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general. Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of...

A remarkable video has been filmed of craft over the night skies above the city of Santiago in Chile last week on December 10th. The video shows what appears to be a large UFO 'mothership' hovering over the skyline,

Hawking sea lion skin souvenir canoes at one of South America's most remote outposts, Francisco Arroyo is among the last members of a Patagonian tribe staring down the barrel of extinction. The elderly Arroyo recalls wending the icy channels and fjords of southern Chile's Patagonia region with his father as a boy, tending a fire lit on dried earth on the bottom of their canoe and diving naked for giant mussels to survive. With only an estimated 12-20 pure-blooded members of his nomadic Kawesqar tribe surviving, most of them elderly, another of the far-flung region's tribes will soon disappear. "It...

“Without seeking to become a political player she aspires, with the independence of her moral authority, to co-operate faithfully and openly with all leaders of the temporal world in the noble goal of achieving a civilization of justice, peace, reconciliation, solidarity, and of those other ideals that can never be rescinded or left at the mercy of party consensus, as they are engraved in the human heart and correspond to truth."

<p>SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The reappearance of a man who was officially dead has shaken and outraged some in Chile, a nation that mourns 1,196 other political prisoners who vanished in the hands of a military dictatorship.</p> <p>Human rights judge Carlos Gajardo said Tuesday he was questioning German Cofre, who turned up alive this month — and with a second family in Argentina.</p>

In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds Deep in the Andean foothills of Chile’s central valley lives a group of German expatriates, the members of a utopian experiment called Colonia Dignidad. They have resided there for decades, separate from the community around them, but widely known and admired, and respected for their cleanliness, their wealth, and their work ethic. Their land stretches across 70 square miles, rising gently from irrigated farmland to low, forested hills, against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. Today Colonia Dignidad...

You wouldn't know it from all the panicky headlines but the current turmoil on Wall Street is not the world's first financial crisis. Latin America has suffered more than a few, and many were on a larger scale relative to the economies they hit. One was triggered by Chile's 1982 economic collapse. For a small country it was a lot worse than what is happening in the U.S. today. The Bush economic team could learn from how it was handled. The Chilean plan helped the banks recapitalize and protected depositors. It also minimized moral hazard and kept the government's role...

An organic wine from Chile has oenophiles in San Francisco turning up their noses. But there’s nothing wrong with the wine. It’s the name that bothers them: Palin Syrah. The wine from a boutique vineyard in Chile was once a strong seller, but now it’s an outcast in the City by the Bay because its name comes way too close to a certain governor from the state of Alaska, says Celine Guillou, co-owner of the Yield Wine Bar. Palin Syrah — pronounced Pay-LEEN — takes its name from a ball used in a Chilean-style hockey game, and it has been...

President of Chile Michelle Bachelet is trying to reconcile the positions adopted by the Presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and Brazil, Lula da Silva, regarding the political crisis in Bolivia, according to official sources quoted on Monday by Chilean newspaper El Mercurio. Based on the report, the proposal that will be discussed by the leaders of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) will be not to intervene in the internal affairs of Bolivia and not to mention the United States.

The Other September 11 On 11 September 1973, in response to formal requests by his nation's judiciary and legislature, General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the regime of the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist whose government had placed foreign agents of revolution in positions of power, stolen the private property of Chilean citizens, nationalized many of the country's major industries, and wrecked Chile's economy and sense of public order. The coup succeded: stolen property was returned, the foreign terrorists with Chile were hunted down and eliminated, and law and order were restored to the...

Three months after erupting, for what scientists say they believe was the first time in 9,370 years, the Chaitén volcano continues to threaten to coat this formerly picturesque town with volcanic ash. The aftereffects of the eruption in May destroyed half of the town of 5,000 residents. Uncertainty about if and when they will ever be able to return to the tranquil seaside life they cherished is tearing many of them apart. What to do with the displaced has become a problem for Chilean officials, and Chaitén, tiny though it may be, has alerted them to the need to better...

Scientists exploring caves in the bone-dry and mostly barren Atacama Desert in Chile stumbled upon a totally unexpected discovery this week: water. They also found hundreds of thousands of animal bones in a cave, possibly evidence of some prehistoric human activity. The findings are preliminary and have not been analyzed. The expedition is designed to learn how to spot caves on Mars by studying the thermal signatures of caves and non-cave features in hot, dry places here on Earth. Scientists think Martian caves, some of which may already have been spotted from space, could be good places to look for...

Maria Mercedes with her mother Santiago, Aug 1, 2008 / 10:23 am (CNA).- Maria Mercedes Correa Maldonado, a 23 year-old Chilean woman who in explicably “woke up” from cerebral palsy when she was 18, is now pregnant, in what could be the second miracle attributed to Italian seminarian Nicola D’Onofrio (1943-1964), whose cause of beatification is open in the Diocese of Rome.Maria Mercedes suffered from grave cerebral palsy but on a March afternoon on 2003, after her mother had incessantly prayed to the Italian seminarian for his intercession, she woke up in her hospital bed in Puataendo, sat up...

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Two young Chileans thought they were the object of a joke when they received e-mails saying they would ride the boat-a-cade that would take Benedict XVI to his World Youth Day arrival. Jorge Juárez and Ane Marie Kampp registered for a random drawing on the official World Youth Day page, without thinking seriously that that click would make possible an unforgettable adventure, reported the Chilean episcopal conference. Juárez said he has been serving the Church for years, but what he experienced in Sydney would make him deepen his faith. "I feel the responsibility to...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has received leads that "Dr. Death" Aribert Heim, the center's most wanted Nazi war criminal, is alive and living in Patagonia, Chile. The center's chief Nazi hunter is due to travel there this week. The hunt for "Dr. Death" Aribert Heim, the Nazi war criminal wanted for murdering hundreds of prisoners in concentration camps during World War II, has intensified after the Simon Wiesenthal's chief Nazi hunter received fresh leads during a visit to South America. Efraim Zuroff, a Holocaust historian who heads the center's Jerusalem office, told media that he had received information that Heim...

Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Munger's recent trip to Chile and the changes Chile has made to Santiago's bus system. What was once a private decentralized system with differing levels of quality and price has been transformed into a system of uniform quality designed from the top down. How has the new system fared? Not particularly well according to Munger. Commuting times are up and the President of Chile has apologized to the Chilean people for the failures of the new system. Munger talks about why such changes take place and why they...

Gasoline would be cheaper if countries ended their oil subsidies and let markets rule. In China, the government caps gas prices. Drivers there pay about half of what Americans pay. In many countries, oil prices are held artificially low, either by fiat or subsidy. The result? Consumption keeps rising, boosting global prices. About half of humanity, from India to Chile, now benefits from cut-rate petroleum prices. In 2008, these countries will account for all the growth in world oil demand, or an additional one million barrels a day, according to Deutsche Bank. Their consumption will be the highest in eight...

4,500-year-old mummies discovered in Chile Saturday, 28 June , 2008, 10:55 Santiago: Eight perfectly preserved mummies, believed to be some 4,500 year old, were found by workers engaged in a restoration project in Chile's far north, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Saturday quoting media report. "These mummies date back to between 2,000 BC and 5,000 BC." archaeologist Calogero Santoro told the daily El Mercurio. The mummies are remains of individuals belonging to the Chinchorro culture, which was one of the first to practice mummification and the perfect condition in which the mummies were found is indicative of their advanced...

Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanos are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008. REUTERS/Carlos Gutierrez (CHILE) The Etna volcano in Sicily rumbled back to life on Tuesday with a "seismic event" followed by a burst of ash, volcanologists said three days after minor eruptions shook the cone. A "seismic...

PUERTO MONTT, Chile (Reuters) - A towering plume of ash from an erupting volcano in Chile's remote Patagonia could collapse back down to devastate the surrounding area, a leading expert warned on Friday. Luis Lara, a geologist and volcano expert with the government's geology and mining agency Sernageomin, says his models show the vast column of ash, which has soared 7.5 miles into the air, at a critical stage. A sudden collapse would shroud vast areas with hot gas, ash and molten rock, killing anything in its way. Authorities have evacuated thousands of people from the immediate vicinity of Chaiten...

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The long-dormant Chaiten volcano blasted ash some 20 miles (30 kilometers) into the Andean sky on Tuesday, forcing the last of thousands to evacuate and fouling a huge stretch of the South American continent.A thick column of ash climbed into the stratosphere and blew eastward for hundreds of miles (kilometers) over Patagonia to the Atlantic Ocean, closing schools and a regional airport. Chilean and Argentine citizens were advised to wear masks to avoid breathing the dangerous fallout.Chilean officials ordered the total evacuation of Chaiten, a small provincial capital in an area of lakes and glacier-carved fjords...

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An "unknown" (meaning it hasn't erupted historically) Chilean volcano erupted starting on Friday. The ash clouds are some of the most impressive I've seen since Pinatubo, and have caused the usual problems in nearby areas. Below is a selection. (Because I'm borrowing mainly from news sources, some of these may not work or may cease working in the near future.)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Hundreds of people fled remote villages in southern Chile on Friday after a snowcapped volcano erupted, sending minor earthquakes rippling through the region. The Chaiten volcano belched fire and ash on Thursday night, causing more than 60 small tremors in Los Lagos, a region about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of the capital of Santiago. More tremors can be expected in the coming days, warned Emergency Bureau Director Carmen Fernandez. The government evacuated as many as 1,500 people from nearby villages and the town of Chaiten, just 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) from the volcano, as ash...

SANTIAGO, April 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A terrorist group calling itself the Insurrectionist Federation has reportedly taken credit for the recent bombing of the University of the Andes in reprisal for a decision of the Chilean Supreme Court prohibiting the distribution of the abortifacient "morning after pill". The bomb detonated in a university bathroom on April 23. Although no one was hurt, ACI Prensa reports that the bathroom suffered severe damage, contrary to media reports that the device was just a "noise bomb". "They say it's just a 'noise bomb' but in reality the bathroom was destroyed and if anyone...

EL PASO — Rafael Ernesto Corvalan Herrera was half way to freedom when his apparent plan to sneak into the United States from Mexico derailed. Corvalan, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Chile who has been deported once before, was arrested Sunday afternoon after he got stuck in the rafters underneath an international bridge over the Rio Grande, authorities said. He told U.S. Border Patrol agents that a wheel on a makeshift cart he was using to shuttle himself along the bridge's support beams broke, stranding him in the middle of the span, at least 20 feet off the ground, Border...

After getting the bad end of his own ax in a fight, a bloodied villain limps alone in a stark desert. Mathieu Amalric stumbles to the red, rocky ground. "CUT!" rings loudly from the set of the 22nd James Bond film. Picking up an hour after "Casino Royale" left off, "Quantum of Solace" is the spy franchise's first direct sequel. Filming began in January and has taken the crew from Britain to Panama to this moonlike landscape in northern Chile, which is standing in for Bolivia. It's a place that director Marc Forster said evokes Bond's "isolation and loneliness." "He...

Chilifest 2008 will be held on April 4th and 5th of 2008. Snook, Texas. The most anticipated event in the Brazos Valley - Chilifest. 2008 Gary Allan, Aaron Watson, Pat Green, Stoney LaRue, Randy Rogers Band Chilifest 2008 Friday Night (April 4th)Line-up: The Woods Ryan Turner Granger Smith Bleu Edmondson Owen Temple Gary P. Nunn

THE NEW YORK TIMES March 28, 2008 Santiago Journal Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines. The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic” concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to...

The teens call their public orgies ponceo. On a typical Friday afternoon in the Chilean capital of Santiago, hundreds gather in a leafy urban park for a few hours of sexual experimentation. Surrounded by passing strollers, they trade partners multiple times—mostly engaging in anonymous rounds of oral sex. When the party is over, no contact information is exchanged. Same-gender interactions are commonplace, as the lines between hetero- and homosexuality are blurred, partly by the alcohol and drugs consumed, but also by shifting social mores held by Chilean youth, in contrast to their conservative parents. "Ponceo is about having fun," says...

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...