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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A woman from California died after being hit by a falling rock Saturday while visiting a vast cave system in northwestern Puerto Rico, authorities said. Socorro Elaine Smith, 45, was struck while waiting with her husband to board a trolley that runs through the Camuy caves, authorities said. Information on her hometown was not immediately available. No one else was injured, but the Rio Camuy Cave Park was evacuated, Puerto Rican police spokeswoman Marilyn Calo said. The caves are one of the biggest cave systems in the world and a major tourist attraction on the...

Krubera is the deepest known cave in the world A Ukrainian team has set a new depth record for caving.The nine-strong group travelled 2,080m (6,822ft) underground, passing the elusive 2,000m mark at Krubera, the world's deepest known cave. The team was part of a project that has made breaking through 2,000m its goal for the past four years. It built on records set by a previous expedition, which blasted through blocked passages in the cave, within Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia. "Even now, we don't know whether we've reached the limit - or if it will go on. We're pretty...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - Earlier this month, as thousands of Olympians trained to compete in Athens, a small team of Croatian cavers set a new benchmark that went largely unnoticed. They found the world's deepest hole. There was no medal ceremony awaiting Darko Baksic, the expedition leader, or any of his dusty colleagues when they reached the bottom of the 1,693-foot pit. Just a long climb back up. The pit, which is at the back of a dark cave in the Velebit mountains, southwest of Zagreb, is about 217 feet deeper than the former record holder in Austria known as...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- State Sen. John Whitmire said he is returning to Houston tonight in a move that could potentially end the holdout of Texas Democratic senators who fled Austin on July 28 to stop a vote on congressional redistricting. Whitmire, who had not even unpacked his bags after returning today from Houston where he spent the Labor Day weekend, said his decision to return to Houston was not well-received by his fellow Democrats. "There were varying degrees of disappointment is all I can say," he said. "The bottom line is that, redistricting is real important but there are other...

Tony Snow just recently confided to Sean Hannity on his radio show that the GOP intends to keep fighting and are not about to cave. developing....