Four families torn apart by Chile’s illegal adoption scandal finally found each other decades later. They describe the emotional moment they met – and how they pieced together the lives they had spent apart For Sara Melgarejo, the wait at Santiago airport was agonising. The 65-year-old had travelled about 30km north from San Bernardo, a working-class suburb of the Chilean capital, for the reunion. She walked the length of the building trying to calm her nerves, holding her breath for the arrival of the two children she had spent the last 40 years believing were dead. “My heart was racing ..read more

Underwater mountains are biodiversity hotspots and researchers exploring the Salas y Gómez ridge off Chile have found 50 species probably new to science. How much more has yet to be discovered? Photographs by ROV SuBastian/Schmidt Ocean Institute Squat lobsters, bright red sea toads and deep-sea dragon fish were among more than 160 species never previously seen in the region that were spotted on a recent expedition exploring an underwater mountain range off the coast of South America. Scientists working on Falkor Too, a California-based Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel, believe that a ..read more

While the ecosystem is thriving off the coast of Argentina, the proliferation of salmon farms in Chile’s waters is threatening marine life, say critics A rocky path, strewn with thick tree roots, leads from a dirt road down to a small green hut overlooking the choppy waters of the Beagle Channel, a strait between Chile and Argentina. The shack is home to Diane Mendez and her family but doubles as Alama Yagan, one of nine restaurants in the fishing village of Puerto Almanza. The village, in Argentinian Tierra del Fuego, has become a foodie haven, and the final stop on the king crab route, a tra ..read more

Latam Airlines flight LA800 was headed to Auckland from Sydney when plane’s ‘gauges just blanked out’ due to technical problem, pilot reportedly told passengers Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Cockpit voice and flight data recorders are being gathered as an investigation begins into a sudden mid-air drop on an Auckland-bound flight that left passengers bloodied, hospitalised dozens and “felt like an earthquake had just hit”. Latam Airlines flight LA800 departed Sydney at 11.35am on Monday with 26 ..read more

Chilean social media users target institution, forcing it at one point to close comments on posts The British Museum is tackling an influx of social media trolls from Chile, who have flooded the museum’s Instagram posts calling for the return of a moai statue, one of the stone monuments from Easter Island. The museum has two moai, which were taken from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by British surveyors in 1868, and there have been longstanding demands for the British to return them to Rapa Nui, which is Chilean territory ..read more

Family videos and self-shot footage provide an intimate, moving chronicle of the lives of former Chilean government minister Paulina Urrutia and her ex-journalist husband In the opening scene of Oscar-nominated Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s 90-minute documentary, Eternal Memory, we watch as a woman wakes up a sleeping man to begin a new day. She introduces herself to him – her name is Pauli. His name is Augusto. She is an actor and was a government minister, and they have been together for 20 years. They built the house they are living in together. He receives each piece of this news deligh ..read more

Recent blazes in Chile and Argentina have highlighted the need for better environmental laws as the climate crisis deepens As South America endures unprecedented high temperatures, after the hottest January on record globally, it is still coming to terms with the devastating wildfires that have torn across the continent. Chile has been the most notably affected country, with at least 131 people dying in a fire that ripped through the coastal Valparaíso region in what has quickly become a national tragedy. Last year, at least 23 people died in summer wildfires in the country ..read more

A long drought followed by exceptional heat and wind brought deadly blazes that ripped with devastating speed through the coastal town of Viña del Mar On the afternoon of Friday 2 February, Danitza Hurtado was resting at home after work, unconcerned about the seasonal summer wildfires that had started in a nearby farm close to a nature reserve. By 6pm, she was frantically gathering belongings with her father and brother as fireballs rained down and a wall of black smoke crept up the hill towards their home in the Achupallas neighbourhood on the fringes of Viña del Mar, a coastal city of about ..read more

Europe’s early 20th-century exploitation of Tierra del Fuego is told in an unsparingly bloody drama-thriller by first-time director Felipe Gálvez Haberle This almost unbearably brutal and violent western drama-thriller from first-time feature director Felipe Gálvez Haberle was a prize winner at Cannes and Chile’s official entry for best international feature at the Academy Awards. At once explicit and yet mysterious and elliptical, it dramatically recreates some of the story behind the exploitation and colonisation of Tierra del Fuego by European commercial interests and the Santiago political ..read more

Minister says Piñera’s body recovered from scene of crash in lake near southern town of Lago Ranco Chile’s two-time former president Sebastián Piñera has died in a helicopter crash at the age of 74. According to preliminary reports, Piñera was piloting a helicopter with three passengers onboard over Lago Ranco, a lake in southern Chile where he had a home, but no further information regarding the incident was immediately given ..read more