The first pictures of a huge coral reef system discovered in the Amazon last year have been released by environmental campaigners. The Amazon Reef is a 9,500 sq km system of corals, sponges and rhodoliths, Greenpeace says. The reef is almost 1,000 km long, and is located where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Authorities in Chile have detained 43 people suspected of stoking some of the deadly forest fires that have killed 11 people and destroyed large swaths of land, according to President Michelle Bachelet.
The residential ship, The World, has broken the record for the most southerly navigation reaching 78°43•997´S and 163°41•421´W at the Bay of Whales in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. The World recorded this polar record at 10:41hrs ship’s time on Saturday. Commanded by Captain Dag H. Saevik this is the furthest south any vessel has ever sailed.
Ushuaia, capital of Tierra del Fuego in the extreme south of Argentina was left without internet and cellular phone communications most of last Friday because beavers had bitten pieces of the optic fiber for their dens.
Chile declared a state of emergency on Friday as more than a dozen wildfires that have scorched nearly 50,000 hectares threatened to encroach on towns, factories and vineyards. Firefighters, forestry service personnel and members of the military are battling 18 separate blazes in the center and south of the country that have been fueled by strong winds and a heat wave.
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has decided not to winter at Halley VI Research Station for safety reasons. The station, which is located on the floating Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, will shut down between March and November 2017.
Foreign minister Susana Malcorra said fisheries licensing in the South Atlantic is of great concern for Argentina because of the “overall ongoing depredation”, and recalled that there is an item referred to the issue in the September UK-Argentine joint statement, which has yet to be addressed and that most probably it will follow on the identification of unknown soldiers buried in the Falklands and the additional flights issues.
A cold wave stretching across Europe has left at least two dozen people dead in the past two days, including several migrants and homeless people, with the frigid temperatures expected to continue. Four Portuguese tourists were killed and about 20 others were injured Sunday when their bus crashed off an icy highway in central France before dawn on what is locally known as “the road of death.”
On Wednesday, Beijing was under a red alert for smog, the highest of four levels, and a yellow alert for fog. Other areas, particularly in northern China were still under red alert as of Wednesday for both fog and smog. The high pollution has been going on for a number of weeks, causing flight delays, and leading to traffic bans, as part of what is called smog season or airpocalypse.
A large fire that burned 150 homes in the historic port city of Valparaiso, Chile, has been practically brought under control, an official said Tuesday. Monday's fire forced dozens of residents to take refuge in shelters and devoured green hillsides in the Laguna Verde neighborhood, on the southern outskirts of the colonial city.