Earth's largest radio telescope is growing more powerful by the day on this remote plateau high above Chile's Atacama desert, where visitors often feel like they're planting the first human footprints on the red crust of Mars.
It's still a natural paradise far out in the Pacific, with thick jungles and stunningly steep and verdant slopes climbing out of the sea. But much of the splendor in the tiny Chilean islands that likely inspired Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" castaway novel is being eaten away.
Raoul Ruiz, the Chilean-born filmmaker who made more than 100 films in his teeming, international career, has died. He was 70.
Rescuers on Monday reinforced the hole drilled to bring 33 trapped miners to safety and then successfully lowered a rescue capsule nearly all the way down to where the men are trapped, showing the escape route works.
