Chile said yesterday it would send anti-depressants down a tiny shaft to 33 miners trapped half a mile underground for 20 days, as it told them it will take at least three more months to dig them out.

Health minister Jaime Manalich said the miners had reacted calmly, AFP news agency said. “We were able to tell them… they would not be rescued before the Fiestas Patrias (Chile’s Independence Day on 18 September), and that we hoped to get them out before Christmas,” AFP quoted Mr Manalich as saying.

Although they took the news calmly, he said, “a period of depression, anguish and severe malaise” was possible.

Rescuers are now sending fresh clothes, medicine and games down a 2,300 feet bore hole the diameter of a grapefruit to help keep the men physically and mentally fit for the gruelling wait ahead.

The government has asked NASA and Chile’s submarine fleet for tips on survival in extreme, confined conditions, and are looking to send them space mission-like rations.

Manalich said rescue workers had managed to finish a second narrow bore hole which will be dedicated to channelling drinking water to the miners and keeping communications flowing.

They are also preparing to drill a vertical shaft around 2 feet in diameter to evacuate the miners one by one via a pulley.

“We expect that after the initial euphoria of being found, we will likely see a period of depression and anguish,” the minister said. “We are preparing medication for them. It would be naive to think they can keep their spirits up like this.”

The miners and their relatives are exchanging letters via the shaft, a crucial part of maintaining their mental health.

“You have no idea how much my soul ached to have been underground and unable to tell you I was alive,” trapped miner Edison Pena said in a letter to his family. “The hardest thing is not being able to see you.”

Fellow miner Esteban Rojas promised his wife he would finally buy her a wedding dress as soon as he gets out, and hold a church marriage ceremony, 25 years after they wed in a registry office.

Officials are vetting letters sent by relatives, to avoid any shocks. Some disagree with the method.

“It’s very important for the miners’ mental health that they communicate openly with their families, and without filters, either by letter or by phone,” said Claudio Barrales, a psychologist at the Universidad Central in Santiago.

Trapped miners’ relatives, who have been living in plastic tents at the mine head in a makeshift settlement dubbed Camp Hope, are gradually returning to their normal lives, but some are drawing up rosters to take turns being at the mine.

The miners have lost around 22 pounds each after having survived on half a glass of milk and two mouthfuls of canned tuna every 48 hours until supplies ran out.

The men sent samples of water from underground tanks that have helped them to survive to the surface for testing, and rescuers are sending down fortified mineral water.

The miners are in remarkable health, and have stripped off their shirts to cope with the heat.

Officials are looking for ways to help ease psychological pressure and plan to set up special lighting in the tunnel to mimic night and day, with dull red lights to help the miners sleep. They are also going to send down games like cards.

Until now, the miners have used vehicle batteries to power lights and charge their helmet lamps.

Two small tremors shook northern Chile early on Wednesday, but witnesses at the mine head said they did not feel them at ground level. It was unclear if the miners, who are 4.5 miles inside the winding mine, were jolted.

The nation is still recovering from a devastating quake on 27 February – one of the biggest ever recorded – and ensuing tsunamis, which killed more than 500 people and ravaged cities, roads and industries in south central Chile.

The accident in the small gold and copper mine has turned a spotlight on mine safety in Chile, the world’s No. 1 copper producer, although accidents are rare at major mines. The incident is not seen having a significant impact on output.

President Sebastian Pinera has fired officials of Chile’s mining regulator and vowed to overhaul the agency.

Analysts say the feel-good factor of finding the miners alive, coupled with the government’s hands-on approach, could help Pinera as he tries to push through changes to mining royalties that the centre-left opposition had shot down.

The kangaroo, a beloved national symbol of Australia, may in fact be an ancient interloper.

A study published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology suggests that Australian marsupials — kangaroos, wallabies, Tasmanian devils and more — evolved from a common South American marsupial ancestor millions of years ago. The finding, by researchers at the University of Munster in Germany, indicates that the theory that marsupials originated in Australia is incorrect.

Marsupials are characterized by distinctive frontal pouches in which they carry their young. There are seven existing orders, three from the Americas and four from Australia.

One prominent theory, now validated by the new study, suggested that ancient South American marsupials migrated across Antarctica to Australia more than 80 million years ago when the continents were connected in a supercontinent known as Gondwana. But scientists had also theorized that the first marsupials migrated from South America to Australia and then back again.

A third theory was that marsupials originated in Australia and then travelled to South America.

Up till now, it had been hard to verify any of the theories, said Matt Phillips, a biologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, who was not involved in the study.

“Ancient fossil records for marsupials are very poor, particularly in Australia,” Phillips said. “This has made it hard to understand early migration patterns and relationships amongst the species.”

Previous studies had tried to tackle the question by comparing small bits of DNA or physical differences between marsupials, such as ankle joint characteristics, Phillips said. The new study, in contrast, examines large chunks of marsupial genomes for evolutionary clues.

The team started by analyzing the genome sequences for the South American opossum and the Australian tammar wallaby. They specifically looked at DNA features called retroposons, types of “jumping genes” that pass virtually unchanged from mother to offspring. When two species share retroposons with very similar genetic sequences it is likely that they are derived from the same ancestor. The scientists found 53 similar retroposons in the opossum and wallaby, verifying their common ancestry.

The team then compared the wallaby and opossum data to the DNA of 20 other marsupial species, including the wallaroo, the common wombat, and the marsupial mole, to find out which marsupial lineages are more closely related and which split off first.

They found that all of the species had common retroposons, and thus a common ancestor. Closer analysis revealed that the South American opossum order, Didelphimorphia, was the oldest living marsupial order, indicating that all marsupials originated in South America.

“Scientists had always suspected there was a common ancestor between South American and Australasian marsupials but now we finally understand where they may have originated and how they branched off from one another,” said study lead author Maria Nilsson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Munster.

The study also cleared up years of confusion about where to group a marsupial called the monito del monte (mountain monkey). Although this creature is native to South America, it has more characteristics in common with Australian marsupials, and so scientists had debated its closest relatives for many years, Phillips said.

The DNA comparisons clearly showed that the mountain monkey belongs to the South American group on the marsupial evolutionary tree.

Argentina is faced with a critical shortage of manpower to man its prisons – in one prison, instead of 15 guards, they have only two. Hence they employ dummy guards – they place a football with the cap of a guard on top of it – from a distance it gives the impression that a guard is present. But it is not easy to fool the prisoners – two of them who were serving sentences for armed robbery made good their escape from the prison in the Neuquen province. The escaped convicts are still on the run.

Colombia celebrated the 200th anniversary of the start of the movement to win independence from Spain yesterday.

Concerts took place simultaneously in 1,102 communities, with about 200,000 musicians participating. In the capital Bogota as well as other parts of the country, anniversary celebrations and military parades were held.

Thousands of concerts and parties will continue for days as the Colombian people celebrate the birth of a nation.

A chest, sealed 100 years ago, was opened in Bogota which contained an album with drawings and photographs of Colombia’s presidents until 1910, and the Bogota city scape, a book about customs, a 1910 city map, text and score of the national anthem and a copy of the 1810 declaration of independence.

Colombia achieved its independence from Spain in 1819.

After a 15-hour debate from Wednesday through to the early hours of today, the bill to legalize gay marriage passed in a 33-27 vote.

Under the leadership of President Cristina Kirchner, Argentina has become the first Latin American country to allow gays and lesbians the same rights in marriage as heterosexual couples, including the adoption of children and inheritance of wealth.

In a country where 90 percent of the citizens consider themselves Roman Catholic, the decision to allow gay marriage is historic. Outside of Congress, duelling parties argued over the impending change but in the end, the country decided to move forward with equal rights for all.

“What defines us is our humanity, and what runs against humanity is intolerance,” Sen. Norma Morandini told the Associated Press.

After the final decision, the mood outside Congress became celebratory, with tears of happiness and shouts of “Equality, Equality.”

“Today’s historic vote shows how far Catholic Argentina has come, from dictatorship to true democratic values, and how far the freedom to marry movement has come, as twelve countries on four continents now embrace marriage equality,” said Evan Wolfson of the US Freedom to Marry lobby.

Argentina leads the way in Latin America, but follows Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Iceland in the legalization of gay marriage around the world.

Although the government has taken a historic step toward equality for all, many of the country’s citizens will need a little time to accept it.

Former president Adolfo Rodriguez Saa told AFP, “Argentina has taken a step forward, but out in the street … it will take time for hatred and resentment to heal.”

The rail service to Peru’s main tourist attraction Machu Picchu, one of the world’s most prized heritage sites, reopened in full last week after months of repairs since heavy rains cut off the site early this year.

Train operators said normal service had resumed on Thursday for the entire rail line from the regional capital Cusco to the ancient Inca citadel.

The route had been partially reopened in late April, combined with bus service for some of the way, after the railway was damaged in hundreds of places by flooding and landslides prompted by rains that hit the country in late January.

The railway is the only access for many tourists, but hikers can trek for four days over high-elevation Inca trails to reach the remote site.

In June, further disruption hit the region with strikes in the southeastern part of the country that closed railway access for 48 hours.

The 15th-century city perched some 2500 metres above sea level is the most visited site in South America, a pillar of the Cusco region and the source of 90 per cent of Peru’s tourist revenues, according to the country’s finance ministry.

In January, thousands of stranded foreign tourists were evacuated from the small village of Aguas Calientes, the gateway to Machu Picchu, threatened by rising waters from the Vilcanota river.

The Tourism Observatory had warned that Peru stood to lose up to 0.64 percent of GDP if tourism declined, with particularly serious repercussions for Cusco, where thousands of people make a living from the industry.

On average, more than 2000 tourists from all over the world visit Machu Picchu every day.

Colombia may not even have qualified for this year’s World Cup but Colombian police have at least got their hands on a version of the trophy… made out of cocaine.

The replica of the World Cup trophy was seized by Colombian authorities at Bogota’s international airport. Airports anti-drug chief Colonel Jose Piedrahita said Colombian authorities found the statue during a routine security check by anti-drug agents in a mail warehouse at the airport. The 36-centimetre-high statue was painted gold.

The statue was inside a box headed for Madrid, Spain – although it’s not clear if that counts as a good or a bad omen for Spain’s chances in the tournament. Col Piedrahita said laboratory tests had confirmed the cup was made of 11 kilos of cocaine, mixed with acetone or petrol to make it mouldable.

In a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes, men in paint-daubed boilersuits diligently coat a mountain summit with whitewash in an experimental bid to recuperate the country’s melting glaciers. It’s a bizarre sight at 15,600 feet above sea level.

The man behind the idea is not a glaciologist but an inventor, Eduardo Gold. His non-governmental organisation Glaciares de Peru was one of 26 winners of the World Bank’s “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” competition in November 2009. Gold has already begun work while he waits for the US$200,000 prize money to fund his pilot project. His plan is to paint a total area of 173 acres on three peaks in the Andean region of Ayacucho in southern Peru.

The workers use jugs – rather than brushes – to splash the whitewash onto loose rocks around the summit. So far they have painted some two hectares, just a tenth of the total area they aim to cover.

“A white surface reflects the Sun’s rays back through the atmosphere and into space, in doing so it cools the area around it too,” explains Gold. “In effect in creates a micro-climate, so we can say that the cold generates more cold, just as heat generates more heat.”

The idea is based on the simple scientific principle that changing the albedo (a measure of how strongly an object reflects light) of a surface by whitening it means that it does not absorb so much heat and emit infra-red radiation which takes time to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and warms trapped greenhouse gases.

The fossil of a 13-million-year-old giant sperm whale, which fed on other whales, has been found in a coastal desert in Peru.

While modern-day sperm whales have teeth only in their lower jaws, and suck down squid like large spaghetti noodles rather than catch the prey with their teeth, the ‘much-toothier’ fossil sperm whales, however, may have eaten more like a outsized-orca, or killer whale, chomping great big bites out of its prey.

The extinct cousin of the sperm whale is the first fossil to rival modern sperm whales in size – although this may be a very different beast, whale evolution experts said.

“We could see it from very far,” palaeontologist Olivier Lambert of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, who led the team which found the fossil, was quoted as saying.

The giant three-meter skull was found with teeth in its top and bottom jaws up to 36 cm long. The whale has been dubbed Leviathan melvillei, in honour of Herman Melville, author of ‘Moby Dick.’

“These are very unusual attributes,” said evolution expert Ewan Fordyce of the University of Otago, New Zealand. “It’s remarkably big. That is unexpected.”

Another sign that this extinct animal had a killer bite is the presence of a large hole in the skull which accommodated a large jaw muscle. “This was a hunting predator that took chunks out of prey,” Fordyce said.

To learn more about its eating habits, Fordyce said they would look at the microscopic wear patterns on the teeth. If the wear lines are horizontal, it probably sucked in prey like today’s whales. But if the wear lines are vertical, it would suggest a biter, like the orca.

There have also been discoveries of isolated large sperm whale teeth fossils before. Those made it clear there was a bigger animal out there waiting to be found. And now they have found it.

The discovery is reported in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature.

Brazilians are battling the bulge. A government study says the South American country known for its bikinis is expanding at the waistline. The Health Ministry notes that in 2009, 46.6 percent of Brazil’s 190 million people were overweight. That’s up from 42.7 percent in 2006. The rate of obesity also rose, from 11.4 percent in 2006 to 13.9 percent in 2009. The study released Monday is based on interviews with 54,000 adults. The result: 51 percent of men and 42.3 percent of women are overweight. The study blamed poor eating habits, lack of exercise and genetics. Brazil is still slim, however, compared to the United States, where a recent study showed 68 percent of the population was overweight.