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To stop the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from permitting streams, valleys, historic places, and communities across West Virginia to be destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining and valley fills, West Virginia citizen groups went back to court Wednesday.
Indigenous protesters from northwestern Venezuela marched Friday through the streets of Caracas, which is hosting the sixth World Social Forum (WSF), to protest plans for mining coal on their land.
The Ghana Institute of Journalism is objecting to a new public relations collaboration between the mining company Newmont Ghana Gold Ltd. and the weekly newspaper "Junior Graphic" to make positive information about gold mining available to children in Ghana.
Bechtel, a global engineering and construction company based in San Francisco, today reached agreement with the government of Bolivia, dropping a legal demand for $50 million after a revolt over privatizing water services in the city of Cochabamba forced the company out of Bolivia in April 2000.
Though largely unexplored, mining experts think the Indian Ocean island has big untapped deposits of gold, platinum, sapphires, rubies, diamonds and emeralds. Each year, thousands leave their villages to dig for gold and precious stones in a country where three quarters of the 17 million-strong population live on less than a dollar a day. An increasing number of international mineral exploration companies are also setting up operations on the world's fourth largest island.
The nation's coal mines have been required to pay only a fraction of the federal fines imposed after deadly accidents since 1999, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
It is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy-through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks.
In the largest U.S. anti-war protest in recent memory, at least 75,000 demonstrators encircled the White House on Saturday to demand a diplomatic solution to escalating tensions with Iraq.
With the same logic that dictates that logging is good for trees, the 5 years of the Bush Administration has rolled back regulations on mine safety at the bidding of mining corporations.
The head of the Mining Healthy and Safety Administration is himself a former mining executive. A New York Times article in August 2004 noted:
Bush administration policies have abandoned a series of Clinton-era safety proposals favored by coal miners while embracing others favored by mine owners.
Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian who grew up in childhood poverty, has won the Bolivian presidential elections. He is part of a wave of leftists taking power in Latin America and challenging multinational corporations.