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+30 +1
Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve never heard of
From Cambodia to California, industrial-scale sand mining is causing wildlife to die, local trade to wither and bridges to collapse. And booming urbanisation means the demand for this increasingly valuable resource is unlikely to let up
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+38 +1
As Groundwater Dwindles, a Global Food Shock Looms
By mid-century, says a new study, some of the biggest grain-producing regions could run dry. By Cheryl Katz.
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+25 +1
The gold mine at the end of the world
Photographer Elena Chernyshova spent 10 days at the Kupol gold mine in northeast Russia to see the extremes workers endure to feed our demand for precious metals. Gold is still one of our most precious resources. It is an essential component in everything from smartphones to the latest diagnostic kits for malaria and HIV. Which means we need to go to great extremes to keep up with demand. Isolated in the frozen wastes of eastern Siberia, where temperatures can plummet to -50°C (-45F), the Kupol gold mine is one of the toughest places in the world to extract the ore.
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+38 +1
Rio Tinto’s plan to use drones to monitor workers’ private lives
Privacy campaigners express alarm after company contracts Sodexo to ‘capture individual insights’ from staff in Western Australian mining camps. By Max Opray.
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+35 +1
Galactic gold rush: the tech companies aiming to make space mining a reality
Asteroids and the moon contain vast quantities of natural resources, including water, that could be worth billions and fuel a new phase of space exploration
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+13 +1
China Warns of Safety Risks as Rally in Coal Price Spurs Mining
Soaring coal prices have spurred a surge in potentially dangerous mining activity in China, prompting a government warning about the risk of increased casualties in a country that is home to some of the world’s deadliest mines.
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+27 +1
A New Threat to Oceans: Deep-Sea Mining for Precious Metals
“Whether mining these nodules will help end cycles of war and peace still remains to be seen, but Mero was right about one thing: They are now the precious targets, worth millions of dollars, of an emerging deep-sea mining industry, and that’s making many researchers like Craig Smith, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, cautious.” By Sarah Fahmy.
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+35 +1
Inside the world of Australian opal miners who live underground
Photographer Tamara Merino and her boyfriend were driving through the desert in Australia in November 2015 when they started to see a few odd signs: “Underground bar,” then “underground restaurant.” After they got a flat tire, they found an underground church — empty, but lit by a few flickering candles. They had stumbled into the city of Coober Pedy, a partly subterranean community and the opal capital of the world. The town’s name comes from the Aboriginal phrase “kupa piti,” or, roughly, “white man’s hole.”
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+23 +1
The Price of Gold
Over a period of 20 days, Thom Pierce travelled around South Africa's Eastern Cape, into Lesotho and up to Johannesburg to find and photograph the miners, and widows, suffering from silicosis and pulmonary tuberculosis as a result of working in the gold mines.
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+27 +1
Canadian Mining’s Dark Heart
Tallying the human cost of gold in one of the most remote places on Earth. By Richard Poplak.
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+28 +1
Miners uncover a huge jade stone worth $170 million in Myanmar
Miners in Myanmar have unearthed a huge jade stone weighing 175 tonnes, and worth an estimated US$170 million.
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+13 +1
The Deepest Dig
The bottom of the ocean is the most remote place on Earth, but that isn’t stopping us from mining it. By Brooke Jarvis.
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+13 +1
How to Start an Asteroid Mining Company Without a Mine
Deep Space Industries is an asteroid mining company without a mine—instead, it’s creating an entire industry. By Daniel Oberhaus.
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+8 +1
This is where your smartphone battery begins
Workers, including children, labor in harsh and dangerous conditions to meet the world’s soaring demand for cobalt, a mineral essential to powering electric vehicles, laptops, and smartphones, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
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+42 +2
China's Sinking Coal Mining Towns and Villages
Thousands of residents in China’s Shanxi province have been evacuated as villages next to mines have started sinking, after decades of reckless coal mining
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+14 +2
Major rivers of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta become unusually deeper
Vietnamese scientists have warned of the unusual increase in the depth of two major rivers in the Mekong Delta, with sand mining and hydropower dams said to be the cause. (Aug. 16, 2016)
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+35 +1
Blood Mica: Deaths of child workers in India's mica 'ghost' mines covered up to keep industry alive
In the depths of India's illegal mica mines, where children as young as five work alongside adults, lurks a dark, hidden secret - the cover-up of child deaths with seven killed in the past two months, a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation has revealed. Investigations over three months in the major mica producing states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh found child labor rife, with small hands ideal to pick and sort the valued mineral that puts the sparkle in cosmetics and car paint.
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+33 +1
South African miners given go-ahead to sue companies over deadly diseases
Thousands of South African gold miners and their families can pursue a multi-million-dollar class action against mining companies over fatal respiratory diseases contracted at work, a high court judge has ruled. The decision opens the way for the current and former miners to sue about 30 companies for damages, after suffering silicosis and tuberculosis from dangerous underground working conditions dating back decades.
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+2 +1
You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
Patty Loveless
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+24 +1
The Future of Technology Is Hiding on the Ocean Floor
In March 1968, a Soviet Golf II submarine carrying nuclear ballistic missiles exploded and sank 1,500 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii.
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