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he name “cobalt” comes from the German word kobold, which translates as “goblin” or “evil spirit.” When sixteenth-century miners in Saxony discovered the metal, they thought they had stumbled upon silver, yet it was later revealed that the ores were poor in metals that were known at the time. Upon smelting, the ore (where cobalt is twinned with arsenic, resulting in cobalt arsenide) was found to produce poisonous fumes and became known for causing “mischievous effects”1 upon miners’ health. Then, as now, the element had a dubious reputation.2 Although once it was feared for its toxic health effects,3 today the...

China on Wednesday urged its citizens to leave three provinces in eastern Congo as violence intensifies in the mineral-rich region. A posting from the Chinese Embassy in Kinshasa on the WeChat online messaging said a number of Chinese citizens had been attacked and kidnapped over the past month in the provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu and Ituri, where several anti-government rebel groups have a presence. It said Chinese residing in the three provinces should provide their personal details by Dec. 10 and make plans to leave for safer parts of Congo. Those in the districts of Bunia, Djugu, Beni,...

The Congolese variant, known by the scientific name B1 640, was first detected in a family in France after returning from a trip to the Republic of Congo. But if Europe is now discovering this variant with unusual mutations, Congolese scientists discovered it much earlier. "It is a variant of SARS cov2 responsible for covid-19 that was described in our laboratory at the end of August 2021, and it is a variant that was then detected in other countries" said Francine Ntoumi, President of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research. So far eight cases have been detected in the Republic...

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a policeman and kidnapped five Chinese nationals near a mine in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo overnight, a local official and an army spokesman said on Sunday. It was not clear who carried out the attack near the village of Mukera in South Kivu province. Relations are already strained between Chinese mining companies and local authorities, who say some firms are operating illegally without licenses. "An armed group exchanged fire with police. Five Chinese nationals were kidnapped," Major Dieudonne Kasereka, the army spokesman in the region, said. A spokesperson at the...

An investment firm that counts Hunter Biden among its founders helped a Chinese company purchase one of the world’s most lucrative cobalt mines from an American company, according to a report by The New York Times. Biden established the firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company with two other Americans and some Chinese partners in 2013. The American members controlled 30 percent of the Shanghai-based operation and served on the board. The company notably completed a deal in 2016 that saw a Congo cobalt and copper mine transfer from American company Freeport-McMoRan to Chinese outfit China Molybdenum...

A lawsuit filed this week in Washington, D.C., alleges that some of the world's largest technology firms knowingly engaged in the usage of child labor in Africa's cobalt mines. The suit was filed by nongovernmental organization International Rights Advocates and mentions Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Tesla and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, USA Today reports. Cobalt is an essential part of rechargeable lithium batteries that power many of the electronic devices that the listed companies sell. According to the suit, two mining companies — British company Glencore and Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt — supplied cobalt to all of the...

The president’s son was part owner of a venture involved in the $3.8 billion purchase by a Chinese conglomerate of one of the world’s largest cobalt deposits. The metal is a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles. An investment firm where Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was a founding board member helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Biden and two other Americans joined Chinese partners in establishing the firm in 2013, known as BHR and formally named Bohai Harvest...

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that it had begun administering Ebola vaccines to people in eastern Congo. WHO said in a statement that people most at-risk for contracting the disease would be vaccinated first, The Associated Press reported. About 200 doses were sent to Beni, a region that was particularly hard-hit by the outbreak from 2018-2020 and where a case of Ebola was identified last week. About 1,000 doses were also sent to Goma, Congo’s North Kivu province's capital city, according to the AP. Last week, a toddler died from the disease, and his family is expected...

In an October 9, 2021 article in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, Lebanese media figure Baria Alamuddin writes that Hizbullah continues its globe-spanning drug trafficking activities, now using West African countries as major transit states for its drug shipments. She notes that Hizbullah and Syria, both sponsored by Iran, continue to bolster their status as the world's major source of the amphetamine-based drug Captagon. However, since Saudi Arabia banned the import of Lebanese produce earlier this year, Hizbullah has had to divert its Captagon shipments through transit countries to obscure the country of origin. West Africa has become a...

KINSHASA, Congo — A new craze for a drug derived from crushed vehicle exhaust filters is rattling authorities in Kinshasa, triggering a campaign to stamp out the concoction and a related rash of car part thefts. In August police rounded up and paraded nearly 100 alleged dealers and users of the drug "bombe," which means powerful in the local Lingala language, following a call to action by Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi. "This social phenomenon calls for collective responsibility by the whole nation," Tshisekedi told ministers at a weekly meeting. In an abandoned shack in a suburb of...

ISIS is “evolving into a new beast” in order to strike the West, a Brit who fought the terrorist group has warned. Macer Gifford chucked in his job as a currency trader in the City in 2015 and went to Syria to fight the Islamist extremists alongside Kurdish forces. He warned that despite the collapse of the Caliphate and the loss of almost all its territory ISIS still posed “as much of a threat today” as they went about recruiting fighters. His chilling warning comes as fanatics attempt to build a new Caliphate in Africa. Gifford told Express.co.uk: “I certainly...

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said Monday that the Ebola outbreak in conflict-ridden Congo has become so serious that international public health experts need to consider the possibility that it cannot be brought under control and instead will become entrenched. If that happened, it would be the first time since the deadly viral disease was first identified in 1976 that an Ebola outbreak led to the persistent presence of the disease. In all previous outbreaks, most of which took place in remote areas, the disease was contained before it spread widely. The current outbreak is entering...

Trees and wildflowers blossom during all four seasons in Kunming, which is known as The City of Eternal Spring because of its year-round mild temperatures. However, it is also home to something much less natural: a laboratory where scientists have been creating monkey embryos with a mutated gene so that, when born, they will age unusually fast. Such experiments are done to study human diseases such as autism, cancer, Alzheimer's and muscular dystrophy.

Days after a deadly eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in Democratic Republic of Congo, the threat of another eruption forced the evacuation of much of the city of Goma. But that ended up in a traffic chaos… Tens of thousands of residents tried to escape the major city in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, after authorities issued an evacuation order warning that Mount Nyiragongo could erupt again. People jammed highways, crowded boats and set off on foot to flee this major African city on Thursday, seeking an escape from the rumbling threat of Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s...

An outbreak of bubonic plague has left victims vomiting blood as health authorities revel at least 11 people as young as 30 have died over two weeks with many vomiting blood At least 11 people have died in an outbreak of the Black Death in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reports say. People are being urged to wear masks and staying away from corpses amid the surge in the deadly disease which caused the most fatal pandemic in history. Near-daily deaths with at least 15 cases of the bubonic plague have been recorded in Ituri province's health department, the Express...

Lake Kivu contains about 300 billion m3 of carbon dioxide and 60 billion m3 of methane gas, giving it the capacity to produce between 120 million and 250 million m3 of methane gas annually. Now, you probably understand why panic and fear has gripped communities in Rwanda and Congo after the sudden and deadly eruption of Nyiragongo volcano on Saturday, which is situated just 20-25 miles away… The likelihood of flow of extremely hot magma into the waters of Lake Kivu and the resulting seismic unrest are feared to potentially cause a deadly explosion. Rwanda’s Lake Kivu is indeed one...

Michigan's governor apologizing after a photo shows her violating social distancing rules but first... "Until they show me evidence that people who have already had the infection are dying in large numbers or being hospitalized or getting very sick, I just made my own personal decision that I'm not getting vaccinated because I've already had the disease and I have natural immunity." Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky interviewed on WABC Radio... More than 227,000 Americans have experienced adverse reactions to coronavirus vaccines through May 14th... America's Frontline Doctors filing a federal court motion seeking a restraining order to suspend...

The eruption of the Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo seems to have subsided late Saturday, according to the Goma Volcano Observatory, which monitors the volcano. Still, authorities have activated an evacuation plan for the nearby city of Goma. The volcano's last major eruption in 2002 killed 250 people and displaced thousands. Volcanologist Honore Chiraba from the Goma Volcano Observatory told CNN there are two fractures in the volcano. Chiraba is following the volcanic activity closely with the governor of North Kivu, the province where the city of Goma is located. A post on the verified...

Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo started erupting at around 17:15 UTC on May 22, 2021, producing high lava fountains and lava flows that forced nearby residents to evacuate in panic. According to local media reports, many residents of the nearby city of Goma (population 670 000) grabbed their belongings and evacuated toward neighboring Rwanda. Red glow filled the sky above the city, sending panicked residents fleeing, Reuters reported. Volcanologist Dario Tedesco said Goma does not appear to be at risk because lava is flowing east in the direction of the Rwandan border. According to Reuters, Tedesco earlier...

During the whole month of February, starting this Monday, the people of Brussels are called upon to choose the new name of the longest tunnel in the country, Leopold II, from among 15 names of famous women, Brussels Mobility said in a press release. The renaming procedure “to symbolically reinforce the place of women in the public space” began last year with a call for ideas to citizens and the reflection of a committee of experts. Currently, 43% of the streets in Brussels bear the name of a person. Of these, only 6.1% of the streets are named after a...