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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The proposed rare metals mine in southeast Nebraska would produce $17.6 billion over its lifetime. That's the conclusion of a feasibility study released by NioCorp Investments Ltd., the company hoping to make the mine a reality. NioCorp has been working on the feasibility study for the proposed mine near Elk Creek in Johnson County for more than three years.....

ACOSTA, PA. — On a warm June morning, a large crowd gathered in the lush, gentle folds of the Allegheny Mountains to hear President Donald Trump live on video. “I’m absolutely thrilled to be speaking with you on this great, great day,” he said. “The miners of Pennsylvania are mining coal again.” On a stage, five men unfurled a gold banner that blared, in large black letters: “Trump Digs Coal,” as the audience went wild. For the first time in nearly a decade, a new coal mine has opened here, and a US president has rallied alongside an industry deemed...

Democrat super-lobbyist Tony Podesta was paid $170,000 over a six-month period last year to represent Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, seeking to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against that country, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned. Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. mining industry had its first profitable quarter in two years in the first quarter of this year, according to data published last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. In the first three months of 2017, U.S. mining corporations with assets of $50 million or more had combined after-tax profits of $1.957 billion, according to the Census Bureau, which has posted quarterly U.S. mining industry after-tax profits and losses going back to the fourth quarter of 2000. The after-tax profit that the U.S. mining industry earned in the first quarter of this year was a dramatic reversal...

One of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits sits 7,000 feet below the Earth’s surface. It is a lode that operator Rio Tinto RIO 0.68% PLC wouldn’t have touched—until now. Not that long ago, an abundance of high-grade copper could be mined out of shallower open pits. But as those deposits are depleted and high-grade copper becomes tougher to find, firms such as Rio have been compelled to mine deeper underground.

Fox's John Stossel penned a column on the "Green Baloney" at The New York Times featuring a May 13 story headlined "In Reversal, E.P.A. Eases Path for a Mine Near Alaska's Bristol Bay." It came with a big aerial picture of Dillingham, a fishing village on an inlet of the bay. We'll get to how "near" the mine is to the bay in a minute. They have hoped to mine copper, gold, and silver at the site. While this was just another of their stories about how Donald Trump will poison America, it caught my eye because of the big...

As recently as 1990, the United States was the world’s largest producer of minerals—a collection of nonfuel resources that are the building blocks of today’s technologies. In the ensuing decades, quite a different trend has emerged. Of 88 mineral commodities tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the United States is more than 25 percent import-dependent for 62 of them. That trend is growing worse. In its annual Mineral Commodity Summary, USGS notes: Several U.S. metal mines and processing facilities were idled or closed permanently in 2016, including iron ore mines in Michigan and Minnesota; three primary aluminum smelters in...

NASA scientists are outdoing themselves yet again: by reworking the planned route for a robotic mission to a giant asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion, they’ve managed to cut costs, launch sooner and arrive four years earlier than planned. Not bad. The Psyche planetoid, measuring 240km (149 miles) in diameter, is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is made almost entirely of iron and nickel. At current market prices, such an asteroid, a truly unique object in our solar system, is estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000). That is, if you could successfully tow it into orbit...

Goldman Sachs is bullish on space mining with "asteroid-grabbing spacecraft." In a 98-page note for clients seen by Business Insider, analyst Noah Poponak and his team argue that platinum mining in space is getting cheaper and easier, and the rewards are becoming greater as time goes by. "While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6bn," the report says. $2.6 billion (£2 billion) sounds like a lot, but...

Lawmakers in El Salvador, Central America’s smallest nation, have passed a law that bans all mining for gold and other metals, making the country the world’s first to impose such a broad prohibition on the extraction of minerals, environmentalists and human rights groups said. The ruling, aimed at protecting the nation’s allegedly quite fragile environment, comes after a long-dragged dispute over a proposed gold mine by Pac Rim Cayman, a unit of Canadian-Australian company OceanaGold Corp. (TSX:OGC). The law also bans the use of cyanide and mercury for mining. Legislators across the political spectrum supported the measure, which does not...

Remote-controlled robots will journey to the bottom of the ocean in search of copper, nickel, cobalt, gold, and platinum as global demand for minerals surges. The world's first deep-sea mining operation will kick off in early 2019 when a Canadian firm, Nautilus Minerals Inc., lowers a trio of massive remote-controlled mining robots to the floor of the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea in pursuit of rich copper and gold reserves. The machines, each the size of a small house, are equipped with rock-crushing teeth resembling the large incisors of a dinosaur. The robots will lumber across...

An African church minister who supplements his meagre stipend by scrabbling for minerals in the artisanal mines of eastern Sierra Leone has discovered one of the largest diamonds ever found. The 709-carat stone was extracted this week by Emmanuel Momoh, a pastor in one of the myriad churches that ministers to the mining communities of Kono district, the diamond centre that became the crucible of Sierra Leone’s blood-soaked civil war. It is believed to be the 13th largest uncut diamond ever to be pulled from the ground, industry analysts said. The stone is to be auctioned, the Sierra Leonean government...

As the nation’s largest silver producer, Idaho-based Hecla Mining Co. is fired up over the possibilities in President Donald Trump’s plan to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure projects. But company President and CEO Phil Baker says Congress must first make it easier for mining companies to get the necessary permits to start digging up more copper, zinc, silver, iron ore and other minerals needed for the construction boom. “At the end of the day, you can’t have the infrastructure and everything that goes with that if you don’t have the underlying commodities that go into the bridges and the roads...

President Donald Trump signed legislation on Tuesday, repealing an Obama-era rule that forced energy and mining companies to disclose any payments they made abroad. At least we can see all the "players" interacting.

Today, Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (ADD.V) reported to have started permitting for a drill program on its wholly owned CAP Property, located within the central parts of the Rocky Mountain Rare Metal Belt, 80 km northwest of Prince George in British Columbia, Canada. In 2010, Arctic Star acquired this property for its potential to host niobium-tantalum and/or rare earth elements ("REEs"). Since then, these commodities have undergone a dramatic shift in demand owing in part to their usage in the green energy sector, which includes modern wind turbines, rechargeable batteries, catalytic convertors etc. Past exploration identified a large anomaly to...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. American officials caution that Mr. Ani may...

(CNSNews.com) – As the Obama Administration comes to a close, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is pushing ahead with its plan to restrict more federal land from future mining operations by putting 10 million acres in six states off limits. “As part of its continuing efforts to conserve habitat vital to healthy populations of the Greater Sage-Grouse in the West, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) today announced the draft proposal to withdraw a subset of lands that are sage-grouse strongholds from future mining claims,” read a press release posted on the BLM website on Thursday.

At virtually the last possible moment, the Obama administration on Monday rolled out new regulations making it even more difficult and more costly to mine coal in the U.S., a final shot against the already beleaguered coal industry as the president leaves office. The Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule will go into effect 30 after its official release and publication in the federal register, meaning it likely will be implemented Jan. 19 — one day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Mr. Trump has vowed to undo much of his predecessor’s environmental regulations, including rules that target coal mining. The...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it plans to require mining companies to show they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution so taxpayers aren’t stuck footing the bill. The proposal follows a 2016 agreement reached under court order for the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law. The requirement would apply to hardrock mining, which includes mines for precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. It would cover mines and processing facilities in 38 states, requiring their owners to set aside sufficient money to pay for future clean ups. The...