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No company has applied to mine within the former boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument since President Donald Trump’s cut to national monuments went into effect, The Washington Examiner reported Thursday. Trump announced he was rolling back Utah’s Bears Ears by about 85 percent in December. The cuts went into effect last week, causing critics to claim mining companies would begin staking claims and applying for mining permits within the area.

Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies. The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins, media reports say. The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, is a restricted area.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw federal protections from millions of acres of Utah wilderness will reopen much of the iconic terrain to gold, silver, copper, and uranium land claims under a Wild West-era mining law, according to federal officials.Starting at 6 a.m. on Feb. 2 – the moment Trump’s proclamation reducing the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments takes effect – private citizens and companies will be allowed to stake claims for hard rock mining in a process governed by the General Mining Law of 1872, according to the U.S. Bureau...

Deep in China’s Sichuan mountains, miners are chipping away at complex mathematical puzzles in hopes of unlocking one of today’s most prized assets, bitcoin. Currently, more than 60 percent of all bitcoin is mined in China, and these miners have picked their location wisely. The remote Sichuan mountains enjoy a cool year-round temperature and cheap electricity provided by small-scale hydro-electric facilities, averaging from $0.05 to $0.08-cents per kWh. Recent rumors, however, suggest that this could all come crashing down. First reported on Reuters, the People’s Bank of China outlined a plan behind closed doors aiming to curb the high energy...

Companies controlled by Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz sued fellow billionaire George Soros, claiming he cost them at least $10 billion through a defamation campaign that stripped them of rights to an iron ore deposit in Guinea and other business opportunities around the world. Soros funded law firms, transparency groups, investigators and government officials in Guinea in a coordinated effort to ensure BSG Resources Ltd. lost the rights to the Simandou deposit in April 2014, BSGR said in a complaint filed Friday in Manhattan federal court.

Thousands of Guineans on Wednesday cheered a young army captain chosen as de facto head of state by the military junta that took over the West African country in a coup after the death of President Lansana Conte. The installation of Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara as leader of the world's top bauxite exporter went ahead despite international condemnation and statements opposing the coup from civilian leaders and the top military commander. The coup leaders, calling themselves the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), appeared unopposed in their control of the Guinean capital Conakry two days after Conte's death from...

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag says Washington has told Ankara that jailed Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab -- a gold trader who is awaiting trial in the United States on charges of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran -- is in good medical condition. Bozdag made the remarks on November 16, a day after Turkey announced it had sent a diplomatic note to U.S. authorities inquiring about Zarrab. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons website last week listed Zarrab, 34, as having been released from prison on November 8. But U.S. prosecutors said that posting was an error and he remained...

The Trump administration has resurrected an effort to build the proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota. Last December, the Obama administration declined to renew the long-standing leases that the company needs for the underground mine it wants to build near Ely. But an in opinion published Friday, a top attorney at the U.S. Interior Department concluded the Bureau of Land Management erred last year when it concluded that BLM had the power to grant or deny the lease renewals. Minnesota Public Radio News reports the reversal means the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service must reconsider Twin Metals'...

Insurgents funnel off extraction fees amid disputed control of the site. Officials have warned that smugglers are continuing to pillage Afghanistan’s largest marble mine, with their proceeds helping fund local Taleban groups. Both the Taleban and the government claim control over the mine, situated in the country’s southern Helmand province. Contractors wishing to extract marble from the plentiful reserves often have to pay fees to both officials and the insurgents. This means that the Taleban is guaranteed a lucrative income from the industry. Helmand chief of police Aqa Noor Kintoz told IWPR, “We suffer hundreds of casualties due to this...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

Its business bolstered by improvements in the global mining industry, Komatsu Mining Corp. has hired more than 100 employees so far this year at its plant in South Longview and is working to fill another 100 positions. "Orders are picking up, and we have the work," said Caley Clinton, a spokeswoman for the company in Milwaukee. The reason, she said, is that mining companies are coming out of the recent economic downturn "ready to invest in capital and new equipment." Komatsu bought Joy Global Inc. in April for $3.7 billion. The plant off Estes Parkway has hired welders, machinists and...

Mukhtar Dzhakishev is by all accounts in miserable shape.Languishing in a “harsh” Kazakhstan prison colony that was once part of Stalin’s gulag system, he suffers from hypertension, hardened arteries and kidney disease likely triggered by a severe beating.“His life is constantly at risk,” one human-rights group warned in September, as it urged the international community to advocate on Dzakishev’s behalf.Largely unable to communicate with the outside world, the former head of Kazakhstan’s state uranium conglomerate has made one thing clear: he blames his arrest and 14-year prison term at least in part on a Canadian company’s corporate dealings.More specifically, Dzakishev...

Parsons says that although 1872 Mining Law reform has passed in the U.S. House it remains stuck in the Senate. “It is literally one person on the U.S. Senate who stops it at every turn, and that’s Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and he does so because he’s beholden to the mining interests because he’s dependent on them for his reelection in Nevada,” Parsons said.

Richards Murphy writes that Boko Haram is the brainchild of some powerful interests targeting the untapped natural resources in Northern NigeriaThe curse of natural resources is apparently real or more accurately, cursed interests in resource exploration are real. This evil often goes about masked as something less sinister. Take for instance the insanity that is todayÂ’s Afghanistan, which began in a fashion not too different from what Boko Haram is acting out in Nigeria today. Somewhere in the convoluted mix of transitions and mishmash of Mujahedeen, Taliban and al-Qaeda was UNOCAL, an oil multinational and its effort to construct pipelines...

Mali’s gold exports are falling, and new discoveries aren’t enough to make up for the loss of its giant legacy mines, where production is already dead or winding down, and the fate of one of the biggest of them all—Sadiola—now hangs in the balance.

Not long ago, supposed “environmental justice” concerns at least involved risks to mine workers and their families. The risks may have been inflated, or ignored for decades, but they were a major focus.In one case, a state-run mine and smelter had fouled the air, land and water with toxic contaminants in a Peruvian town for 75 years. Environmental groups raised few objections – until a U.S. company bought the properties and began installing modern pollution controls, implementing worker health and safety practices, cleaning up widespread lead dust, and initiating numerous community improvement projects.Suddenly, anti-mine activists descended on the town. They...

Child miners aged four living a hell on Earth so YOU can drive an electric car: Awful human cost in squalid Congo cobalt mine that Michael Gove didn’t consider in his ‘clean’ energy crusadePicking through a mountain of huge rocks with his tiny bare hands, the exhausted little boy makes a pitiful sight. His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and...

Well, this is certainly odd. A mining company that was poised to begin work a silver mine in Guatemala was shut down by the nation’s supreme court for not consulting with the indigenous peoples in the area. That seems standard. Even in the U.S., the Keystone Pipeline had to go through consultations with local Native American tribes to ensure their sacred burial sites would not be disturbed. They protested anyway, but that’s a story for another time. The halt in production torpedoed the stock of the mining company—Tahoe Resources—and threatens the jobs for the thousands of workers who ventured to...

Washington, D.C., February 1, 2017 – ADP is designed to contain all decommission U.S. nuclear energy sites … to accelerate decommissioning of shutdown nuclear power facilities through a complete and permanent transfer of ownership of the asset, including used nuclear fuel, from utility owners to an entity who is an expert in decommissioning and used fuel management, Sam Shakir, CEO of AREVA Nuclear Materials. //Back-snip// http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/239819-new-questions-about-clinton-foundation-russian-nuclear Clinton Foundation donors sold one of the largest uranium mining companies in America to a Russian nuclear agency in a deal signed off by the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of...

Hillary Clinton handing over a sizable portion of US uranium production potential to Russia is not an isolated event, but rather is the logical convergence of decades-old Clinton era dealings with Russia and rogue states, for enrichment of the power elite. AT contributor Michael Curtis is correct when he says that the Uranium One deal has serious implications for our national security.  In fact, the revelation of Hillary’s independent intel network, coupled with Clinton era national security policy changes in the form of counter-proliferation (CP) regimes, have been far more strategically harmful than many Americans realize....