Free Republic

The tantalum within your device weighs less than half of the average garden pea but is essential for the efficient functioning of a smartphone, and almost all other sophisticated electronic devices. The unique properties of this rare, blue-grey, lustrous metal – including being able to hold a high charge compared to its size, while operating in a range of temperatures - make it an ideal material for tiny capacitors, which temporarily store energy. It is also mined in Rwanda, Brazil and Nigeria but at least 40% - and maybe more – of the element's global supply comes from DR Congo...

KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Little about Kolwezi, a small city in southern Democratic Republic of Congo, hints at its global importance. Nondescript and ringed by slag heaps, pits and quarry lakes, the city is home to some of the largest copper and cobalt mines in the world. Now, Kolwezi is at the center of U.S.-Chinese competition over critical minerals. Earlier this year, mining firms began shipping ore along a U.S.-backed railway that terminates in Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito. A massive infrastructure project is focused on this rail line -- which is viewed as a bid to counter...

The vast, mutilated African state of Congo is enjoying a ceasefire but butchery and theft continue apace while the West remains inactive reports Adrian Blomfield in Aru Nine-year-old Bahati lies on the ground whimpering, a urine stain slowly darkening the front of his baggy camouflage trousers. Two boys, perhaps three or four years older and also dressed in military uniform, stand over his body clutching bamboo canes in their hands. A boy soldier in the eastern Congo They look across at "General Jerome", a former traffic warden who now heads the Armed Forces of Congolese Patriots, or FAPC, one of...

U.N. Investigating Reports of 100 Civilians Massacred in Congo The Associated Press 2-24-04 KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - The U.N. Congo mission is investigating reports of massacres of about 100 civilians and seven soldiers by Mayi-Mayi fighters in southeast Congo, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. The killings have allegedly occurred in Katanga province, 960 miles from the capital Kinshasa, spokesman Hamadoun Toure said. Congo's military confirmed massacres of civilians since January. It gave no more details. The government and U.N. mission in Congo are trying to assert control nationwide after a five-year war that split the country, about the size of...

RUBAYA, Democratic Republic of Congo - Under the watchful eye of M23 rebels in the hills around the Congolese town of Rubaya, a line of men in rubber boots ferry sacks full of crushed rocks up winding paths cut into the slopes.The laborers are hauling coltan ore, a mineral that powers the modern world. The ore will be loaded onto motorbikes and eventually shipped thousands of kilometers away to Asia. There it’s processed into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal that fetches more than $300 a kilogram and is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas...

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Félix Tshisekedi, has reached out directly to President Donald J. Trump with a historic proposal: help defeat a brutal rebel force terrorizing his nation, and in return, America will gain direct access to one of the world’s richest untapped troves of critical minerals—worth an estimated $24 trillion. According to a letter obtained by The Wall Street Journal, President Tshisekedi offered Trump exclusive mining opportunities through the newly launched U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund, a Trump-led initiative aimed at reshaping global investment through pro-American partnerships. “Your election has ushered in the golden age...

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed. A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo. Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check. The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed...

UN cuts details of Western profiteers from Congo report By Declan Walsh in Nairobi 27 October 2003 A controversial section has been omitted from a UN report on the plunder of wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo due out this week. Senior UN officials objected to part of the report by a UN panel investigating the illegal exploitation of Congo's wealth, fearing it could derail the peace process. Sources say the section includes details on how shady networks of business and military figures, some tied to the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, are continuing illegally to export gold, diamonds...

<p>So now, it seems, China will commit troops to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo. While not a grand scale — just 175 engineers and 43 medics will be deployed — the contribution marks China's biggest overseas operation since the U.N. effort in Cambodia a decade ago.</p>

France accused of genocide role Kagame denies ordering the shooting down of the Rwandan president's plane in 1994 Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused French people of "direct involvement" in the 1994 genocide. He told the French state-owned RFI radio that they provided weapons and training, and gave orders to those who killed some 800,000 people. He said the "French elements" were acting on government orders. The president was speaking a week after a French daily reported a police report that blamed him for a rocket attack that precipitated the massacre. "Sooner or later they will have to account for...

In just 12 weeks the world will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. That somber thought was on my mind as my friend, the distinguished African-American journalist Peter Noel, took me the other night for a tour of Harlem. We passed by Bill Clinton's office, and Peter told me how significant crowds, nearly all African-Americans, await the arrival most mornings of the man dubbed "America's first black president." That description – coined in 1998 by African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison – as well as the African-American rapture for Bill Clinton, is nothing short of astonishing. Calling Clinton...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- More than 3 million people have died during Congo's civil war, the vast majority from malnutrition and disease, a relief organization said Tuesday. The International Rescue Committee said in a report that at least 85 percent of the 3.3 million deaths were from easily treatable diseases and malnutrition. IRC Congo Report: http://www.theIRC.org

Thu 9 Jan 2003 Pygmies being eaten by rebels in Congo's ongoing war, UN reveals JAMES ASTILL IN NAIROBI REBEL soldiers are massacring and eating pygmies in the dense forests of north-east Congo, UN investigators said yesterday. A UN team has spent the past week investigating allegations of cannibalism in remote Ituri province, where fresh fighting between several rebel groups has displaced around 150,000 people in the past month. Many of the displaced tell of rebel fighters capturing and butchering pygmies across the front-line, said Manoddje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN cease-fire monitoring mission in Congo yesterday. "The UN...