Free Republic

n nothing short of a jackpot for the Uttar Pradesh government, geologists have discovered massive gold deposits in Sonbhadra district of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The discovery comes after two decades of search by the Geological Survey of India and the Uttar Pradesh Directorate of Geology and Mining. As per the UP state GSI officials, there are two goldmines with around 3,500 tonnes of gold ore in the Naxal-affected Sonbhadra district. This is around five times the current gold reserves of the country which stands at around 626 tonne. According to District Mining Officer KK Rai, the government is thinking of...

For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was published in a journal called Literary Contemporary. He was released in 1951, and from 1954 to 1973 he worked on Kolyma Stories, a masterpiece of Soviet dissident writing that has been newly translated into English and published by New York Review Books Classics this week. Shalamov claimed not...

It’s a town most people in Alabama don’t even know exists. But, that’s not the way things have always been, as this tiny Tallapoosa County community was once one of the largest cities in Alabama. The reason can be found deep beneath the woods near the main road that runs through town. James “Coy” Powell, whose ancestors have lived in Goldville for generations, said he hopes the history of this town doesn’t fade away like the population has. “It’s a sacred spot that I can go back and I can tell people like you, you know this wasn’t easy back...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - An earthquake shook parts of northern South Africa on Wednesday, trapping 42 miners underground, damaging buildings and causing scores of minor injuries, officials and news media said. The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 5, was centered near Klerksdorp, 125 miles southwest of Johannesburg, said Ian Saunders of the National Seismograph Network at the Department of Geosciences in Pretoria. The temblor trapped the workers 1 1/2 miles underground at a gold mine, the South African Press Association reported. "Rescue teams are working to open entry tunnels that were closed by rock falls," Ilja Graulich, a...