Free Republic

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday his government was cancelling all mining concessions and would not award any new deals to transnational companies as part of a wider sector restructuring. "Recently ... we decided, after looking at this and looking at that, to cancel all mining concessions. We will not give any more concessions to transnationals," Chavez said in a speech late on Wednesday. Left-winger Chavez has launched a broad campaign to review energy and mineral contracts signed by Venezuela before he first won office in 1998. He says some of the deals are robbing the world's No....

Wallace Street Journal Going South David Bond Sleepless and Solvent in the Silver Valley March 18, 2004 WALLACE, Idaho - Seems like it was only yesterday when the great Anaconda Copper Company broke its pick in South America - Chile to be exact - but it was actually 33 years ago. The train wreck that had once been the U.S. mining industry in South America was absolute and lethal. Yet the events leading up to it seemed, even to nominally intelligent Americans, each harmless in and of itself. But the net effect of this - to use the term employed...