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| US: Senate Considers Bill on Mine Safety
by John Holusha, The New York Times
May 16th, 2006
Legislation that would increase the supplies of oxygen available to miners trapped by explosions, rock falls or other disasters, among other measures, was introduced in the Senate today by two senators from both parties. |
| AFRICA: Anger rises in oil-rich Chad as funds don't aid the poor
by Raymond Thibodeaux, The Boston Globe
April 30th, 2006
Three years after Chad began exporting its oil with assistance from the World Bank, few people outside the capital have access to electricity, running water, paved roads, and health clinics. Public schools are nonexistent. Life expectancy is 46 years for men, and only slightly longer for women. |
| UK: Eight arrests after goldmine raid
by Paul Carter, The Daily Telegraph
April 16th, 2006
FIFTY environmental activists have stormed and occupied an open cut goldmine in Western New South Wales, halting mining operations, and causing the arrest of eight protesters, police and the activists said today. |
| PHILIPPINES: Missing, despising Marcopper
by Gerald Gene R. Querubin, Philippine Daily Inquirer
April 6th, 2006
WHEN Marinduque Copper Mining Corp. (Marcopper) stopped its operation in 1997, the municipality of Santa Cruz in Marinduque came to a standstill. Almost 2,500 employees were left jobless, businesses suffered from low sales; some even had to close shop. |
| NIGERIA: Government Investigation Indicts Shell over Toxic Waste
by Yemie Adeoye, Vanguard (Lagos)
April 4th, 2006
THE Ministerial investigation committee into alleged dumping of toxic waste by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) at Igbeku and Ejekimoni communities of Sapele local government area of Delta State has come up with recommendations for the company to remove and treat in situ the "alleged buried waste" to acceptable statutory levels. |
| SOUTH AMERICA: Creating a Network Against Biopiracy
by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 27th, 2006
Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge. |
| ARGENTINA: Suez Packs Its Bags and Won't Be Back
by María Amparo Lasso, Inter Press Service
March 27th, 2006
The French water company Suez, the favorite villain of anti-privatisation activists, has entered the final stretch of its withdrawal from Argentina and Bolivia, where it has been packing for quite a while. And it could be a long time before it returns to Latin America. |
| US: Toxic sites' cleanup at risk
by Les Blumenthal, The Sacramento Bee
March 27th, 2006
Grupo Mexico S.A. de C.V. could find itself at the center of the bankruptcy reorganization of Asarco, a century-old American mining and smelting company whose liabilities include the environmental cleanup of 94 Superfund sites in 21 states. Depending on what happens in the bankruptcy reorganization, U.S. taxpayers ultimately could be responsible for the tab. |
| US: Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil
by Edmund L. Andrews, The New York Times
March 27th, 2006
Last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful. |
| WORLD: Foreign Corporations Backing Off
by Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 16th, 2006
Water rights groups say transnational corporations are increasingly sinking their teeth into Latin America's water services, but studies by the United Nations and other experts point to the contrary: these companies are backing off, and may not come back any time soon. |
| INDONESIA: U.S. Aid to Corrupt TNI Risks More Rights Abuses
by Lisa Misol, The Jakarta Post
March 14th, 2006
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Jakarta follows the Bush Administration's controversial decision to reestablish full relations with the Indonesian Military (TNI). That move opens the door to renewed U.S. assistance, but pumping aid to an unreformed Indonesian military would serve only to encourage further rights abuses and undermine civilian governance. |
| WORLD: Cleaning Up Its Reputation
by Rebecca Bream, Financial Times
March 6th, 2006
The mining industry has a worldwide image problem. In developing and developed countries alike, the public tends to regard mines as dirty, dangerous and disruptive — and those who stand to profit from them as greedy despoilers. |
| PERU: Substandard Peruvian Gas Pipeline Blamed for Spills
Environmental News Service
March 2nd, 2006
A pipeline crossing the Peruvian Amazon has spilled natural gas liquids four times since it opened 15 months ago because it was shoddily built by unqualified welders using corroded pipes left from other jobs, according to a new technical report by the nonprofit environmental consultancy E-Tech International based in San Diego. |
| NIGERIA: Shell told to pay $1.5 bln damages
Reuters
February 24th, 2006
A Nigerian court said on Friday Royal Dutch Shell should pay $1.5 billion (861 billion pounds) in damages for pollution in oil-producing Bayelsa state, the latest instalment in a long-running case. |
| BOLIVIA: Bolivia Indicts Shady Oil Transnat
Prensa Latina
February 20th, 2006
Bolivia´s President Evo Morales is analyzing Monday with specialized officials the current situation of Andina Co., controlled by Spanish transnational Repsol which is accused of illegally trafficking petroleum. |
| BULGARIA: Bulgarians Protest Use of Cyanide Leaching
by Michael Werbowski, World Press
February 5th, 2006
The cyanide "leakage" that killed tons of fish in the Czech river Labe (Elbe) recently has re-focused public attention throughout central and Eastern Europe to the environmental and human dangers associated with this toxic chemical, especially when it spills into a nearby river or tributary. |
| PHILIPPINES: No new mining permits
by Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. , Blanche S. Rivera, Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 4th, 2006
PRESIDENT Macapagal-Arroyo has offered to suspend the issuance of new mining permits to try to appease Roman Catholic bishops strongly opposed to the country's new Mining Act, a top Malacanang official said yesterday. |
| GHANA: World Bank unit OKs Newmont Ghana mine investment
by Lesley Wroughton, Reuters
February 1st, 2006
The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private-sector lending arm, on Tuesday approved $125 million in loans for gold major Newmont Mining Corp.'s Ahafo project in Ghana, but not all countries on the IFC's 24-member board agreed it was a good move. |
| INDONESIA: A Widow Who Won't Let Indonesia Forget
by Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, The New York Times
January 26th, 2006
In more than six hours of questioning by Indonesian police investigators, Patsy Spier described how attackers fired into the convoy carrying her, her husband and eight other Americans up a mountain road inside the concession of Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining company. Then she repeated her pitch for justice. |
| BOLIVIA: Bolivia’s Morales rejects US domination
by Hal Weitzman, The Financial Times
January 22nd, 2006
Evo Morales was sworn in on Sunday as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in a historic and emotional ceremony that set the tone for his new government, promising to move much the profits of Bolivia's natural resources to the people of Bolivia. |
| MADAGASCAR: Gold Rush Attracts Foreign Interest
by Tim Cocks, Port Louis L'Express
January 17th, 2006
Though largely unexplored, mining experts think the Indian Ocean island has big untapped deposits of gold, platinum, sapphires, rubies, diamonds and emeralds. Each year, thousands leave their villages to dig for gold and precious stones in a country where three quarters of the 17 million-strong population live on less than a dollar a day. An increasing number of international mineral exploration companies are also setting up operations on the world's fourth largest island. |
| US: Fines in mining deaths cut back
by Thomas Frank, USA Today
January 10th, 2006
The nation's coal mines have been required to pay only a fraction of the federal fines imposed after deadly accidents since 1999, a USA TODAY analysis shows. |
| INDONESIA: Recklessness in Indonesia
The New York Times
January 9th, 2006
Freeport-McMoRan, an American company that operates a giant open-pit copper and gold mine in Papua, is a major contributor to Indonesia's economy. The company is also one of Indonesia's most reckless polluters and a source of hard cash -- cash the company concedes is protection money -- for the Indonesian military, which has one of the worst human rights records anywhere. |
| US: Moving Mountains
by Erik Reece, Orion Magazine
January 9th, 2006
It is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy—through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. |
| US: Safety Violations Have Piled Up at Coal Mine
by Joby Warrick, Washington Post
January 4th, 2006
Time and again over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust. |
| NIGERIA: Blood Flows With Oil in Poor Villages
by Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
January 1st, 2006
For months a pitched battle has been fought between communities that claim authority over this village and the right to control what lies beneath its watery ground: a potentially vast field of crude oil that has caught the attention of a major energy company. |
| RUSSIA: In Russia, Pollution Is Good for Business
by Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times
December 28th, 2005
One of the paradoxes of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is that companies in Russia and other Eastern European countries, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, are poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through trading their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air.
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| NEW GUINEA: Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste
by Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, with Evelyn Rusli, The New York Times
December 27th, 2005
It is hard to discern the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport-McMoRan from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets. |
| INDONESIA: The Cost of Gold: The Hidden Payroll
by Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, The New York Times
December 27th, 2005
Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.
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| US: $64B diamond industry rocked by fraud
CNN
December 20th, 2005
A scandal has rocked the $64 billion global diamond business and tarnished the credibility of one the industry's biggest players,according to a news report Tuesday. |
| ARGENTINA: The War for Gold in Catamarca
by Darío Aranda, Página 12 Newspaper
December 18th, 2005
Water that is undrinkable. Air that is better left unbreathed. A community impoverished, living above mountains of gold. These are some of the contradictions of Andalgalá, a town of 17,000 inhabitants in Catamarca, Argentina, 240 kilometres from the provincial capital, home for ten years now to the largest gold and copper mine in the country, and one of the largest in the world. |
| LIBERIA: Firestone Sued Over "Slave" Plantation
by Haider Rizvi, OneWorld.net
December 8th, 2005
Firestone, a multinational rubber manufacturing giant known for its automobile tires, has come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for its alleged use of child labor and slave-like working conditions at a plantation in Liberia.
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| INDIA: Health Minister: 'Coke Plant Will Not Be Allowed to Function'
The Hindu
October 25th, 2005
Health Minister K.K. Ramachandran on Monday said the Government "would not allow the bottling plant of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd. at Plachimada to reopen against the will of the people." (Mr. Ramachandran is the first Minister to have visited Plachimada where the local people have been waging an agitation for the last three years demanding the closure of the company for allegedly exploiting the groundwater, leading to shortage of water for drinking and irrigation purposes.) |
| WORLD: The Cost of Gold
by JANE PERLEZ and KIRK JOHNSON, The New York Times
October 24th, 2005
The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years - pushing $500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost, often in some of the poorest corners of the world. |
| CANADA: MPs Call for Tougher Rules on Overseas Mines
by Paul Weinberg , Inter Press Service
October 22nd, 2005
A call by members of Canada's parliament for legally binding measures to govern the behaviour of Canadian mining companies around the world, and specifically to investigate the activities of a Calgary-based operation in the Philippines, has been turned down flat by the Canadian government's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew. |
| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians say Texaco left damage
by Gonzalo Solano, Associated Press
October 20th, 2005
About 50 Cofan Indians, some holding handkerchiefs over their faces to fend off an acrid chemical stench, gathered around two contaminated open pits they say were left behind and never adequately cleaned up by the former Texaco Corp. |
| US: EPA probes alleged mud dumping in Alaska
by Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press
October 18th, 2005
Federal regulators are investigating the alleged dumping of thousands of gallons of tainted mud by a Texas drilling company into the Beaufort Sea on Alaska's northern coast, a spokeswoman for Alaska's environmental protection agency said Tuesday. |
| US: A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska
by Felicity Barringer, The New York Times
October 2nd, 2005
The 217,000 acres of windblown water and mottled tundra here on the North Slope of Alaska, separating Teshekpuk Lake from the Beaufort Sea, are home in summer to 50,000 to 90,000 migratory birds. This corner of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve is also thought to be brimming with oil. |
| ROMANIA: An oil fortune bound in red tape
by Terence O'Hara, Washington Post
August 16th, 2005
G. Philip Stephenson does not cut the figure of an Eastern European oil baron, clashing with formerly communist security officials over the legality of his budding empire. |
| US: Newmont on Trial in Indonesia for Pollution
by Jane Perlez, New York Times
August 5th, 2005
The Indonesian government today brought criminal charges of polluting the environment against the American mining company Newmont, and its head of operations here.
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| NIGERIA: Chevron Paid Troops After Alleged Killing
by David R. Baker
August 4th, 2005
Nigerian soldiers guarding Chevron oil rigs billed the company for $109.25 a day after they allegedly attacked two villages in the volatile country, killing four people and setting fire to homes. |
| US: Is Nevada a Toxic Neighbor?
by Jeff DeLong, Reno Gazette-Journal
July 10th, 2005
With concern mounting that Nevada gold mines are belching clouds of toxic mercury downwind to neighboring states, officials are being urged to tighten regulations regarding the dangerous pollutant. |
| BORNEO: Lowland Forests Face Extinction
Reuters
June 8th, 2005
The lowland tropical rain forests in Indonesian Borneo could disappear in five years due to rampant logging and forest fires, endangering the survival of many exotic species, an international conservation group said on Tuesday. |
| US: Clean-Energy Mega-Mall
by Amanda Griscom Little, Grist
May 20th, 2005
The developer of a new mall planned for Upstate New York vows that it will be the closest thing to an "Apollo Project" for renewable energy that America has ever seen -- one that grows the economy, strengthens national security by encouraging energy independence, and protects the environment. |
| US: Shouting Drowns Out Positive Weyerhaeuser Report
by By BILL VIRGIN, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
April 22nd, 2005
The normally staid annual shareholders meeting of Weyerhaeuser Co. was anything but a buttoned-down affair yesterday, with representatives of labor, environmental and Canadian tribal groups shouting at the company's chief executive and demanding an opportunity to present their criticisms of the forest-product company. |
| LATIN AMERICA: New Gold Rush Runs into Opposition
by Mark Stevenson, Associated Press
April 12th, 2005
A surge in world gold prices is attracting U.S. and Canadian companies eager for another crack at the Latin American lodes that once enriched the Old World. But their modern-day methods -- strip mines and cyanide-based refining -- are meeting fierce resistance. |
| PERU: Villagers Seek Justice
by Peter Hecht, San Francisco Chronicle
March 20th, 2005
Unbeknownst to the driver, at least one canister leaked 330 pounds of glittering silver droplets onto the highway, attracting curious residents of the small farming community called Choropampa.
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| CANADA: Water - Bottles Versus Faucets
by Stephen Leahy, IPS
March 12th, 2005
Four large corporations control much of the world's booming bottled water industry and pose a threat to public water utilities, according to a report by the Canadian non-governmental Polaris Institute. |
| INDIA: Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
by Stan Cox, Counterpunch
February 15th, 2005
In this 50-mile-long stretch of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own. |
| CANADA: Natives' Land Battles Bring a Shift in Economy
by Clifford Krauss , The New York Times
December 9th, 2004
The Haida won a landmark case in November in Canada's Supreme Court obliging British Columbia to consult with them over land use anywhere on their traditional homelands on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The decision is expected to have a sweeping impact on similar Indian claims across Canada.
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| INDONESIA: Report Heightens Pollution Dispute with Newmont Mining
by Jane Perlez, New York Times
November 8th, 2004
A government panel presented a bitterly fought-over report on Monday showing that sediment in the equatorial bay where the world's biggest gold producer, Newmont Mining Corporation, deposited mine waste is polluted with significant levels of arsenic and mercury. But the panel found the water quality met Indonesian standards. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: DeBeers Pleads Guilty to Price-Fixing
by Margaret Webb Pressler, Washington Post
July 14th, 2004
DeBeers SA, the huge diamond company, pleaded guilty yesterday to price fixing and agreed to pay $10 million to settle a 10-year-old indictment, which paves the way for the company to start doing business directly with the American market. |
| World: Lenders Urge World Bank to Reject Oil, Mining Pullout
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service News Agency
April 5th, 2004
International investment banks are lobbying the World Bank to rebuff the recommendations of an independent study that urged the global lender to bail out of gas, oil and mining projects. |
| US: A Wave Of Desalination Proposals
by Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
March 14th, 2004
More than 20 projects to make seawater fit for the tap are being considered in the state. Those from private firms stir debate over public's interests. It's purified seawater, stripped of its salts and ready for the tap. MacLaggan's firm, Poseidon Resources |
| US: Nevada Nuke Dump Workers Hurt By Toxic Dust
by Ken Ritter, The Associated Press
March 11th, 2004
A former tunnel worker at the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert filed suit Thursday against Energy Department contractors, claiming the companies deliberately exposed employees to toxic dust at the Yucca Mountain project. |
| UK: Coca-Cola Admits Dasani is Tap Water
by Trevor Datson, Reuters
March 4th, 2004
It made for great headlines, but the fact that the UK version of Coca-Cola's Dasani brand bottled water comes out of the London public supply should hardly have come as a surprise. |
| World: WB to Work on Oil, Gas and Mining Projects
Financial Times
February 26th, 2004
The president of the World Bank and his management colleagues will reject several of the crucial recommendations of a review about the extractive industries - oil, gas and mining - they themselves instituted. In particular, they will oppose the idea that the Bank should phase out all oil projects within five years. |
| Indonesia: Tensions in Mining Operations
by Kafil Yamin, Inter Press Service
February 23rd, 2004
The government and Dayak villagers have called in fresh troops as tension intensifies over disputed mining operations on Sebuku, an island of some 3,000 residents in central Indonesia. |
| Iceland: Power Driven
by Susan De Muth, The Guardian
November 29th, 2003
In Iceland, work has already begun on a colossal $1bn dam which, when it opens in 2007, will cover a highland wilderness - and all to drive one US smelter. Environmentalists are furious, but the government appears determined to push through the project, whatever the cost |
| Vanuatu: Reefs at Risk After Disney Film
by David Fickling, Guardian (London)
November 21st, 2003
A booming trade in aquarium fish, sparked by Finding Nemo, the Disney film featuring clownfish, is endangering the wildlife of the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific. Over the past year about 200,000 fish and other marine creatures have been exported from the country, and local tour firms are warning that the reefs will be at risk if the tropical fish trade is not regulated. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: Tribe Wins Rights to Diamond-Rich Land
by Rory Carroll, The Guardian (London)
October 15th, 2003
A South African tribal community robbed of its land in the 19th century yesterday won a court battle to regain land and mineral rights to diamonds that could be worth billions of pounds. |
| Brazil: Battling for the Environment
by Paulo Cabral, BBC Brazilian Service
August 20th, 2003
The virtual disappearance of a waterfall at Brazil's Paulo Afonso gorge - once called "Brazil's Niagara" by Victorian explorer Richard Burton - is perhaps the most visible of a number of changes along the Sao Francisco river made in order to generate hydroelectric power. |
| India: River Plans Spark Furore
by Jyotsna Singh, BBC
August 19th, 2003
India's plans to link major rivers in the region to provide water to arid states are causing a furore among its neighbours and environmentalists. Indian officials insist that the project is at a very early stage and that concerned neighbours will be consulted before the plans are firmed up. |
| Lesotho: Water Troubles Building Resentment
BBC
August 6th, 2003
For the past six years Anna Moepi and her sister have been scratching a living in a village a few kilometres from the capital of Lesotho, Maseru. These woman are one of the many people whos homeland was flooded due to a massive water project that was undertaken in the area. |
| Ghana: Anti-Mining Activists Threatened and Harrassed
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
July 30th, 2003
The National Coalition of Civil Society Groups Against Mining in Ghana Forest Reserves has condemned what coalition members describe as deliberate and horrific acts of harassment directed at two of their colleagues by Ashanti Goldfields Company Limited, the district chief executive of Adansi West, and a number of the traditional rulers in the Obuasi area. |
| India: Coke Adds Life?
by Paul Vallely, Jon Clarke and Liz Stuart in Kerala, Independent/UK
July 25th, 2003
Three years ago, the little patch of land in the green, picturesque rolling hills of Palakkad in the Indian state of Kerala yielded 50 sacks of rice and 1,500 coconuts a year. It provided work for dozens of labourers. Then Coca-Cola arrived and built a 40-acre bottling plant next door. |
| Liberia: Civilians Seek Ban on Natural Resources Trade
Environment News Service
July 22nd, 2003
A halt to extraction and trade of Liberian gold, diamonds and timber would help stop the fighting that has killed at least 600 civilians in the capital in the past five days, according to the Environmental Lawyers Association of Liberia and two other nongovernmental organizations. |
| BRAZIL: Land Reforms Promised to Peasant Activists
by Andrew Hay, Reuters
July 3rd, 2003
Brazil promised on Thursday to speed land reforms after landless movement leaders met with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the pledge did little to halt a wave of occupations by peasant activists. |
| USA: Bottled Water Blues
by Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
June 3rd, 2003
The residents of Mecosta County and the surrounding areas in central Michigan regard water as central to their identity. They fish for trout and watch ospreys and eagles feeding in the streams. They spend warm days by the ponds and small lakes that dot the woodlands. And of course the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, are a constant presence. So when a huge multinational bottled water company decided to move in and start pumping over half a million gallons of water a day out of the springs that feed their lakes and streams, the residents took it personally. |
| USA: Private Firms Belly-flop in the H2O Biz
by Jane Kelly, The Sacramento Bee
April 7th, 2003
Multinational corporations vie for a share of the American water market, and if they are given the opportunity, affordable drinking water may soon be a thing of the past. From Stockton, to Atlanta, to Cochabamba, Bolivia, privatization has proven a risky business with far-reaching consequences. |
| USA: Bechtel to Get Richer in Post-War Iraq
by Aaron Davis and Dana Hull, San Jose Mercury News
March 25th, 2003
Bechtel raised the Bay Bridge and assembled the Hoover Dam. The San Francisco company extinguished the oil well fires in Kuwait and dug tunnels for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Its workers have laid 50,000 miles of pipeline and built 17,000 miles of roadway in 140 countries. |
| BRAZIL: South Could Become Stage for Water Wars
by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service
March 21st, 2003
Developing countries rich in water resources could become scenarios of war similar to what is happening today in Iraq if water continues to be privatized and sold like any other merchandise or "good", warned Leonardo Morelli, the organizer of the Social Water Forum, taking place in Brazil. |
| WORLD: Water Privatization Under Fire
Inter Press News Service
March 10th, 2003
Privatization of water services has had negative consequences in many countries, says the environmental network Friends of the Earth International, which urges global resistance to the commercialization of this essential resource. |
| Ghana: Gold Discovered Beneath Forest Reserves
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
March 4th, 2003
Dozens of bulldozers and excavators belonging to five multinational mining companies operating in Ghana are poised to tear apart thousands of hectares of forest reserves in the Ashanti, Western and Eastern Regions of the country, if the government gives them approval to haul out what they describe as rich deposits of gold beneath the forests |
| WORLD: The Planet is Running Out of Fresh Water
by Maude Barlow, The Guardian
February 26th, 2003
The private sector was the first to notice: the planet is running out of fresh water at such a rate that soon it will be the most valuable commodity on earth. |
| BRAZIL: Vivendi Moves to Keep Water Company
by Raymond Colitt, Financial Times
February 18th, 2003
Vivendi Environnement will today launch last-ditch negotiations to recover control of a Brazilian water company after a state government said it would take over management from the French utility. |
| US: Privatized Water Deal Collapses in Atlanta
by Douglas Jehl, New York Times
February 10th, 2003
Privatization has hit the water sector, which has remained mostly the bastion of public utilities. Over the last five years, hundreds of American communities, including Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Gary, Ind., have hired private companies to manage their waterworks, serving about one in 20 Americans. |
| UK: De Beers Changes Its Name to Element Six
Canada NewsWire
September 30th, 2002
CO. CLARE, Ireland (September 30) -- From October 1st, 2002, the De Beers Industrial Diamonds group of companies (Debid) including Drukker International, will become Element Six. The new corporate and brand name is derived from the fact that diamond is a form of carbon, and carbon is the sixth element in the periodic table. The companies feel that the choice of this name encompasses their several businesses in an imaginative and differentiating way, reflecting the modern industrial diamond industry. |
| PERU: Women to be Reckoned With
by Barbara J. Fraser, LatinAmericaPress.org
September 24th, 2002
In a remote mining camp, small businesses give women economic security -- and freedom. High on an arid western slope of the Andes, Santa Filomena is nearly invisible from a distance. The cluster of straw-mat shacks is barely distinguishable from the surrounding hills. There is no water or greenery, and until recently, there was not even an electric light. But for nearly 15 years, the village has attracted settlers from as far away as Piura, in the north, as well as the local department of Ayacucho. |
| NIGERIA: Women Stick to Oil Demands
by D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press
July 13th, 2002
Oil company executives thumped the table and even offered concessions, but the women who took over a giant oil terminal and trapped hundreds of workers inside did not budge Saturday in their demands for jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes. |
| AFRICA: Controversy Continues to Dog Major World Bank Projects
by Jim Cason, AllAfrica.com
April 25th, 2002
The World Bank president's June meeting could do worse than to consider Uganda's Bujagali Dam project and Tanzania's Bulyanhulu Gold Mine. The two large-scale projects are being supported by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga), as part of a broad strategy to increase economic growth and alleviate poverty. |
| BRAZIL: Peasants Take Over Ranches of the Rich
EFE News Service
March 26th, 2002
Some 300 members of Brazil's Landless Peasants' Movement (MST) took over an estate belonging to an associate of the country's president in the state of Sao Paulo Monday, organization spokesmen said. |
| US: Mine Workers Chief Arrested at Massey Energy Protest
Environment News Service
March 15th, 2002
United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts was one of 11 people arrested Thursday at the site of a huge coal sludge spill as they demonstrated against the environmental performance of Massey Energy. |
| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians Appeal Texaco Case Ruling
by Gail Appleson, Reuters
March 11th, 2002
Rainforest Indians of Ecuador and Peru urged a U.S. appeals court on Monday to reinstate nine-year-old litigation against Texaco, alleging that toxic dumping devastated their environment and exposed residents to cancer-causing pollutants. |
| INDIA: Novelist Roy is Grassroots Hero
by Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian (UK)
March 7th, 2002
When Arundhati Roy woke up at 5.30am this morning in Tihar prison, New Delhi, it must have struck her that reality was proving stranger than any fiction. Over the past week terrible communal violence in India has claimed hundreds of lives while the forces of law and order stood by. This has now been juxtaposed with the spectacle of a diminutive, softly spoken novelist being sent to one of the country's most notorious prisons to uphold what the supreme court called the ''glory of the law'' because she dared to criticize it. |
| INDONESIA: Man Shot at Australian Gold Mine
Environment News Service
January 23rd, 2002
An Indonesian man was shot by security police at an Australian gold mine in Indonesian Borneo. The gold mine is located in a remote area of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, inhabited mainly by indigenous Dayak people. |
| Ghana: Cyanide Spill Worst Disaster Ever in West African Nation
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
October 24th, 2001
Villages in the Wassa West District of Ghana's western region have been hit by the spillage of thousands of cubic metres of mine wastewater contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals. The cyanide-laced waste contaminated the River Asuman on October 16 when a tailings dam ruptured at a mine operation owned by the South African company, Goldfields Ltd. |
| Peru: Mining Companies Invade Andean Cloud Forests
Environment News Service
August 17th, 2001
The recent discovery of gold deposits in northwestern Peru has split the population between those who support proposed mineral extraction and those who fear it will cause irreparable ecological damage to human health, agriculture and endangered species. |
| FIJI: Japanese Mine Wants to Dump 100,000 Tons of Waste Daily
Drillbits and Tailings (Project Underground)
June 30th, 2001
Japanese mining magnate Nittetsu-Nippon has set its sights on the copper-rich hills of Fiji, endangering the ecologically fragile Waisoi Valley and the Coral Coast. Because the ore contains such low-grade (only .5%) copper, the proposed Namosi mine would be among the biggest producers of crushed rock among copper mines worldwide. |
| Indonesia: International Ban on Dumping Mine Waste Urged
Environment News Service
May 2nd, 2001
An international conference here on the dumping of mine waste at sea, known as submarine tailings disposal, concluded Monday with a declaration which calls for an international ban on the practice. |
| Africa: U.S. Covert Action Exposed
by Eric Ture Muhammad, Final Call
April 25th, 2001
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) led the voices of castigation that claimed the U.S. Government, the UN, private militias and western economic interests possessed complete knowledge of pending civil unrest in Africa and fed the fray between African nations. Their aim was to use war, disease, hunger and poverty as covers while continuing the centuries-old practice of rape and exploitation of the continent's human and mineral resources, testimonies charged. |
| US: 2001 Goldman Prize Winners Fight Greed
Environment News Service
April 23rd, 2001
The Goldman Environmental Prize for North America goes this year to Akre and Wilson. Winners in five other geographic areas are honored too with the world's largest prize for environmental activists. |
| Turkey: Anti-Mining Activist Jailed
by Jon Gorvett, Environment News Service
March 30th, 2001
The leader of one of Turkey's longest running environmental campaigns was jailed for a year and a half this week under the country's tough anti-protest laws written by the Turkish military. |
| ECUADOR: Nationwide Protests End with Triumph by Indians
by Kintto Lucas, Inter Press Service
February 7th, 2001
The nationwide protests or ''uprising'' by Ecuador's indigenous people that has brought much of this Andean nation to a standstill over the past two weeks ended Wednesday with the signing of a pact with President Gustavo Noboa, who agreed to lower the price of gasoline, one of the demonstrators' main demands. |
| TURKEY: Court Bans Cyanide Gold Process Near Ancient Town
by Jon Gorvett, Environment News Service
January 16th, 2001
Despite an order from the country's Supreme Court backing up environmentalists, the pressure is mounting this week for the reopening of a controversial mine in one of Turkey's most visited tourist areas. |
| World: Enviromentalists Call for Mining Standards
by Danielle Knight, Inter Press Service
October 25th, 2000
Following January's cyanide spill in Romania and new reports on mining disasters from China, environmentalists are calling for governments worldwide to adopt international mining standards. |
| PERU: Mercury from Gold Mine Dumped in Transit
Environment News Service
June 16th, 2000
Eight people have been hospitalized including a woman in critical condition following a mercury spill near the Minera Yanacocha mine, 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of Lima, Peru. |
| SRI LANKA: Massive Protest Against US Mining Project
Inter Press Service
March 30th, 2000
Scientists, trade unionists and priests joined farmers from a northeast Sri Lanka village on Thursday in a massive protest in the capital against government plans to hand over phosphate mines to a US-based transnational company (TNC). |
| ZAMBIA: Environmentalists Caution New Mine Investors
The Times of Zambia (Lusaka)
March 6th, 2000
A non-governmental organisation has cautioned the new mine investors not to willfully pollute the environment despite a bill which indemnifies them from litigation against environmental degradation. Citizens for a better environment, a Kitwe based NGO, warned that should the new mines violate the rights of the people to a clean environment, they would face the wrath of the public. |
| US: Vermiculite Products Could Expose Consumers to Asbestos
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
February 15th, 2000
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether products made from vermiculite could expose consumers to asbestos. Preliminary test results on common household products indicate that a particularly lethal form of asbestos fibers contaminates some attic insulation, but researchers do not yet know whether normal use of these products could endanger consumers. |
| US: Asbestos Tainted Ore Affected Thousands, Suit Charges
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
February 1st, 2000
A class action lawsuit filed Monday seeks cleanup and medical monitoring funds to help more than 26,000 people exposed to asbestos from contaminated vermiculite ore. The suit alleges that decades of unsafe mining operations in Libby, Montana have led to illness and death for thousands of mineworkers, processing plant employees, and Libby residents. |
| The Mexican Version of Pulpwood Plantations
by Alejandro Villamar, World Rainforest Movement Bulletin
August 1st, 1998
In response to pressure from the maquiladora industry, the Mexican government is now paving the way for the large-scale pulpwood plantations in order to provide industry with raw material to produce cheap pulp and paper. |
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