Coltan ore is valuable as a source of niobium and tantalum, metals key to many kinds of electronics. Coltan mining has helped finance war in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now new illegal coltan mining activity has sprung up in the remote Amazon jungles on the border between Venezuela and Columbia. It is controlled largely by armed militias and drug smugglers.
"President Barack Obama on Sunday told a pro-Israel lobbying group that 'loose talk of war' was only serving to benefit Iran because it was driving up the price of oil."
"The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday.
Looking back at this bygone warm period in Earth's history could offer help in forecasting the impact of human-spurred climate change, researchers said.
"An associate of the Heartland Institute, the thinktank devoted to discrediting climate change, taught a course at a top Canadian university that contained more than 140 false, biased and misleading claims about climate science, an expert audit has found."
"Frustrated with the pace of the United Nations group charged with protecting Antarctic waters, a coalition of environmental groups announced its own initiative on Tuesday, calling for the creation of what would be the world’s largest network of marine reserves in the Southern Ocean."
"A new independent report from Japan details just how close that country came to a "devil's chain reaction" of nuclear plant after nuclear plant melting down and sending a plume of radiation over the city of Tokyo and its 30 million inhabitants."
"The World Bank announced on Friday a global alliance to better manage and protect the world's oceans, which are under threat from over-fishing, pollution and climate change."
"DETROIT -- Average retail gas prices in Detroit have risen over 25.6 cents per gallon in the past week. According to GasBuddy.com this compares with the national average that has increased 11.3 cents per gallon in the last week to $3.64/gallon."
"Earth's clouds got a little lower - about one percent on average - during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate."
"A European experiment that in September showed particles moving faster than the speed of light has been exposed as a mistake due to a faulty wire connection, the US journal Science said Wednesday.
'A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame,' said the report on the magazine’s website section Science Insider, citing 'sources familiar with the experiment.'
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