Mining company hit with accusation it contaminated waterways with harmful levels of uranium and lead

In a letter of claim, a document that is an early step in a lawsuit, the villagers accuse Rio Tinto of contaminating the waterways and lakes that they use for domestic purposes with elevated and harmful levels of uranium and lead, which pose a serious risk to human health.

This story was published in partnership with The Intercept . The reporting for this investigation was supported by a grant from Journalists for Transparency, an initiative of Transparency International.

Seven years ago, El Salvador banned all mining for metals to protect its water supply. But now the government seems to be making moves to reverse the ban – and environmental activists are in the firing line

On the afternoon of 17 May 2023, in the rural El Salvador state of Cabañas, Vidalina Morales’s mobile phone rang. It was her 33-year-old son, Manuel, but his voice sounded strange. “They have me here in the police station,” he said. He’d been arrested while playing football with friends on a local field. Morales tried to breathe. This had long been her worst fear: that her loved ones would be targeted on account of her work.

Morales, 55, is one of the most visible leaders of the Salvadoran environmentalist movement. About 5ft tall and slight, with long black hair wrapped into a sensible bun, she often wears the blouses and long skirts traditional to rural Salvadoran women. As the president of a development organisation in Cabañas called the Association for Social and Economic Development ( Ades ), she is also familiar with the halls of power. In March 2017, she and her colleagues, after years of activism, won a national ban on metal mining , the first such ban in the world. Mining posed an existential threat to the Salvadoran water supply. Worldwide, the industry often overrides local laws and regulations and leaves violence and environmental destruction in its wake. For Salvadorans, a ban was the only way to protect their resources.

Researchers applaud move away from fossil fuels but say more must be done to mitigate effects on endangered species

Up to a third of Africa’s great apes are threatened by a boom in mining projects for minerals required for the renewable energy transition, new research shows.

An estimated 180,000 gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees are at risk due to an increase in demand for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt, a study has found. Many of those minerals are required for clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric cars. Researchers say the boom in demand is driving destruction of tropical rainforests which are critical habitats for Africa’s great apes.

Online videos of disused slate quarry ‘car grave’ led hundreds to come and take photographs but leave rubbish and graffiti behind

An old flooded slate mine used as a dumping ground for cars in north Wales, the eeriness of which attracts Instagram photo seekers, is in danger of being destroyed by visitors trashing the site, it has been claimed.

YouTube videos of the so-called “Cavern of Lost Souls” filmed in the Gwynedd quarry have been viewed by millions and attracted adventurous visitors to the site at the old Gaewern slate mine from where they have posted hundreds of photographs of the “car grave”.

Investigation reveals reports of miscarriages, infections and birth defects among women and girls in mining communities

Women and girls living in cobalt-mining communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are reporting a “staggering” rise in serious reproductive health issues, including miscarriages and birth defects, according to a new report.

An investigation published by the UK-based human rights group Rights & Accountability in Development (Raid) and the Kinshasa-based NGO Afrewatch said that women and girls living around cobalt mines reported experiencing irregular menstruations, urogenital infections, vaginal mycoses and warts.

Chase Hays and more than 50 neighbors are suing Blackhawk Mining after a silt retention pond burst and killed 43 people

Chase Hays knew it was time to evacuate when he saw his neighbor’s home float through his front yard. It was just after midnight on 28 July 2022, and Lost Creek, Kentucky, was experiencing a catastrophic rainstorm .

As Hays would later learn, the rains caused a silt retention pond to burst at a nearby mine, sending a torrent of rainwater and sediment down the mountain.

UK industrial towns offered not only well-paid jobs, but a whole culture. A radical alternative is desperately needed

Last week, Tata Steel in Port Talbot announced the immediate closure of its coke ovens . These ovens create the coke that ultimately powers the blast furnaces, which, as was announced in January, are due to be shut down . The decision by Tata to close the furnaces sent shock waves through the community. There are set to be 2,800 job losses – a huge blow for a small town that has already undergone significant cuts to its steel industry over the past decades. A final chapter in the decades-long deindustrialisation of the British economy appears to be coming to a close.

Plant closures are never only about the loss of work, but also the cultural and psychological effects on the people who are made unemployed, on families and communities. Steel provided well-paid, unionised and skilled employment, and created a working-class culture that gave the country Labour MPs, athletes, musicians, writers, artists and a sense of community and collective purpose. Port Talbot even gave the world the cinematic presence of Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.

Keith Gildart is a former coalminer, and now a professor of labour and social history at the University of Wolverhampton

ENRC seeking compensation for losses it says were result of fraud inquiry dropped last year, court hears

The UK government faces an “extraordinary” $1bn damages claim, a court has been told, in a lawsuit brought by a mining company that has been bankrolled by Russian banks targeted by sanctions.

ENRC, the UK-based arm of a global mining conglomerate belonging to oligarchs, is seeking compensation for losses it claims it suffered as a result of a decade-long Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation that was dropped last year, according to court documents.

Buoyed by forcing the closure of a vast copper mine, a new generation of eco-conscious candidates are taking on the ‘shameful and corrupt’ status quo in May’s general elections

In October, seven months before Panama’s general election, thousands of young environmentalists marched through the streets of Panama City demanding the closure of an open-pit copper mine , one of the largest in the Americas. They chanted “Panama’s gold is green” and “PRD trash” – a reference to the governing Partido Revolucionario Democrático ( Democratic Revolutionary party), which has long dominated politics in the country.

Soon, they were joined by others from across Panamanian society: Indigenous people, workers, students and Instagram influencers.