Guinean migrants turn dust into gold
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It looks like a medieval alchemist's den, this tumbledown shack where young Africans use bubbling blue acid to turn dust into gold.
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PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia  - Gold miners on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula contend with volcanic eruptions, floods and poor infrastructure, but high metal prices mean the hard work pays off.
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"For us, rubbish is gold," is how one  Italian gangster explained the mafia's involvement in waste  trafficking to an investigating magistrate in Naples.
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Poor farmersâ simple methods have helped lead to millions of newly tree-covered acres in a dust-choked region.
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There's no end in sight to the agony of millions of displaced people, but servicing the needs of the thousands of aid workers and peacekeepers has created an economic boom in a dusty northern town
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MERERANI, Tanzania  - The orange sun sets over the  Tanzanian mining town of Mererani as pick-up trucks take the  night shift to pits producing blue Tanzanite gemstones, and  tired workers trudge home in the opposite direction.
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By James Hagengruber, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.  Jan. 30--LIBBY, Mont. -- After finishing a shift at the vermiculite mine, Les Skramstad would come home covered in the white dust of asbestos.   He'd find the dust in deep recesses of his wallet.
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On a warm, dry evening 50 years ago, thousands of people packed the old polo ground in Accra, capital of the soon-to-be-independent country of Ghana. Ernest Tetteh was in his final year of high school and recalled that the atmosphere turned electric as midnight neared.
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Once, the Thakur of Mandawa lorded it over the merchants of his parched Silk Road region. Today, the heir to that title needs a little help from those merchants-turned-moguls
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Salvadoran immigrant Aresenio Ayala walked past the Western Union outlet on Mount Pleasant Road last week and stopped instead at Mi Pueblo, where he sent money to a relative in San Salvador. He said he decided to give the company a try after he saw a flier in the neighborhood.
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BREMEN, Germany, Sep 21 (IPS) - The Panamanian flagged ship Probo Koala unloaded  more than 550 tonnes of toxic waste at Abidjan port in C- te  d'Ivoire a month back. Emissions from that toxic waste have  killed seven people and poisoned thousands.
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Migrants around the globe sent more than $300 billion to their home countries last year, a "staggering" sum that surpassed foreign development aid and foreign direct investment and carries major development potential for poor nations if properly channeled, a report says.
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SAN JOSE MINE, Bolivia  - Roger Mamani rides a rickety elevator deep underground, hikes through flooded tunnels and crawls through a maze of muddy burrows to dig silver ore at the San Jose mine in Bolivia's Andes.
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The first ever commercially viable uranium reserves are found in the West African nation of Guinea.
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Morocco's capital Rabat is rebuilding its seafront and in so doing uncovering a vast treasure trove of relics, artefacts and ruins.
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Hicham El Guerrouj was likening the meaning of his daughter&#39;s name to the precious gold he had earned, but the Moroccan might as well have been describing the last half of the men&#39;s 1,500 meters at Olympic Stadium last night.
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Mohammed Ismail gently pumped the leather bellows to feed embers glowing in a small pit of sand. After four months in a refugee camp, the old farmer is trying to make a living as a blacksmith while dreaming of going back to his ransacked village 125 miles away.