Congo's faded copper town perks up in mining rush
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KOLWEZI, Congo  - Amid rusted hulks of abandoned plants and huge mine craters, Congo's former top copper town Kolwezi is showing signs of a reawakening.
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A town in the mineral rich Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has fallen to a mysterious group of militants. Going by the name of the Liberation Movement for
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'Blood Diamond' tries to mix African politics and action.
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This old mining town in the northeast of England used to be a grimy industrial wasteland. Now it's becoming a gleaming cultural center and -- who would have thought it? -- tourist destination
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From Africa to Russia, from Peru to China, mining companies face a problem: the workers who haul up the earth's riches are coming down with AIDS, and it is hampering operations at a time of booming demand for minerals.
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SILVERBELL, Ariz. -- Among the statuesque saguaro cactuses in the desert south of this old mining town lies the remnant of a crime scene that federal authorities say signals a troubling and escalated level of violence associated with the human smuggling trade.
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Almost five years after a cyanide spill from a gold mine in northern Romania travelled down the Tisza river in Hungary, leaving a trail of ecological destruction in its wake, local communities in the region ...
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Walls plastered with campaign posters from Congo's historic elections are peppered with bullet holes. Tank fire has smashed buildings just down bloodstained streets from voting centers in the war-battered capital.
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KOIDU, Sierra Leone  - The battle for Sierra Leone's eastern diamond fields fuelled its 11-year civil war, but now the muddy pits are being returned to farming under a scheme funded by U.S. luxury jewelers Tiffany & Co.
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ARANDIS, Namibia -- This sandy little company town, with its tree-lined streets and concrete homes set amid a vast, forbidding desert, had all the signs of terminal decline just a few years back. Both banks closed. The only gas station shut off its pumps. And employable young men, realizing the bleak future of the giant uranium mine that gave Arandis life, began drifting away....
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In large swaths of Congo, many people rely on an increasingly dangerous railway system long past its prime.
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An improving political climate, and the   potential for major mineral discoveries, has reawakened   interest in Africa among Australian mining companies that have   traditionally rated the continent too risky.
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China plans to lend the Democratic  Republic of Congo $5 billion to modernize its decrepit  infrastructure and rich but deteriorated mining sector in  another huge Chinese investment foray in Africa.
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POTOSI, Bolivia  - High silver prices are drawing a frenzy of miners to a colonial-era mine at Potosi in Bolivia, but the mine has become so dangerous that authorities fear the mine, part of a World Heritage Site, could collapse.
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MUTONGO, Congo AP) &#151; Swooping over the lush, volcanic hills of east Congo, a helicopter patrol by U.N. observers on Saturday revealed emptied villages &#151; one spotted a day earlier was half-burned &#151; but little sign of who was responsible.
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Prices for raw materials had languished for years, but the sector is now trying to meet burgeoning global demand for iron, copper and other key commodities.
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MACKENZIE, B.C. -- For a time, the snow-dusted forests ringing this picturesque mill town might as well have been made of gold.