Mining

Fear of a shortage of rare-earth metals used in high-tech military and industrial products has spawned global efforts to reopen abandoned mines, including the formidable Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert. Discovered in the 1940s by uranium prospectors, Mountain Pass contains an array of rare earths, including cerium and lanthanum, in concentrations almost double those found at the world's biggest rare-earth mine, China's Bayan Obo. "You're looking at the greatest rare-earth deposit in the world," says operations manager John Benfield as he ushers a visitor around the 2,200-acre site 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse," their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains. But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals. In a letter this month to a coal ally, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not block dozens of "surface mining" projects.

Sitting like a turquoise gem in a bowl of hemlock, Sitka spruce and ice, Berners Bay has long been a jewel of Alaska's Tongass National Forest. In the spring, swarms of tiny eulachon rush in to spawn, and the bay floods with hundreds of killer whales, humpback whales and sea lions in hot pursuit, along with eagles and seabirds by the thousands. Fishermen flock to its herring, salmon and Dungeness crab. Its chilly, tranquil waters are a favorite destination for kayakers.

Beyond triggering a growing chorus of international criticism, China's detention of an Australian mining executive is a reminder that doing business here carries risks not found in other major economies. The controversy has sparked heated exchanges between Chinese and Australian officials in recent days, with Australians complaining that the Chinese have not released any evidence backing the charges against Stern Hu, an iron ore negotiator for mining giant Rio Tinto.

The logistics of escape is the main topic of conversation these days for the people who live near an old mining tunnel. How many cars could make it up the snow-crusted emergency road at a time? What if it's 3 a.m., and they're sound asleep? How would someone in a wheelchair outrun a flood? Overnight, these have become pressing questions for the people who live below the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, just outside this mining town 85 miles southwest of Denver. The 2.

Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon's storied sandstone cliffs. On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior.

High up a steep Sierra hillside that rises behind this Mother Lode town, past where the paved road runs out, tucked into a shadowy gulch covered with pines and cedars -- and far, far away from the financial calamities rocking Wall Street -- this was where Perry Cottingham could be found last week, engaged in that most seminal of California enterprises, mining for gold. Here was a man happy in his work.

This tiny community nestled on the backside of Pike's Peak revels in its mining heritage. Tourists are invited to tour underground tunnels, gamble in the Gold Rush and Gold Diggers casinos or view a video at a museum entitled, "The Timeless Art of Gold Extraction." They can shop for trinkets in the stores set up in Victorian houses built during Cripple Creek's mining heyday.

Ronald seems a sober, respectable, church-on-Sunday type. Not the kind you'd find prospecting for diamonds here in Zimbabwe's wild east, a world of swaggering foreigners, dirty money and shoot-to-kill police. Not the sort who'd utter movie-script lines like this one: "You can make $15,000 or $20,000 in 30 minutes. But you can die within seconds." Ronald, like the rest of Zimbabwe, has caught Africa's nastiest ailment -- diamond fever.

Workers at a huge U.S.-owned copper and gold mine are on a sit-down strike demanding a greater role in management, which they say is discriminating against tribespeople in remote Papua province. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., based in Phoenix, has been plagued for years by allegations of human rights abuses and environmental damage at its open-pit mine.