Mining

The U.S. mining company Freeport has ordered its 20,000 employees in Indonesia to avoid the only road to the world's largest gold mine in the wake of deadly ambushes by mysterious gunmen. The wave of attacks that began Saturday marked the worst violence to hit Freeport's operations in the restive Papua province since the killings of three teachers, including two Americans, in 2002. At least 12 people have been killed or wounded in the attacks along the 40-mile road from Grasberg to the mountain mining town of Timika.

Craigslist Inc., the online advertising provider, accused EBay Inc. of using its minority stake in the company to extract confidential information that helped it start a competing classified-advertising website. EBay obtained a seat on Craigslist's board after buying 28% of the company's shares and used that access for data mining, lawyers for Craigslist alleged in a lawsuit.

Everyone plays for high stakes in Ilakaka. You can get rich or you can get killed. This city at the heart of Madagascar's sapphire mining industry is estimated to produce 30% of the world's sapphires -- worth at least $30 million a year. And in the Wild West lifestyle of shady casinos and banditry that swaggered into town with the fabulous mining wealth, speculators are being killed at an alarming rate, with as many as 30 homicides a year in a town of 20,000. One of this year's victims was Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law.

Your implication is correct that nuclear power works best and safest in a democracy ("New energy behind nuclear power," Jan. 21). Your statistics about mining coal in China are also chilling. We cannot control the rest of the world, which is going to move strongly to use nuclear power regardless of what we think or do. What we can do is be a leader in that technology by developing safe and economical plants that we can both market and control overseas. Edwin A. Karlow Professor of physics La Sierra University Riverside

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.

Re "Don't go nuclear," editorial, March 25 You assert that emissions from mining uranium are "significant." Compared to what? Even a modern, high-efficiency, natural gas-fired plant produces substantial carbon dioxide emissions over its life compared with the relatively short time that mining equipment would be used to extract uranium for any individual nuclear plant. Depending on the nuclear fuel cycle chosen, the uranium fuel might be recycled, so that fuel mined during one period would be used over many years, thus limiting mining emissions.

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.

Waiting in their cars or on broken sidewalks, the blue-jeaned crowd has turned out for a parade. But they could pass for mourners at a funeral. They line up along the main drag in front of empty cafes and shops and rusted mining equipment fenced off with barbed wire. Passing time, some press hands and foreheads against windows of stores that went out of business so many years ago that it's hard to remember what they sold. Two graybeards stand near a telephone pole, watching for any sign of action in front of Susie's Thrift and Gift.

President Bush on Monday signaled his intention to protect some of the Pacific Ocean's most remote and unspoiled islands, atolls and coral reefs from fishing and deep-sea mining. In a memo to three Cabinet secretaries, the president asked for a plan that would protect parts of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on the planet, as well as waters around Rose Atoll in American Samoa and various islands and reefs in the central Pacific that are under U.S. jurisdiction.

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.