It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 09, 2021
Illegal gold mining thrives in Amazon, miners attack indigenous people
| WION Climate Tracker | News
Sep 8, 2021
WION The illegal gold mining business is booming in Brazil, with miners pinning their hopes on a bill. More than 5000 illegal gold mines are operating in the Amazon forest which results in polluting the Amazon River. #Brazil#GoldMining#AmazonRiver
Agriculture reform: Will new laws destroy Indian farmers' livelihoods? | DW News
Farmers in India are stepping up the pressure on the government to repeal a set of laws they say will harm their livelihoods. Thousands gathered at a grain market outside the capital Delhi on Monday to protest these laws. Over the weekend, there was also a massive rally in another town outside Delhi. Farmers believe the new laws, introduced in September 2020 will leave them at the mercy of rich food companies. Farmers say, these companies will use their power to dictate the price of agricultural products and will hurt their income. The protests have been on for nearly ten months now and there's warnings of even bigger ones to come.
In October 2016, an aircraft equipped with NASA’s Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer–Next-Generation (AVIRIS-NG) instrument detected multiple plumes of methane arising from the Sunshine Canyon landfill near Santa Clarita, California. The plumes were large enough that researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) notified facility operators and local enforcement agencies about it. It was an important step in a process of better accounting for local emissions of the gas.
Methane is a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas that has been responsible for about 20 percent of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. Dairy cows and beef cattle produce methane through their guts and release it in burps. Their manure also produces methane, and when it is stored in manure lagoons it can be a major source of emissions. Oil and natural gas production releases methane from underground, and the infrastructure to store and transport it can leak. And landfills are a source of methane when organic materials are broken down by bacteria in anaerobic conditions.
The state of California aims to reduce such methane emissions, trying to cut back to 40 percent below 2013 levels by the end of this decade. But in order to reduce emissions, the state needs to get a better handle on the sources.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB)—the state agency that oversees air pollution control efforts—traditionally estimated greenhouse gas emissions by taking inventory of known emitting activities. But this approach can miss leaks or other fugitive emissions, so CARB staff became interested in measuring emissions from the air to improve greenhouse gas accounting and to pinpoint mitigation opportunities.
The images above show methane measurements made by the AVIRIS-NG instrument during October 2016 and 2017 flights over Santa Clarita, California. Methane emissions from the Sunshine Canyon landfill are shown in a yellow to red gradient, with red representing the highest concentrations. The right image shows the reduction in methane concentrations after landfill improvements were implemented.
The flights were part of the California Methane Survey, an ongoing project to map sources of methane emissions around the state. But before any flights took off, climate scientist Francesca Hopkins of the University of California, Riverside, and Riley Duren of JPL (now at the University of Arizona) set out to map all potential sources of methane around the state in order to better focus limited flight time and prioritize observations.
They decided to use a GIS-based approach, assimilating many publicly available geospatial datasets to develop a map that could help them quickly match methane plumes to likely sources. The research team organized potential methane-emitting infrastructure in California into three sectors: energy, agriculture, and waste. The dataset, called Sources of Methane Emissions (Vista-CA), includes more than 900,000 entries and is available at NASA’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC).
From August 2016 to November 2017, a JPL-based team flew aircraft equipped with the AVIRIS-NG instrument over 22,000 square miles of the state. “Currently there is no methane observing system that can efficiently survey the entire land surface at high resolution,” said Duren. “We had to focus on high-priority areas.” The flight paths were planned so that they would cover at least 60 percent of methane point-source infrastructure in California.
To speed up the data analysis, Duren and colleagues then used machine learning techniques (such as neural networks) to automatically identify plumes detected during the flights. In parallel, graduate student Talha Rafiq from UC Riverside developed an algorithm to attribute methane plume observations to the most likely Vista-CA source. The technologies allowed the team to share their findings within weeks with facility operators and regulators in California to alert them of fugitive methane emissions and to help accelerate remediation.
More than 272,000 individual facilities and equipment components were surveyed. Of those sites, emissions from less than 0.2 percent of that infrastructure were responsible for at least one third of California’s methane inventory. Landfills and composting facilities were responsible for 41 percent of the emissions measured. Duren, Hopkins, and others published their findings in Nature in 2019.
In the case of Sunshine Canyon, the landfill operator confirmed the methane emissions and determined that they were due to problems with surface cover and with gas capture systems. Over the next year the operator instituted a number of changes that dramatically reduced emissions. Subsequent flyovers with AVIRIS-NG confirmed a reduction in methane. These findings were documented by Duren, Daniel Cusworth (project scientist at the University of Arizona), and others in Environmental Research Letters in 2020.
Researchers have discovered a way to use mining waste as part of a potential cheaper catalyst for hydrogen fuel production.
Water splitting reactions that produce hydrogen are triggered using rare platinum ($1450/ounce), iridium ($1370/ounce) and ruthenium ($367/ounce), or cheaper but less active metals—cobalt ($70,000/ton), nickel ($26,000/ton) and iron ($641/ton).
Professor Ziqi Sun from the QUT School of Chemistry and Physics and QUT Centre for Materials Science and Dr. Hong Peng from the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland led research to create a new catalyst using only a small amount of these reactive metals.
They combined them with feldspars, aluminosilicate rock minerals found in mining waste that Professor Sun said some companies pay about $30/ton to dispose of.
In the experiment, featured on the August cover of Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research, the researchers triggered a water splitting reaction using heated-activated feldspars nanocoated with only 1–2 percent of the cheaper reactive metals.
"Water splitting involves two chemical reactions—one with the hydrogen atom and one with the oxygen atom—to cause them to separate," Professor Sun said.
"This new nanocoated material triggered the oxygen evolution reaction, which controls the overall efficiency of the whole water splitting process," he said.
Professor Sun said cobalt-coated feldspar was most efficient and optimizing the new catalysts could see them outperform raw metals or even match the superior efficiency of platinum metals.
He said the new catalyst could also potentially lower the cost of lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries and other sustainable energy solutions that relied on electrochemical conversions.
"This research could potentially add to Australia's renewable energy value chain by repurposing mining waste and adding new technologies to traditional industries.
"Companies like Tesla could potentially use this technology for energy production, advanced energy storage solutions like new battery technologies, and renewable fuel," he said.
Researchers are now looking to test the catalysts at pilot scale.
"Australia's abundance of aluminosilicate and the simplicity of this modification process should make industrial scale production of this new catalyst easy to achieve," Professor Sun said.
Feldspars make up about 60 percent of the Earth's crust, according to Professor Sun, whose previous research activated feldspars for use as potential low-cost anodes in Li-Ion storage.
He said the aluminosilicates were chemically inert, but heat caused defects that were useful for chemical reactions and electron transport.
Joining Professor Sun and Dr. Peng were other researchers from the QUT Centre for Materials Science including Professor Godwin Ayoko, Dr. Jun Mei and Dr. Juan Bai from the QUT Faculty of Science, and Associate Professor Liao Ting from the QUT Faculty of Engineering.
Professor Sun and Dr. Peng are both focused on developing materials for emerging sustainable technologies.
Dr. Peng is an expert in utilizing clay minerals and mine tailings for functional materials through low-cost mineral processing technology.
He said the mining industry produced tons of waste material each year that Australia could be using for sustainable technologies.
"Aluminosilicate is commonly found in various mining tailings and is so cheap that mining companies would normally pay to dispose of it," Dr. Peng said.
More information:Jun Mei et al, In Situ Growth of Transition Metal Nanoparticles on Aluminosilicate Minerals for Oxygen Evolution,Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research(2021).DOI: 10.1002/aesr.202170018
We are facing a waste crisis, with landfills across the world at full capacity and mountains of “recycled” waste dumped in developing countries. Food packaging is a major source of this waste, giving rise to an industry of “environmentally friendly” reusable food and drink containers that’s projected to be worth £21.3 billion worldwide by 2027: well over double its 2019 value of £9.6 billion.
But while it might seem like reusing the same container is better than buying a new single-use one each time, our research shows that reusable containers could actually be worse for the environment than their disposable counterparts.
Reusable containers have to be stronger and more durable to withstand being used multiple times – and they have to be cleaned after each use – so they consume more materials and energy, increasing their carbon footprint.
Our research set out to understand how many times you have to reuse a container for it to be the more eco-friendly choice, in the context of the takeaway food industry.
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We looked at three of the most widely used types of single-use takeaway containers: aluminium, polypropylene (PP) and extruded polystyrene (commonly known as Styrofoam®, but correctly referred to as EPS). We compared these with commonly used reusable polypropylene food containers, popular among eco-conscious consumers.
The results showed clearly that Styrofoam® containers are by far the best option for the environment among single-use food containers. This is mainly due to their use of only 7.8g of raw materials compared with PP containers’ 31.8g. Also, they require less electricity for production compared with aluminium containers.
Even a reusable container would have to be reused between 16 and 208 times for its environmental impact to equal that of a single-use Styrofoam® container.
We assessed 12 environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of a food container. These included the container’s contribution to global warming and to acid rain, its toxicity to humans and natural ecosystems and its effects on the ozone layer.
Taking these into account, you’d have to reuse a container 16 times to “counteract” the impact on air pollution of using the single-use container – and 208 times to counteract the impact of resource consumption.
When it comes to endangering our landscapes, reusable containers are always a worse option – regardless of the number of times used – due to the electricity required to heat the water for washing them. This is thanks to the emission of substances like heavy metals in electricity generation, which are toxic to many land-based organisms. Offsetting damage through reuse
This is the number of container reuses required to offset negative climate effects driven by their production: including climate change, resource consumption, air pollution, acid rain, eutrophication, marine toxicity, human toxicity and terrestrial toxicity. Author provided
Similar results to ours have been reported for coffee cups, with one study concluding that it takes between 20 and 100 uses for a reusable cup to offset its higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to a disposable cup. Alternatives
A common criticism of Styrofoam® containers is that they are not currently recycled. Although technically possible, the low density of Styrofoam® (containing 95% air) means that vast amounts need to be collected and compressed before they can be shipped to a recycling plant, making Styrofoam® recycling economically tricky.
However, we found that increasing recycling rates for the three types of single-use takeaway containers to the level of the EU’s 2025 packaging waste recycling target (75% for aluminium and 55% for plastic) would reduce their impacts by 2% to 60%. This includes an annual drop in carbon emissions equivalent to taking 55,000 cars off the road.
That doesn’t mean that reusing containers is always worse for the planet. We just need to be realistic about the number of reuses it takes to make environmental sense. But reuse is a considerable challenge for an industry optimised for “on-the-go” consumption.
Unless it is highly convenient or they’re offered an incentive (such as money back), customers aren’t likely to carry around empty containers until they can return or reuse them. There are also potential issues with liability for food poisoning and cross-contamination from allergens when reusing containers.
Despite this, reuse has been shown to work in the takeout sector, as with reusable box schemes like reCIRCLE in Switzerland. However, systems like this require considerable investment, particularly to help customers return containers.
Single-use containers are often more convenient for consumers. ArnoldUspt/Pixabay
A more promising model may be one where the vendor directly collects empty containers from the customer to be refilled with the same substance, in the style of old-fashioned milk delivery rounds. Similar models, like Terracycle’s Loop, aim to reuse each container up to 100 times. The bigger picture
Unfortunately, single-use takeaway containers frequently end up contaminating natural environments. Almost half of the plastic polluting the world’s oceans comes from takeaway containers.
But instead of switching from single-use, a better environmental solution may be to encourage food companies to invest in more efficient recycling systems worldwide.
The takeaway message? Individual packaging choices will have limited influence as long as the whole system remains in need of a complete overhaul. For example, a consumer might opt for a compostable container, but that won’t help if their area doesn’t have a industrial composting facility.
It’s time we shifted packaging design from being product-based – focused on providing maximum features and functionality – to user-centred, focusing on improving customers’ lives by empathising with their desires for a cleaner world.
That means coupling environmentally sound and low-impact materials with a waste infrastructure that appreciates how humans actually behave and is designed to help them lead sustainable lives. When convenience and sustainability are pursued together, everyone wins.
Authors
Alejandro Gallego Schmid Senior Lecturer in Circular Economy and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, University of Manchester
Adisa Azapagic Professor of Environmental Chemical Engineering, University of Manchester
Joan Manuel F. Mendoza Research Fellow in Circular Economy and Industrial Sustainability, Ikerbasque Foundation
Disclosure statement
Alejandro Gallego Schmid receives funding from UKRI. The authors would like to thank Dr Caroline Wood for her writing assistance, language editing, and proofreading of this article.
Adisa Azapagic receives research funding from UKRI.
Joan Manuel F. Mendoza receives funding from IKERBASQUE - The Basque Foundation for Science, and is affiliated with The University of Mondragon and Ikerbasque. Partners
Hannah McGowan once believed that vaccination was to blame for her chronic health issues, and refused to vaccinate her two young sons. Then she started to listen to the health professionals who know best.
OPINION: In 1999 I was 19 and utterly convinced that vaccines had given me Crohn's disease. Crohn's is a living nightmare, the kind of hell you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Already hostile and distrustful of the medical profession after many unpleasant experiences, I stumbled across a small study that connected Crohn's to exposure to the MMR vaccine.
I was hooked. It made sense to me that a medication designed to stimulate your immune system could in turn cause Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disorder. Medicines I had been assured would help me had already hurt me. I didn't trust pharmaceuticals. Why should I trust vaccines?
Unable to find a GP willing or able to talk with me in length about my concerns, I went online. I came across terms like 'big pharma' and 'vaccine injury', terrifying reports from devastated parents convinced vaccines had harmed their children. Studies, blogs and articles published in medical journals reinforced my suspicions. They all seemed legitimate, convincing. I soon became wary of evidence that opposed my newly formed beliefs. I leapt at the chance to share new evidence that supported 'the cause', regardless of the authenticity or source, and only if it confirmed my viewpoint.
I became active on anti-vaxx Facebook groups. I met others who had experienced trauma, incompetence, disability, even death after interactions with our health system. We couldn't rely on conventional medicine but we could rely on each other. We were all hurt, in pain, and angry in the same way. Our pain bonded us. We clung to our truth, to our feelings, to what we knew. We lost the ability to separate facts from falsehoods. We were scared - and when you're scared it's much easier for lies to gain traction.
Once a belief has taken hold in your mind, it's hard to budge it. New information that conflicts with an existing belief causes psychological discomfort, and our brains tend to try to protect us from this by shutting down. It's called cognitive dissonance - the frustratingly counter-intuitive thing our brains do to 'protect' us. It's this mental phenomenon which gets us caught up in a belief while becoming intolerant to anything that might contradict it.
Cognitive dissonance makes life less challenging. It makes it easy to stay set in your ways. But it's a lazy way to live: instead of looking objectively at opposing studies you can write them off as the work of 'big pharma shills' and remain comfortably certain of your beliefs. I wasn't able to accept the cost of my decision to not vaccinate. When the danger I was putting my children and others in was pointed out to me, I always found a way to rebuff the evidence and justify myself. My psyche couldn't handle confronting the reality of my actions.
The love we have for our children and the desire to protect them is a powerful force. A belief that vaccines are dangerous can be so strong that it can blind us with emotion, overriding the ability to be objective or rational. We even find ways to justify the unassailable fact that dangerous, disabling diseases are resurfacing because of our fear.
Disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield. Photo credit: Getty
When British doctor Andrew Wakefield's autism study claiming a link between the MMR vaccine, autism and bowel disease started to garner serious criticism my brain refused to accept the fact. I was experiencing cognitive dissonance. I began to debate vaccination supporters on open forums, and did some fact checking to defend my side of the argument. It was then that it began to dawn on me that the evidence against Wakefield's claim was painfully solid. The idea of having to both re-examine my beliefs and very likely alienate people I cared about was a bitter pill to swallow. I didn't do anything, but my confidence in the dangers of vaccines was crumbling. Were vaccines really the enemy we thought they were? Was any of this fear rational?
About three years ago I had a conversation with someone I respect a great deal. I brought up the fact I hadn't vaccinated my children and told her I was concerned about the connection between vaccines, Crohn's disease and immune disorders. I mentioned reports of neurological damage due to severe reactions to vaccines and the possible under-reporting of vaccine related injuries.
We had a discussion about her perspective on vaccination as a member of the DHB and discussed the findings of her colleague, an immunisation specialist. She had a lot of faith in the system and I had a lot of faith in her, but I also had a lot of questions. Her answers were fact-based, scientific and validated by decades of study and testing. I realised that a great deal of the information I had accumulated was outdated, exaggerated, or incorrect.
Finally, I was able to accept that I might want to reevaluate my anti-vaxx views. I began visiting sites I had previously dismissed as biased contributors to the vaccine conspiracy. I soon unearthed the study claiming a connection between the MMR vaccine and Crohn's disease, and found that it had been discredited the same year I decided to believe it was true.
It became evident that vaccines are constantly under scrutiny, monitored and improved even as a precautionary measure. Deaths related to vaccinations are almost non-existent. So few deaths can be plausibly attributed to vaccines that it is hard to statistically access the risk.
One of the hardest things for me to accept was that the majority of reported 'vaccine injury' cases are not supported by evidence. I do not dispute that genuine vaccine injury cases occur. These terrible, life-changing events inflicted on the unlucky few are heartbreaking and justify sincere concern and investigation regarding the safety of vaccines. But amplifying the pain of these events scares others into making choices that will guarantee other parents will know the horror of death or disablement by preventable disease. Vaccine injury cases are statistically unlikely but they are treated as though they are commonplace, and that just isn't true.
It is incredibly difficult for anyone to cope with an illness or disability that comes on suddenly, especially if there is no clear cause. If a vaccination appears to precede a health crisis or sudden death, it is understandable that people will blame the one known factor. But those who blame vaccinations tend to ignore other, far greater factors like human error or pre-existing conditions.
My research revealed a conclusion I long considered impossible: vaccinations are overwhelmingly safe. It seems counter-intuitive to give healthy people an injection, but herd immunity only works when every healthy, able-bodied individual and child gets on board.
Vaccinating as many people as possible is the only way we can protect our most vulnerable including children too young to be immunised, chemotherapy patients and the elderly.
My response to a more complete understanding of vaccines? I began the belated process of fully vaccinating my children. They didn't develop Crohn's disease and they are protected from many dangerous preventable diseases including the ongoing measles outbreak. They are also protected from spreading these diseases and infecting others.
Admitting that I had been wrong was rough. I'd been incredibly lucky - herd immunity had protected my sons - but I had been so afraid of my children suffering that I had willingly put their health and the health of others at risk by cherry picking my way through 'scientific' studies and anecdotal reports. Not a fun thing to admit to yourself, let alone others.
I can understand why parents and caregivers are reluctant to begin the long and possibly thankless process of re-educating ourselves. But there is simply not enough real, substantive evidence to justify the war on vaccinations.
Sharing misinformation and clickbait articles leads to more people being afraid to vaccinate, which results in deadly outbreaks of preventable diseases like whooping cough, measles and influenza - all far more dangerous than any vaccine. If you choose not to vaccinate your child and encourage others to do the same, you are at the very least putting the vulnerable in harm's way.
If you're an anti-vaxxer, you might have become one because you have an open mind. You can consider different perspectives, possibly more so than most. Please continue to use that open mind to consider new evidence. All of us need to examine a different perspective every now and again. When I began to change my point of view it improved the life of my children, myself, and this tribe we call humanity. It wasn't easy, but I highly recommend it.
The president of the University of Calgary Students' Union says the decision to move some classes online a couple of weeks before fall classes began was done without proper consultation, and as a result student complaints are off the charts.
"The students' union was not consulted in any way by the university ahead of this decision," Nicole Schmidt told Alberta@Noon on Wednesday.
"The number of complaints from students has been unprecedented."
The University of Calgary said 10 per cent of course components (lectures, labs, seminars or tutorials) were shifted online in August, and that 80 per cent of students are learning either entirely in-person or partially in-person.
Schmidt feels the writing was on the wall and the school didn't need to wait to the last minute.
"Students have been busy planning their schedules and their lives for the fall semester. They registered for classes in good faith expecting the university to honour the original intended delivery format but instead we have seen the university pull the rug out from under students with less than two weeks until classes begin."
The university has known since March that classes would return to campus in the fall and offered in person, Schmidt said.
"It is just disappointing that the university has offered flexibility to professors and not to students."
Decision not made lightly, school says
The school declined an interview but offered a statement on its decision to CBC News.
"The University of Calgary's top priority is the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff. The environment continues to change rapidly," the statement reads.
"The pandemic has forced many post-secondary institutions, including the U of C, to make difficult decisions on a short time frame in order to ensure our campus is safe for students, faculty, and staff. These are not decisions we make lightly."
MacEwan not doing last-minute pivot, provost says
That decision, however, left some people high and dry, says the provost and vice president academic at MacEwan University in Edmonton.
"There is no last-minute pivot," Craig Monk said of his school, relative to the University of Calgary.
"While instructors do have the ability to increase the online component as conditions allow, two-thirds of our programming was always designed to combine an online and face-to-face experience."
Monk says MacEwan has been responsive to a moving target.
Eighteen months ago, the school had fully moved to online delivery as the pandemic roared. Six months after that, 10 to 20 per cent of programming had returned to face-to-face.
Earlier this year, MacEwan had committed to a "meaningful face-to-face component" with two-thirds of programming designed as an on-campus and online hybrid, Monk said.
Many things impact the final delivery decision.
"There is a lot of instructor discretion. They have learned from feedback from students, they work with department chairs and deans, to see what works," he said.
Trudeau Says Rebel News Spreads Disinformation On Vaccines
Canada election: Trudeau says Rebel News needs to ‘take accountability’ for increasing polarization
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau criticized Rebel News during a media scrum following the French language debate on Wednesday, saying the group needs to “take accountability” for its role in contributing to the increasing polarization in Canadian society and accusing them of spreading misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.
AND BY INFERENCE THE SECRET ORG BEHIND THE PROTESTS PLAGUING TRUDEAU
Trudeau climate promises interrupted by angry crowd in Ontario
Protesters scream as police secure the property as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau announces green incentives towards climate change at a campaign stop during the Canadian federal election campaign in Cambridge, Ont., on Sunday, August 29, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Noront Resources’ Esker camp in Ontario’s Ring of Fire. Credit: Noront Resources
Noront Resources (TSXV: NOT) has finally received a formal offer from Wyloo Resources – more than three months after Wyloo first floated a proposal to acquire the Ring of Fire junior in late May.
The C$0.70 per share offer trumps BHP’s (NYSE: BHP; LSE: BHP; ASX: BHP) friendly C$0.55 per share bid for Noront, made in late July.
It’s also more than double what Wyloo first proposed in May — C$0.315 per share. The success of either bid will put high-profile Ring of Fire nickel asset in Australian hands. Wyloo, a private company controlled by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, submitted the offer to Noront’s board on Friday, Sept. 3, after Noront invited it on Aug. 31 to make its proposal official. Wyloo says it wants to develop a “Future Metals” hub in Ontario, building on Noront’s Eagle’s Nest project, a high-grade nickel-copper-PGE deposit in the remote Ring of Fire region.
But even though it has now formally submitted its offer, the Perth-based company has continued to lob criticisms at Noront’s board. In its most recent statement, it implied that Noront’s directors and officers have continued to support BHP’s bid because under a lockup agreement signed with the giant Australia-based miner, they gain earlier access to certain options or share awards – a benefit with a gross monetary value of C$10 billion ($7.9bn) at BHP’s offer price. In addition, Wyloo doesn’t like the terms of a confidentiality agreement it has now entered into in order to conduct due diligence.
According to Noront’s July 27 support agreement with BHP, the junior can only provide confidential information to another party only if it signs a confidentiality agreement and agrees to a standstill provision. In the interest of Noront shareholders, the company says that BHP has agreed to waive the standstill requirement.
However, Wyloo says the confidentiality agreement still restricts its ability to communicate directly with shareholders.
For its part, Noront says the agreement and the terms of its support agreement with BHP are standard.
“Wyloo’s assertions that, among other things, the exercise of options and share awards by Noront officers and directors is unusual is simply incorrect,” the company said. “The acceleration provisions provided in the support agreement for the options and share awards are also customary for a transaction of this nature and are fully disclosed in the support agreement and other public filings relating to the proposed transaction with BHP.”
The lock-up agreements between BHP and Noront’s officers and directors will automatically terminate if Noront ends its support for the BHP bid in response to a higher offer.
Noront also confirmed it has no undisclosed agreements, understandings or incentives for its directors or officers in connection with the BHP offer.
Notably, while Wyloo is Noront’s biggest shareholder, the junior’s board did not support its proposal and adopted a poison pill provision to block it.
In its release on Aug. 30, Wyloo said it only made the initial offer because of Noront’s intention to strike a deal with BHP that it says undervalued the Ring of Fire assets.
“In April this year, we were deeply concerned when the Noront board proposed to farm out Noront’s exploration projects to BHP for only C$25 million,” said Luca Giacovazzi, head of Wyloo Metals. “Rather than consenting to such a transaction, we decided to make an offer to acquire the company. Our fears were justified when the Noront board completed a deeply discounted 5% placement to BHP, giving away a strategic toehold in the company to an obvious suitor.”
Giacovazzi added: “Since our initial proposal, we have listened to the feedback from shareholders who, like us, believe in the future of the Ring of Fire. We believe Noront shareholders deserve the chance to decide whether to join us in rebuilding the company, and not be pressured into selling all of their shares unless they want to.”
Noront has said that it sought a bid from BHP in its search for a superior offer to Wyloo’s initial proposal in May.
Wyloo, which now owns a 24.4% stake in Noront, asserts that given its holding and the superiority of its new offer to BHP’s bid, its proposal has a better chance of success. (The company can increase its interest to 37.2% by converting a $15 million convertible loan into common shares before the Sept. 30, 2021 maturity date.) However, the BHP bid only requires 50% of the shares not already owned by BHP to be tendered. Details of the proposal
Wyloo says it will give shareholders the choice between retaining some or all of their shares in a revamped Noront, with a board of directors headed by Andrew Forrest, or taking the cash offer.
Other board members would include former Sherritt International CEO Ian Delaney; chairman and CEO of Queen’s Road Capital Investment Warren Gilman; and current Noront director Giacovazzi.
In a direct appeal to shareholders, Forrest pledged that Noront would make more progress under his leadership.
“After years of little progress, it’s understandable that shareholders have lost hope in Noront,” Forrest said in a statement. “I’ve personally been in the same position before. Seventeen years ago, people told me Fortescue’s deposits would never be mined because there was no infrastructure to access our projects. We proved those critics totally wrong and we want to do the same in the Ring of Fire. If shareholders share my view, that it’s impossible to place a value today on a new mining district with the immense potential of these assets, I invite them to hold on to their shares and come along for the ride.”
The company adds that it is also committed to creating business opportunities for First Nations communities, pointing to the success of its Billion Opportunities program created in 2011.
Albemarle says Chile output on track despite strike Reuters | September 8, 2021 |
Chile’s Salar de Atacama, pictured here, is the world’s largest and purest active source of lithium. Reference image by Francesco Mocellin, Wikimedia Commons. Albemarle Corp, the world’s top lithium producer, said on Tuesday it has maintained output from its Chile operations despite an ongoing strike by one of the company’s four unions in the South American nation.
The 135-member “Albemarle Salar” union, which the company said comprises about half the workers at its Salar plant, went on strike in August after failing to reach a labor contract deal with the U.S.-based lithium miner.
The company in a statement said the Salar workers remained on strike – part of a regulated legal process in Chile – but that operations continued apace there and at its La Negra processing plant nearby.
ALBEMARLE’S ATACAMA OPERATIONS IN CHILE ARE A VITAL SOURCE OF LITHIUM
“We have a solid contingency plan that maintains operational continuity and our production at La Negra to continue meeting our customers’ needs,” the company said in the statement.
Representatives of the striking union did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Albemarle’s Atacama operations in Chile are a vital source of the ultralight white metal used in the batteries that power electric vehicles. Top competitor SQM operates nearby. The company said it had failed to reach agreement with workers at the Salar union but had struck deals with the remaining three guilds at its operations in Chile.
“We have presented four offers, which have been rejected because they aspire to an end-of-conflict bonus amount that far exceeds what was provided to the other three unions, with whom we successfully concluded negotiations this year,” the company said.
The union on strike has said in a previous written statement that it is particularly disadvantaged by the Salar’s distant location, which it said shortens rest time. The union also expressed concern over inequality around compensation.
Albemarle extracts lithium-rich brine from beneath the salt flat at its Salar plant, then processes the distilled brines into battery grade lithium carbonate at its La Negra chemical plant near the city of Antofagasta in northern Chile.
(By Dave Sherwood; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Boeing board to face investors’ suit over 737Max crashes
Jef Feeley and Julie Johnsson, Bloomberg News
Boeing Co.’s directors must face an investors’ lawsuit accusing them of failing to properly oversee development of the 737 Max line of planes that were involved in two fatal crashes within a six-month period starting in 2018.
Delaware Chancery Judge Morgan Zurn threw out some claims against Boeing’s board, but said Boeing shareholders produced enough evidence to justify pursuing claims that directors missed a “red flag” about the 737 Max’s safety issues in the first crash in October 2018. That incident raised issues about a flight-control system “that the board should have heeded but instead ignored,” the judge said in her 102-page decision.
Boeing’s board didn’t move to gain greater oversight over quality and safety until a second Max crashed in Ethiopia in March 2019, according to a complaint filed by the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado. But the board failed to focus on safety even before the first crash, the investors claim.
The second disaster, which brought the death toll from the two accidents to 346, spurred a global grounding that plunged Boeing into one of the deepest crises in its century-long history. Different investors’ suits against company directors have been consolidated in state court in Delaware.
Boeing declined to immediately comment on the ruling.
An automated flight-control system known as MCAS was implicated in both crashes. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration last year gave Boeing the green light to have the planes resume passenger flights after extensive modifications to the MCAS systems.
Disgruntled investors claim David Calhoun, who was lead director when the fatal accidents occurred, made “public representations” he knew were false about the board’s response to the first 737 Max crash in hopes of salvaging directors’ reputations. Zurn backed up their contentions, noting Calhoun made four misstatements after Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea in 2018, killing, all 189 people aboard.
That disaster should have served as a wakeup call to Boeing directors, Zurn said. Instead, board members “ignored the Lion Air Crash and the consequent revelations about the unsafe 737 MAX,” the judge wrote. Investors claim that led to the second fatal crash in 2019.
Zurn did throw out claims against individual Boeing executives, saying it was the board that failed to “make any good faith effort to implement and oversee a board-level system to monitor and report on safety.”
Zurn acknowledged the primary victims of Boeing’s lax oversight were the passengers of the two 737 Max flights and their families.
“While it may seem callous in the face of their losses, corporate law recognizes another set of victims: Boeing as an enterprise, and its stockholders,” the judge said. “The crashes caused the company and its investors to lose billions of dollars in value.”
The case is In Re Boeing Co. Derivative Litigation, 2019-0907, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington).