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Geopolitics

Chinese Officials Apologize For Cremating 46 Landslide Victims Without Consent

AP, XINHUA (China)

Worldcrunch

ZHENXIONG - Chinese authorities have offered a rare apology after cremating the remains of 46 victims of last Friday's deadly landslide, before even consulting with their families.

The AP reports that Hu Jianpu, deputy dead of Zhenxiong county in China’s Yunnan province, told state broadcaster CCTV "We did that because we were afraid that the bodies would start to decay and some bodies have been damaged in the landslide and we thought the family members would be too distraught to see them."

Traditionally in the region, the dead are buried after elaborate funerals and not cremated.

The government has said that the landslide was triggered by continuous snow and rain – however, many villagers believe that a gas explosion was to blame. Xinhua quoted villagers as saying blasting and other mining work had opened up huge fissures in the mountain looming over the villages of Gaopo and Zhaojiagou, where 14 homes were smothered.

One coal miner said the mining area was right beneath the landslide and that people had seen "earth and rocks sprayed up into the air" when the landslide occurred.

Locals also insisted that this year there has been little snow or rain compared to other years.

No geological disasters have happened in the history of this area, Liu Jianhua, the mayor of Zhaotong City that administers Zhenxiong, told Xinhua. No hidden dangers had been discovered in previous surveys and no signs had appeared prior to the disaster, Liu said.

Feature: SW China village mourns landslide victimst.cn/zjdZ89c (Photo By Wang Shen) twitter.com/XHNews/status/…

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) January 13, 2013

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Economy

Lithium Mines In Europe? A New World Of Supply-Chain Sovereignty

The European Union has a new plan that challenges the long-established dogmas of globalization, with its just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing the "dirty" work to the developing world.

Photo of an open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — It is one of the great paradoxes of our time: in order to overcome some of our dependencies and vulnerabilities — revealed in crises like COVID and the war in Ukraine — we risk falling into other dependencies that are no less toxic. The ecological transition, the digitalization of our economy, or increased defense needs, all pose risks to our supply of strategic minerals.

The European Commission published a plan this week to escape this fate by setting realistic objectives within a relatively short time frame, by the end of this decade.

This plan goes against the dogmas of globalization of the past 30 or 40 years, which relied on just-in-time supply chains from one end of the planet to the other — and, if we're being honest, outsourced the least "clean" tasks, such as mining or refining minerals, to countries in the developing world.

But the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, if possible under better environmental and social conditions. Will Europe be able to achieve these objectives while remaining within the bounds of both the ecological and digital transitions? That is the challenge.

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