Planetary Resources ~ Mining Asteroids & More...

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture spots Planetary Resources infovideo...

Salone Promo ~ Sierra Leone Import Exports...

SwitSalone's Vickie Remoe spots nice promo video -- Invest in Sierra Leone -- made by their Import Export team...

Stealing Africa ~ Why Poverty? on What's Right...

Why Poverty? shares Stealing Africa documentary...

"Zambia’s copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia’s copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they’ve extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. So why hasn’t copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia’s case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Tax avoidance by corporations costs poor countries and estimated $160 billion a year, almost double what they receive in international aid. That’s enough to save the lives of 350,000 children aged five or under every year. For every $1 given in aid to a poor country, $10 drains out. Vital money that could help a poor country pay for healthcare, schools, pensions and infrastructure. Money that would make them less reliant on aid."

Asterank ~ Cataloging & Mapping Asteroid Value

Cool new visualization tool Asterank shows economic and scientific catalog of half-million "nearby" asteroids in solar system...

"Our calculations incorporate conclusions from multiple scientific publications in addition to cross-referencing known meteorite data. Asteroid mining has been making headlines. Companies like Planetary Resources are an exciting take on the commercial viability of space industry. But how realistic are the trillion dollar estimates? How much would it cost to mine an object millions of miles away? The data on these objects are public but very sparse. Remember, it's 2012 and we are just beginning!"

Sahara-Sahel ~ Mapping Movements and Routes

Le Monde Diplomatique shares nice map of Sahara-Sahel...

Ocean Mining 2.0 ~ Rare-Earths From Seafloor...

Stay tuned for Ocean Mining 2.0 -- Japanese authors Kato, et al, report in Nature Geoscience about Deep-sea mud in the Pacific Ocean as a potential resource for rare-earth elements...

"World demand for rare-earth elements and the metal yttrium -- which are crucial for novel electronic equipment and green-energy technologies -- is increasing rapidly [...] We estimate that an area of just one square kilometre, surrounding one of the sampling sites, could provide one-fifth of the current annual world consumption of these elements. Uptake of rare-earth elements and yttrium by mineral phases such as hydrothermal iron-oxyhydroxides and phillipsite seems to be responsible for their high concentration. We show that rare-earth elements and yttrium are readily recovered from the mud by simple acid leaching, and suggest that deep-sea mud constitutes a highly promising huge resource for these elements."

Thanks again to Calestous Juma for spotting this!