Environment

Activists in Peru have forced the second-largest gold mining corporation in the world, Newmont, to abandon its $5 billion Conga copper and gold mining project. Indigenous Peruvians say the conga mine project, which was intended to replace the nearly-depleted Yanacocha gold mine nearby, threatens the local environment At the forefront of the local resistance was Máxima Acuña de Chaupe, a 47-year-old grandmother who lives off a plot of farmland in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region, an area that would have been used by Newmont to drain a nearby lake to collect mining byproducts.

A powerful explosion struck a storage facility housing hazardous chemicals in China’s Jingjiang province on Friday, causing a huge ongoing blaze. A plume of black smoke has been rising from the storage reservoir engulfed in flames. RT reports: The factory stores chemicals and petrol. China’s media outlet 163.com says there are a total of 42 reservoirs at the oil processing facility where the explosion occurred. There have been no immediate reports about any injured or dead in the incident so far.

The complete train wreck that is Venezuela continues to find ways to one-up itself. Fresh off of the announcement that every Friday in the months of April and May would be designated as non-working holiday's in order to save electricity, the Socialist utopia is now simply cutting it off for four hours a day.

A prominent US geologist has warned that a powerful mega earthquake is due to strike the U.S. this weekend, due to the fact that a full moon this Friday is set to occur at the same time the San Andreas Fault is showing signs of earthquake activity.  Jim Berkland, a former US Geological Survey (USGS) scientist, once predicted the Loma Prieta quake, and has confirmed that mega quakes often occur during a new moon or full moon due to their gravitational effects on the Earth.

Residents in California have reported that sidewalks are opening and lifting up from the ground, as the force that caused the recent earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan has now begun affecting California. Experts have warned that pressure from the Pacific Tectonic plate threatens to crush the west coast of America.  According to photographs submitted by a resident in Palm Springs, California is about to suffer a very large earthquake in the next few days.