Reported at Al Jazeera.net At least 163 people have died in northern Nigeria in recent weeks as a result of lead poisoning from illegal gold mining in several remote villages. Henry Akpan, the Nigerian health ministry’s chief epidemiologist, said on Friday that 111 children were among those killed in Zamfara state, many of them under

As reported in the Professional Jeweller by Kat Slowe Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF political and military elite are seeking to capture the country’s diamond wealth through a combination of state-sponsored violence and legally questionable opaque joint-venture companies, claimed new Global Witness report ‘Return of the blood diamonds’. The report criticised the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, set

Recently, Ute Decker, an ethical jeweler from the UK, emailed me a PDF of a green jewelry manufacturing guide which I had never seen — from a agency half a mile from my own shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The document was produced in 2002, far ahead of the current green curve, as part