Serbian green campaigner who co-drafted declaration against lithium exploitation now fears for his safety When Aleksandar Matković received the first message threatening his life, he thought it was a prank. The text, sent to his Telegram account just after midnight on 14 August read: “We will follow you until you disappear, scum.” Matković is one of the campaigners who have been at the forefront of widespread protests against plans to develop a massive lithium mine in Serbia. He said: “At first I thought someone was joking but during the morning I got another message, saying ‘how is the struggle against Rio Tinto going?’ from another profile I didn’t know, and the app displayed the sender’s distance as just 500 [metres] away.” Continue reading...

As Tata Steel and British Steel close their polluting blast furnaces, will Labour get behind the switch to more energy-efficient technology – and secure jobs? The warning is to “wait for the snap, crackle and pop” as three glowing electrodes are dropped into an electric arc furnace in Cardiff. What follows sounds like thunder and lightning. It is a human-induced storm in a massive, ceramic-lined cup, holding 140 tonnes of rapidly melting steel. The plant, owned by Spain’s Celsa, melts scrap steel using high-voltage electrical currents that generate the 1,600C needed to turn the metal to liquid. The glowing steel is then ready to be cast, twisted and crushed into the rods used to reinforce concrete. Continue reading...