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Hoffman Family Gold Quest on Discovery Channel

By General Posts

L-R: Hunter Hoffman, Jack Hoffman, Todd Hoffman

Tune In: HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD Premieres on Discovery

THE TODDFATHER IS BACK ON DISCOVERY! TODD HOFFMAN IS READY TO STRIKE GOLD ONCE AGAIN IN ALL NEW SERIES HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD

HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD PREMIERES  MARCH 25, FRIDAY AT 10 P.M. ET/PT ON DISCOVERY

WATCH TRAILER HERE

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – When gold runs in your veins, you can’t stay away forever. Todd Hoffman started Discovery’s gold mining craze, and tonight he returns to Discovery with the premiere of HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD at 10 p.m. ET/PT after the GOLD RUSH finale. Episodes will be available to stream the same day on discovery+, and starting Friday, April 1, new episodes will air at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery.

Four years after he walked away from his tumultuous mining career to focus on his family, Todd has been given an opportunity too good to pass up and is returning to Alaska for one final shot at redemption. With his father Jack and his son Hunter in tow, will the Hoffmans be able to save a struggling mine for the ultimate payday? Or have they bitten off more than they can mine?

Love him or hate him, fans of Discovery’s No. 1-rated show GOLD RUSH have watched Todd Hoffman from the very beginning when the original dreamer took to mining and launched the franchise. Todd has excavated mine after mine for a chance to strike it rich in gold. After hanging up his gold pan more than four years ago, Todd is banking his future mining career on turning around a rundown mine far off the grid 80 miles north of Nome, Alaska. With Alaska’s unforgiving weather, rookie crews and beat up equipment, the mine is struggling to keep operations going. Trying to save this mine is a big gamble for Todd, but if he is successful, he will secure the mining rights for the next decade and could build a family legacy. But Todd arrives on site with just seven weeks before winter rolls in. Will Todd, Jack and Hunter Hoffman along with their crew be able to find enough gold to get this mine in the black? Or will this be the last mining chapter for the Hoffmans?

In HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD, Todd’s taking on this huge risk and potentially bigger reward with the team he trusts most. Todd’s father Jack and his son Hunter will be making the long trek to Alaska along with a veteran crew of gold miners including Jim Thurber, foreman Andy Spinks and bush mechanic Randy Hubler. How will the current crew react when Todd and his team arrive? Will Randy be able to fix all the failing equipment? But most importantly, will they all be able to work together to find gold?

Follow the conversation on social media with #HoffmanFamilyGold. Follow Discovery on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and Todd on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more updates.

HOFFMAN FAMILY GOLD was produced by Lionsgate’s Pilgrim Media Group, with Craig Piligian, Mike Nichols and Franco Porporino Jr. as executive producers. Michael Gara is executive producer for the Discovery Channel, along with coordinating producer Greg Wolf.

Save the Salt – Bonneville Report

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5-Ball Racing and Bikernet.com set a record with the Salt Shaker, Valerie Thompson (her first) and Barry Wardlaw. Top speed 151.5 in 2006.

Restore Bonneville hopes new data will speed salt flat replenishment

The ongoing pursuit to preserve the Bonneville Salt Flats has scored another victory and SEMA, along with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Utah Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Utah Geological Survey (UGS), and Intrepid Potash Inc. marked more progress in restoring the area’s precious salt.

A new well installed in the summer of 2021, along with equipment that will collect data on evaporation, will inform the preservation and replenishment of the salt flats as the Restore Bonneville program kicks off.

CLICK HERE To Read about the unique Salt Flats – it’s lot more than a speed test ground

How to Build a Bonneville Salt Flats Motorcycle documents the construction of “The Worlds Fastest Panhead,” conceived and assembled by Keith Ball, former editor or Easyriders magazine and current owner of Bikernet.com, the most popular biker stop on the internet.

CLICK HERE To Buy the Book – visit the 5-Ball Racing Shop

Tesla among companies sued for complicity over child labor in Congo

By General Posts

by Matthew Lavietes from https://www.autonews.com

NEW YORK — Five of the world’s largest tech companies, including electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc., have been accused of being complicit in the death of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo forced to mine cobalt, a metal used to make telephones and computers, in a landmark lawsuit.

The legal complaint on behalf of 14 families from Congo was filed on Sunday by International Rights Advocates, a U.S.-based human rights non-profit, against Tesla, Apple Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Dell Technologies Inc..

The companies were part of a system of forced labor that the families claimed led to the death and serious injury of their children, it said.

It marked the first time the tech industry jointly has faced legal action over the source of its cobalt.

Images in the court documents, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, showed children with disfigured or missing limbs.

Six of the 14 children in the case were killed in tunnel collapses, and the others suffered life-altering injuries, including paralysis, it said.

“These companies — the richest companies in the world, these fancy gadget-making companies — have allowed children to be maimed and killed to get their cheap cobalt,” Terrence Collingsworth, an attorney representing the families, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Cobalt is essential in making rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by the tech industry.

More than half of the world’s cobalt is produced in Congo.

Global demand for the metal is expected to increase at 7 percent to 13 percent annually over the next decade, according to a 2018 study by the European Commission.

The lawsuit said the children, some as young as 6 years old, were forced by their families’ extreme poverty to leave school and work in cobalt mining owned by the British mining company Glencore. Glencore has previously been accused of using child labor.

Some children were paid as little as $1.50 per day, working 6 days a week, it said.

In response to a request for comment, Dell said in an email that it has “never knowingly sourced operations” using child labor and has launched an investigation into the allegations.

A spokesperson for Glencore said: “Glencore notes the allegations contained in a U.S. lawsuit filed on 15th December 2019.

“Glencore’s production of cobalt in the DRC is a by-product of our industrial copper production. Glencore’s operations in the DRC do not purchase or process any artisanally mined ore.

“Glencore does not tolerate any form of child, forced, or compulsory labor.”

Tesla, Apple, Google, Microsoft did not immediately respond for comment.

The legal complaint argued that the companies all have the ability to overhaul their cobalt supply chains to ensure safer conditions.

“I’ve never encountered or documented a more severe asymmetry in the allocation of income between the top of the supply chain and the bottom,” said Siddharth Kara, a researcher on modern slavery who is an expert witness in the case.

“It’s that disconnect that makes this perhaps the worst injustice of slavery and child exploitation that I’ve seen in my two decades research,” Kara said.

More than 40 million people have been estimated to be captive in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to Walk Free and the International Labour Organization.

The Battery Wars of the near future

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U.S. legislation aims to thwart China’s electric vehicle dominance

WASHINGTON: A U.S. senator plans to introduce legislation on Thursday to streamline regulation and permitting requirements for the development of mines for lithium, graphite and other electric-vehicle supply chain minerals, part of a plan to offset China’s dominance in the space.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican chair of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will introduce the Minerals Security Act alongside Senator Joe Manchin.

“Our challenge is still a failure to understand the vulnerability we are in as a nation when it comes to reliance on others for our minerals,” Murkowski told Reuters.

France, Germany agree on first battery cell consortium

France and Germany have earmarked 1.7 billion euros ($1.90 billion) to support several company alliances looking to produce electric car battery cells, a step aimed at reducing the dependence of European carmakers on Asian suppliers.

BERLIN: France and Germany have asked the European Commission to green-light state subsidies for a cross-border battery cell consortium involving carmaker PSA with its German subsidiary Opel and Total’s Saft, FAZ newspaper reported on Monday.

The economy ministries of both countries sent a letter of intent to the European Union’s executive body asking Brussels to quickly give its go-ahead, the newspaper said, adding that the sum of the planned support was not mentioned.