Bulletins and News Discussion from March 17th to March 23rd, 2025 - The Kafue River Dies - COTW: Zambia

Image is of the breach in the tailings dam near Kitwe.

On February 18th, 50 million liters of acidic waste from a copper mine was accidentally released into the Kafue River after a tailings dam collapsed. The Kafue River stretches for a thousand miles across Zambia and a majority of the country - millions of people - rely on it, for both the economy and drinking water.

The results have already been catastrophic. The water supply for the city of Kitwe, home to 700,000 people, was completely shut off. As the wave of contamination moved downstream, a wave of death accompanied it as dead fish dotted the river surface. The government is dropping lime into the river to try and counteract the acid with an alkali and neutralize the water, but the tailings also contain toxic heavy metals that will undoubtably seep into the nearby environment and affect the area for years to come.

A considerable portion of the media attention to the accident has been devoted to the fact that the mine was Chinese-owned, as well as China's broader influence and investment in the region. Western anti-China propaganda aside, it has been clear to those in the know that these mines have been badly managed and needlessly dangerous for years now, and it is disappointing - to say the least - to see disasters of this magnitude occur from Chinese businesses. Hopefully this prompts a wave of investigations into China-owned mine managers all around the continent, who will then hopefully face real consequences for their actions.

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Latest statement by the Yemeni Armed Forces:
It seems as if the new tactic to try and economically damage Israel is to fire ballistic missiles at the main international airport, to disrupt air travel. Along with forcing Israelis into bomb shelters at the middle of the night, every night. So the missiles primarily act as a economic and psychological weapon now. A change in strategy that makes sense given that the Israelis, with assistance from the US Space Force, seemed to have figured out how do do boost phase or early midcourse interception of a single Palestine 2 missile at a time. Intercepting these missiles costs Israel a lot of money in Arrow 3 interceptors $2-3 million dollars each), but the Palestine-2 missiles themselves are also expensive (prices for MaRV capable MRBMs aren't exactly public information, but estimates range from hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of dollars each), so it makes sense for Yemen to try inflict the most amount of economic damage possible if a single missile can't reliably reach Israeli airspace, for a terminal intercept or impact/direct hit. Firing multiple missiles at Israel at a time could be another solution, but that is likely too expensive for Yemen to keep up in the medium term, which is probably why they're not doing it.
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