TerraLithium, an Occidental subsidiary, and BHE Renewables have produced lithium chloride from geothermal brines at BHE’s Calipatria geothermal plant in California’s Imperial Valley and converted it to battery-grade lithium carbonate. The partners have also directly converted lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide using a commercial-scale electrolyser at TerraLithium’s Brawley R&D facility in the US’s second-largest geothermal field, validating high-purity output against commercial processing standards. BHE Renewables plans to build, own and operate full-scale lithium production facilities in Imperial County once technical and economic feasibility is proven.

Kazakh steel and mining company Qarmet has installed an almost total underground visibility system at its eight former ArcelorMittal coal mines in Karaganda, combining helmet‑mounted cameras with live location tracking of every miner on a central control‑room schematic. Pre‑shift “health booths” at the portal process about 50 workers per hour, checking blood pressure, pulse, eye fatigue and alcohol, with roughly 1% barred from descending, and all footage stored on 1 TB helmet units and uploaded after each shift. The in‑house system, developed by teams of about 30 per mine, is paired with a privately funded medical centre delivering around 200 check‑ups a day, but raises unresolved questions about consent and long‑term use of pervasive surveillance in a company town setting.

Gladiator Metals has raised over C$35 million in a BlackRock-led private placement, issuing 7 million flow-through shares at C$3.87 and 3 million non-flow-through shares at C$2.65, lifting its treasury to about C$50 million and its market capitalisation to C$357.9 million. The funding fully covers the 2026–2027 drilling campaign at the Whitehorse Copper project in Yukon, targeting multiple high-grade prospects across a 35 x 5 km belt. Cowley Park, with more than 300 historical holes and 700 m of defined copper-molybdenum strike, will see drill capacity doubled from three to six rigs by late summer.