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.

China’s lithium carbonate futures on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange have fallen nearly 10% over two sessions, dropping a further 2.4% on Monday to about 157,000 yuan/t, as traders bet on a restart of CATL’s Jianxiawo mine in Jiangxi. Authorities have issued a preliminary, limited land-use assessment for the site, which has been offline since its permit expired in August 2025 and is estimated to supply around 3% of global lithium output. Citigroup notes that while a restart could pressure prices, Q3 battery capacity additions should keep the market tight.