October 28, 2025

China Pushes to Silence Victims of African Mining Disaster
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/china-africa-mining-disaster-386af938?mod=hp_lead_pos7
The worst day of Bathsheba Musole’s life started with a deafening crash when the 30-foot wall around a toxic-waste pool collapsed at the Chinese copper mine above her village.
A poisonous river of a stinking yellow liquid rushed downhill, inundating homes and fields, including the one where she grew corn to feed her eight children. The floodwater, laden with cyanide and arsenic, rose chest-high. “I thought I would drown,” said Musole, 48 years old, in a recent interview.In August, months after the Feb. 18 disaster, officials from Sino Metals, a unit of the state-owned China Nonferrous Mining Corp., showed up at Musole’s half-acre farm, which the Zambian government says is too toxic to sustain crops for at least three years. They were there to make things right, she recalled them saying. Their offer was $150, but it came with a catch.
To get the money, she would have to agree never to talk about the spill, take legal action against Sino Metals or even reveal the contents of the nondisclosure agreement itself, according to documents presented to other spill victims, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Local environment activists said those terms were the same for all victims.

The Fed’s $6.6 Trillion Test: When to End Its Portfolio Runoff
https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/the-feds-6-6-trillion-test-when-to-end-its-portfolio-runoff-9627b711?mod=hp_lead_pos10

Federal Reserve officials have a suddenly pressing decision when they meet this week that has nothing to do with an interest-rate cut. It is whether to stop shrinking the central bank’s $6.6 trillion asset portfolio within days or wait until the end of the year.
As recently as two weeks ago, the Fed seemed on track for a year-end decision. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, in a rare speech devoted primarily to technical monetary plumbing dynamics, said the central bank could approach the point “in coming months” where it needed to end the three-year-long campaign to shrink its holdings.But analysts say firmer-than-anticipated pressures in overnight funding markets since then could warrant stopping sooner.
The debate over when to stop portfolio runoff is separate from the one over whether to hold interest rates steady or to cut them, as is widely expected this week. Instead, these deliberations revolve around how best to ensure the Fed maintains effective control over short-term interest rates.

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