Ongoing project about WWI -Danube Division-Portrait of Ivan Stratimirović, President of the Association of Descendants of Serbian Warriors.Stepan Stepa Stepanović was the military leader of the Serbian and Yugoslav armies. He was born on March 11, 1856 in Kumodraž, and died on April 27, 1929 in Čačak.He took part in several significant wars that changed the course of the history of the entire Balkans, and later the world. Thanks to the victory in the Battle of Cer, in addition to the praise and admiration of the entire nation, he also received a promotion in the form of the rank of duke.On August 6, 1914, Stepanović took command of the Second Army. His army was the strongest in the army and it consisted of the Sumadija and Moravian divisions of the first call in the area of Arandjelovac-Lazarevac with the strengthened Danube division of the first call near Belgrade.On this day in 1929, Duke Stepa Stepanović passed away, who led the Serbian army in the Serbian-Turkish wars, the Balkan wars and the First World War.
Jadar River in western Serbia. The proposed site for the Europe’s biggest lithium mine is on the bank of the Korenita River, a tributary of the Jadar.In July, Rio Tinto announced that it would invest $2.4bn in a project in the Jadar valley, in western Serbia, overlooked by the Cer and Gučevo mountains, building what it says will be Europe’s biggest lithium mine, and one of the world’s largest on a greenfield site.The team had been looking for borates, used in fertiliser and building materials, but found something unexpected: borates and lithium in one mineral, a combination that would later be given the name jadarite, after the valley.The project is gathering momentum. But anxious and angry campaigners, including the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets of the Serbian cities of Loznica and Belgrade over recent months, say they are witnessing an unfolding disaster in the country’s “breadbasket”, responsible for around a fifth of total agricultural production, raising questions about the strange bedfellows being made in the maelstrom of the green revolution, and whether lessons have been learned about consumption and production that has made the transition to a decarbonised world so urgent
Portrait of Milos Savic, In the story, we visit Savić at his home in a more poor neighborhood of Bor, approx. 5-10 minutes from the city centre of Bor. He lives in a small house with a lot of rubbish and apparent cracks in the walls of the house, which he says is from the explosions of the mining.He lives about 50 meters from the mining pit of the ‘Jama’ mine in the city of Bor.In 2018 the Chinese company Zijin Mining bought the state-owned mining company in Bor and its mines. And also another mine in a village nearby, Metovnica. Ever since that, production has gone up and locals are now complaining about their land getting expropriated, cracks in their houses because of explosions from the mine, and pollution in general.
"This hill, the next one and several wreaths in a row," says Ivan Dunić, a lawyer from Žagubica, a town of about 2,000 inhabitants, at the foot of the Homolje Mountains. "It would all be excavated, it would all be a mine, miles in that direction," he added, pointing to the mountain.Dunić is one of the inhabitants of Žagubica, Laznica and the surrounding villages, who oppose the announcement of the construction of a gold mine in the Homolje mountains, known for honey, cheese, rich flora and fauna.It is about the mine "Potaj Čuka - Tisnica", the Canadian company Dundee precious metals, in which the use of cyanide was announced for the extraction of gold from the ore."Cyanides are extremely toxic compounds," Dragana Djordjevic of the Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy told the BBC in Serbian.Locals and environmental activists warn that the mine would endanger the Mlava and Peka basins, and thus all rivers in eastern Serbia, and potentially the Danube, where Mlava and Pek end their journey.The Dundee company for the BBC states in Serbian that "the concern about the use of cyanide in the processing of gold ore is understandable", but that it is a "safe technology" and that currently "only the possibility of its use is being investigated"."The project is based on the highest standards of the mining industry, care for the local community, protection of the environment and providing long-term benefits for Zagubica and Serbia," they say in a written response.