NEARLY six weeks after being flooded by the collapse of an artificial river bank, one of Australia's largest open cut coal mines continues to fill with water, limiting the operation of a major power plant.

AUSTRALIA and other rich countries are under pressure to change rules that allow them to meet climate change targets by subsidising coal plants in poor countries.

CARBON pricing can deliver incremental reductions in rich countries' greenhouse emissions but will not drive the discovery of cheap sources of clean power that are the only hope of stopping dangerous climate change, a former senior adviser to Kevin...

AFTER almost 16 years financing groundbreaking projects to fight indigenous social disadvantage around the country, Rio Tinto will shut down its Aboriginal Fund. The move has shocked many indigenous leaders, who say the philanthropic fund has helped ur...

BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers’s annual pay grew by 8.5 per cent in the last financial year, to $US11.6 million ($11.37 million). The pay rise (in US dollars) came in a financial year in which the company posted a record Australian corporate profit, growing 86 per cent from the previous year to $US23.6 billion.

Mining giant BHP Billiton has defended as "effective" its strict office etiquette policy, which bans workers from eating pungent food, throwing jackets on their chairs or leaving Post-it notes on their monitors or keyboards after hours. The company outlined its "Office Environment Standard" in a memo emailed to employees in Brisbane this month.

Cashed-up Rio Tinto is expected to post a first-half net profit of more than $US8 billion, driven by prices of iron ore, aluminium and copper. The earnings season gets into full swing tomorrow when the miner reports, with consensus among analysts for a 39.1 per cent jump in first-half underlying profit from $US5.77 billion to $US8.03 billion. The iron ore division is expected to contribute nearly 80 per cent of the net profit, lifting its performance by more than 50 per cent a year ago to about $US6.2 billion.

Environment groups trying to stop the construction of a new coal-fired power station in Victoria say it would add millions of tonnes to Australia's annual greenhouse gas pollution.

Gloucester Coal has completed two acquisitions designed to create a leading Australian coal miner worth about $2 billion. Gloucester said it had completed the purchase of Donaldson Coal Holdings, which owns three NSW coal mines, from Asian commodities trader Noble Group.