Coal miners in Australia are equipped with a device that allows people on the surface to make contact with people underground. The U.S. mining industry has opposed requirements that this same equipment be given to American miners.
The owner of the Utah coal mine that collapsed more than two weeks ago, trapping six miners, prepares to re-open his operation, The Mountain Eagle, a weekly newspaper in the coal region of Eastern Kentucky asks if the country will learn any lessons from the disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mine.