Welcome back to your weekly mining news recap. At the end of the week we’ll catch you up on the mining news from CIM Magazine and elsewhere you may have missed. In this week’s headlines: Caterpillar adds new haul truck options, Pan American takes over Tahoe, and we bid adieu to the Sudbury Superstack.

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Caterpillar is expanding its roster of electric drive and autonomous-ready haul trucks. The company introduced its latest large mining trucks with electric drives, the 796 AC and the 798 AC heavy haulers. They can carry up to 326 and 378 tonnes respectively, and meet the Tier 4 emissions standards for particulate matter and nitrogen oxide in Canada. Our Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen was able to see the trucks in action at Caterpillar’s Tinaja Hills demonstration centre in Tucson, Arizona last week. (Also, check out our Instagram for some photos from his visit.)

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada announced its slate of 2019 award winners. Vancouver junior diamond miner Peregrine Diamonds, Avalon Advanced Materials president and CEO Donald Bubar, NexGen Energy, geologist Gordon Maxwell, Cardinal Resources and Nemaska Lithium will be honoured at the PDAC 2019 convention on March 5.

Stornoway CEO Matt Manson will step down on Jan. 1, and be replaced by COO Patrick Godin. This comes months after the company finished the ramp-up of its flagship Renard diamond mine. Manson has been with the company for 13 years, and oversaw the development, construction and financing of the company’s mine in Quebec. Manson said he is “confident Pat has the leadership skills required to achieve this task” and that he is “looking forward to supporting him in his new duties as president and CEO.”

Pan American Silver will buy out all of Tahoe Resources’ outstanding shares in a deal worth US$1.067 billion, the company announced on Wednesday. Pan American’s TSX share price dropped 11 per cent on Wednesday morning with the news, given the uncertain state of Tahoe’s flagship Escobal mine, which has been suspended since last July. The companies said the deal will create the largest publicly traded silver mining company by free float capitalization.

A petition has called on the Yukon Chamber of Mines to uninvite Rex Murphy from the Yukon Geoscience Forum this weekend, the CBC reported. Murphy is supposed to give the keynote address tomorrow. The petition takes issue with Murphy’s recent National Post column, which questioned the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified at now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing about her alleged sexual assault at his hands when they were teenagers.

Iamgold resumed operations at its Rosebel gold mine in Suriname after a two-day union strike. The company said "a number" of its unionized employees stopped work on Tuesday, and it halted operations and prepared legal action in response. The company, which declined to offer comment, alleged the strike was a breach of a labour agreement between it and the union.

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal to two Quebec Innu communities’ lawsuit against Rio Tinto’s Iron Ore Company of Canada. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador is appealing a 2017 Quebec Court of Appeal decision upholding a Quebec Superior Court ruling, which allowed two Innu communities to proceed with their lawsuit against the IOC in Quebec, despite the lawsuit involving territory that spans both Quebec and Labrador. The province will argue Quebec has no authority to decide a case that involves jurisdiction outside its province.

Workers at Gold Fields’ South Deep gold mine in South Africa are being snuck into the mine at night to bypass protesters that the company says shot at vehicles attempting to access the site, Bloomberg reported. The protests were spurred by a worker strike in response to Gold Fields’ announcement that it would cut 1,500 jobs to turn around the unprofitable mine.

If you’re looking for some weekend reading, our profile of Vale’s Clean Atmospheric Emissions Reduction (Clean AER) project is up on the site this week. The completion of Vale’s $1-billion retrofit at the Sudbury smelter has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 85 per cent and metal particulate emissions by 40 per cent, but spells the end for a beloved local landmark.