On a Friday morning in April this year, Simon Thompson, the outgoing global chair of the mining giant Rio Tinto, addressed the company’s shareholders in London for the last time. Thompson, who chose not to stand for re-election after Rio Tinto destroyed an ancient Aboriginal site in Western Australia in 2020, spoke with the somber optimism of a leader emerging from scandal and vowing to do better.  But amidst talk of “transition,” “rebuilding” and “strengthening,” ThompsonRio Tinto has appointed Dominic Barton, the longtime McKinsey executive with extensive experience in China, as the company's new chair. brushed over a development at one of the company’s long-stalled mining projects: the Rio Tinto board had agreed to a path forward for the Simandou site, an iron ore venture in the African nation of Guinea.  The Simandou update was awkwardly slotted into the “climate change” section of the chair’s remarks, and Thompson made no reference to what som