Each is worth an estimated $2 million.

The Vancouver Sun reports that David Cundall spent 16 years and several thousand dollars travelling to Myanmar to locate the missing planes.

Cundall recently brought on a financial backer, Boultbee Brooks, but the two have had a falling out over the terms of a deal to get the planes dug up:

"I had an AK-47 pointed at me once," says Cundall, who has endured mosquitoes and jungle heat in his search for the airplanes, many of which were buried around the old British airfields at Myitkyina and Min-galadon. "There were also six non-crated Mark VIIIs," says Cundall. "They are very rare and I believe they were buried in a quarry."

Read more here.

Richard Mackenzie Matthews, who is reportedly co-operating with officials, tried to swap the 1.7-carat diamond with a fake while at Precision Jewellers. Matthews, who has prior convictions, walked into the store and tried to make the switch but was caught by staff and detained until the police arrived.

The man has been x-rayed but results are inconclusive since diamonds are translucent. Matthews was detained in a dry cell and had agreed to eat food that would hurry up bowel movements.

"This particular cell does not have any running water, toilet or sink and that is so when we require information that may suggest somebody who has come into our custody has injested some product or evidence or contraband, which is not unusual in this business, we put them in this cell and hold them there until we have the opportunity to recover any evidence they may have injested," said Windsor Police Deputy Chief Jerome Brannigan in an interview with the Windsor Star.

Liz Dick, the store employee who caught Matthews, said the retrieved diamond should be “perfectly fine” and would most likely maintain its value. She also told the newspaper she she believed people would seek out the stone for its amusing story.

The company reported a 32% increase in profits of Can$12.7 million; however, the company also announced sharply higher cash cost per gold ounce of $759 compared t $516 a year ago due to recurring and non-recurring items.

"The recurring items include planned lower grade ore being extracted, additional cyanide and explosives consumption to aid in achieving higher gold recoveries and the industry-wide increases in key mining consumables prices such as cyanide and diesel," wrote the company in a news release.

Non-recurring items were currency fluctuations, operational repairs and the strip ratio falling below the life-of-mine average during the current period.

"The company expects cash costs to be $700 per gold ounce for fiscal 2012 as economies of scale are realized as a result of expanded throughput."

Commentator Peter Grandich said that the shares are at 200-day key support level.

Timmins Gold operates the San Francisco gold mine, an open pit heap leach operations in Sonora, Mexico.

Chovanec believes that real estate prices will head down, which will take China's GDP with it.

There was an astonishing 23.5% growth in real estate investment, says Chovanec, but he proceeds to explain it away:

So if sales were down, and starts were either flat or down, where was the 23.5% investment growth coming from?  Developers, burdened by 70% leverage ratios and loans threatening to come due, were rushing to complete whatever projects were already in their pipeline, in order to put those units onto the market and raise cash.  Completions (measured in floor space) were up 39.3% in Q1, compared to last year (residential completions were similarly up 40.0%).  But, of course, those completed units weren’t selling like last year, so unsold inventories expanded.

China’s developers are playing out a kind of prisoner’s dilemma:  rush to complete, in hopes of cashing out.  But while supply keeps going up, demand is going down

Read more here.

Eric Stroud, who runs Shark Defense, accidentally stumbled upon the discovery after dropping a magnet from his workbench and into a pool of nurse sharks that he happens to keep in his basement:

"That night, we put magnets into the water and couldn't believe the nurse sharks were extremely distressed and stayed away from them," he says.

Stroud thinks that was the moment he discovered that magnets repel sharks.

Read more here.

Mulcair has been roundly criticized by the Western premiers and risks alienating the west, but Michael Den Tandt says the attack is not folly but careful counting by the leader of the opposition on where he is mostly likely to win seats in the next general election:

To see the logic, one need only take a look at seat distribution after re-allocation, set to go into effect before the next federal election. Ontario, with 106 seats now, will have 121 after re-allocation, out of a total seat count of 338. Quebec will have 78 seats, British Columbia 42, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba 34,14 and 14, respectively. In other words, the three Prairie provinces combined will hold just 62 seats – less than half Ontario's tally.

Read more here.

Inside Education, a non-profit group with backing from Alberta Government and oil and gas companies, is accepting applications from teachers to visit the region and take a tour.

Teachers who participate will tour surface and in-situ sites. There will also be presentations from industry, government, academia, the environmental community and first nations groups.

The program is out reach to counter a negative view of the industry. In a recent poll by Nanos, Canadians said that minimizing the environmental impact of the oil sands was more important than maximizing economic prosperity—a view shared by the leader of the federal NDP party.

Alberta is also seeking to expand its export market to the Asia and wants to run pipelines through British Columbia.

For teachers who participate in the tour, all accommodation, meals and travel are covered, but in order to qualify all participants must complete the full itinerary.

The program consists of indoor and outdoor sessions.

Doctors Without Borders estimates that 1,500 children in the village of Bagega have been suffering from lead poisoning since 2010.

Zamfara state has significant concentrations of heavy metals in the soil and rocks. Gold mining has occurred for decades, but until recently it was not widespread or profitable.

Since gold prices have risen, interest in mining in Zamfara state has increased. In artisanal mining, workers dig up rocks by hand, break them into pebbles with hammers, grind the pebbles to sand with flour mills, and extract gold from the sand using sluicing, panning, and mercury amalgamation, and in some cases, cyanidation.

Usually the health problems associated with artisanal mining are related to mercury or cyanide use; however, the gold-bearing deposits in Zamfara contain high concentrations of lead.

Crushing pebbles into sand in the dry-running flour mills produces enormous amounts of dust, which can be highly contaminated with lead. Lead can enter the body through the lungs or the digestive tract.

Doctors Without Borders wants miners to be given access to facilities and programs that allow them to safely mine without exposing themselves or others to toxic lead.

The non-profit has been pushing the government to act on a three-pronged plan that includes medical care, environmental remediation and safer mining practices.

"To effectively cut the pathways of lead contamination requires specialized expertise and equipment," said Simba Tirima, a scientist with Terragraphics, an environmental engineering firm. "The people of Bagega need urgent assistance to provide a safe environment for their children."

Image of gold miner working circa March 2010 in Shinyanga, Tanzania

Back before he became Vice President, Joe Biden was asked by comedian Bill Mahr to rank what is mostly likely to contribute to the deaths of average Americans: high-fructose corn syrup, coal and terrorism.

Biden gave a considered response.

Early this month the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources started considering changes to the way the government manages helium.

Helium is not only being used in party balloons, but it is also a key component in medical devices, industrial welding and high tech manufacturing. And don't forget scientific research to launch all those weather balloons.

The National Helium Reserve, the world's only underground helium storage facility, is a depleted gas field located 19km northwest of Amarillo, Texas. Unrefined or crude helium sales from the reserve supply roughly half of all domestic helium needs and one third of global helium demand each year.

The reserve is close to gas fields in southwest Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle that contain high amounts of helium, which is separated from natural gas as a byproduct. Helium is collected, piped and injected underground.

Back in 1925 when airships were considered leading flight technology, the reserve was established by the US government as a strategic supply of gas. Later in the 1950s, the helium reserve became important to the US space program.

By the mid-90s a billion cubic metres of gas had been collected but the reserve was also deeply in debt. Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act of 1996 directing the government to start liquidating the reserve to payoff a US$1.4 billion debt.

The committee believes that the current sales structure distorts the private helium market and is creating uncertainty for commercial, Federal, medical and scientific users of helium.

"The proposed legislation would remove this market distortion for the benefit of industry, private, and Federal users. Additionally, the debt will be paid off prior to the mandated final sell off date, which may result in the expiration of the funding mechanism that provides the operating expenses for the reserve. According to the BLM, this may occur as early as mid-year 2013," said the committee in a statement.

Proposed legislation would extend authorization of the reserve beyond 2015 when the operation was set to expire. The Bureau of Land Management would set helium prices at fair market value. Selling at market rates will also hopefully spur the development of private sources of helium.

Image of a balloon chain at Burning Man by william.neuheisel 

On Saturday Clark appeared on CBC's The House and responded to Mulcair's accusations.

"It's by definition the Dutch Disease," said Mulcair in an interview played on the show before Clark's appearance.

"The Canadian dollar is being held artificially high, which is fine if you are going to Disney World, but it is not so good if you want to sell your manufactured goods . . . because the American client can no longer afford to buy it.

"We've hollowed out the manufacturing sector. At the present time, the way we are developing and exploiting the oil sands sector is causing an imbalance in our economy. That's demonstrable."

Clark said Mulcair's accusations had been discredited. The NDP may not want all this economic growth, says Clark, but they also want to pour money into social programs.

"You can't have it both ways, because it's economic development that makes it possible for us to have one of the finest health care systems in the world," said Clark.

Clark was asked if she was mis-interpreting Mulcair's position. The NDP say they plan to better direct development of natural resources and fully price out the cost of development. Clark disagreed.

"What [Mulcair] is actually saying is that he wants less of it. He wants to make it much more expensive for it to happen; therefore, we will have less of it and therefore we will have less development. The NDP talk their gobbledygook, but that is what they really mean.

On another topic, Clark was asked about what the the Northern Gateway Pipeline would mean for the province. Aside from short-term jobs building it, the benefit would be equal to B.C. as any other province.

"The Northern Gateway Pipeline for British Columbia would be somewhat important. To put this in context, if it were found to be environmentally sound to go ahead—and we don't know what the risks are recognizing that British Columbia is taking 100% of the risk . . . but if it was go ahead at the moment British Columbia gets the same benefit as Nova Scotia. It wouldn't create any jobs but BC would benefit from the royalties like any other Canadian province."

Image: Christy Clark, center, tours a science labortory at Simon Fraser University

The S&P/TSX Composite index was off 1.96% to 11,627.89. The S&P 500 was down 1.16% to 1,355.

Markets were worried that Greece may finally default and exit the Eurozone. Changes in leadership over the weekend also left markets uncertain on how leaders will react to the crisis in Europe.

Notable decliners were Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ) that was off 5.02% to $21.39 a share giving back all the gains, and then some, after its good Q1, and Teck Resources (NYSE:TCK) that fell 5.35% to $32.75.

Crude oil fell 1.36% to US$96.61 a barrel, and gold was struggling to stay out of the $1,500s. It was down 2.11% to $1,603.46/oz.

Hecla's stock (NYSE:HL) was largely unchanged in a down day in the markets, off 0.77% to $3.85.

On the same day as announcing its Q1, the company announced a quarterly dividend of $0.0225 per share of common stock. It is also undertaking a share repurchase program.

As of March 31 this year, the company has cash and cash equivalents of  $279 million.

The company estimated that care and maintenance costs incurred at the Lucky Friday totaled $6.2 million for the first quarter of 2012. After two fatalities at the mine in 2011, the company undertook 1,500 feet of rehabilitation work on one of the mine's shafts. The silver-lead-zinc mine in northern Idaho is one of the deepest underground mines in the US.

Looking forward, the company sees increased production for the rest of the year, with silver output growing by 50%.

"While our first quarter silver production at Greens Creek was impacted by ground support work that diverted equipment and personnel, we expect production to increase for the rest of the year," said  Hecla's President and Chief Executive Officer Phillips S. Baker, Jr.

"The combination of Hecla's strong balance sheet, including a cash balance of $279 million and substantially no debt, and its long-lived, low cost mines which provide strong cash flow will allow us to deliver an expected 50% growth in silver production while also allowing the company to deliver value to shareholders through the Company's dividend and share repurchase programs."

Hecla Mining produces silver, gold, lead and zinc through its Greens Creek Mine and Lucky Friday Mine.

Image of headframe from Lucky Friday Mine by Plazak

Exports to China were 135.53 tonnes for the first three months of this year, up from 19.7 tonnes a year ago.

Analysts use import data from Hong Kong census department to gauge overall gold demand in China.

World Gold Council is projecting that China may become the world's biggest user of gold.

Lawrence Williams at Mineweb wonders if gold is being used by China to reduce its central bank's overweighting of US dollars.

"If historical precedent is being followed, a significant proportion of Chinese government-held gold may be being held in a secondary account which is not reported in the official reserve figures," writes Williams.

Gold has not had a good week. Since the leadership changes in Europe over the weekend, gold has been off 2.49% to $1,601.29/oz.

Gold has moved sideways since the start of the year. It spiked at $1,783.93/oz in late February but has since slid to about the same price it started in January.

Video of the event was uploaded by Winnipeg Free Press.

In the fall federal budget, Flaherty announced that the penny was going to be discontinued to save the government money.

@stevenchase noticed that the event was heavily guarded: