For metals consultancy Thomson Reuters GFMS’s Paul Walker, looking to hedge from a position of strength would serve miners well when prices do eventually fall.

Hollinger pit project moving forward yet many Timmins people seem unaware.

Gold futures trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange experienced an after-hours selloff on Friday with prices tumbling $20 in a flurry of end-of week liquidation.

Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto not only have to deal with higher projected mining and processing costs at the mega-mine but also development delays and most worryingly, lower ore grades.

Avalon Rare Metals, whose Nechalacho rare earth prospect in Canada's Northwest Territories is in the midst of a feasibility study, today announced the results of a separate prefeasibility study for the separation plant, to be built in Louisiana.

China, the world's biggest consumer of coal, said that the gross domestic product came in at 8.1% in the first quarter, the lowest figure in three years.

Harmony Gold briefly dropped to a year low of $9.68 on Friday after the company announced a steep fall-off in output for the first quarter. Now worth $4.4 billion the counter is down a third in a year, but its Papua New Guinea project may be worth that by itself.

Alderon Iron Ore Corp saw a 2% bump in its stock price Friday on news that the Canadian iron ore junior has inked a CAD$194 agreement with China's largest steel producer.

The decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone brought two unforgettable images to the West: victims of violence whose limbs were hacked off by armed rebels as a warning to civilians; and the term "blood diamonds," referring to the diamonds plucked by hand from alluvial deposits that were smuggled out of the country and used by both sides of the warring factions to fund their vicious campaigns.