South Africa's third-largest gold producer after AngloGold and Gold Fields Ltd., Harmony Gold Ltd. (JSE:HAR), said Wednesday that workers at its Kusasalethu mine embarked on a strike.

While some miners have ventured in the coffee growing business, others such as mining giant Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) are getting ready to start producing hay.

In a move that caught more than one investor by surprise, Australia’s Reserve Bank (RBA) announced Tuesday it was cutting its interest rate, prompted by worries of a sluggish mining industry, falling commodity prices and concerns over China.

75,000 miners, or 15% of the sector's workers in South Africa, are now on wildcat strikes.

Chile's deputy mining minister, Pablo Wagner, resigned a day after the government decided to revoke the lithium mining concession awarded to a local company last week, acknowledging problems with the tender process.

BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance is suing Queensland's most powerful mining union for almost $2.5 million to counteract the unlawful work stoppages that have affected BHP’s subsidiary in the last few years.

While Republican candidate Mitt Romney slams Barack Obama's policies as bad for coal, the President has taken a more personal approach. Not only he went after Romney ‘s business record, but he has also denounced his opponent's use of unpaid coal miners in his campaign through a provocative TV ad.

Mining executives met this week in a MINExpo convention in Las Vegas and the talk was mostly bullish. They heard Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM) CEO Richard O’Brien say that gold is presently trading more like a currency than a commodity. But analyst Przemyslaw Radomski differes.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the world’s Western central banks lie vaults holding gargantuan piles of physical gold bars… or at least that’s what they all claim.