Download our newly launched MINING.com app, available in the iPhone app store. You will be able to look up top news, news […]

Felix Salmon, uber-blogger and columnist at Reuters, takes on the Economist's Matthew Bishop, author of In Gold We Trust?, on gold's value versus currencies, bonds and stocks.

"Resources groups and the bankers who promote them merit close scrutiny since minerals have been linked in the past with financial scandals and market manipulation, from the nickel bubble that captivated the City in the 1960s and ended in the Poseidon crash, to the Hunt brothers’ cornering of the silver market in 1980."

Recent potash contract placements by some of the world’s largest buyers have raised hopes of a resurgence in the fortunes of potash companies and their investors.

BC Iron's Nullagine mine in Australia will produce another 18 months thanks to an updated mineral resource at it Bonnie East deposit.

Vale — the second largest nickel producer in the world — plans to begin looking for nickel this year on the Melville Peninsula near Repulse Bay, Nunavut.

Diavik is supposed to transform into an underground operation this year and Harry Winston's partner on the project, Rio Tinto, wants to exit diamond mining, but the luxury retailer could not provide any guidance on the way forward. Investors responded by giving Harry Winston a 5% kicking.

ABC News reports that two amateur rockhounds, Libby and Kevin Barrieault, found a 50.5 carat emerald in North Carolina.

The amount of first-year students studying at the Wits School of Mining Engineering at the University of Witwatersrand has dramatically increased due to donations from the London Metal Exchange (LME), reports International Mining.

Professor Fred Cawood, head of the Wits School of Mining Engineering, aims to increase the percentage of sponsored students in the school to provide opportunities for those drawn from a disadvantaged socio-economic background and the donation from LME fulfilled this exact purpose. “Our objective is to identify students who are needy - students coming from poor families who cannot afford to study, and deserving - those who have a realistic chance of success if their money problems are resolved,” says Professor Cawood.