European central banks recommit to gold, price won’t budge

Stillwater Mining, the only platinum and palladium producer in the U.S., announced on Monday that it will acquire Peregrine Metals for US$487.1 million. Peregrine Metals is a publicly-traded exploration and development company with gold and copper projects in Argentina and Peru. The company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The world's largest copper producer is shut down in a 24-hour strike that has the potential to cause severe losses for Chile's state mining company. Codelco says it could lose $41 million from today's strike

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Gold futures gained Monday on continuing concerns about Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and as investors eschewed investments considered riskier, such as U.S. stocks. Gold for August delivery added $13.20, or 0.9%, to

Chronic labour shortages in resource-rich Western Australia could put mining projects at risk, as the state struggles to plug a shortfall of skilled workers set to balloon to 150,000 by 2017.

Recruiters in Western Australia are seeing a steady flow of people heading into the state in search of lucrative jobs in the mining industry, but they need to be realistic about the salaries they can receive and the training they need, Perth Now reports.

Recruitment agencies told The Sunday Times that highly skilled positions, such as heavy diesel fitters, drillers and boilermakers, were in shortest supply and workers with experience in most areas of the resources industry were highly sought after. Hays regional director Simon Winfield said people often thought they could get jobs on mines without any qualifications and were "misguided" about salaries.

Reuters reports that nickel went untraded today, but still managed to fall as copper, aluminum and zinc also fell.

Five Turkish companies have been named among the world's biggest steel producers. ANKARA- Turkish companies Erdemir Group, Habas, Icdas, Diler Group and Colakoglu Metalurji were included in the world's leading steel & metal markets publication Metal

Copper fell on Monday as concerns over Italy's sovereign debt curtailed appetite for risky assets, but a series of strikes in producer countries highlighted supply constraints and lent support to prices. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange traded at $9, 581 a tonne in official rings , down from the $9,661 close on Friday.

Diamonds have the potential to act as building blocks for quantum computing. In an article published in Nature Physics last month, a group of researchers found that the nitrogen vacancy centre in a diamond can be used for quantum memory. The paper was published by the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, California; and the Department of Physics, University of Konstanz. Researchers named were G. D. Fuchs, P. V. Klimov, and D. D. Awschalom.