KGHM CEO sees copper price at around $6,000 this year

Augusta Resource jumped more than 10% on Monday after announcing it has received an air quality permit for its Rosemont mine in Arizona which could by itself account for about 10% of annual US copper output once in production in 2015.

A Chinese supervisor died on Saturday after being hit by a trolley pushed at him at the Collum mine in Zambia during a dispute over minimum wages.

The Vancouver-based miner inked a deal with a Zambian firm for a new mine on Monday adding to its already ambitious expansion plans totalling $3.7 billion which includes building one of the world's largest copper smelters.

Former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar was found guilty on corruption charges and sentenced to four years in prison just weeks after he made a political comeback with his Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party as the junior partner in the new ruling coalition.

The mining giant is also scaling back or postponing other expensive expansion projects but the pullback in iron ore – by far the Melbourne-based company's most profitable division – is a surprising move and indicative of the cloudy outlook for the commodities business.

The Toronto-based company said in the report it continues to engage the government of PNG in legal proceedings held in Sydney Australia but that it has run into trouble with its German partners building a surface vessel for the operation which would lead to delays.

Nautilus Minerals dropped 7.3% to $1.02 in late-afternoon trade on Wednesday, after the Toronto-based firm announced that it is raising $34 million from its major shareholders at 90c a share to build its seabed mining system.

LME's warehousing operations "have been dogged by controversy since big banks and trading houses including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase bought warehousing operations."

The stock hit a high of $50 in May 2008 and came close again in April 2011, but at $170 billion, the Melbourne-based company is now valued at some $80 billion less that at its peak.