Zambian president threatens to fine miners who break law

Unrest and strikes in Indonesia, Chile, Australia and Africa, a shortage of skilled workers in North America and rising labour costs all over the globe are quickly becoming the most serious downsides of a mining boom that started almost a decade ago. While a historically high overall jobless rate is masking spiking wages in the resources sector in the US, workers in emerging markets are shutting down operations of mining companies deemed not to be sharing record profits fairly.

Copper-zinc miner HudBay Minerals said Wednesday it has acquired the roughly 2.5m shares in Norsemont Mining it did not already own, giving it 100% ownership. The acquisition is set to increase HudBay's copper output by about 145% when Norsemont's Constancia mine in Peru comes into full production. The news comes a day after the company announced it will spend $144m to build a new concentrator at its Lalor project in Manitoba, Canada.

After an initial 5% jump, shares in Arabian American Development Co was flat at midday on Wednesday on four times usual volumes following news of a $37m injection into the Texas-based company's Saudi mine by a fund controlled by the League of Arab States. Shareholders in the 44-year old Nasdaq-listed company saw the value of their investment rise a cool $107m as a result of the transaction. The gold, silver and copper mine in a Yemen border province is the only non-government mine in the Saudi kingdom and is scheduled to begin production early next year.

Late last month Ivanhoe Mines received $502 million from Rio Tinto following Rio’s decision to exercise all remaining share-purchase warrants that it holds in Ivanhoe Mines. Assembly of open pit equipment has started - in this case Komatsu dozers. Image of the Oyu Tolgoi complex by Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.

Reuters reports Afghanistan has grand plans for a vast rail network to attract mining investors, but experts say the project would simply be a new target for insurgents and warn that sovereign risk and high production costs are also deterring companies. With an impoverished economy ravaged by more than three decades of war and corruption and now bank rolled by foreign aid, Afghanistan's government has pinned its hopes of rebuilding on untapped mineral resources of mainly iron ore and copper, which it has said could be worth up to $3 trillion.

According to reports more than 7,000 workers from Freeport McMoRan's massive gold and copper mine in Indonesia's western Papua region started a week-long strike on Monday to demand better wages. The Grasberg mine is the richest gold and third largest copper mine in the world and and the US company's local subsidiary is the largest single taxpayer to the Indonesian government.

Canadian base metal and coal miners were the nation's economic bright spot in April, according to report from Statistics Canada released on Thursday. The study, which looked at gross domestic product by industry, found that mining grew strongly while the rest of the economy was mostly flat.

Mexican mining production rose 22% in April from the year-ago month, led by a big jump in output of copper, the National Statistics Institute, or Inegi, said Thursday. Copper production rose 77% to 32,324 metric tons.

The Chilean Federation of Copper Workers announced a strike for July 11 to oppose plans to privatize the state-owned National Copper Company (Codelco). The management of Codelco, the biggest copper producer in the world, is preparing for privatization, said Raimundo Espinoza, a leader of the workers' federation, FTC.