China’s Fosun sweetens offer for Gemfields

A small number of investment professionals around the world are competing behind the scenes to turn the gem into a commodity that would be available to investors in the way that gold has been traded through funds on exchanges.

The decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone brought two unforgettable images to the West: victims of violence whose limbs were hacked off by armed rebels as a warning to civilians; and the term "blood diamonds," referring to the diamonds plucked by hand from alluvial deposits that were smuggled out of the country and used by both sides of the warring factions to fund their vicious campaigns.

Output from the resources industry in the African nation is now the lowest since 1961, the year South Africa left the British Commonwealth and declared itself a republic

MINING.com reported on how opponents and proponents of hydraulic fracturing were using videos and infographics to argue their case. Now a London jeweler, Ingle and Rhode, is taking on the Kimberely Process and using an infographic to explain why, according to the company, that the standard is not up to snuff.

Widely circulated reports that the 88-year old were fighting for his life in a Singapore hospital were deemed to be "lies meant to destabilise Zimbabwe," according to a spokesman.

Alianue Thiam, a rising R&B singer in the U.S.A., is just another celebrity with a side business, although this side business happens […]

The source of the surge in mining investment has been quite diverse, reflecting the widespread advance in prices. For 2012, gold leads the way with $3.6 billion of capital spending. But not far behind are copper-nickel-zinc mines at $3 billion, potash at $2.9 billion and iron ore at $2.7 billion as the Labrador Trough is developed.

The world's number one diamond miner does not seem to be in need of cash. Too bad, direct exposure to diamonds has always been hard to come by and the diamond business' fundamentals continue to improve.

"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."