Philippines delays environment minister nomination approval over mining woes

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, may be yet again running for President, but he has not abandoned his quest for an independent audit of U.S. gold reserves. A hearing is scheduled this Thursday before Paul's House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology on Paul's bill demanding an audit of all gold in the United States.

On Tuesday Zambia's Finance Minister mocked Zimbabwe and South Africa for planning to forcibly raise government stakes in foreign mines, saying "the Zambian miner in 1970s was a happier miner than a miner during the period of state ownership of the mines.” Under Zimbabwe's on-again off-again indigenization policy mining companies were granted until the beginning of June to submit proposals about transferring majority ownership to locals while there are growing calls within the ruling party in South Africa to move ahead with nationalization as called for in the country's Freedom Charter.

B2Gold Corp. reports a temporary shutdown of the underground workings at the Limon Mine in Nicaragua due to on-going rescue attempt of a missing worker during heavy rains and mine flooding.

According to a report by Chinese news agency Xinhua, China has been sharply increasing its output of gold and silver coins to meet seemingly ever-increasing popular demand for precious metals as people buy to protect against perceived rising inflation. Indeed it has more than doubled the maximum issuance for 2011 for some popular gold coin sizes from its previously announced levels.

India, the world's top gold importer, may have just turned net exporter over the last couple of months given the high level of exports of gold jewellery, medallions and coins from the country. Export of items of the yellow metal rose to a staggering $1.24 billion during March and April 2011.

Extorre Gold Mines announced that it has entered into an agreement pursuant to which a syndicate of underwriters led by TD Securities Inc. (the "Underwriters") has offered to purchase, on a bought deal private placement basis, 2,400,000 common shares (the "Shares") of the Company at a price of $10.50 per Share (the "Issue Price") for total gross proceeds of $25,200,000 (the "Offering"). The net proceeds from the Offering will be used for exploration and development of the Company's mineral projects in Argentina and for general working capital purposes.

Silver Predator announced that it has signed an option to acquire a 100%-interest in 125 State of Alaska mining claims comprising the Illinois Creek silver-gold district located in west-central Alaska. The past-producing Illinois Creek Mine lies in the southern Kaiyuh Mountains in west-central Alaska about 30 kilometers east of the Yukon River and the small village of Kaltag and 90 kilometers south of the town of Galena.

Bearing Resources announced that the Company has entered into an option agreement with Eastfield Resources Ltd. ("Eastfield") to earn up to a 65% interest in the 12,113 hectare Zymo copper-gold project ("Zymo"), located 45 kilometres west of the town of Smithers, British Columbia. Exploration work carried out to date at Zymo, including surface sampling, geophysical testing and core drilling has identified a large copper-gold porphyry system. Four distinct porphyry targets have been identified over an open ended nine kilometre by three kilometre area defined by a coincident copper in soil and induced polarization ("IP") chargeability anomaly.

Further to the announcement on 15 April 2011, Gold Fields announced that its shareholders have overwhelmingly approved the US$667 million acquisition of IAMGOLD Corporation's 18.9% stake in the Tarkwa and Damang gold mines in Ghana. Of the 603 million shares (84% of total shares in issues) that were voted at a general meeting 93% were cast in favour of the transaction.