It's been a long time coming for some of Canada Fluorspar's (TSX-V: CFI) founding investors, but persistence appears to have paid-off. Arkema and Canada Fluorspar announced they signed a definitive agreement worth $84 million to fully fund and give a past-producing fluorspar mine in Newfoundland, Canada, a second life. Since Alcan closed up shop at the Blue Beach-Tarefare fluorspar mine just outside the town of St. Lawrence in 1978, various operators have taken a crack at bringing operations back online to produce acidspar, which is used for a variety of industrial purposes such as in hydrofluoric acid production.

Top miners in Peru expect to have to pay a new tax on windfall profits proposed by President-elect Ollanta Humala, but on Wednesday urged the incoming government to refrain from raising royalties based on sales.

Geologists suspected there would be significant copper below Pershimco Resources' (TSX-V: PRO) La Pava gold deposit at its Cerro Quema project in Panama. In drilling La Pava during the mid-1990s, previous project operators mostly stuck to near-surface gold in La Pava's oxide cap and in the process outlined a now updated indicated resource of 7.2 million tonnes @ 1.1 g/t gold.

Here's a thing - Eurozone central banks have stopped selling and started buying gold so far in 2011. Only by €6 million mind, and all of it in gold coin according to the European Central Bank's weekly statements. But this net gold buying still stands, even ignoring Estonia's 0.6 tonne purchase at New Year (its contribution, on joining the Euro, to the ECB's reserve assets).

In this article we look at some critical fundamental features of precious metals that are rarely considered or accepted in the developed world markets. Expert investors like Warren Buffet look at inactive, buried gold with amazement, because he is focused on companies that produce things and earn money.

Nyrstar (NYR.BR: Quote), the world's biggest zinc producer, is to buy Canada's Breakwater (BWR.TO:Quote) for C$619 million ($639 million) as it carries out its strategy to buy more mines and increase its self-sufficiency. Belgium-based Nyrstar said on Wednesday it will pay C$7.00 per share in cash, and Breakwater shareholders will also get a special dividend of C$0.50 in cash.

World no.2 iron ore miner Rio Tinto is investing $676 million to speed up its iron ore expansion by six months to capture demand as rival plans to boost production are impeded. Rio said on Wednesday it expects to increase its capacity by 50 percent to 333 million tonnes a year by the first half of 2015.

Get set for a pace of drilling and exploration results from the Yukon even more blistering this year than the last. By way of yardstick, 2010 was stellar for exploration in the Yukon, with about $150 million in such expenditures. But this year is looking even better, with exploration expenditures expected to top $250 million, according to Natural Resources Canada, which some months ago surveyed the 2011 spending intentions of mining and exploration companies. And with the shorter Yukon exploration season, many drilling campaigns in the Yukon are just getting underway.

Brazilian miner Vale (VALE5.SA:Quote) expects iron ore demand in Japan to reach 90 percent of pre-crisis levels in the fourth quarter, the company's global marketing director Pedro Gutemberg said. "Japan iron ore demand was at almost 90 percent of pre-crisis levels before the earthquake and potentially after it recovers from the earthquake it will go back to that in the fourth quarter," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference.

Xstrata Plc will start exporting iron ore concentrate to Asian buyers from Australia on Wednesday as part of a A$589 million redesign of its Ernest Henry copper and gold mine, the company said on Tuesday. Exports of the magnetite-type material at a rate of 1.2 million tonnes a year are a key component of Xstrata plan to transform the Ernest Henry mine from an open-cut design to an underground one, the company said.

South Africa's MDM Engineering Group has been awarded the increased throughput design update and cost revalidation of the Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) for Africo Resources' Kalukundi copper/cobalt project, located in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which borders Zambia to the south. In May 2006 MDM completed a BFS, based on a throughput of 800,000 tonne/year plant, on the Kalukundi project.

Chinese asset managers are rushing to launch funds that invest in natural resources and precious metals overseas, responding to feverish domestic demand for inflation-hedging tools.