The Montreal Gazette reports that there are still a stubbornly low number of women pursuing engineering as a course of study in university, and the question remains - why? The gender disparity has continued, they wrote, "despite the fact that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of new jobs in engineering and technology." Elizabeth Croft, a UBC mechanical engineering professor and, since 2010, regional chair for Women in Science and Engineering with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), agreed that engaging women in applied sciences is a serious concern. "I don't think we've done a particularly good job of communicating that the careers for engineers do not require you to be a man," she said in a recent interview.

Euroenews reports that two bodies were found by rescuers who are trying to reach trapped miners in an underground coal mine in south Wales. On Thursday morning, water flooded the hillside colliery near Cilybebyll where seven miners were working. Three miners managed to escape while four remained underground. Divers have been trying to reach the workers but debris in the water is making progress difficult.

Silvercorp Metals Inc. says the anonymous fraud allegations that have hammered its share price are completely false, and the company is backing that view up by buying back its shares at low prices.

Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) plans to sell "a lot" of the output from the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold project in Mongolia to China, and is in discussions with smelters in China, Rio Tinto's U.S. Copper Chief Financial Officer said Friday at an industry event."Talks are still underway, and there's no definite plan right now," Kay Priestly told a Metal Bulletin conference in China. With the Oyu Tolgoi mine strategically located close to China where demand is high, so "it's certainly our plan to transport a lot of the products to China," Priestly added.

Western Australia’s manufacturing sector is losing nearly 150 jobs per day as workers chase high wages in mining.

JSW Steel today said shortage of iron ore had "severely impacted" its production this month and the company was running units at 75% capacity.

Preliminary estimates from Metals Economics Group’s (MEG) Corporate Exploration Strategies (CES) study indicate that 2011 nonferrous exploration budgets will exceed $17 billion for expenditures related to precious and base metals, diamonds, uranium, and some industrial minerals.

Nine months overdue, the diamond marketing contract between the Government of Botswana and De Beers will finally be signed tomorrow in Gaborone, Mmegi reported on Thursday.

Encouraged by test work that revealed extraction potential using its own technology at one of the world’s largest known glauconite deposits, Perth-based Potash West on Wednesday expanded it exploration tenure by almost 40% to 2,905km² in Australia's wheatbelt. The company raised $6 million on the Sydney bourse in May this year hoping to become the first Australian firm to break into the lucrative potash market dominated by about 10 mainly Canadian companies. Global potash prices currently average $500 a tonne, up more than 40% from 2008-recession lows.