Lake Shore Gold Corp.(TSX:LSG)(NYSE MKT:LSG) ("Lake Shore Gold" or the "Company") today announced that the Company has commenced safety, ventilation and maintenance checks at its Timmins West Mineas of 7:00 pm on Sunday, May 27, 2012, with full production at the mine to resume tomorrow morning (Monday, May 28, 2012) at 7:00 am.

It raises questions about demand for such assets, just as peer Rio Tinto starts work on a potential sale of its diamond division.

Smaller miners are waiting for production cutbacks by the market leaders to prop up prices the way Saudi-Arabia comes to the rescue of oil producing nations whenever the crude price begins to flag.

The prospectus giving details of the creation of a $90 billion mining and commodities trading behemoth will find its way to the inboxes of shareholders this week.

If there is one mining project anywhere in the world that could warrant the old Hollywood blockbuster title of Back to the Future it must be EMED Mining’s Rio Tinto copper venture in Andalucía, Spain.

Gold faces a crucial test in the coming holiday-shortened week with crucial US jobs numbers out on Friday and the ongoing Eurozone crisis making or breaking the yellow metal's assault on $1,600 and higher.

Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting which is hiring 1,700 foreign workers for the Roy Hill iron mine were absent from the Australian mining association job fair in Perth and so were the $9.8 billion project's main contractors.

The bodies of 10 illegal miners were pulled from a collapsed tunnel at a disused diamond mine in South Africa's Northern Cape province De Beers announced late on Saturday.

It has been a slow start for China’s first physical iron ore trading platform which was launched with the idea that it would give China greater influence on the price of the commodity.