Polar bears were the theme of the diamond jewelry items presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during their visit to Canada's Northwest Territories. The newlyweds received a set of diamond pave cufflinks modeled after the polar bear logo of the NWT Government, and a diamond pave brooch also in the shape of the North's iconic bear.

More details of the carbon tax are trickling out as the Australian Government prepares to take the next step towards imposing its carbon price.

Plans for a huge gold mine near Kershaw have been delayed for at least a year because of the mine's potential effect on creeks and wetlands that run through the site in Lancaster County. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will conduct an environmental impact statement before it decides on a wetlands permit for Romarco Minerals Inc., which wants to create the largest gold mine east of the Mississippi River. Image of the Haile gold mine site, by Romarco Minerals.

Zambian President Rupiah Banda opened the country's largest coal mine Friday, after Singapore's Nava Bharat took over majority shares and invested $750 million (525 million euros) at the once defunct state entity. Nava Bharat, a Singapore subsidiary of India's Nava Bharat Ventures, has a 65 percent stake in Maamba Collieries, with Zambia's government owning 25 percent through its Zambia Copper Mines Investment Holdings.

Debt-saddled Greece has a new revenue source in the form of two gold mines that have been approved by the country's environment minister, George Papaconstantinou, FT reported on Friday. The newspaper said that European Goldfields has received final approval to build two large gold mines in northern Greece, named Olympias and Skouries, near Thessaloniki. The AIM-listed miner plans to spend $500 million to build the mines and a total of 1.3 billion euros throughout the life of the mines.

Shares in Anfield Nickel's jumped more than 4% to within striking distance of a year-high on Friday after the company released the results of its economic assessment of the Mayaniquel project in Guatemala. Anfield said the project may generate approximately 700 permanent jobs and 800 direct jobs during the three year construction period and potentially $1.8 billion in taxes and government royalties payable to the Guatemalan government.

The price oil sands producers can charge fell to $96/barrel on Friday while global crude prices remained firmly around the $118/barrel level as Canadian supplies swamp the US. Canada exports two million barrels of crude to the US per day of which 1.5m come from oil sands meaning Alberta's bitumen mines are losing out on a possible $33m in revenues each and every day. Building new pipelines would remove the glut but it’s almost three years since TransCanada first applied to extend its Keystone pipeline and Enbridge’s project to pipe crude to the west coast for export to Asia will languish for another 18 months in a review process. All this while US need for crude continues to seep away and Chinese demand grows at double digit rates.

While Western mining multinationals are conspicuous in their absence from any bids for Afghanistan's vast resources of copper and iron ore Tata Steel on Thursday joined other Indian steelmakers to bid for the Hajigak iron ore deposits 130km west of Kabul. So far only China has made any firm commitment to the country's mining sector with state-owned Metallurgical Corp's successful $3.4bn bid to build a copper mine – and a $6bn railway to go with it – that should enter production in 2014.

South Africa’s Pilanesberg Platinum announced on Friday a labour dispute has been settled and mining operations will resume next week after a two-week shutdown after employees of a contractor disrupted operations through intimidation of supervisors and damage to property and equipment. The share traded up almost 2% in afternoon trade but the company worth some $510m has lost more than a tenth of its value on the Toronto bourse since halting operations and is down close to 50% over the last twelve months.