Finnish engineering company Metso (MEO1V.HE) has raised its guidance for full-year 2011 sales growth to 15 percent from 10 percent due to favourable order intake and improved markets.

Ivanhoe Australia Ltd (ASX & TSX: IVA), controlled by North American-based Ivanhoe Mines, today put out what it quaintly described as a clarification of its position on Exco Resources Ltd (ASX: EXS) selling the Cloncurry copper project to Xstrata Copper. Ivanhoe, which is Exco's major shareholder made it clear it was not supporting the sale, pointing out that the company's chief executive Peter Reeve, as a director of Exco, excused himself from the deliberation of this transaction.

China has called on central and provincial authorities to stop approving the construction of new aluminium smelting capacity as over-capacity in the industry is expanding. Nine ministries and departments jointly issued an urgent circular reinforcing Beijing's policy to restrict aluminium capacity expansion. The circular was published on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Wednesday. (www.miit.gov.cn). Picture, a German aluminium coin from the time of the hyperinflation, is from Images of Elements.

Kaminak Gold Corporation (TSX-V:KAM) today announced that the 2011 drill program has begun on the company's 100%-owned Coffee Gold Project, located in the White Gold District, Yukon Territory. This program marks the start of just the second year of drilling, which aims to significantly build upon the highly successful 2010 program where eight gold discoveries were drilled over a 15km by 5km area of the Coffee Gold Project.

Platts reports the Chinese government is planning to categorize coking coal as a strategic resource that will be “protected” via incentives to […]

Pan American Silver said Tuesday it had consulted with Bolivia's Minister of Mines and its unions and "has not received official notification from any government representative with respect to the possibility that the Bolivian government might seek to take control of San Vicente." Bolivian media reports claims the Morales Administration was considering terminating joint venture contracts and taking control of several mines formerly operated by the government, which could include the San Vincente silver mine.

Analysts say the $1.5 billion share purchase will be useful if Vedanta fails to get a big response from minority shareholders for […]

Rising silver prices lead Canadian junior Aurcana to cancel debt financing proposal with two Sprott companies – and it gets sued as […]

Demand for rare earth metals is likely to continue growing at double digit annual rates for the foreseeable future but, the supply side does not look quite as rosy. According to Molycorp CEO, Mark Smith, while a lot of production has been forecast from a number of small producers, very little of it is likely to come on stream in five years.