Less than a month after officially launching its asteroid-mining plans, Google’s billionaire co-founders and filmmaker James Cameron’s owned company Planetary Resources, has already decided not to accept any more job applications.
"I think gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold. They invest in productive businesses."
Adrian Ash at BullionVault picks up the story in the FT that looks at massive gold buying in China over the last quarter of 2011, and the possibility that the People's Bank of China may be behind the buying.
Caterpillar Inc. CAT -0.65% announced today it has selected land near Athens, Georgia, as the location for a new facility that will build small track-type tractors and mini hydraulic excavators. The state-of-the-art, one-million-square-foot-facility is expected to directly employ 1,400 people once it is fully operational.
Australian Mining reports: Atlas Iron's chief executive says the miner may need an extra 1000 workers in three years, highlighting once again the severe skills shortage for miners that will continue in Australia into 2012.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week also indicated mining jobs were in demand across Australia. While total job positions in Australia have fallen by 181,000, the new figures showed resources states QLD and WA were still hungry for mining jobs, posting a rise in available positions. Like other companies in the Pilbara, particularly BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Fortescue Metals Group, Atlas is pursuing aggressive expansion targets.
CBC News is reporting that last fall's cyberattack on government agencies looking for confidential information on PotashCorp was much larger than previously disclosed and the perpetrators seemed to be after insider information. Seven Canadian law firms were attacked, along with various government agencies. Analysts estimate that the well-coordinated attack must have involved 100 people or more. Although the attacks were traced back to China, that does not mean the attacks were carried out by that country. The Chinese government denies any involvement.
RUSAL ALSCON, the Nigerian subsidiary of United Company RUSAL announced the completion of 7 water projects to complement the existing three projects that provide potable water for over 10,000 people in Ikot Abasi LGA where the plant is located.
Police have detained eight people in east China's Shandong Province in connection with a coal mine fire that has trapped 28 miners for more than two weeks, local authorities said Saturday. A total of 91 people were working underground in the Fangbei Coal Mine in the province's city of Zaozhuang on July 6 when an air compression device located in a parking lot 255 meters underground caught fire.
New Statscan data on the first quarter population estimates for the country and the provinces shows Alberta's population reached 3,758,200 at the end of March, an increase of just under 15,500 since the start of the year. Net inflows were the highest since 2006.
In a guest blog post for Oxfam America, Keith Slack, Extractive Industries Campaign Manager wrote that Peru’s new President Ollanta Humala “is generally viewed as bad news for the country’s mining industry. Indeed, Lima’s stock market — which primarily trades mining and minerals companies — promptly crashed following the election.
The new Mining Power Rankings are live. Vote for the sector’s leaders in each of the Large-, Small-, and Micro-Cap leagues.