Congo mines no longer controlled by warlords and militia —report

Isolated North Korea is desperate to earn some hard currency and look for rare earths in its borders with China.

Medusa Mining Ltd advised the annual update of the JORC compliant ore reserve estimate for the Co-O Mine in the Philippines now stands at a probable reserve of 502,000 ozs contained in 1.5 million tonnes at 10.1 gpt Au.

Robert L. Card, President of Gulfside Minerals Ltd. ("Gulfside" or the "Company"), is pleased to report that the Company has acquired, subject to TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") approval, an option to acquire three iron ore projects. The first project is comprised of 49 mineral claims located near Port Snettisham about 30 miles southeast of Juneau, Alaska. This project is a titaniferous magnetite deposit on the Snettisham Peninsula which has been intermittently explored since 1969.

Mining giant BHP Billiton has defended as "effective" its strict office etiquette policy, which bans workers from eating pungent food, throwing jackets on their chairs or leaving Post-it notes on their monitors or keyboards after hours. The company outlined its "Office Environment Standard" in a memo emailed to employees in Brisbane this month.

US coal exports increased 35% to 53.6 million short tons through June 2011, according to a recent edition of NMA’s (National Mining Association) International Coal Review. Strong demand from Asia and Europe for steam and metallurgical coal is expected to push coal exports above 100 million tons by the year’s end, the highest level in nearly 20 years. NMA’s economic forecast prepared in May predicted 2011 coal exports would reach 101.5 million tons (up 24%).

WA's resources sector has been issued an SOS from the nation's steel and manufacturing industries to ramp up investment in Australian products to prevent thousands of more jobs going offshore.

Ivanhoe Mines (TSE:IVN,NYSE:IVN,NASDAW:IVN) announced an update to the production potential of its Oyu Tolgoi project.

Lawyers for Swiss mining giant Xstrata are in court today defending a massive coal project slated for Queensland. The AU$6 billion Wandoan coal mine has come under fire by environmentalists for its potential negative effects on the Great Barrier Reef. Bloomberg reports that Friends of the Earth, an international environmental lobby group, is attempting to block the mine’s approval at a trial in Brisbane that’s scheduled to take two weeks, arguing the coal exported from the project and burned overseas will add to global warming.

Tawsho Mining Inc. (TAW.V) is now surging 32%, hits a new year high of about 37 cents earlier, after announcing results from its summer 2011 drill campaignon its Whisker Valley Gold Project.