The rocky road to achieving fully autonomous mines

AuRico Gold shot up 21% on Wednesday on massive volumes, after announcing it has offloaded a mine and two exploration projects and sold half of a development in Mexico to a local company.

Canadian Lumina Copper Corp. (CVE:LCC) fell 8.5% Tuesday after the company hinted its expected sale will have to wait as it plans to carry a study at its Taca Taca massive copper/gold/molybdenum deposit in Argentina.

Montreal's Osisko says it has staked out some one million hectares of ground in an – as yet unnamed – "emerging gold rich mineral belt in Mexico".

Vale was granted a preliminary environmental license for the new mine in June, but the $100 billion company has run into problems with the project before.

The world’s most important copper companies will gather next month in Shanghai in an event organized by the Chinese’s city Futures Exchange (SHFE) and Chile’s Centre or Copper and Mining Studies (Cesco).

Brazil’s mining giant Vale (NYSE: VALE) will temporarily halt operations at its São Luís and Tubarão I and II pellet plants starting October 8 and November 13 respectively.

Australia-based Mariana Resources (LON:MARL) (TSX:MRY) , an exploration and development company focused in southern Argentina and Chile, announced Thursday it signed a Letter of Intent ("LOI") with Canadian junior Condor Resources to explore a gold deposit in northern Peru.

A Chilean appeals court has accepted a request for an injunction against Canada’s Barrick Gold (NYSE, TSX: ABX) and its Pascua Lama project, filed by a group of northern natives in conjunction with the local government’s environmental evaluation committee.

Chile's deputy mining minister, Pablo Wagner, resigned a day after the government decided to revoke the lithium mining concession awarded to a local company last week, acknowledging problems with the tender process.