Peru’s Buenaventura threatened with general strike

Miners voted Friday to end a two-week long strike at the world's largest copper mine, La Escondida in northern Chile, approving an agreement struck by their union and management. Escondida employees accepted a management offer of a special production bonus for 2010, a year in which the mine had record earnings, a spokesman for the mine's largest union said. Image of the Escodida mine, by BHP Billiton.

BioteQ Environmental Technologies, a leader in the treatment of industrial waste water, has come to an agreement with Minera México, a subsidiary of Grupo México, to provide water treatment solutions that support Minera México’s commitment for the sustainable development of its mineral resources.

Talon Metals has cranked up the resource estimate for its Trairão iron ore project in Brazil by 60%, the company said today, which puts the inferred resources at over a billion tonnes. Talon, based in British Virgin Islands, added another 414 million tonnes with an average grade of 33% Fe to its existing two target areas, bringing the total amount of iron ore to 1.102 billion tonnes.

The world's top copper mine, Chile's Escondida, refused to improve a bonus to defuse a 13-day strike on Wednesday, presenting an offer the union said fell short, but that workers would vote on. Union leaders said the proposed bonus worth $5,760 failed to meet the expectations of workers who rejected the same offer from mine owner BHP Billiton on Friday.

Bloomberg reports Antofagasta Plc, the copper giant controlled by Chile’s Luksic family, on Wednesday said second-quarter output increased 17% boosted by additional ore from the Esperanza mine in Chile that began shipping at the start of the year. Antofagasta is actively diversifying outside of its home base and is awaiting the outcome of a joint bid for a mine in Pakistan that has the potential to add 200,000 tonnes of copper annually.

Suriname's only commercial gold mine, the Rosebel Gold Mine which is majority owned by Canada's Iamgold, has been shut down by a strike by 1,100 workers protesting new longer shift hours. Rosebel is located some 118 kilometers south of Paramaribo (pictured), the capital of the South American nation. The mine produced 395,000 ounces in 2010 at cash cost of $484 per ounce. While Rosebel is the country's only commercially operated mine, there are believed to be thousands of small scale miners operating in the tiny, impoverished country.

The Korea Herald reports a Korean consortium forged an agreement with Bolivia’s state-run miner Comibol over the weekend to manufacture lithium-ion battery parts, boosting Korea’s bid to tap the largest lithium deposits in the world. A research project involving extracting lithium will begin next month at Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni – an 11,000 square kilometers salt flat (pictured) – with plans for constructing lithium-carbonate processing facilities. The soft, silver-white metal is widely used in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric cars and the price has been steadily increasing prompting talk of a Opec-style cartel to control production and prices among South American nations that together control 85% of the world's resources.

In late morning trade shares in Miraflores-based Portage Resources had gained more than 12% after announcing a 10:1 future stock split that would, after cancellation of some of the shares held by its CEO, bring the total number in issue to a whopping 4.45 billion. When MINING.com reported on Portage Resources a fortnight ago the counter had gone from 2c to 65c a share in the matter of three months. The explorer has been snapping up properties in Peru hitting pay-dirt with reserves of 58 million ounces of silver at one of them. Portage is a prime example of how volatile stocks in juniors miner can be: its 52-week high is $1.24 and despite Monday's 12% jump to 32c, the stock is worth half of what it was just five trading days ago.

Mexico massively ramped up its gold reserves in the first quarter of this year, buying over $4 billion of bullion as emerging economies move away from the ailing U.S. dollar, which has dipped to 2-1/2-year lows.