Esther Tanquintic-Misa

Australia's job unemployment rate has improved in July, inching up to 5.2 per cent from 5.3 per cent in June, defying analysts' projections of 5.4 per cent. The improvement corresponded to a total of 14,000 new jobs in July, versus projections of 10,000.

In spite posting a favourable revenue performance from its diamond business, global mining giant Rio Tinto Group is still resolute to sell off its assets from that particular business arm.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is in the headlines again, this time for its Wednesday announcement of a $1.6 billion quarterly loss in its fiscal fourth quarter following the writedown of its global publishing empire.

China has formally unveiled on Wednesday a physical trading platform for rare earth metals.

The shortage of skilled manpower in Australia's iron ore sector has been seen to improve.

India's largest power producer, NTPC Ltd., (NTPC), will be carrying this month an international $1 billion bond sale to help support the company's capacity expansion plans in light of the electricity crisis that hit country last week.

Global output of diamonds declined in 2011 on aging mines and struggling demand brought by the continuing debilitating fiscal crisis in the eurozone.

Prices of coal used for making steel has been forecast to further slide and could hit rock bottom to its lowest price in two years, as global steel output slows down spurred by the deepening debt crisis in the Eurozone.

China, in a bid to regulate its disorderly rare earths industry, has issued a production limit guideline for its producers.

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan may have spooked the uranium mining sector, forcing even some nations to forego nuclear programs in light of its effectiveness, safety and efficiency, but these factors will not permanently kill nuclear power.

Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc., creator of the well-loved giant panda and its martial arts friends in "Kung Fu Panda," together with its Chinese joint venture Oriental Dreamworks, is poised to invest some $3.1 billion to create a theme park in Shanghai which it expects to launch in 2016.

Chinese employees working for publicly-traded companies may now have the option to receive their take home pay in the form of stock options from the shares of their companies as the federal government mulls to reinvent the country's overall wage structure to help lift investor confidence in the local stock market.

Higher demand from its Asian market has helped pushed sales of Prada Spa by as much as 37 per cent in the first six months of 2012.

For the fourth month in a row, Australia's labour sector notices and advertisements in newspapers and on the Internet continued to decelerate.

The Philippine government has suspended the operations of its largest gold mine, the Padcal facility, following last week's waste spillage.

World prices of commodities will continue to be dependent on China's economic growth, regardless whether its economy is a slowed down or not.

Judging from the number of Chinese investments that have been sealed this year, Australia it seems had ceased to be China's favorite mining destination.

It is likely that Australia will experience yet again the weather phenomenon El Niño in the coming months.

The world's production of iron ore, the key ingredient for making steel, despite continued slump of prices, has achieved an all-time high production record in 2011, according to a latest July report of the UN's Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Effective October 28, Taiwan's China Airlines will increase its number of flights from New Zealand to Taipei via Sydney to four times a week.

Looks like the Australian 2012 Olympic team could be receiving a mind-blowing, hard-knock whipping once it gets back home. After six days of competition, the delegation has yet to add another gold to uplift its tarnished honor.

Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines has changed its name and will now be known as Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. The new name, which was approved at the company's annual meeting on June 28, 2012, had gone into effect.

Continuing labor problems, coupled with lower global prices of commodities and difficulties associated with the weather, at its Australian coking-coal subsidiary have taken its toll on the overall net profit of Mitsubishi Corp. for the first quarter.

China had recovered some 1,000 tonnes of illegally mined rare earths in two separate police crackdown operations last week as it continued to intensify and strengthen the management of the sector. At least 50 individuals were detained because of the operations.

Ned Kelly, the famous outlaw hanged in 1880 for leading a gang of bank robbers in Victoria and killing three police officers, could very well rest in peace now 133 years after his death after a new exhumation licence was signed by the Victorian government on Thursday that effectively allows the return of the remains of the notorious bushranger to his family and descendants.

"It hurts," was all that James "The Missile" Magnussen could muster of his defeat to American swimmer Nathan Adrian who outdid him in the pool by a fingernail and one-hundredth of a second in the 100 metres freestyle final event of the 2012 London Olympics.

At least 350 jobs are in for the taking once the gold mine project of Alkane Resources starts constructing in New South Wales (NSW), its first gold mine to be developed in several years. The gold mine will be located near Dubbo in the state's central west.

Investors of Australian iron ore developer Sundance Resources, along with industry experts, are keenly awaiting latest developments if the Perth-based miner will bite into a lowered takeover bid by Hanlong Mining of China.

Nations around the world, primarily those in Europe, have been patiently "courting" officials of the home rule government of Greenland for potential access into the latter's natural resources after latest satellite data showed that almost 100 per cent of Greenland's ice sheet surface experience melting over a stretch of four days in July, a report said.