Molycorp shares re ticking higher early amid new 2013 rare earth quotas set in China over the weekend.

According to China's Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR), the first production quota for minerals used in hybrid autos, mobile devices, and more, will be set at 46,900 metric tons. That is about half the total quota for 2012, Bloomberg noted this morning. Though last years quota wasn't given, production totaled 93,800 tons in 2011.

China's MLR also set production for tungsten concentrate at 43,500 tons and antimony at 37,680 tons.

Production for the rest of the year will be set in the second quarter, according to the MLR.

Molycorp is up 3 percent in early trading Monday.

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Solomon Resources Limited is pleased to report on its preliminary exploration of the Rurembo Tin Project in the Republic of Rwanda. The Rurembo licence area includes highly prospective pegmatite swarms immediately adjacent to the former Belgian-owned cassiterite-columbite-tantalite mine at Gatumba and unexplored strike extensions of that metallogenic district to the north.

Solomon executed an Option Agreement effective July 12th, 2012 with the principals of Speck Minerals Ltd., a Rwandan corporation, to acquire (subject to regulatory approval) a 100% interest in the Rurembo licence. The licence permits prospecting for wolframite, cassiterite and coltan within a concession covering 110,984 hectares located in western Rwanda.

Background:

The Government of Rwanda Geology and Mines Authority (OGMR) contracted Toronto based consultant Paterson, Grant and Watson Limited to carry out an interpretation of existing geological, geochemical and geophysical data in 2009. The PGW report included 12 detailed mapsheets at 1:100,000 scale and identified 21 Prospective Target Areas (PTA's) that were ranked for tin (Sn), tungsten-niobium-tantalum (W-Nb-Ta) and/or gold (Au) and base metal mineralization. Speck Minerals Ltd. applied for and was granted a Prospecting Licence for two of these PTA's. The Rurembo Licence, which Solomon has optioned from Speck, covers an area of approximately 1000 square kilometers in northwestern Rwanda immediately north of and on strike with the historic tin producer at Gatumba.

Location and Physiography:

The Rurembo Prospecting Licence is situated in the northwestern portion of Rwanda and extends from the city of Gitarama (population 83,000) in the south to the city of Ruhengeri (population 87,000) in the north. Limited commercial services and accommodation are available in both Gitarama and Ruhengeri, and most supplies and services in support of exploration may be sourced from the city of Kigali (population 909,000).

The climate of Rwanda is temperate, with two rainy seasons (March to May and October to November). The high altitude of Rwanda provides the country with a pleasant tropical highland climate, with a mean daily temperature variation of less than 2° C. Temperatures vary considerably from region to region because of the variations in altitude. At Kigali, on the central plateau, the average temperature is 21° C. The exploration season in the licence area extends throughout the year. There are no climatic restrictions on the conduct of field exploration.

2012 Preliminary Exploration Program:

The Rurembo Project is a grassroots exploration for Sn-Ta-Nb (W), largely predicated upon the proximity of the former Belgian mine at Gatumba now privately operated as the Gatumba Mining Concession and the projected strike extensions of that geological environment into the Rurembo Licence Area.

There are artisanal miners active within the Rurembo Licence Area; these are believed to be largely illegal and rudimentary cassiterite-coltan extraction operations directed at the weathered exposure of pegmatite dykes and no production records are available.

Exploration in the Rurembo Licence area will be directed at pegmatites variably mineralized with columbite-tantalite and/or cassiterite. At the type locality in the adjacent Gatumba Concession, beryl, ambygonite, spodumene, apatite and lithium-phosphates are the most prevalent accessory minerals. At the regional scale more than 130 large pegmatites have been mapped to date, but this encompasses only a small portion of the inter-massif area of the Rurembo licence area in which a far greater number of pegmatites are thought to exist.

The pegmatites of Gatumba, dated at 968 Ma, occur in four parallel networks between the granites, with each individual network traceable up to 5 kilometers in extent. Thickness can vary from several centimeters to 30 meters, and lengths of tens of meters up to 2400 meters. The vertical extent of the pegmatites is not known as only the uppermost weathered portions have been investigated by artisanal mining.

In the present exploration program, regional geochemical indicators include Sn, lithium (Li), beryllium (Be), Ta, Nb, W and molybdenum (Mo). The pegmatite dykes may report on airborne spectrometry as there is a known thorium provenance in the Gatumba pegmatites, and airborne gravity should help differentiate the less dense pegmatites from the surrounding diorites and metasediments. Analysis of aerial photography and satellite imagery should focus on identifying dilationary zones where the north-south trending pegmatites are cross cut by regional structures.

Solomon field crews mobilized to the Republic of Rwanda on August 2nd, 2012. The Company has leased a field office and expat residence in the capital city of Kigali and hired a Country Manager and support staff.

Tungsten Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.chinatungsten.com
Tel.: 86 592 5129696; Fax: 86 592 5129797
Email: sales@chinatungsten.com
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Avrupa Minerals shares closed more than 26 per cent higher on Monday, with the junior mineral explorer recently expanding its footprint in Portugal, and announcing a polymetallic discovery at a Kosovo asset.

Shares in the Canada-based company rose 3 cents to 14.5 cents.

In mid December, the company acquired three new exploration licenses in the region.

Today kapitalerhoehungen.de had the opportunity to meet James Robertson, CEO of Blackheath Resources. Following the success of Primary Metals, Mr. Robertson and his team are back in Portugal with new tungsten projects including the past producing tungsten project at Covas in northern Portugal. Historical resources at Covas are 923,000 tons of 0.78% WO3 (tungsten trioxide). Mineralization is open in several directions and a drilling programme is underway.

Hello Mr. Robertson, to start, what is the focus of Blackheath Resources?

Blackheath Resources is a TSX Venture Exchange listed company that is entirely focused on tungsten exploration and development in Portugal. We currently hold rights to three tungsten projects, all of which are past-producing mines and we are also assessing additional tungsten acquisitions.

China's Ministry of Commerce announced that it has granted 255 Chinese producers and trading companies licenses to export ferroalloys, including ferrosilicon, silicomanganese, ferrotungsten, ferrochrome, ferrovanadium, in 2013.

The ferroalloy exporters on the list are classified into two groups with Group A comprising 107 companies while Group B has 148. The two groups are categorized according to the types of ferroalloys they export.

In a statement on its website, the ministry did not reveal export volumes allocated to each company.

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Can PIIGS fly again? No, that’s not a typographical error. I’m referring to Europe’s PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain - the continent’s sick men.

The aftermath of recession and financial crisis has left them struggling and their travails – particularly those of Greece – have hogged the economic headlines this year. Austerity and high unemployment have left their marks too. But they have also spawned a self-help mentality.

As part of this, our PIIGS are targeting what could be a huge and largely forgotten bounty of natural resources. And they are being helped in their endeavours by a handful of entrepreneurial junior explorers and miners.

Comment – Australia - So much for Australia catching the critical metals wave. Sure, we do have two tungsten producers but the main one is German-owned. Yes, we mine antimony -- well, actually a Canadian company does that for us. There is a tin producer, except that the operation is half Chinese-owned.

Graphite? Well, we're getting there, but slowly. Rare earths? It has been 17 years (at least) since work started on any of the current projects. Vanadium production has -- at last -- begun in Western Australia, but what a saga behind that; the deposit was found in 1982 and production was seemingly all set to go by 1999.

Barry Hearn returns to Alexandra Palace this weekend with his latest sporting spectacle: the World Championship of Ping Pong.

If they think it is all over at the Alexandra Palace now that the PDC World Darts Championship has stepped back from the oche, they had better think again. The staff there may have just de-tacked the carpet, gathered up the Himalayas of empty pint pots and filled the lost-property room with forgotten items of fancy dress (every year several pantomime cow rear ends are left behind in the gents, at least one of which is still occupied). But the king of sporting spectacle will not be abandoning the place anytime soon. Indeed, the man behind the arrows claims things could get messy all over again at Ally Pally.

This weekend Barry Hearn returns to the arena where his tungsten tips have ruled with his latest innovation: the World Championship of Ping Pong. In characteristic style, he insists the event will not be quiet. Via use of laser lighting, a thumping disco beat and – we assume – 8,000 inebriated fans chanting “duh-duh-duh duh duh der-duh-duh-duh” at the end of every rally, he intends to turn the once gentle dining-room pastime of table tennis into an all-action must-watch television event on a par with the arrows.

Galway Metals Inc., a company that holds a 100% interest in the Victorio tungsten-molybdenum project situated in New Mexico, has announced that common shares will be listed and will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange effective January 4, 2013, under the symbol “GWM.”

As previously disclosed on December 20, 2012, Galway Metals received conditional approval to list its common shares on the TSX-V in connection with a plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") among formerly listed Galway Resources Ltd. ("Galway Resources"), AUX Acquisition 2 S.àr.l, AUX Canada Acquisition 2 Inc., Galway Metals and Galway Gold Inc. that closed on December 20, 2012. Galway Metals is well capitalized with US$12 million cash and holds a 100% interest in the Victorio tungsten-molybdenum project in New Mexico formerly held by Galway Resources.

Tungsten disulfide is a semiconductor and in bulk possesses distinct band gaps. Mauricio Terrones' group at Pennsylvania State University in the US, however, have been looking at this material not in bulk, but as a triangular two-dimensional crystal.

The picture behind shows what happens when Terrones' team  made these small crystals – the edges showed an incredible photoluminescence at room temperature (around 25 times stronger than at the centre of the triangle). As the material changes from bulk to monolayer, the interaction between electronic states also changes and the material becomes a direct band gap semiconductor – allowing electrons that move from a higher energy band to a lower band to emit a photon. However, that doesn't in itself explain the boosted luminescence at the edges. That is helped, it seems, by the structure at the edges, involving zig-zag patterns of sulfur atoms, but the overall explanation is still unclear.