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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stan_hughes who wrote (344885)	10/3/2007 8:29:34 PM
From: Terry Maloney	Respond to of 436258

Yep, that's the way most of us are ... they're brave desperate men who go down there.

To: stan_hughes who wrote (344885)	10/3/2007 8:46:20 PM
From: Giordano Bruno	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

“Inflation is less responsive than it used to be to changes in oil prices and other supply shocks. If inflation expectations are well anchored, changes in energy and food prices should have relatively little influence on core inflation,” - Ben news.goldseek.com An interesting scan.

To: stan_hughes who wrote (344885)	10/3/2007 10:49:29 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 436258

Harmony Gold Says 3,200 Miners Stuck Underground (Update2) By Stewart Bailey bloomberg.com Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Harmony Gold Mining Co., Africa's third-largest gold producer, said 3,200 workers are stuck more than a mile underground at its Elandsrand mine in South Africa after a falling pipe damaged the shaft. A pipe broke from a column near the surface ``due to fatigue'' and plunged down the 2,200-meter (1.4-mile) shaft, spokeswoman Amelia Soares said. An adjacent shaft normally used to haul waste is being refitted so that rescuers can start hoisting 300 miners an hour to the surface by midnight local time, she said. The pipe collapse ``caused a lot of damage to the steelwork and electrical feeder cords,'' Soares said today in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. ``There have been no injuries.'' Mines in South Africa are the world's deepest and among the most dangerous, with 113 workers killed last year by rock bursts, mudslides, tremors and exploding gases. About 440,000 people work in mines in the country, which has a 26 percent unemployment rate. Declining production from South Africa's mines has forced companies including Harmony and Gold Fields Ltd. to dig deeper shafts to tap the Witwatersrand Basin, the world's largest gold deposit, which lies under Johannesburg. South Africa is the world's largest producer of the precious metal. The miners reported for work almost 19 hours ago, at about 4 a.m. local time, said Deon Boqwana, regional chairman for the National Union of Mineworkers, the country's largest labor union. `Disaster' ``An escape route is the most important thing and they have failed miserably,'' Boqwana said in a telephone interview from the mine. ``They need to ensure that the shaft is maintained. This is why we have this disaster. Our main worry is for more than 3,000 people who are underground.'' Harmony's former chief executive officer, Bernard Swanepoel, quit on Aug. 7 after running the company for more than a decade and orchestrating the acquisition of aging mines and cutting costs to boost profit margins. Harmony's American depositary receipts, each equal to one share, dropped 61 cents, or 5.5 percent, to $10.46 at 4:22 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, paring the company's market value to $4.18 billion. The stock has dropped 34 percent this year, making it the worst performer of the 16- member Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index. Mine Disruptions The damage today at Harmony's Elandsrand mine follows an underground fire last month that burned for more than nine days at the company's St. Helena mine, which reduced production. Elandsrand was acquired from AngloGold in 2001, giving Harmony access to a 6.9 million-ounce gold deposit, according to a presentation posted on the company's Web site. Harmony has plans to deepen the shaft to 3,566 meters to tap richer seams of gold and extend the life of the mine. South African mines pump chilled water down pipe columns into underground reservoirs, helping cool air heated by underground rock temperatures which exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius). A container used to transport ore plummeted more than a mile down the main shaft at the South Deep mine west of Johannesburg in May 2006, wrecking the shaft now owned by Gold Fields. The damage took almost a year to repair and cut production at the mine in half. South Africa's gold production dropped 7.5 percent to 8.85 million ounces last year, its lowest level in 84 years.