Argyle pink diamonds get heart of stones beating

Rare pink, red and blue Argyle diamonds. 

IF diamonds are a girl's best friend, to use the well-known refrain, then a pink diamond is a soulmate - an exceedingly rare find. It was certainly the rarest of finds for global mining giant Rio Tinto in 1979 in Smoke Creek in Western Australia's Kimberley, a region of rugged yet breathtaking terrain.

Exploration crews were working their way along that creek on October 2, 1979, when one of the geologists saw a small diamond embedded in an anthill. Thus began the start of the Argyle diamond mine and a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Diamond enthusiasts marvel at the sparkle and attraction of a white gem, but the precious pink stones are truly unique and they comprise less than one-tenth of 1 per cent of Argyle's annual diamond production.

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Scientists find diamond planet

This artist's rendition released by Yale University shows the interior of 55 Cancri e, located 40 light years from Earth revolving around a star in the Cancer constellation. Source: Supplied

TWINKLING stars are not the only diamonds in the sky. Scientists have reported the existence of a "diamond planet" twice the size of Earth, and eight times its mass, zooming around a nearby star.

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CLARITY TREATMENTS IN DIAMONDS: LASER DRILLING AND INTERNAL LASER DRILLING

16.08.12

By Yehuda Yakar, GG GIA, Chief Gemologist at GCI All natural diamonds have faults that could negatively influence their gemological rating and financial value. Diamond cutters can remove some of the clarity faults, but some flaws demand a different treatment, one which has techniques developed since the 1970s to nowadays. Every treatment that a diamond undergoes must be disclosed at every stage. Anyone who violates this obligation is breaking rules which apply to members of every diamond bourse and association in the world. In some cases, it is even illegal not to disclose.

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Recent announcements by central banks to increase their Aussie dollar holdings are an expression of trust in the health of the Australian economy. But history suggests the boom will not endure, writes Timo Henckel of the Australian National University.

Central banks everywhere – from Russia to the Czech Republic – are piling into Australian-dollar-denominated assets. This has limited the fall of the Australian dollar to around 3% from its peak even though commodity prices, which are strongly correlated with the Aussie dollar, have fallen globally by 10%. Even the German Bundesbank, the stodgiest of central banks, announced its intention to increase its reserve allocation of Aussie dollar assets. Is the Australian dollar, the fifth-most traded and among the most volatile of currencies, about to rival the US dollar, the yen, and the Swiss franc as one of the world’s major reserve currencies? And does this increased demand for assets created down under change the way the Reserve Bank and the Treasury conduct policy?

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Chinese CAUTION

China’s current ‘Year of the Dragon’ appears to have lost some of its fire as investors and ‎analysts view China’s economy with increasing caution. Chinese diamond buyers have ‎picked up on that sentiment and are holding back from making large-inventory purchases ‎as global economic concerns deepen and local consumer confidence fades. ‎

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