Diamonds are rare, beautiful, valuable and famous as girl’s best friends, but traditionally they are not considered a separate class of assets, enjoying the same rights as the rest, the portal www.wealth-bulletin.com writes.

Diamonds do not share the status of “asylum”, which has the gold, and the price for diamonds is more volatile than prices of the precious metals. While the spot price of gold this year has increased by about 25%, the price of diamonds fell by at least 10%, following the low rates of the luxury industry, according to the American edition of IDEX Online Diamond Prices, which tracks the asking prices of diamonds around the world.
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Bacteria

“In the XV century, people have learned how to get copper out of the blue streams, which flow from the mountains. But the mechanism of Vatting of non-ferrous metals from sulphide ores was understood much later, in the XX century, – says head of the Laboratory of the chemolithotrophs Microorganisms of the Institute of Microbiology named after S.N. Winogradsky Academy of Sciences Tamara Kondratieva to Infox.ru. – Chemolithotrophs acidophilic bacteria play the main role in this process.
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“The recent rise in metal prices is caused by speculative actions. After some time, there will be a fall in prices”, – president of the company GeoProMining Roman Khudoliy said at a meeting to the reporters.

According to him, various funds have free cash now and hurry to put them in safe assets. “In the metals market in general, there are two major players. The first is China, acquiring resources, and the second is the funds that have available ready assets”, – said Khudoliy.
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Finally, a plan of the development of North-Ural district for the extraction and development of precious metals, raw materials and fuel is approved. The Ministry for Nature Management has begun to develop the strategic plan, which included investments from both the budget and the private capital.
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The Bank of Russia has established new book prices for precious metals since December 23, 2009:
- Gold costs 1,071.04 rubles per gram;
- Silver – 16,90 rubles per gram;
- Platinum -1390.87 rubles per gram;
- Palladium – 354.32 rubles per gram.

Accounting prices of precious metals set by the Bank of Russia, used for accounting purposes by credit institutions, beginning with the calendar day following the day of their establishment, and act till the new values of accounting prices  will come into force.
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