Once upon a time, there live a Swine, called Saddam. in the hot deserts of Iraq who decided to trade his eggs in Eurobux... This got up the nose of "sneaky" Yamerica Fairy who decided to be "badder" and eliminate Saddam, to take over his golden goose, in whichever way she could... So feathers flew as Yamerica's bombs landed on a restaurant where Saddam Swine was not. Since then, more than one million poor souls died, 4.5 million souls lost their space and trouble brew forever after...

The price of gold has hit a new all-time high of $1,043.77 an ounce after a decline in the dollar boosted the attractiveness of metals to investors.

Copper prices also rose above $6,000 a tonne, as the weaker dollar made metals cheaper for non-US investors.

The dollar fell after a newspaper report - later denied - said that Gulf nations wished to replace the greenback as the main oil currency.

The rise in metal prices lifted shares in mining firms.

Mining stocks were among the biggest risers on the UK's main FTSE 100 share index, with Fresnillo adding 10% and both Kazakhmys and Vedanta up 9%.

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see toon above...

It does not look like much: a jumble of pipes, containers and drilling equipment sitting on a windswept jetty at Port Stanley.

The hardware, however, signals an imminent search for oil and gas that could turn the Falkland Islanders into south Atlantic oil barons, a prospect that has already triggered a dispute between Britain and Argentina.

A rig, the Ocean Guardian, is due to arrive by mid-February and will almost immediately begin drilling for hydrocarbon deposits 100 miles north of the archipelago.

Geological surveys suggest there could be up to 60bn barrels beneath the seabed around the British territory, a bonanza that would transform islands famed for sheep, fish and remoteness.

"The rig won't come into sight of Port Stanley unfortunately, it'll be out too far," said Phyll Rendell, the islands' director of mineral resources. "But everyone knows it's coming."

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