IRAN WOULD take pre-emptive action against its enemies if it felt its national interests were endangered, the deputy head of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces was quoted by a semi-official news agency as saying yesterday.

“Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests, and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions,” Mohammad Hejazi told Fars news agency.

The following is a missive that we received from Jim Sinclair today, who is the host of a web site called Jim Sinclair's MineSet in our humble opinion its well worth the time spent on reading what he has to say. The above link will take to his site and his updates via email are free, so you have nothing to lose by signing up for them.

Dear Friends,  

Have you considered the States of the US Dollar Union have financial problems equal to and in many cases in excess of the States of the European Union?

President Obama promised to turn around the floundering economy that he inherited from his predecessor. He promised jobs. He promised transparency. Not only did he not deliver on those campaign promises, he has led the nation further into the abyss on all counts. Today we are less prosperous, deeper in debt, and enjoy fewer liberties than when Obama first stepped into the Oval Office. His own party is losing faith in the messiah.

You can see that loss of faith in the steady downward trajectory of Obama's approval ratings. While Democrats can take heart from the fact that no truly viable candidate has emerged from the GOP, it's clear that "Hope and Change" will not be sufficient to rally the electoral troops for Obama again in 2012. Voters are hurting, and Obama's claims that the blame lies with George W. Bush no longer provide any solace.

Not only is the president's own reelection in jeopardy, his sagging polls are dragging down other Democrat candidates as well. Republican Bob Turner handily took Anthony Weiner's seat in New York's 9th Congressional District, a district that had been a Democrat stronghold since 1923. New York's 9th District has previously been represented by such Democrat stalwarts as Chuck Schumer and Geraldine Ferraro. During the special election for Weiner's seat, Obama had only 31 percent approval in that district, although he won there with 55 percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election.

First Uranium Corp. has been one of the uranium sector’s most disappointing performers, and it now appears that a major restructuring is around the corner.

On Tuesday night, the company announced it has entered negotiations to sell its principal assets, which have been plagued with delays and operational problems. Those include the Ezulwini mine and the Mine Waste Solutions tailings facility, both in South Africa.

By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist, Casey Research

The Fukushima disaster reminded us all of the dangers inherent in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. Fresh news yesterday about Tepco's continued struggle to contain and cool the fuel rods highlights just how energetic uranium fission reactions are and how challenging to control. Of course, that level of energy is exactly why we use nuclear energy – it is incredibly efficient as a source of power, and it creates very few emissions and carries a laudable safety record to boot.

This conversation – "nuclear good but uranium dangerous" – regularly leads to a very good question: what about thorium? Thorium sits two spots left of uranium on the periodic table, in the same row or series. Elements in the same series share characteristics. With uranium and thorium, the key similarity is that both can absorb neutrons and transmute into fissile elements.

As we all know, two things affect the price of all things tangible and intangible – supply and demand.

On the supply side, Gold stays remarkably fixed. It is mined at a very consistent rate year round with factors such as weather and temperature having much less influence than other markets such as soft commodities. In addition to this, supply can only vary rather gradually from a mining standpoint, given that it takes around a decade to bring a new find into production. However, any seasonality in the gold price must be attributed to variations in supply and demand during different times of the year, since supply could also be increased by non-mining entities, such as investors selling their holdings.

Below is the average monthly trend in gold prices since 1969. To find this, we simply add the returns for each month in every year since 1969 and divide them by the number of observed years – 43.

To construct this graph we create an index for gold prices. Day one of each year is set as the base of 1.00. Each successive day is compared to the previous; if day 2 is higher than day 1, the index rises by the percentage increase over the two days, and vice versa.

Well done to all of you who had the foresight to invest in this company sometime ago, it now looks like the takeover is finally about happen.

Taurus Minerals Limited has received acceptances under its offer for Extract Resources Limited’s (ASX:EXT, TSX:EXT, NSX:EXT) major shareholder, Kalahari Minerals, of 89.5 per cent.

It must now proceed with its takeover offer of Extract Resources for $8.65 per share by the start of next month.

Remember when the US hiked its debt ceiling on Friday courtesy of a formulaic 52 affirmative votes in the Senate, giving the Treasury $1.2 trillion in dry debt powder to attempt to grow the economy one more time according to the algorithmic fantasies of voodoo priests with pieces of Ivy League parchment on their walls? Well, two days later, the dry powder is less than $1.1 trillion. In other words, in the past two days, total US debt increased by $120 billion,

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said that no one has the right to ask Iran to halt the uranium enrichment component of its nuclear program. 

Salehi made the remarks at a news conference on Sunday on the sidelines of an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa when asked whether or not Iran would halt its nuclear enrichment activities if the West offers incentives.

Canada's energy industry on Monday rolled out six "operating practices" to protect water sources where companies drill for natural gas using an increasingly controversial technique.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry lobby group, said the new guidelines apply to all of its members exploring for and producing natural gas in Canada. The rules address hydraulic fracturing operations in shale gas and tight gas reservoirs.

Water is the key concern.