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Competitive devaluations continue as Chile weakens peso against dollar

Section: Daily Dispatches

Chile Central Bank to Buy $12 Billion to Stem Peso's Region-Beating Rally

By Sebastian Boyd
Bloomberg News
Monday, January 3, 2011

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-03/chile-central-bank-to-buy-12-bi...

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chile's central bank plans to buy $12 billion of U.S. dollars to help exporters by weakening the peso, Latin America's best-performing currency last year.

The bank will buy $50 million a day from Jan. 5 to Feb. 9 and will announce further plans later. The move will boost international reserves to the equivalent of 17 percent of gross domestic product, the bank said today in a statement. The bank will sell bonds to drain the equivalent amount of cash from the economy.

Policy makers are intervening to weaken the peso after the currency gained 8.4 percent last year and climbed 0.5 percent today to 465.75 per U.S. dollar, the highest since May 2008. The bank warned last month that the country's real exchange rate had gained to the strongest level coherent with fundamentals.

... Dispatch continues below ...



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Prophecy Receives Permit To Mine at Ulaan Ovoo in Mongolia

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY, OTCQX: PRPCF, Frankfurt: 1P2) announces that on November 9, 2010, it received the final permit to commence mining operations at its Ulaan Ovoo coal project in Mongolia. Prophecy is one of few international mining companies to achieve such a milestone. The mine is production-ready, with a mine opening ceremony scheduled for November 20.

Prophecy CEO John Lee said: "I thank the government of Mongolia for the expeditious way this permit was issued. The opening of Ulaan Ovoo is a testament to the industrious and skilled workforce in Mongolia. Prophecy directly and indirectly (through Leighton Asia) employs more than 65 competent Mongolian nationals and four expatriots. The company also reaffirms its commitment to deliver coal to the local Edernet and Darkhan power plants in Mongolia."

The Ulaan Ovoo open pit mine is 10 kilometers from the Russian border and within 120km of the Nauski TransSiberian railway station, enabling transportation of coal to Russia and its eastern seaports. Thermal coal prices are trading at two-year highs at Russian seaports due to strong demand from Asian economies.

For the complete press release, please visit:

http://prophecyresource.com/news_2010_nov11.php



"This intervention should smooth the effects of the exchange-rate adjustment to which our economy has been subjected," the bank said in the statement.

Policy makers will publish their 2011 bond-sale calendar tomorrow.

The bank last intervened in the currency in April 2008, when it announced a $8 billion program of buying dollars, also in $50 million-a-day clips. It abandoned the program after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, having bought $5.75 billion.

The currency may weaken by 48 pesos per dollar because of the intervention, according to Jorge Selaive, chief economist at Banco de Credito e Inversiones in Santiago, "the greater part of that tomorrow."

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Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property

Company Press Release, October 27, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:

-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.

-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.

-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.

Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."

For the company's full press release, please visit:

http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf