Precious metals

The revelations on the activities of two gangs accused of smuggling gold out of Greece have thrown light on a hidden aspect of the human tragedy of the past few years. In addition to undermining the present and the future, with the sudden drop in living standards and incomes, the flight of young people and more deaths than births, the crisis is also robbing us of the past.

A sunken Russian warship believed to contain $130 billion in gold bullion and coins has been found off the coast of a South Korean island — 113 years after it was scuttled during the Russo-Japanese War, several reports said.

In the first quarter of this year, the global gold demand decreased sharply. This was announced by the World Gold Council, AFP reported.

In Dubai's decades-old Gold Souk, customers from around the world haggle over bangles and necklaces. Elsewhere in the emirate, the region's top center for gold trade, bullion is playing a new role in financial engineering.  

The Russian government has purchased two-thirds of all the gold mined in country, buying it from local banks to add to reserves as the Kremlin sees the precious metal as a safe haven at a time of geopolitical turbulence.

France has found traces of radioactive cesium on mushrooms imported from Russia, the head of French nuclear regulator ASN said on Thursday, quoted by Reuters. 

Russia’s meteorological service has confirmed “extremely high” concentrations of the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106 were found in several parts of the country in late September, confirming European reports about the contamination this month.

Russian authorities have confirmed that there has been increased radioactivity in the country, the Guardian reported. From the surveys it is clear that ruthenium-106 exceeds 986 times the performance compared to last month. This is an "extremely high concentration". The indicators were detected between September 25 and October 1 in the South Urals, the Russian meteorological office reports.

A cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe in recent weeks indicates that an accident has happened in a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan in the last week of September, French nuclear safety institute IRSN said on Thursday.

Gold fell to its lowest in seven weeks on Tuesday after strong U.S. economic data reinforced expectations of another interest rate rise in the United States this year and pushed the dollar and U.S. bond yields higher.