Cluff Gold brought two gold mines to production during 2008 and is now poised to develop a third, much larger prospect. Chairman Algy Cluff talks to Gay Sutton about the rocky road to success.

Russia and Norway ended a 40-year dispute yesterday when they signed an Arctic border treaty, opening up the region to offshore oil and gas development.

Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev and Jens Stoltenberg, the premier of Norway, attended the signing in Murmansk, a Russian Barents Sea port near the Norwegian border.

The disputed territory in the Barents Sea covered 175,000 square kilometres—roughly half the size of Germany—between the Novaya Zemlya archipelago on the Russian side and the Svlabard archipelago on the Norwegian side.

Honeywell today announced it has completed its acquisition of Sperian Protection for approximately $1.4 billion, including the assumption of net debt.

Sperian Protection is a leading provider of personal protective equipment (PPE), and will be combined within Honeywell's Automation and Control Solutions' Life Safety business.

London-based miner Rio Tinto has said it will spend £518 million expanding its diamond operations.

The mining group’s diamond business is often overlooked, due to the success of its primary iron ore, copper and coal operations. However, its diamond unit is the third-largest in the world behind industry leaders De Beers and Alrosa.

Rio Tinto’s diamond division is based on three mines, including Argyle in the north-western desert area of Australia.

Although not strictly a Masters degree, the Master of Business Administration (MBA) is considered by many to be a must-have for a top level career in business.

As the number of schools offering MBAs has grown, a ranking system has developed around them, to give students guidance on the best colleges to apply for, and to help potential employers to target their recruitment efforts.

A123 Systems has opened the largest lithium-ion automotive battery manufacturing plant in North America.

The new facility in Livonia, Michigan, is a welcome boost for employment in the beleaguered state and will expand A123’s production capacity up to 600MW hours per year when fully operational, contributing to the company's plan to expand global final cell assembly capacity to more than 760MW hours annually by the end of 2011.

French industrial gases company Air Liquide has said it will invest $450 million in two global-scale hydrogen production units to supply Saudi Aramco with hydrogen for its planned Yanbu refinery.

Saudi Aramco's refinery will be located in Yanbu Industrial City, on the west coast of the kingdom. The new incorporated Red Sea Refining Company will process 400,000 barrels of heavy crude per day when the facility is completed in 2014.

The two hydrogen production units will have a total production capacity of 262 million cubic feet per day.

BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defense contractor, is considering the sale of its US-based component manufacturing business Platform Solutions, for up to $2 billion.

Platform Solutions makes electronic components including cockpit displays for military jets and digital engine controls for commercial aircraft. The company, part of BAE's Electronic, Intelligence and Support (EI&S) division, also produces electrical components for hybrid buses. The unit has facilities in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Irving, Texas, Johnson City, New York, and Redmond, Washington.  

Tullow Oil has today announced a key new oil discovery in its Owo-1 exploration sidetrack in the Deepwater Tano licence offshore Ghana which confirms that its Owo well is now a "major new oil field."

Tullow said that the sidetrack showed a "very substantial" 200 metre gross oil column in the heart of the Owo oil field, with new condensate and gas accumulations below.