I loved the first paragraph of the article!

"Major nickel mining operations in Sudbury, Ont., will come to a standstill for the first time in more than a century this summer after Brazil's Vale Inco announced plans to shutter its Sudbury mines and smelters for two months."

Reminds me of the old saying by that wealthy French noble guy/investor in the 1800's, Rothschild, that "the time to buy is when there is blood in the streets." Hey, if nickel mining from the major nickel miner has "come to a standstill", then, metaphorically speaking, there is "blood in the streets". In other words, things in regard to the nickel mining industry appear to have gotten as bad as they can possibly get.

Now - the interesting thing is that there is a power shift from west to east going on. China is buying up copper, nickel, and other metals at a breakneck pace and looking for acquisitions of mines, smelters, and other related entities in peaceful countries so as to make some money with their over $1 trillion of U.S. dollars they currently hold as part of their "foreign reserves" (before the American paper becomes like Zimbabwe's currency, where they are now having to print out $50 billion bills that are accepted in public at only U.S. 2 cents in money).

Also, China is pushing for a new world reserve currency that is based on something solid - 30 different commodities (much of which are copper and other industrial metals), instead of the fiat (i.e., created out of thin air and paper and ink, with no tangible value backing) dollars, euros, yen, etc. And they are switching out of this "funny money" for metal which they will use to support their currency and help make them the dominant economic power in the world.

For investors in industrial metals (copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, chromium) or industrial metals miners and explorers - like Noront - things should be looking up pretty soon! After all, a trillion and a half dollars is a lot of money to get rid of in buying metals!