Lithium Australia led the one-eyebrow-raised stocks today, showing off a pic of a crop that got a boost after being fed recycled battery minerals.

More about that below. Generally, it all went quiet today as the world wondered if maybe Trump was serious about not ever leaving the Oval Office.

There was some interesting developments in the news reporting of a “serious adverse event” regarding Chinese vaccine developer Sinovac Biotech’s coronavirus trials in Brazil’s largest state. Local researchers were baffled — yesterday, the “serious event” sort, kinda eluded, strongly, as that wording does in most vaccine trials, to a possible tragic outcome.

But the narrative changed overnight, to something that suggests the move could be political.

According to Bloomberg, the health agency which made the decision “didn’t consult with researchers beforehand”. Or so says Dimas Covas, head of the institute which is helping develop the vaccine, said. In fact, he said, there’s no relation between an incident with a volunteer and the shot. There was something about a “traffic incident” mentioned.

Just last month, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro mildly racistly made it clear he didn’t have time for a vaccine developed by Chinese researchers.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll topped 160,000.

Here’s some other life-changing news you might have missed today.

 

Announcements

– Great Southern Mining (ASX:GSN) will resume drilling operations at Cox’s Find next month, following a comprehensive geological review of the “spectacular gold results encountered earlier during 2020”. These results included several high-grade intersections of up to 5m @ 80.0 g/t from 160m including 1m @ 404 g/t Au, and a highly significant 15m @ 1.01g/t Auintercept from 167m. That intercept “opens up an entirely new search space immediately to the south of the high-grade unmined panel delineated by recent spectacular high-grade drill intersections”, Great Southern Mining’s CEO Sean Gregory said. The program will include up to five 200m deep holes to test the space, and will start early December.

– Crowd Media (ASX:CM8) has launched a beta version of its conversational commerce “talking head” 12 months ahead of schedule. No idea what that means? Here it is helping customers choose products over at NZ skincare company MDComplete’s site:

It’s an AI chatbot and they will one day take over your shopping world, guaranteed. So CM8’s mission is to make them helpful, and bearable. Its AI driven Chatbot technology is unique in that it combines answers from both AI and real humans answering questions. So far, it’s been responsible for processing in excess of 180 million questions and answers. It’s also jumped into a partnership with NZ-based UneeQLtd to create “Digital Ambassadors” to help power “conversation commerce” activity and influencer marketing. CM8 investors liked the news – it jumped 16.4%.

– This seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Lithium Australia NL (ASX:LIT) is “committed to the creation of a circular battery economy”. Today, that means its running a field trial wherein it takes zinc and manganese out of old alkaline batteries, and adds it as micronutrients to conventional fertiliser. Result? Battery-powered growth, on the left:

lithium australia
Lithium Australia’s battery-powered crop, let. Picture: Company supplied

A clearly “positive” result. Ha. Well, the market liked it – together with that picture and a Sustainability Victoria grant, LIT has added 0.5c to its last Thursday stock price of 4.9c. Harvest is planned for December, when the crops can be subject to a micronutrient analysis over their full lifecycle.

– We’re not going to explain magnets to you. That’s been tried before. All you need to know is Australian Strategic Materials’(ASX:ASM) team in Korea has successfully produced 200kg of FeNd, a key rare earth alloy used to produce sintered permanent magnets (via powder metallurgy).

Apparently, sintered rare earth permanent magnets “have high magnetic strength and heat resistance”. More importantly, for EV fans and ethical investors, they’re essential for advanced and clean technologies. And yes, you can be sure ASM has a special process to produce the FeNd alloy using low energy metallisation with significant environmental advantages. In about four months, ASM will kick off its first phase of commercial operation at a continuous metal plant in Korea, pumping out 250kg of the stuff.

Shares rose 6.36% to $3.51 today on the news.

 

Out Thursday:

Buderim Group (ASX:BUG) – capital raising
Galilee Energy (ASX:GLL) – capital raising
archTIS (ASX:AR9) – capital raising
Crowd Media Holdings (ASX:CM8) – proposed joint venture agreements
eMetals (ASX:EMT) – exploration results
Galena Mining (ASX:G1A) – project financing

Out Friday:

Suvo Strategic Minerals (ASX:SUV) – capital raising
Neuroscientific Biopharmaceuticals (ASX:NSB) – capital raising
Thomson Resources (ASX:TMZ) – capital raising
MMA Offshore (ASX:MRM) – capital raising
Battery Minerals (ASX:BAT) – capital raising
RareX (ASX:REE) – capital raising
Flexiroam (ASX:FRX) – capital raising
Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) – exploration results
Allegiance Coal (ASX:AHQ) – capital raising

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