POLYMETALLIC – Andover Mining Corp. Jan. 25 outlined its 2012 work program for the Sun volcanogenic massive sulfide project in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. Andover said it has signed a contract with Core One Drilling Inc. to provide two drill rigs for the 2012 drill season. One rig will drill NQ2 diameter core focused at the Main Sun and S.W. Sun deposits. The second rig, a man portable drill, will test exploration targets. Andover’s preliminary 2012 budget for at Sun is US$3.5 million. The company anticipates the exploration season to run from May until September. Andover plans to drill around 16 holes for about 4,570 meters at the Main Sun deposit and five holes totaling around 1,220 meters at S.W. Sun. Drilling priorities may change as the season progresses and drilling results are received. Additionally, the company will utilize a man-portable rig capable of drilling BTW core to a depth of about 150 meters. This rig will be used to conduct exploration drilling on the 16 kilometers (10 miles) of strike length that has yet to be drill tested by Andover. The Picnic Creek area located to the North of the Main SUN deposit will also be tested by this drill program. Planning for the 2012 drill locations at Main Sun and S.W. SUN was carried out by Andover's management and Mine Development Associates of Reno, Nevada, to maximize projected results. Previous drill assays, logs and data were analyzed and deposit modeling was performed using past drill holes completed by Andover, Anaconda, Cominco, Sunshine and Noranda. Andover said this preparatory work will enable the company to more effectively locate the drill holes for the 2012 drill season and allow MDA to complete a new resource calculation for the Main Sun deposit following the completion and analysis of the results from the 2012 drill season. John Spencer has been retained to perform the duties of camp manager and to provide the mobilization for Andover in 2012. The 2012 program at Sun will be performed under the supervision of Bradley Peek, the company's general manager for the project.

GOLD – McEwen Mining Inc. Jan. 24 reported that the business combination, pursuant to which US Gold Corp. acquired Minera Andes Inc. and was renamed McEwen Mining, has been completed. The combination was carried out by way of a plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta), which was approved by the shareholders of both US Gold and Minera Andes on Jan. 19 and the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta on Jan. 20. Shares of McEwen Mining will begin trading on the NYSE and the TSX, subject to final exchange approvals, under the symbol "MUX" on Jan. 27. Holders of Minera Andes shares will receive 0.45 of an exchangeable share of McEwen Mining - Minera Andes Acquisition Corp. for each one Minera Andes share held. These exchangeable shares of McEwen Mining - Minera Andes Acquisition Corp., will also start trading on the TSX on Jan. 27 under the symbol "MAQ". The exchangeable shares of McEwen Mining - Minera Andes Acquisition Corp. are convertible on a one-for-one basis at any time into shares of McEwen Mining. McEwen Mining will have an aggregate of 267,084,203 shares of common stock outstanding and issuable upon the exchange of exchangeable shares. On Jan. 27 Minera Andes will delist from the TSX and OTC and US Gold will continue to trade as McEwen Mining. Rob McEwen – who will serve as chairman, president and CEO of McEwen Mining – owns 25 percent of the outstanding shares of McEwen Mining, which has US$80 million in cash (including silver/gold bullion) and no bank debt (as at Dec. 31, 2011). The objective of McEwen Mining is to qualify for inclusion in the S&P 500 by 2015 by creating a high growth, low-cost, mid-tier silver producer focused in the Americas. In 2011 US Gold Corp. entered into a four-year exploration lease and purchase option agreement with minerals subsidiary, Select Resources Corporation, Inc. (the mineral subsidiary of Tri-Valley Corp.) on the Richardson gold project in Interior Alaska about 115 kilometers (72 miles) southeast of Fairbanks.

REE – Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Jan. 23 reported assay results from 10,112 meters of drilling completed in 34 holes drilled in 2011 at the Bokan-Dotson Ridge rare earth element project in Southeast Alaska. The Halifax-based company said the data will be used to upgrade and expand the existing resources at the REE project on Prince of Wales Island. Together with the drill programs from 2007 to 2010, Ucore has now completed 134 drill holes in total, comprising 19,662 meters of core at the Bokan property. “The 2011 drill program is remarkable for being the most ambitious to date, generating more linear metres of core during one season than in all of the previous drill seasons combined. The sheer size of the 2011 program clearly demonstrates that Ucore is rapidly increasing the scale and intensity of its development activities at Bokan. What’s more, the rare earth grades obtained this year surpass all prior years, with several intercepts ranging from 2-3 percent TREO (total rare earth oxides). The total core volume generated this year has been more than sufficient to upgrade the bulk of the existing resource from the inferred to indicated category under NI 43-101 guidelines, as the company counts down to the release of a preliminary economic assessment in the near future,” Ucore said. The 2011 exploration program confirmed the integrity and continuity of the Dotson Zone. The zone has a strike length of more than 2,000 meters, with an average width of 50 meters, and contains at least 24 high-grade mineralized veins or vein-arrays. The company said the 2011 drill results show that there are multiple wide and high grade intersections within the steeper holes, indicating that the already high grade mineralization is apparently strengthening at depth. The results both reinforce and augment the historical U.S. Bureau of Mines resource estimate and geological model for the area (Warner & Barker; USBM OFR 33-89). Drill results and drill-hole location map can be found on Ucore’s website. In addition to drilling, the 2011 field program included surface bulk sampling. These bulk samples are serving as input material for plant-scale metallurgical and innovative X-ray transmission ore sorting test work being conducted at Hazen Research Inc. of Golden Colorado and Commodas Ultrasort of Hamburg Germany. The 2011 field program additionally included comprehensive environmental baseline testing, as well as desktop engineering studies, as a prelude to mine planning and development commencing in 2012. Beyond the central exploration targets at Dotson Ridge, Ucore geologists conducted surface work at several Bokan-area REE occurrences in 2011, using prior USBM studies as a means of generating outbound targets.