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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a slow 42-44-163. The TSX Venture Exchange gained one point to 681 while polished diamond prices, erratic of late, fell another 0.5 per cent. Lukas Lundin's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) gained four cents to $1.82 on 596,000 shares. Lucara racked up a $46-million (U.S.) profit at its Karowe mine in Botswana last year and hopes to do nearly as well again this year. Lucara has been silent for the past month, but it is also spending several million dollars this year on two exploration projects near Karowe. Alexander Stewart's Xmet Inc. (XME) lost one-half cent to four cents on 3.36 million shares. Xmet has been touting the graphite potential of a geophysical target at Blackflake West in Northern Ontario. A recent drill program hit sulphides but no graphite. Mr. Stewart still calls it a graphite play, but one that hosts a "potential new discovery of a large-scale VMS system." Meanwhile, he has been pumping a drill program on Xmet's Grasset gold play in Quebec.

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