Word: diamond
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...official opening two weeks ago of the Jwaneng diamond mine in Botswana, near the southern tip of Africa, should have been an occasion for celebration. After all, Harry Oppenheimer, 73, the chairman of De Beers, the cartel that controls the production and sale of most of the world's diamonds, has called the site "the most important primary deposit found anywhere in the world since the discovery at Kimberley more than a century ago." The rich ore of the Jwaneng mine is expected to produce 3 million carats of precious stones in 1982, and eventually 4.5 million carats annually...
This year, however, many of the diamonds laboriously extracted from the arid Botswana earth will not be sold. They will instead be added to the growing De Beers stockpile of gems. The reason is that there is a worldwide glut of the precious gems. The vaults of diamond wholesalers are overflowing with rough as well as cut and polished stones, and the market for investment-grade diamonds has virtually collapsed. A rare one-carat D-flawless-grade stone that brought $62,000 at the peak of the market in 1980 is now worth only $15,000 or less, a decline...
...investigators discovered that the owner gladly accepted the coupons instead of cash when it came to settle the room bill. In an investigation in Las Vegas headed by Lamond Mills, U.S. Attorney for Nevada, federal agents used the stamps this year to purchase, among other items, four guns, two diamond rings, a handsaw, cocaine, a macaw from Mexico, the proffered services (not accepted, of course) of two prostitutes, even a three-room house on Tamalpias Avenue (price tag: $35,520 in coupons...
Yane is now planning a pair of diamond-solitaire jeans that will cost as much as $3,500. But wearers of the gilded britches might want to be discreet, or they could find themselves confronted by a mugger who growls, "Keep the wallet, pal. Just hand over the pants...
...Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten records a joke about the Lipshitz Curse: a blond at a charity ball is wearing an enormous diamond. She boasts that there are three great diamonds in the world-the Hope, the Kohinoor and her own, the Lipshitz. But, unfortunately, she tells her friends, with the Lipshitz diamond comes the Lipshitz Curse. "The Lipshitz Curse? What is the Lipshitz Curse?" The blond sighs: "Lipshitz...