Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have got engaged for the second time
After rekindling their highly publicised relationship last year, the Hollywood power couple are taking another shot at tying the knot.
Lopez sparked rumours of an engagement when she was spotted wearing a massive diamond ring last week, and has since confirmed the news of the year with her recent On The JLo newsletter.
In the video in her newsletter, J.Lo showed off her sparkler, which is believed to be an 8.5 carat natural green diamond! It’s estimated to be worth a whopping $10 million!
So, why green? Well, it turns out it’s her lucky colour.
8.5 carat natural green diamond
“I always say the colour green is my lucky colour….Maybe you can remember a certain green dress. I’ve realised there are many moments in my life where amazing things happened when I was wearing green,” she wrote.
When Affleck first proposed to Lopez back in 2002, he did so with a Harry Winston 6.1 carat pink diamond ring, which J.Lo said was “the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen.”
Alrosa, the world’s top diamond producer by output, has been hit by fresh sanctions imposed by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The OFAC announced late on Thursday it had placed Alrosa on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, which effectively kicks a sanctioned company out of the US banking system and bans its trade with Americans.
The measure against the Russian state-owned diamond miner seeks to cut off additional sources of revenue for Moscow, the government agency said.
It also affects any entities in which Alrosa has a 50% interest or more, either directly or indirectly.
The company’s customers well as other counterparties must stop all dealings with the state-controlled Russian miner by May 7, Treasury said.
Shares in the company collapsed on the news, closing nearly 13% lower on Friday trading in Moscow.
Alrosa and its chief executive Sergei S. Ivanov were included in the first wave of restrictions announced by Washington, which restricted the company’s ability to raise new debt and equity in the US.
“These actions, taken with the Department of State and in coordination with our allies and partners, reflect our continued effort to restrict the Kremlin’s access to assets, resources, and sectors of the economy that are essential to supplying and financing Putin’s brutality,” Treasury said in the statement.
The European Union and the UK have also imposed sanctions on the miner following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Diamonds are one of Russia’s top ten non-energy exports by value, with exports in 2021 totalling over $4.5 billion, it noted.
Alrosa is responsible for 90% of Russia’s diamond output and 28% of global supply, with 32.4 million carats produced in 2021 and sales topping $4 billion thanks mainly to consumer demand from the US.
Loopholes Experts have noted the sanctions against the miner carry a significant loophole. Russia’s rough diamonds are sent to another country — usually India — where they are polished and cut, which makes them the product of that nation in the global market.
Another issue is that diamonds of various origins are often mixed once polished, which can make it more difficult for companies that independently vow to stop buying Russian goods.
The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), the leading standards organization of the global jewellery and watch industry, took steps into that direction in early April and suspended Alrosa’s membership.
“Fundamentally, we remain focused on RJC’s purpose, which is to ensure all jewellery is responsibly sourced,” the group’s char David Bouffard said in the statement.
World’s top diamond miner Alrosa hit by US sanctions The main markets for Alrosa, which employs about 32,000 people, are the US and Asia (Photo: Dmitry Amelkin, Transformation Director of Alrosa’s Polishing Division. Courtesy of Alrosa | Twitter. ) US-based jewellers Tiffany & Co. and Signet Jewelers said in March they would no longer buy new diamonds mined in Russia.
Alrosa withdrew in March from the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), a market alliance of the world’s leading producers of precious stones. By doing so, the company not only stepped down from the board, but it also cut all financial contributions.
The Mirny, Sakha-based miner also has a 41% stake in Angolan diamond production firm Catoca, which is not affected by the latest US sanctions given the OFAC.
While the full effects of the sanctions on the already undersupplied global rough diamonds market are not yet clear, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) has said there was a chance the restrictions could prove counterproductive.
“It is a blow that should hurt Russia but there is a chance that we do more damage to ourselves,” spokesman Tom Neys told Belgian newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen. “The Russians can easily trade their diamonds with non-EU countries and outside the US.”
The diamond jewelry industry is going into the year with diamond supply at historically low levels, estimated by Bain & Company at 29 million carats in 2021. “Upstream inventories declined ~40%, driven by high demand and slow production recovery, and are near the minimal technical level,”
De Beers is bringing its sales activities back to Botswana’s capital Gaborone, it said on Thursday, almost two years after the Covid-19 pandemic forced them to be held in cities including Antwerp and Dubai.
The Anglo American subsidiary had moved its pre-sale viewings – a marketing exercise to showcase its new batch of diamonds – from Botswana in May 2020 when travel restrictions to curb the pandemic prevented its international customers from flying to the Southern African country.
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Customers from across the world fly ten times a year to participate in week-long diamond sales, known as sights, in Botswana, which accounts for 90% of the company’s total annual sales.
“From March, we are bringing back the sights to Gaborone and we look forward to meeting again as an industry after a long time,” De Beers Executive Vice-President Diamond Trading Paul Rowley told a press briefing.
“We will of course maintain some flexibility for some customers who will still not be able to come to Botswana.”
The return is expected to bring in valuable foreign exchange to Botswana, which had lost out additional earnings from travel, hospitality and ancillary services, even though sales income still came to the country.
The majority of diamond mining in the country is done by Debswana, a company jointly held by De Beers and the Botswana government, which sells 75% of the diamonds mined to De Beers. The remaining 25% of the diamonds is sold to state-owned Okavango Diamond Company.
Apart from the large business delegations who visit the country ten times a year, the pre-sale viewings are known to attract more than 100 high net worth diamond magnates who spend heavily in the country.
Botswana’s state-run diamond trader reported record revenue last year with sales surging almost five fold after U.S. imports recovered from a Covid-19 induced slowdown.
Okavango Diamond Company sold $963 million of rough diamonds last year, said Dennis Tlaang, a company spokesman. The revenue was the most since the company began operations in 2012, he said.
“The demand for natural rough diamonds remained strong throughout 2021 driven primarily by positive market sentiment in key markets such as the United States,” Tlaang said.
Sales may rise further this year after De Beers, the world’s biggest producer of the stones, pushed through one of its most aggressive diamond price increases in recent years. Okavango also got higher than normal prices in the sole auction it held this year, Tlaang said.
De Beers Implements Big Diamond Price Hike as Demand Runs Hot. A Buying Frenzy in Cheap and Tiny Diamonds Sends Prices Soaring. Diamond Sold for $12 Million in Cryptocurrency at Sotheby’s. “We believe this is a good indicator of the market dynamics of 2022, at least for the first half of the year,” he said. “The company will continue to drive customer participation by marketing its rough diamond assortment in key markets such as Antwerp and Dubai.”
Under a 2011 agreement between De Beers and the government of Botswana, Okavango purchases 25% of the nation’s annual production for independent marketing, while the balance is sold through the De Beers’ trading network.
The current shortfall in rough production will likely continue for up to a decade, while both demand and prices will remain strong, according to Bain & Company.
Output fell 20% to 111 million carats in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic forced companies to shut deposits, Bain said Monday in “The Global Diamond Industry 2021-22,” the latest edition of its annual report on the sector. Production increased 4.5% to 116 million carats in 2021, when mines reopened. However, solid demand for diamond jewelry depleted resources, as did the closure of Rio Tinto’s Argyle mine in Australia, which accounted for 11 million carats a year.
“Demand was so strong, production levels had to be supplemented by inventory,” Bain partner Olya Linde told Rapaport News. “We have not seen such strong demand for a long time. Actually, I have not seen such a big boom in all my time in the industry. Going forward, it’s not that easy to just add production. So, while demand will continue to remain strong, the ability for players to increase production in the short term is very limited.”
Miners’ “technical” inventories — goods that have been extracted but are not yet ready for sale — fell to an all-time low of 29 million carats in 2021, Linde claimed.
Over the next five years, rough output is expected to grow between 1% and 2% annually, reaching just over 122 million carats by the end of 2022 — still 10% to 15% below pre-pandemic levels.
Rising jewelry demand
In 2021, demand for diamond jewelry rose 29% globally and 38% in the US, well above pre-pandemic figures. China, the second-largest market, showed similar growth, Linde noted.
“At the end of the consumer holiday season and coming into the new year, there is still a lot of interest and demand,” she explained. “Even in 2022, we can expect that demand will continue, probably not at the same level of recovery, but it will definitely be robust enough. Although we don’t have a crystal ball, and don’t know how prices will behave for sure, given that supply is limited, it sets a foundation to support very healthy price growth across categories.”
Lack of new supply
The dearth of new mines coming online as others go offline or approach their end of life is also contributing to the gloomy production forecast. While exploration is underway in Botswana, Angola, Australia and Canada, the only project that will significantly add to output in the near term is the Luaxe mine in Angola, Linde said.
“We do not expect production to recover to 139 million carats [seen in 2019] in the next five years, for sure, and even not in the next 10 years, honestly, unless there will be a major unexpected discovery that could be brought up to production fairly quickly,” she noted. “We have to remember not only do we have a very limited number of new projects, but existing mines also have declining production levels.”
Filling the hole
While availability will decrease across most categories, it is unlikely lab-grown diamonds will cover the natural-diamond shortfall, as they are doing well in their own, separate category, Linde said.
Growth in synthetics over the past year was likely supported by both a decrease in prices, as well as higher transaction volumes, she explained.
“I don’t believe that one category is taking market share away from the other,” she added. “If you look at last year, if the market is operating purely on substitution, you would be hard pressed to really say where all this demand is coming from. In the US, it far outgrew pre-pandemic levels. What that suggests to me is that there are additional consumers that are coming to make lab-grown diamond purchases that we have not seen before in the diamond sector.”
Investors were duped into handing over more than $1m to a man who claimed to own a diamond mine, say police in Australia.
He allegedly claimed to be the owner of a non-existent mine in Sierra Leone and offered his victims the opportunity to invest.
Once they paid an initial sum, he allegedly asked for equipment and various gifts for his employees – which he then sold.
One victim reportedly paid $730,000. Two others are understood to have “invested” at least $73,000 each.
A 42-year-old man from the South East Suburbs, Melbourne, has been charged with 150 deception related offences including obtaining property by deception between September 2017 to October 2021.
He’s been bailed to appear before the Melbourne Committal Court in February 2022.
Detective senior sergeant Jason Venturoni, of Victoria police, said: “Criminals involved in the deception of others are often convincing and take advantage of people’s trust to exploit others for their own financial gain.”
MB&F founder Max Büsser is leaning into his female clientele. Back in 2018, during a sneak peek of his first ladies’ watch, the LM FlyingT, he admitted to Robb Report that he was unsure of his ability to design for women. “Men don’t understand women,” he said, “so I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ ”That may sound like an antiquated notion of gender norms, but the watch itself was anything but conventional.
Its futuristic design was unlike anything on the market and proved to be such a hit the company has since launched seven versions. The eighth, a collaboration with Bulgari that debuts at the end of November, may be its biggest headliner yet.
The joint design was born out of a friendship between Büsser and Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bulgari’s creative director of watches. Both have a penchant for bucking tradition and are known for housing extraordinarily inventive mechanics in out-of-the-box designs.
The new 39 mm-by-20 mm LM FlyingT Allegra uses the same vertically built 3-D movement (it features a flying tourbillon on the upper end of the axis) and space-age domed case design as the original but now comes decked out in Italian opulence.
A system of large, colorful gems orbit the tourbillon, all set within a galaxy of diamonds covering the mainplate; the combination of stones—which include tsavorite, topaz, amethyst, tanzanite, rubellite and tourmalin.
Two diamond bracelets belonging to Marie Antoinette more than doubled their high estimate at a recent Christie’s auction in Geneva.
The set, made by Boehmer in 1776 and passed down through Marie Antoinette’s family for 250 years, fetched $8.2 million at Tuesday’s Magnificent Jewels sale, Christie’s said. That figure is the second-highest price for a jewel owned by the French queen and the highest price ever garnered for one of her diamond pieces. In 2018, Sotheby’s sold a natural-pearl and diamond pendant belonging to Marie Antoinette for $36.2 million against its $2 million high estimate.
In total, the November 9 auction raked in $59 million, with 11 lots fetching more than $1 million.
Other notable items sold at the auction include a pear brilliant-cut, 55.50-carat, D-color, potentially internally flawless diamond, which went for $5.3 million, or $95,700 per carat, at the high end of its estimate. A cushion-shaped Burmese ruby and diamond brooch by Van Cleef & Arpels brought in $4.6 million at the auction, smashing its CHF 600,000 ($656,756) upper valuation.
An oval brilliant-cut, 43.19-carat, D-color, internally flawless diamond ring garnered $3.6 million, representing $83,000 per carat — within estimates. A rectangular-cut, 42.98-carat, fancy-vivid-yellow diamond fetched $3.1 million, in the middle of its presale valuation, while a fancy-light-pink and colorless diamond brooch by Harry Winston hammered for $2.3 million, just over its lower estimate.
However, a ring featuring a heart modified brilliant-cut, 6.75-carat, fancy-vivid-purple-pink, SI1-clarity diamond failed to find a buyer. The piece was estimated to bring in up to $10.9 million at the auction. A ruby bangle by Cartier, the first anniversary gift Wallis SImpson, the Duchess of Windsor, received from her husband, also remained unsold. That piece had a high valuation of $2.2 million.
In total, Christie’s sold 93% of items on offer, with bidders hailing from 32 countries.
“A very dynamic saleroom, coupled with strong online and telephone bids from around the world, resulted in lively bidding and a very high sell-through rate,” said Rahul Kadakia, international head of jewelry at Christie’s. “Marie Antoinette’s diamonds captured the world’s attention and achieved a fitting result for such a magnificent royal jewel.”
The Central African Republic has hosted UN peacekeepers for years
A “handful” of Portuguese peacekeepers may have been involved in smuggling gold, diamonds and drugs out of the Central African Republic (CAR).
The soldiers, part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, are alleged to have been part of a crime ring that used military planes to transport the illicit goods to Portugal, the office of the Portuguese Armed Forces Chief of Staff said in a statement.
More than 300 inspectors raided nearly 100 properties in Portugal as part of the investigation, police said on Monday.
Officers said the “criminal network” had international links and 10 people have been arrested so far – some of them ex-military. They are likely to appear in court this week.
The Portuguese military said officials became aware of the alleged crime ring in December 2019, along with suspicions that some of its soldiers may have been used as couriers.
More stringent checks have been put in place for soldiers returning to Portugal after peacekeeping missions.
Supporters of a presidential candidate in CAR ride on a flatbed lorry, in an incident unrelated to the crash At least 78 people killed as truck flips in the Central African Republic In a statement, military officials said: “The armed forces totally repudiate these behaviors which contradict the values of the military institution.”
Portugal’s defence minister Joao Gomes Cravinho said: “Everything suggests that these were activities undertaken on their own initiative by a handful of soldiers and not something systemic.”
Hundreds of Portuguese soldiers have been deployed in the CAR over the past few years, as the country struggles with violence that worsened after a coalition of rebels seized power in 2013.
It is rich in gold and diamonds but it is also one of the poorest countries in the world.
Kylie Jenner and their daughter Stormi with some new bling
On Tuesday, Kylie Jenner revealed that the “Sicko Mode” rapper, 29, gifted her and the couple’s 3 year old daughter, Stormi Webster, a set of matching diamond rings.
The mommy and me sparklers each feature a pear cut stone nestled next to an princess cut diamond, in a “Toi et Moi” style.
“Daddy got us matching rings,” Jenner, 24, captioned a photo of her hand next to Stormi’s.
And Khloé wasn’t the only one impressed by the sparklers; Mike Fried, CEO of The Diamond Pro, told Page Six Style that the bling is worth some serious cash.
“These matching rings are absolutely stunning due to their unique design and presentation of the diamonds,” he said. “Kylie’s enormous diamonds look to be 5 or 6 carats each, with an estimated value of $325,000 for both. Stormi’s diamonds appear to be 1.5 carats each, with an estimated value of $120,000 for both.”
