Latest news with #Eden
Daily Mirror
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Emmerdale legend Eden Taylor-Draper makes soap decision after 'intense' year
Emmerdale star Eden is up for two awards at the British Soap Awards this month for her portrayal of domestic abuse victim Belle Dingle, while the hard-hitting storyline is also up for a prize She's been a staple in the Dales since the late 1990's but now, Belle Dingle is set to leave the nest in upcoming scenes. After a dramatic year at the heart of Emmerdale 's domestic abuse storyline, actress Eden Taylor-Draper is bound to become the belle of the British Soap Awards. The actress, who will celebrate 20 years of playing Belle Dingle this autumn, is nominated for Best Dramatic Performance and Best Leading Performer while the plot is up for Best Storyline. On top of that her soap family, the Dingles, are nominated in the Best Family category and Emmerdale is facing off against Hollyoaks, Coronation Street and EastEnders for Best Soap. 'I'm thrilled,' grins Eden, 27. 'It's a little bit scary but it's been amazing. It's so hard to put into words, but it's been the most challenging and exciting year I've ever had at Emmerdale.' The soap announced plans for a domestic abuse storyline centered around Belle Dingle and Tom King back in 2023, and the twisting, slowburn scenario has kept fans hooked. With fight scenes, confessional scenes, unique perspectives and even alternative outcomes being filmed, the work has been challenging and fulfilling in equal measures for Eden. 'The episode with Belle's imagination of the different outcomes was challenging because it was like playing many storylines at once and there were some very intense, violent scenes, which were intense to play,' says Eden. 'It was a challenge but I also loved it and it's one of my favourite episodes I've ever done.' The hard-hitting scenes saw Belle bravely confide in her cousin Charity Dingle, played by Emma Atkins, who has been a rock during filming for Eden, alongside J ames Chase who starred as Belle's evil but believable abuser Tom King. 'Emma's one of my best friends,' says Eden. 'It was just so special that we got to have that moment together.' During the character's many years on the soap, Belle has faced serious mental health battles with both schizophrenia and psychosis, she was jailed as a teenager for the manslaughter of her best friend Gemma Andrews (Tendai Rinomhota) and she has been kidnapped by her serial killer boyfriend Lachlan White, played by Tom Atkinson. Despite being trusted with some of Emmerdale's biggest plot points, Eden reveals she has never had any formal acting training. 'No, I've never done anything. I've just been at Emmerdale and that's been it since the beginning,' says Eden. 'One of the things about growing up on the show is that everyone that I work with has been a part of who I am today in both how I act and how I am as a person.' Growing up on set meant Eden felt like she had four parents – her real mum and dad and also Jane Cox, who played her soap mum Lisa Dingle and the late actor Steve Halliwell, who played her dad Zak Dingle. She also cites Charity actress Emma and Cain Dingle actor Jeff Hordley as acting influences. 'I have so much credit to give to Jane and Steve who played Belle's mum and dad because they were just brilliant and helped me in that environment,' says Eden. 'I'm surrounded by such talented people and it's such an honour to be able to work with them. I'm always trying to learn, I'm always trying to better myself and be, you know, very natural and also be so in it. The people around me help because everyone is so dedicated and so good at their craft. It definitely helps learning on the job from such a young age and getting to work with these people daily. It inspires you to keep pushing and keep growing every day.' The domestic abuse storyline might be over now that Tom is serving three years behind bars, but the reaction from fans will never leave Eden. 'I'd never experienced anything like it with people reaching out and feeling they can share their stories,' says Eden. 'The amount of messages I've had off people who have followed the story and said, 'Watching this unfold, I've got myself out of that situation,' or, 'I've spoken to the police,' or, 'I'm now in a women's refuge.' It just blows my mind. That is the power of soap. To even help one person, it would be incredible, so the fact that multiple people have said we've helped them… I couldn't ask for more.' In real life, Eden has a very supportive boyfriend in Ed Lewis, her high-school sweetheart. Ed will be accompanying her to the British Soap Awards and regularly helps her learn her lines. 'He is great,' says Eden. 'We were friends before we got together so he's always known what I've done and he's amazing. He'll stay up with me, running lines, until God knows what hour. He's very supportive.' With so many nominations, Eden is sure to get a lot of screen time when the British Soap Awards is broadcast on ITV1 on Thursday 5 June. Naturally, Eden is looking forward to casting off Belle's practical padded jackets and jeans for a glamorous ball gown. 'On a night out my favourite bit sometimes is just doing my hair and make-up and listening to music,' says Eden. 'I do enjoy that bit. I'm not sorted, I don't have a dress. It's all going to be very last-minute, but it will be nice to get dressed up.' Many Emmerdale faces are up for awards including Eden's co-star Beth Cordingly who is also nominated in the Best Leading Performer category for her role as Ruby Fox-Milligan alongside EastEnders legends Lacey Turner and Kellie Bright. No matter who takes the coveted gongs home, Eden knows she and Beth will paint the town red. 'I feel like whenever I've been at awards with Beth, she is up for a good time!' laughs Eden. 'There's a good gang of us and I think everyone's in high spirits. I think that will just be a lovely party… Hopefully I won't be hungover, but I would love maybe a little dance.' When she's not working on a big storyline, Eden loves to travel with Ed. Later this year they're going to Bali in Indonesia for the first time and they dream of travelling to Japan one day. 'I do love travelling,' says Eden. 'I love a little break, I love a big break and I've got family in Australia so that's really cool to get to go to the other side of the world and see them. Last year I didn't really travel that much because I was so busy, so this year I'm trying to cram as much travelling in as possible. Japan is on our bucket list and we're actually heading to Bali at the end of the year and that's my first time going there, so that should be really nice.' However, home is where the heart is and having grown up on Emmerdale Belle never wants to leave. 'I love it,' she says. 'I'm so happy. I guess it's not fully up to me, it's up to the producers, but I am very happy there and I'd love to stay around.'
TechCrunch
a day ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Eight things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit
On May 6, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company. The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO Group of hacking more than 1,400 of its users by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the chat app's audio-calling functionality. The verdict came after a week-long jury trial that featured several testimonies, including NSO Group's CEO Yaron Shohat and WhatsApp employees who responded and investigated the incident. Even before the trial began, the case had unearthed several revelations, including that NSO Group had cut off 10 of its government customers for abusing its Pegasus spyware, the locations of 1,223 of the victims of the spyware campaign, and the names of three of the spyware maker's customers: Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan. TechCrunch read more than 1,000 pages of court transcripts of the trial's hearings. We have highlighted the most interesting facts and revelations below. New testimony described how the WhatsApp attack worked The zero-click attack, which means the spyware required no interaction from the target, 'worked by placing a fake WhatsApp phone call to the target,' as WhatsApp's lawyer Antonio Perez said during the trial. The lawyer explained that NSO Group had built what it called the 'WhatsApp Installation Server,' a special machine designed to send malicious messages across WhatsApp's infrastructure mimicking real messages. 'Once received, those messages would trigger the user's phone to reach out to a third server and download the Pegasus spyware. The only thing they needed to make this happen was the phone number,' said Perez. NSO Group's research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli testified that 'any zero-click solution whatsoever is a significant milestone for Pegasus.' NSO admitted that it kept targeting WhatsApp users after the lawsuit was filed Following the spyware attack, WhatsApp filed its lawsuit against NSO Group in November 2019. Despite the active legal challenge, the spyware maker kept targeting the chat app's users, according to NSO Group's research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli. Gazneli said that 'Erised,' the codename for one of the versions of the WhatsApp zero-click vector, was in use from late-2019 up to May 2020. The other versions were called 'Eden' and 'Heaven,' and the three were collectively known as 'Hummingbird.' NSO confirms it targeted an American phone number as a test for the FBI Contact Us Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email . For years, NSO Group has claimed that its spyware cannot be used against American phone numbers, meaning any cell number that starts with the +1 country code. In 2022, The New York Times first reported that the company did 'attack' a U.S. phone but it was part of a test for the FBI. NSO Group's lawyer Joe Akrotirianakis confirmed this, saying the 'single exception' to Pegasus not being able to target +1 numbers 'was a specially configured version of Pegasus to be used in demonstration to potential U.S. government customers.' The FBI reportedly chose not to deploy Pegasus following its test. How NSO's government customers use Pegasus NSO's CEO Shohat explained that Pegasus' user interface for its government customers does not provide an option to choose which hacking method or technique to use against the targets they are interested in, 'because customers don't care which vector they use, as long as they get the intelligence they need.' In other words, it's the Pegasus system in the backend that picks out which hacking technology, known as an exploit, to use each time the spyware targets an individual. NSO says it employs hundreds of people NSO Group's CEO Yaron Shohat disclosed a small but notable detail: NSO Group and its parent company, Q Cyber, have a combined number of employees totalling between 350 and 380. Around 50 of these employees work for Q Cyber. NSO's headquarters shares the same building as Apple In a funny coincidence, NSO Group's headquarters in Herzliya, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel, is in the same building as Apple, whose iPhone customers are also frequently targeted by NSO's Pegasus spyware. Shohat said NSO occupies the top five floors and Apple occupies the remainder of the 14-floor building. 'We share the same elevator when we go up,' Shohat said during testimony. The fact that NSO Group's headquarters are openly advertised is somewhat interesting on its own. Other companies that develop spyware or zero-days like the Barcelona-based Variston, which shuttered in February, was located in a co-working space while claiming on its official website to be located somewhere else. Pegasus spyware cost European customers millions During their testimony, an NSO Group employee revealed how much the company charged European customers to access its Pegasus spyware between 2018 and 2020, saying the 'standard price' is $7 million, plus an additional $1 million or so for 'covert vectors.' These new details were included in a court document without the full context of the testimony, but offers an idea of how much advanced spyware like Pegasus can cost paying governments. While not explicitly defined, 'covert vectors' likely refer to stealthy techniques used to plant the spyware on the target phone, such as a zero-click exploit, where a Pegasus operator doesn't need the victim to interact with a message or click a link to get hacked. The prices of spyware and zero-days can vary depending on several factors: the customer, given that some spyware makers charge more when selling to countries like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, for example; the number of concurrent targets that the customer can spy on at any given time; and feature add-ons, such as zero-click capabilities. All of these factors could explain why a European customer would pay $7 million in 2019, while Saudi Arabia reportedly paid $55 million and Mexico paid $61 million over the span of several years. NSO describes a dire state of finances During the trial, Shohat answered questions about the company's finances, some of which were disclosed in depositions ahead of the trial. These details were brought up in connection with how much in damages the spyware maker should pay to WhatsApp. According to Shohat and documents provided by NSO Group, the spyware maker lost $9 million in 2023 and $12 million in 2024. The company also revealed it had $8.8 million in its bank account as of 2023, and $5.1 million in the bank as of 2024. Nowadays, the company burns through around $10 million each month, mostly to cover the salaries of its employees. Also, it was revealed that Q Cyber had around $3.2 million in the bank both in 2023 and 2024. During the trial, NSO revealed its research and development unit — responsible for finding vulnerabilities in software and figuring out how to exploit them — spent some $52 million in expenses during 2023, and $59 million in 2024. Shohat also said that NSO Group's customers pay 'somewhere in the range' between $3 million and 'ten times that' for access to its Pegasus spyware. Factoring in these numbers, the spyware maker was hoping to get away with paying little or no damages. 'To be honest, I don't think we're able to pay anything. We are struggling to keep our head above water,' Shohat said during his testimony. 'We're committing to my [chief financial officer] just to prioritize expenses and to make sure that we have enough money to meet our commitments, and obviously on a weekly basis.' First published on May 10, 2025 and updated with additional details.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
ASX Runners of the Week: Eden, Focus Minerals, InFocus & Dateline
The company's shares bounced back from a lowly 0.15c per share close last week to trade at 0.5c per share on Friday, up 333 per cent, on nearly $1 million of paper traded across two days. Eden's star carbon nanotube-enriched concrete additive, EdenCrete, is shaking up the increasingly green concrete industry by boosting batch strength while slashing the need for carbon-heavy ordinary Portland cement. A major win came with a $141,000 order from Holcim US for a 22-storey high-rise in Denver, which is Eden's first big-ticket commercial project. The market lapped it up, with shares surging on Eden's green concrete breakthrough into high-rise buildings, one of the biggest addressable markets. Meanwhile, Eden's OptiBlend dual-fuel kit, which lets diesel generators run cleaner on natural gas, continues to hum in the background, fuelling company sales across the US and India. With concrete giants such as Holcim jumping on board and sales breaking into the mammoth high-rise building industry, Eden looks poised to cement its place as a clean tech leader. If its momentum holds, the company could go from market battler to skyscraper-high regular in quick succession. FOCUS MINERALS (ASX: FML) up 161% (23c – 60c) Bulls N' Bears' silver medallist this week is Western Australian gold miner Focus Minerals, which shot up like a prospector's pickaxe on Tuesday thanks to a juicy $250M cash deal to offload its Laverton gold project to $5 billion market darling Genesis Minerals. Punters were left scrambling to pick up shares in the cashed-up gold miner on Monday, with a whopping $5.2M traded to push the company's shares up 161 per cent to 60c per share. Nestled in WA's prolific Leonora-Laverton district, the Laverton project is a stone's throw from Genesis' massive 3-million-tonne per annum Laverton mill. The acquisition looks like a perfect fit for Genisis and is set to churn out ample tonnages of open pit and underground gold ore for the company's hungry mill. The deal contains no pesky conditions precedent and is set to seal in early June, handing Focus a mountainous $250M in cash, which looks very timely considering the company is lugging around $187M in debt. Focus will retain its producing Coolgardie gold project, where it cracked a record mining output in the past quarter. Its Three Mile Hill mill processed a thumping 370,262 tonnes for a handy 5376 ounces of gold at $4388 per ounce. With its Bonnie Vale underground mine ahead of schedule and its Alicia open pit firing up, Focus could be hitting its straps in no time, as it looks to increase its lower-grade gold ore with higher-grade output from the newer mines. Laverton's synergistic sale sent Focus' shares flying as investors bet on the company's cash windfall to turn its luck around in a red-hot gold price environment. With Coolgardie's Bonnie Vale underground cranking out ore and a new 80-room camp to house its growing crew, Focus is sitting pretty to join the mid-cap success stories of WA's gold sector – aided by its newfound financial flexibility. INFOCUS GROUP HOLDINGS (ASX: IFG) up 140% (0.5c – 1.2c) Taking out the final podium spot on Runners of the Week is digital solutions experts InFocus Group, which shot out of a cannon on Tuesday by unveiling a blockbuster US$3.25M (A$5M) deal to become the exclusive tech partner for Taiwanese gaming guru TG Solutions Consulting. A feeding frenzy ensued with the company's share price rocketing 140 per cent to 1.2c per share on a sizzling $1.2M in stock traded. This was nearly as much as the entire company's preannouncement market valuation of $1.3M. InFocus says it is set to build a cutting-edge iGaming platform for TG's white-label distribution. It promises to be packed with bells and whistles, such as a polymarket-inspired dynamic odds system, digital collectibles, tokenised loyalty programs and crypto payments. The contract includes milestone-based payments and locks in InFocus as TG's go-to tech partner for all future rollouts. The company says it's a growing market trend as predictive gaming evolves thanks to big data, analytics and cybersecurity expenditure. Investors would seem to agree, betting big on InFocus's pivot into the red-hot iGaming sector. With trials wrapping up and the platform set to launch within two years, the company looks well-positioned at the forefront of a digital gaming revolution that might return the market minnow to its former glory. DATELINE RESOURCES (ASX: DTR) up 86% (5.5c – 10.25c) Finally, Dateline Resources has hit the Runners list for the third time in almost as many weeks. Attempting its best 'broken record' impersonation and continuing to break its share price highs, the US-based junior goldie's share price has risen an eye-watering 1950 per cent this quarter and shows no signs of slowing down. The company's shares peaked on Friday at 10.25c, up 86 per cent over the week, on a monumental $80M in shares traded. Following Trump's Truth Social championing of the company's 'rare earths mine' earlier this month, Dateline continued its breakout on Tuesday when it told the market its Colosseum project in California could be sitting on a much larger gold system than previously realised. A recent rock chip program picked up several outcropping felsite dykes up 1 kilometre west and 4km southwest of the existing pit, which appear to follow a deliberate geological trend. Adding fuel to the fire, results of a fresh surface geochemical survey now point to concealed breccia pipes lurking just beyond the rim of the mine's historic pits. The company says the new mineralisation lines up like clockwork with its known structural gold system and could point to a string of satellite intrusions which, if confirmed, could unearth even more gold-rich breccia pipes brewing just below the surface. The latest rock samples lit up with classic pathfinder elements such as antimony, bismuth and tellurium, which are textbook signs of an intrusion-related gold system. These IRGS-style systems are known for their layered structure, with lighter elements floating near the surface and the real prize - gold - tending to settle deeper. Armed with a fresh trail of geological breadcrumbs, Dateline is ramping up for its next big move. More surface sampling is underway, and the company is locking in its first drilling campaign beyond the pit walls. The program will chase the projected path of the newly mapped felsite dykes and test if the Colosseum's breccia pipes are just the tip of a much bigger, vertically stacked golden iceberg. If the upcoming drill campaign strikes more gold, it could blow the doors open on Dateline's already impressive 1.1-million-ounce resource and unlock a whole new chapter of potential at Colosseum.
West Australian
2 days ago
- Business
- West Australian
ASX Runners of the Week: Eden, Focus Minerals, InFocus & Dateline
It was back to usual programming on a fairly flat week for the ASX. The markets showed some mid-week lustre, boosted by United States-European Union trade talks and a New York court order suspending US President Trump's Liberation Day trade tariffs. But the optimism quickly waned as America's Federal Court restored the tariffs the next day. Weak falling home sales data, rising jobless numbers and more tariff uncertainty saw volatility creep back in at the end the week. Safe-haven gold still held a handy $5150 an ounce price to end the week and the US Fed is expected to cut rates sooner rather than later, thanks to economic distress and bond yields tumbling. In positive news, the Australian energy sector surged more than 2 per cent buoyed by the federal government's approval of Woodside Energy's North West Shelf gas project - despite oil prices dropping. This long-awaited green light, following six years of deliberation, will extend the life of Australia's largest oil and gas project to 2070, offering a lifeline to the nation's energy sector and providing a stable transition baseload power supply to meet its net zero ambitions. Bulls N' Bear's ASX Runners of the Week list was unconventionally littered with a group of revenue-making companies this week, as a mix of sales figures, exclusive deals, and acquisitions lit up the boards. The final Runner for the week was reserved for one of Bulls N' Bears' favourites, market darling Dateline Resources, which traded an astonishing 2.85 billion shares this month, equating to its entire register's worth. EDEN INNOVATIONS (ASX: EDE) up 333% (0.15c – 0.5c) This week's Bulls N' Bears ASX Runner of the Week is clean tech trailblazer Eden Innovations, which sent its share price soaring on Thursday after announcing a cracking $878,000 in EdenCrete additive sales from February 6 to May 23. The company's April and May sales alone rocketed 86 per cent higher than for the entire December quarter last year. The company's shares bounced back from a lowly 0.15c per share close last week to trade at 0.5c per share on Friday, up 333 per cent, on nearly $1 million of paper traded across two days. Eden's star carbon nanotube-enriched concrete additive, EdenCrete, is shaking up the increasingly green concrete industry by boosting batch strength while slashing the need for carbon-heavy ordinary Portland cement. A major win came with a $141,000 order from Holcim US for a 22-storey high-rise in Denver, which is Eden's first big-ticket commercial project. The market lapped it up, with shares surging on Eden's green concrete breakthrough into high-rise buildings, one of the biggest addressable markets. Meanwhile, Eden's OptiBlend dual-fuel kit, which lets diesel generators run cleaner on natural gas, continues to hum in the background, fuelling company sales across the US and India. With concrete giants such as Holcim jumping on board and sales breaking into the mammoth high-rise building industry, Eden looks poised to cement its place as a clean tech leader. If its momentum holds, the company could go from market battler to skyscraper-high regular in quick succession. FOCUS MINERALS (ASX: FML) up 161% (23c – 60c) Bulls N' Bears' silver medallist this week is Western Australian gold miner Focus Minerals, which shot up like a prospector's pickaxe on Tuesday thanks to a juicy $250M cash deal to offload its Laverton gold project to $5 billion market darling Genesis Minerals. Punters were left scrambling to pick up shares in the cashed-up gold miner on Monday, with a whopping $5.2M traded to push the company's shares up 161 per cent to 60c per share. Nestled in WA's prolific Leonora-Laverton district, the Laverton project is a stone's throw from Genesis' massive 3-million-tonne per annum Laverton mill. The acquisition looks like a perfect fit for Genisis and is set to churn out ample tonnages of open pit and underground gold ore for the company's hungry mill. The deal contains no pesky conditions precedent and is set to seal in early June, handing Focus a mountainous $250M in cash, which looks very timely considering the company is lugging around $187M in debt. Focus will retain its producing Coolgardie gold project, where it cracked a record mining output in the past quarter. Its Three Mile Hill mill processed a thumping 370,262 tonnes for a handy 5376 ounces of gold at $4388 per ounce. With its Bonnie Vale underground mine ahead of schedule and its Alicia open pit firing up, Focus could be hitting its straps in no time, as it looks to increase its lower-grade gold ore with higher-grade output from the newer mines. Laverton's synergistic sale sent Focus' shares flying as investors bet on the company's cash windfall to turn its luck around in a red-hot gold price environment. With Coolgardie's Bonnie Vale underground cranking out ore and a new 80-room camp to house its growing crew, Focus is sitting pretty to join the mid-cap success stories of WA's gold sector – aided by its newfound financial flexibility. INFOCUS GROUP HOLDINGS (ASX: IFG) up 140% (0.5c – 1.2c) Taking out the final podium spot on Runners of the Week is digital solutions experts InFocus Group, which shot out of a cannon on Tuesday by unveiling a blockbuster US$3.25M (A$5M) deal to become the exclusive tech partner for Taiwanese gaming guru TG Solutions Consulting. A feeding frenzy ensued with the company's share price rocketing 140 per cent to 1.2c per share on a sizzling $1.2M in stock traded. This was nearly as much as the entire company's preannouncement market valuation of $1.3M. InFocus says it is set to build a cutting-edge iGaming platform for TG's white-label distribution. It promises to be packed with bells and whistles, such as a polymarket-inspired dynamic odds system, digital collectibles, tokenised loyalty programs and crypto payments. The contract includes milestone-based payments and locks in InFocus as TG's go-to tech partner for all future rollouts. The company says it's a growing market trend as predictive gaming evolves thanks to big data, analytics and cybersecurity expenditure. Investors would seem to agree, betting big on InFocus's pivot into the red-hot iGaming sector. With trials wrapping up and the platform set to launch within two years, the company looks well-positioned at the forefront of a digital gaming revolution that might return the market minnow to its former glory. DATELINE RESOURCES (ASX: DTR) up 86% (5.5c – 10.25c) Finally, Dateline Resources has hit the Runners list for the third time in almost as many weeks. Attempting its best 'broken record' impersonation and continuing to break its share price highs, the US-based junior goldie's share price has risen an eye-watering 1950 per cent this quarter and shows no signs of slowing down. The company's shares peaked on Friday at 10.25c, up 86 per cent over the week, on a monumental $80M in shares traded. Following Trump's Truth Social championing of the company's 'rare earths mine' earlier this month, Dateline continued its breakout on Tuesday when it told the market its Colosseum project in California could be sitting on a much larger gold system than previously realised. A recent rock chip program picked up several outcropping felsite dykes up 1 kilometre west and 4km southwest of the existing pit, which appear to follow a deliberate geological trend. Adding fuel to the fire, results of a fresh surface geochemical survey now point to concealed breccia pipes lurking just beyond the rim of the mine's historic pits. The company says the new mineralisation lines up like clockwork with its known structural gold system and could point to a string of satellite intrusions which, if confirmed, could unearth even more gold-rich breccia pipes brewing just below the surface. The latest rock samples lit up with classic pathfinder elements such as antimony, bismuth and tellurium, which are textbook signs of an intrusion-related gold system. These IRGS-style systems are known for their layered structure, with lighter elements floating near the surface and the real prize - gold - tending to settle deeper. Armed with a fresh trail of geological breadcrumbs, Dateline is ramping up for its next big move. More surface sampling is underway, and the company is locking in its first drilling campaign beyond the pit walls. The program will chase the projected path of the newly mapped felsite dykes and test if the Colosseum's breccia pipes are just the tip of a much bigger, vertically stacked golden iceberg. If the upcoming drill campaign strikes more gold, it could blow the doors open on Dateline's already impressive 1.1-million-ounce resource and unlock a whole new chapter of potential at Colosseum. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
The Age
2 days ago
- Business
- The Age
ASX Runners of the Week: Eden, Focus Minerals, InFocus & Dateline
The company's shares bounced back from a lowly 0.15c per share close last week to trade at 0.5c per share on Friday, up 333 per cent, on nearly $1 million of paper traded across two days. Eden's star carbon nanotube-enriched concrete additive, EdenCrete, is shaking up the increasingly green concrete industry by boosting batch strength while slashing the need for carbon-heavy ordinary Portland cement. A major win came with a $141,000 order from Holcim US for a 22-storey high-rise in Denver, which is Eden's first big-ticket commercial project. The market lapped it up, with shares surging on Eden's green concrete breakthrough into high-rise buildings, one of the biggest addressable markets. Meanwhile, Eden's OptiBlend dual-fuel kit, which lets diesel generators run cleaner on natural gas, continues to hum in the background, fuelling company sales across the US and India. With concrete giants such as Holcim jumping on board and sales breaking into the mammoth high-rise building industry, Eden looks poised to cement its place as a clean tech leader. If its momentum holds, the company could go from market battler to skyscraper-high regular in quick succession. FOCUS MINERALS (ASX: FML) up 161% (23c – 60c) Bulls N' Bears' silver medallist this week is Western Australian gold miner Focus Minerals, which shot up like a prospector's pickaxe on Tuesday thanks to a juicy $250M cash deal to offload its Laverton gold project to $5 billion market darling Genesis Minerals. Punters were left scrambling to pick up shares in the cashed-up gold miner on Monday, with a whopping $5.2M traded to push the company's shares up 161 per cent to 60c per share. Nestled in WA's prolific Leonora-Laverton district, the Laverton project is a stone's throw from Genesis' massive 3-million-tonne per annum Laverton mill. The acquisition looks like a perfect fit for Genisis and is set to churn out ample tonnages of open pit and underground gold ore for the company's hungry mill. The deal contains no pesky conditions precedent and is set to seal in early June, handing Focus a mountainous $250M in cash, which looks very timely considering the company is lugging around $187M in debt. Focus will retain its producing Coolgardie gold project, where it cracked a record mining output in the past quarter. Its Three Mile Hill mill processed a thumping 370,262 tonnes for a handy 5376 ounces of gold at $4388 per ounce. With its Bonnie Vale underground mine ahead of schedule and its Alicia open pit firing up, Focus could be hitting its straps in no time, as it looks to increase its lower-grade gold ore with higher-grade output from the newer mines. Laverton's synergistic sale sent Focus' shares flying as investors bet on the company's cash windfall to turn its luck around in a red-hot gold price environment. With Coolgardie's Bonnie Vale underground cranking out ore and a new 80-room camp to house its growing crew, Focus is sitting pretty to join the mid-cap success stories of WA's gold sector – aided by its newfound financial flexibility. INFOCUS GROUP HOLDINGS (ASX: IFG) up 140% (0.5c – 1.2c) Taking out the final podium spot on Runners of the Week is digital solutions experts InFocus Group, which shot out of a cannon on Tuesday by unveiling a blockbuster US$3.25M (A$5M) deal to become the exclusive tech partner for Taiwanese gaming guru TG Solutions Consulting. A feeding frenzy ensued with the company's share price rocketing 140 per cent to 1.2c per share on a sizzling $1.2M in stock traded. This was nearly as much as the entire company's preannouncement market valuation of $1.3M. InFocus says it is set to build a cutting-edge iGaming platform for TG's white-label distribution. It promises to be packed with bells and whistles, such as a polymarket-inspired dynamic odds system, digital collectibles, tokenised loyalty programs and crypto payments. The contract includes milestone-based payments and locks in InFocus as TG's go-to tech partner for all future rollouts. The company says it's a growing market trend as predictive gaming evolves thanks to big data, analytics and cybersecurity expenditure. Investors would seem to agree, betting big on InFocus's pivot into the red-hot iGaming sector. With trials wrapping up and the platform set to launch within two years, the company looks well-positioned at the forefront of a digital gaming revolution that might return the market minnow to its former glory. DATELINE RESOURCES (ASX: DTR) up 86% (5.5c – 10.25c) Finally, Dateline Resources has hit the Runners list for the third time in almost as many weeks. Attempting its best 'broken record' impersonation and continuing to break its share price highs, the US-based junior goldie's share price has risen an eye-watering 1950 per cent this quarter and shows no signs of slowing down. The company's shares peaked on Friday at 10.25c, up 86 per cent over the week, on a monumental $80M in shares traded. Following Trump's Truth Social championing of the company's 'rare earths mine' earlier this month, Dateline continued its breakout on Tuesday when it told the market its Colosseum project in California could be sitting on a much larger gold system than previously realised. A recent rock chip program picked up several outcropping felsite dykes up 1 kilometre west and 4km southwest of the existing pit, which appear to follow a deliberate geological trend. Adding fuel to the fire, results of a fresh surface geochemical survey now point to concealed breccia pipes lurking just beyond the rim of the mine's historic pits. The company says the new mineralisation lines up like clockwork with its known structural gold system and could point to a string of satellite intrusions which, if confirmed, could unearth even more gold-rich breccia pipes brewing just below the surface. The latest rock samples lit up with classic pathfinder elements such as antimony, bismuth and tellurium, which are textbook signs of an intrusion-related gold system. These IRGS-style systems are known for their layered structure, with lighter elements floating near the surface and the real prize - gold - tending to settle deeper. Armed with a fresh trail of geological breadcrumbs, Dateline is ramping up for its next big move. More surface sampling is underway, and the company is locking in its first drilling campaign beyond the pit walls. The program will chase the projected path of the newly mapped felsite dykes and test if the Colosseum's breccia pipes are just the tip of a much bigger, vertically stacked golden iceberg. If the upcoming drill campaign strikes more gold, it could blow the doors open on Dateline's already impressive 1.1-million-ounce resource and unlock a whole new chapter of potential at Colosseum.
