**#7 Sawiris, other gold bugs look to goose miners’ share prices: Naguib Sawiris’ La Mancha Group and a number of other investors have joined New York-based hedge fund Paulson & Co. on an initiative that means to “promote constructive engagement between the gold mining industry and the investment community,” according to a press release picked up by the Financial Times. The move is meant to reverse a sharp drop in gold miner shares, which witnessed a 25% decrease in prices this year. It’s unclear how exactly the group, which goes by the name Shareholders’ Gold Council, intends to remedy the problem.

In other news from the Egyptian bn’aire, Naguib tweeted on Thursday that the UN has exempted his North Korean telecom operation, Koryolink, from sanctions. Reports that Sawiris’s Telecom Media and Technology Holding (OTMT) withdrew its North Korea operation amid mounting pressure from the US and UN Security Council surfaced last year, but an official from OTMT had denied the claims and Sawiris had confirmed he had no plans to exit the market.