June is the traditional start of the Japanese rainy season and you can be golden for showers with this solid gold mug that is so appropriate for getting through this Great Recession.

Worth $50,000, the item has been introduced as part of gold manufacturer Ginza Tanaka’s latest collection.

The firm has created the Summer Cool range with items that are believed to relieve the heat during the summer months and the mug features 850g of gold.

“San Francisco based jewelry designer Sidney Mobell turns the ordinary into extraordinary while tempting the viewer to question their own perception of jeweled art.

For over 30 years, the artist has created elaborate bejeweled works that bring a sense of magic and wonder to everyday household objects.”

He has used precious materials to create diamond- encrusted cell phones, hourglass necklaces filled with 3,000 tiny diamonds, a gold toilet seat and a 23- karat gold and jeweled Monopoly set, valued at $2 million.

Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, has moved his official address from Moscow to the remote town of Yeruda in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region.

A move that will see his tax contribution go to the local budget, regional authorities said.

The village of Yeruda has the largest gold field in the Kranoyarsk Territory, operated by Polyus Gold, controlled by Prokhorov, who reached the top of Russia’s rich list earlier this year with net wealth of $9.5 billion.

A German asset management company plans to set up 500 Gold-to-Go ATMs in Germany, Switzerland and Austria this year.

A gold-dispensing automatic teller machine (ATM) was on display at Frankfurt’s main railway station for a one-day marketing test this week.

A one-gram piece of gold, the size of a child’s little fingernail and about as thin, cost US$42.25-a 30% premium to the spot market price.

Italy’s largest mattress manufacturer, Magniflex, has created a uber luxurious mattress incorporating 22 carat gold and retailing for $24,000 with a matching pillow that retails for $1000 each.

“Each piece is thermo-regulating, anti-bacterial, odor-proof, and anti-stress, and is customized to fit the comfort levels of the consumer.

By adjusting the five-zoned memory foam construction as needed, each person can have a rich and restful sleep.

Reports Thursday said that for six years a woman used a purse with a false bottom to steal tiny amounts of gold from the New York jewelry manufacturer where she was a vault manager.

By the time she was caught, reported the Daily News and New York Post, she’d amassed 500 pounds (227 kilos), equivalent to almost 31 gold bars.

She needed a suitcase and a couple dozen buckets to return the loot to her employers, the newspapers reported. Via AFP