Free Republic

When Ryan Strasser, then an associate at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., got down on one knee and asked Sarah Jones Dickens to marry him, he knew one thing: She’d like the ring. It was 4.06 carats, a near-colorless, old European cut brilliant diamond, mounted in platinum with 14 diamond accents. And it fit what he says were her must-have requirements: 3.5 to 5 carats with an inclusion rating of no “worse” than VS2 and a color rating of no “worse” than G, and with no fluorescence. The price? $100,000. And then, 11 months later…they broke up. According to Strasser,...

ByCONAKRY, Guinea (AP) - There's lucky: Finding a diamond when you're a young miner sweating it out in the west African forests of Guinea. And there's too lucky: finding a 182-carat stone, that everyone - starting with the government of Guinea - wants a piece of. Result: the stone - four times the size of the famous Hope diamond - was tucked away Monday deep in the vaults of Guinea's Central Bank, no pictures, please. And the 25-year-old miner who found it, if not exactly in hiding, was making himself scarce. No interviews, please. State radio in impoverished, mineral-rich Guinea...