A lengthy legal battle over the rights to treasure believed to be worth £1bn, which went down with a Spanish galleon 300 years ago off Colombia’s Caribbean coast, was thrown into further confusion yesterday despite a ruling by Colombia’s highest court to finally decide ownership.

The gold, silver and jewels on board the San José, which sank on June 8 1708 while trying to outrun British warships near the port of Cartagena, make it one of the world’s most valuable shipwrecks. The treasure has been the focus of a legal battle between the Colombian government and American salvagers.

The supreme court ruled yesterday that Colombia holds the rights to items deemed to be “national cultural patrimony”. Anything else will be halved between the US salvage company Sea Search Armada and Colombia.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed against, overturned two earlier court decisions that awarded Sea Search half of the haul. But a Colombian lawyer for Sea Search Armada still claimed victory.

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VietNamNet Bridge - A man living in Quang Binh province’s suburban district of Quang Ninh found a pot of over 20kg of ancient coins from China’s Tang Dynasty while collecting waste on a field yesterday. These ancient coins are made from bronze, one side blank and the other engraved with 4 Chinese characters which are still clearly visible. All the coins were kept in a 40 cm high glazed terra-cotta pot which lay 0.5 meters under ground.

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The Certified Collectibles Group (CCG) has reached a written agreement with the ANA that provides for Numismatic Guaranty Corporation of America (NGC) to continue as the Association’s grading service of choice, Numismatic Conservation Services, LLC (NCS) to continue as the Association’s conservation service of choice and adding Paper Money Guaranty, LLC (PMG) as the paper money grading service of choice, ANA Executive Director Chris Cipoletti has announced.

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In a rare display of bipartisanship that simultaneously rebuked the Bush administration, the U.S. Mint, and the Democratic House leadership, the House of Representatives voted June 29 to strip funding from the Mint if it could be used to edge-letter the new dollar coins. Convoluted, arcane language was used to add a new Section, Section 907, to H.R. 2829, the appropriations bill that keeps the government going. The text, introduced by Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

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