Free Republic

Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper said the force of the explosion had even affected a railway line 5km (three miles) away. Factory valves were ejected during the blast and landed on the tracks, causing delays and disruptions to trains passing through Baotou. Residents of a nearby village said around 70 to 80 per cent of the windows in the village’s 500 to 600 households were shattered, according to The Paper. Baotou Steel Group is a large state-owned steel enterprise. The factory involved in the accident primarily produces composite steel with added rare earth elements such as lanthanum and cerium, widely...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

MP Materials, which runs the sole operating rare earths mine in the United States, is an unusual victim in the year-long tit-for-tat trade war between the two largest economies on the planet, as the conflict looks set to open up a new battlefront over technology. The operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California said it will kick-start its own processing operation by the end of 2020, after China last week more than doubled an import duty on concentrates to 25 per cent effective June 1. MP exports pellets – ground-up ores that contain oxides of rare earth elements –...