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China produces the entire world’s supply of samarium, a rare earth metal that the United States and its allies need to rebuild inventories of fighter jets, missiles and other hardware.China’s strict controls on the export of heat-resistant magnets made with rare earth minerals have exposed a major vulnerability in the U.S. military supply chain.Without these magnets, the United States and its allies in Europe will struggle to refill recently depleted inventories of military hardware.For more than a decade, the United States has failed to develop an alternative to China’s supply of a specific kind of rare earth crucial for the...

April 30, 2025 WASHINGTON — On April 30, the United States and Ukraine signed an agreement to establish the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. In recognition of the significant financial and material support that the people of the United States have provided to the defense of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, this economic partnership positions our two countries to work collaboratively and invest together to ensure that our mutual assets, talents, and capabilities can accelerate Ukraine’s economic recovery. Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, the Treasury Department and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will work together...

The United States and Ukraine are on the verge of signing a mineral deal after months of fraught and chaotic negotiations, although a last-minute snag still needs to be ironed out. Ukraine's prime minister said First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko was flying to Washington on Wednesday to sign the deal, which is central to Kyiv's efforts to mend ties with President Donald Trump and the White House as the U.S. president tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia's war in Ukraine. ... However, a snag arose as Svyrydenko’s plane headed to Washington, with U.S. officials reportedly demanding that...

A vast, ancient crater in the western United States may be home to one of the most significant mineral discoveries of the century. Published in the journal Science Advances, researchers have identified a geological formation beneath this site that could dramatically reshape the global landscape for clean energy technology. A Supervolcano’s Legacy Becomes a Resource Powerhouse The McDermitt Caldera, measuring 45 by 35 kilometers, was formed 16.4 million years ago following a catastrophic volcanic eruption. Over time, a lake developed inside the caldera, collecting thick layers of volcanic ash and mineral-rich sediments. These conditions gave rise to lithium-bearing clay minerals,...

I read earlier today that Zelensky already signed a mineral deal with Great Britain. Yet, listening to FOX News the last couple hours, not one show mentioned this. My question - is the story of Zelensky signing an earlier mineral deal - is that true?

A common criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous Friday performance in the Oval Office is that he failed to read the room. Actually, the Ukrainian president did read a room — but it was the wrong room. Before meeting Trump, Zelensky met with anti-Trump Democrats who advised him to reject the terms of the mineral deal the president was offering, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington. He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements...

KYIV — President Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine War urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign the now-deferred mineral rights deal with Washington during the envoy’s visit to Kyiv last week, but Zelensky’s chief of staff insisted on the Friday Oval Office signing that went badly awry, a senior US official involved with the talks told The Post. After three days of intense negotiations, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg secured the long-sought agreement with Ukraine that would have provided Washington with 50% of all future proceeds from the European country’s lucrative critical and rare-earth minerals.

The wine in the glass urn. Credit: Juan Manuel Román The oldest wine ever discovered, originating from Andalusia, is a white wine over 2,000 years old. A 2019 excavation in Carmona revealed the oldest wine ever discovered, preserved in a man’s tomb for 2,000 years, highlighting significant aspects of Roman funerary rituals and societal gender norms. In 2019, a Roman tomb in Carmona was uncovered, revealing the remains of six individuals—Hispana, Senicio, two other men, and two women, whose names remain unknown. These inhabitants from 2,000 years ago likely never envisioned their funerary rituals gaining significance in the modern era....

Could dietary supplements become a healthy weapon against COVID-19? Experts have shown that common dietary supplements can protect against the coronavirus as well as several common winter illnesses. Prof. Gazit, who also heads TAU's Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery, said: "To address the rapid changes of the virus, we decided to develop active vaccines made of safe and easily obtainable dietary supplements that would reduce the viral load in the body and cut down contagion. We have known for years that food supplements containing zinc can enhance immunity to severe, viral and chronic infections and their potentially grave consequences." The...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will cut import tariffs on textile products and metals, including steel products, to 8.4 percent from 11.5 percent, effective Nov. 1, the finance ministry said on Sunday.

Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston. Project leader, Professor Ian Power (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) said: "Our work shows two things. Firstly, we have explained how and how fast magnesite forms naturally. This is a process which takes hundreds to thousands of years in nature at Earth's surface. The second...

The southeastern United States has been hit by a series of strange unexplained quakes - most recently, the 2011 magnitude-5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia that shook the nation's capital. Researchers have been baffled, believing the areas should be relatively quiet in terms of seismic activity, as it is located in the interior of the North American Plate, far away from plate boundaries where earthquakes usually occur. Now, they believe the quakes could be caused by pieces of the Earth's mantle breaking off and sinking into the planet.

A picture from the Lucara Diamond Corporation of the 1,111 carat gem quality, Type IIa diamond ============================================================================================================================================ A 1,111 carat "high quality diamond" has been discovered at a mine in Botswana, said to be the biggest find in more than a century, according to the mine company. The gem, only second in size to the Cullinan diamond which was unearthered in South Africa in 1905, was mined by Lucara Diamond Corp. "The magnificent stone, which originated from the south lobe of Lucara's Karowe Mine, is the world second largest gem quality diamond ever recovered and largest ever to be recovered...

Another day, another law disregarded by the Obama camp. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and representatives from nine other states have signed a letter to the Obama Administration demanding the administration pay up on mineral lease revenues owed to the states under the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act. This nearly century-old contract requires a certain percentage of the royalties collected by the federal government to be returned to the states where the minerals were produced. The administration now is trying to trim these payments under the guise of sequestration, saying that these royalties are subject to across the board spending cuts...

The Obama administration sparked outrage when it announced on Monday that it was withholding $110 million mineral royalty payments that are owed to states and counties due to the sequestration. “The Budget Control Act of 2011, passed by Congress, mandates across-the-board, automatic 5.1 percent sequester reductions,” said Office of Natural Resources Revenue spokesman Patrick Etchart. “By law, revenue payments to states are not exempt from the sequester. Cumulatively, approximately $110 million will be withheld from states and counties where energy production occurs on federal lands during the remainder of the current fiscal year.”

Several people claim to own one of the world's largest gemstones The latest in the saga of the Bahia Emerald, an 840-pound gemstone is set to take place in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday to decide its fate. Several people have laid claim to the stone in the nine years since it was dug up in Brazil in 2001. Multitudes of lawyers are expected to fill the courtroom where Judge John Kronstadt will review the case of Tony Thomas, a claimant who says he bought the emerald from Brazilian miners for $60,000. The emerald, one of the largest gems...

Backlash over China curb on metal exports China's draconian export curbs on rare earth minerals needed by the rest of the world for frontier technologies is escalating into a serious diplomatic and trade clash with the United States and other leading powers. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor Japan's foreign minister Katsuya Okada issued what amounted to a formal protest at top-level meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing over the weekend, saying the sudden cut-off was "affecting the global production chain". It is the latest sign of rising pressure after angry complaints by companies outside China that rely on this...

Afghan minerals may be triple original estimate: Mining Minister 17 June 2010, 1:28 p.m. By Daniela Cambone Of Kitco News www.kitco.com Montreal -- (Kitco News) --Afghanistan's mining minister, said Thursday that mineral deposits in his country could be worth up to three trillion dollars, triple the US estimate from earlier this week. "A very conservative estimate has been one trillion. Our estimation is more than that... the idea is it could be up to three trillion dollars," mining minister Waheedullah Shahrani told a news conference today in Kabul. Kitco News interviewed Shahrani back in March on the sidelines of the...

When methane and freezing cold water fuse under tremendous pressure, they create a substance as paradoxical as it coveted: burning ice. Earlier in the year, a report from the National Research Council identified the combustible water, also known as methane hydrate, as a potential source of natural gas. Now, according to the Chinese news organization Xinhau, China is joining the US, Japan, and South Korea in the hunt for this weird mineral. Icy Hot : courtesy of NASAAs explained in this comic, there's 85.4 trillion cubic feet of methane hydrate buried under Alaska. That's equivalent to 3 billion tons of...

In North Korea, the military now issues economic orders By Blaine Harden Tuesday, November 3, 2009 SEOUL -- North Korea's military, whose nuclear program vexes the Obama administration, has grabbed nearly complete command of the nation's state-run economy and staked out a lucrative new trade in mineral sales to China to make money for its supreme commander, Kim Jong Il. As it deepens its dominance over nearly every aspect of daily life, the Korean People's Army is also deploying soldiers to take first dibs on all food harvested in the isolated, chronically hungry country, according to the latest assessments of...