Earth

China’s export of rare earth elements is central to the trade deal struck this week with the United States.

Beijing has a virtual monopoly on the supply of the critical minerals, which are used to make everything from cars to drones and wind turbines.

Earlier this year, Beijing leveraged its dominance of the sector to hit back at US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, placing export controls on seven rare earths and related products.

The restrictions created a headache for global manufacturers, particularly automakers, who rely on the materials.

After talks in Geneva in May, the US and China announced a 90-day pause on their escalating tit-for-tat tariffs, during which time US levies would be reduced from 145 percent to 30 percent and Chinese duties from 125 percent to 10 percent.

The truce had appeared to be in jeopardy in recent weeks after Washington accused Beijing of not moving fast enough to ease its restrictions on rare earths exports.

After two days of marathon talks in London, the two sides on Wednesday announced a “framework” to get trade back on track.

Trump said the deal would see rare earth minerals “supplied, up front,” though many details of the agreement are still unclear.

What are rare earths, and why are they important?

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements that are essential to numerous manufacturing industries.

The auto industry has become particularly reliant on rare-earth magnets for steering systems, engines, brakes and many other parts.

China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals, as well as the production of related components like rare earth magnets.

It mines about 70 percent of the world’s rare earths and processes approximately 90 percent of the supply. China also maintains near-total control over the supply of heavy rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium.

China’s hold over the industry had been a concern for the US and other countries for some time, but their alarm grew after Beijing imposed export controls in April.

The restrictions affected supplies of samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, and required companies shipping materials and finished products overseas to obtain export licences.

The restrictions followed a similar move by China in February, when it placed export controls on tungsten, bismuth and three other “niche metals”.

While news of a deal on rare earths signals a potential reprieve for manufacturers, the details of its implementation remain largely unclear.

What has been the impact of the export restrictions?

Chinese customs data shows the sale of rare earths to the US dropped 37 percent in April, while the sale of rare earth magnets fell 58 percent for the US and 51 percent worldwide, according to Bloomberg.

Global rare earth exports recovered 23 percent in May, following talks between US and Chinese officials in Geneva, but they are still down overall from a year earlier.

The greatest alarm has been felt by carmakers and auto parts manufacturers in the US and Europe, who reported bottlenecks after working their way through inventories of rare earth magnets.

“The automobile industry is now using words like panic. This isn’t something that the auto industry is just talking about and trying to make a big stir. This is serious right now, and they’re talking about shutting down production lines,” Mark Smith, a mining and mineral processing expert and the CEO of the US-based NioCorp Developments, told Al Jazeera.

Even with news of a breakthrough, Western companies are still worried about their future access to rare earths and magnets and how their dependence on China’s supply chain could be leveraged against them.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that China’s Ministry of Commerce has been demanding “sensitive business information to secure rare earths and magnets” from Western companies in China, including production details and customer lists.

What have the US and China said about rare earth exports?

Trump shared some details of the agreement on his social media platform, Truth Social, where he also addressed concerns about rare earths and rare earth magnets.

“We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%. The relationship is excellent,” Trump said, using a figure for US duties that includes levies introduced during his first term.

“Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China. Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me),” Trump said.

Ahead of the negotiations in London, China’s Ministry of Commerce had said it approved an unspecified number of export licences for rare earths, and it was willing to “further strengthen communication and dialogue on export controls with relevant countries”.

However, an op-ed published by state news outlet Xinhua this week said rare earth export controls were not “short-term bargaining tools” or “tactical countermeasures” but a necessary measure because rare earths can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

NioCorp Developments’ Smith said Beijing is unlikely to quickly give up such powerful leverage over the US entirely.

“There’s going to be a whole bunch of words, but I really think China is going to hold the US hostage on this issue, because why not?” he said.

“They’ve worked really hard to get into the position that they’re in. They have 100 percent control over the heavy rare earth production in the world. Why not use that?”

Deborah Elms, the head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, said it was hard to predict how rare earths would be treated in negotiations, which would need to balance other US concerns like China’s role in exporting the deadly opioid fentanyl to the US.

Beijing, for its part, will want guarantees that it can access advanced critical US technology to make advanced semiconductors, she said.

Around 240m years ago, a 12-foot-long reptile called a chirotherium walked along a beach in what was then part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and what is now the shoreline of Kildonan village, on the rugged, southern coast of the Isle of Arran. Natural dykes of black igneous rock – cooled magma – jut out into the ocean here. The houses on shore are backdropped by grassy cliffs.

We know that this giant proto-crocodile once roamed here because it left behind footprints – which can still be seen today. “This is older than the dinosaurs,” says Malcolm Wilkinson of Arran Geopark, as we crouch down next to the trace fossil. I place my hand in the massive print and attempt to imagine the world millions of years ago, when Scotland sat just north of the equator and the climate was tropical.

After they were made, Malcolm says, these footprints were covered in layers of silt, deposited by water or wind, which protected them from erosion and created a natural mould. Over the next few million years, layers of sediment gathered and compacted on top, cementing the grains and turning the soft mud around the footprint into solid red sandstone. The footprints turned into fossils, and were thrust back to the surface when the Atlantic opened about 60m years ago, tearing Europe and North America apart.

As the younger rocks slowly eroded the trackway became visible. Similar prints were first discovered in the Victorian era, and the creature was named chirotherium – “hand-beast” – because the fossils look like giant, human handprints.

Just off the west coast of Scotland and reachable in a little over two hours from Glasgow, Arran has long been known for its rocks, regularly welcoming groups of hard hat-clad students on field trips. In April, it became Scotland’s newest Unesco Global Geopark (there are two others, in Shetland and the North West Highlands), in recognition of the world-class geology here, which records tectonic plate collisions and shifting continents.

To walk around Arran is to walk through 600m years of Earth’s history, and my plan is to hike the 65-mile Arran Coastal Way, which circumnavigates the island, over six days. Thankfully for laymen like myself, the history is spelled out through informative Geopark signage along the way.

As the ferry approaches Brodick, the serrated silhouette of the northern mountains comes into focus, the sandstone castle nestled in the greenery below and the mysterious lump of the “Holy Isle” drawing the eye south. The island is divided by the Highland Boundary Fault, a geological line where tectonic plates once collided, separating Scotland’s rolling lowlands from the mountainous highlands.

On day one of the Coastal Way I head up Goat Fell, Arran’s highest peak (874 metres), and witness this: the granite mountains of the north have jagged ridgelines and tower over deep glens, sculpted by glaciation, while to the south the scenery is soft and green.

That evening I stay at the Corrie Hotel and follow a Geopark leaflet to the spot where a sand dune was struck by lightning 270m years ago, locking it in time a stone’s throw from the centre of the village. Staring at this “fossilised fulgurite” and imagining that desert lightning bolt is like staring into a different universe.

Along the coast is another trackway, in a remote spot where Arran’s only coal seam was exposed to the surface. This one was left by a six-foot millipede that lived 300m years ago, and would be easily missed without the small, oak Geopark signpost. A pod of dolphins swims by as I reach it, stealing the scene, jumping joyfully just offshore.

Four miles north sits the most famous geological site on Arran – Hutton’s Unconformity. James Hutton, the father of modern geology, visited the island in 1787. At Newton Point, a rocky outcrop in the north of Arran, he observed rock contact between gently sloping sandstone and older, steeply dipping schists. This led Hutton to reason that if natural processes had occurred in the past at the same rate observable in his day, this formation, and so the Earth, must be millions and not thousands of years old – as was widely believed by scholars at the time.

Happily, a holidaying geologist is on hand to explain this to me, though he is, by his own admission, “more excited about the bloody otter” he’d just spotted.

I eat fish and chips at the community-owned Lochranza Country Inn and collapse into Lochranza Youth Hostel. A simple (but private) bunk bed provides all the comfort I need. The next day I walk a mighty 19 miles along the boulder-filled coastline and quiet roads around the west of Arran, camping near King’s Cave, where iron age crosses are carved into the stone, and watch gannets dive bomb into the sea as the sun sets over the Kintyre Peninsula.

Occasionally, I abandon the geological hunt altogether; stopping to watch otters fishing, indulging in a whisky and chocolate tasting at the newly opened Lagg Distillery, or relaxing at The Lagg Inn, whose leafy beer garden is tucked away next to a river.

As my walk happens to coincide with perhaps the sunniest week in Arran since Scotland sat at the equator, it isn’t hard to convince Malcolm to meet me down at Kildonan shore. “This really is a world-class geological site,” he tells me, pointing to the shoreline. While we wait for the tide to reveal our “pre-dinosaur” footprint, Malcolm explains the science of the nearby dyke swarms – the black “walls” jutting into the sea. “They’re magma which was forced up vertically through cracks in the Earth, and have since eroded away,” he says. “This is a record of a time Europe and North America were pulled apart; and the Atlantic was born.”

Seals lounge around on these globally significant rocks, digesting their breakfast in the sun. “The special thing about Arran is that it has rock types from basically every geological period of the last half billion years,” Malcolm says. “We’ve got the main part of the history of the Earth here – and it’s so accessible.”

Off shore sits the microgranite mound of Ailsa Craig, home to an enormous colony of gannets, and Pladda, an island with a scenic lighthouse, sitting on what was once molten magma.

That evening, via the plummeting waterfalls of Glenashdale, I reach Whiting Bay, and watch an otter scurrying in the sunset before setting up camp. With careful consideration for tide times, my final day skirts along boardwalks and seabed to Lamlash, Arran’s most populous village.

I stop for a swim at a secluded bay and oystercatchers (my constant companions on the walk) squeak their farewells. Brodick soon welcomes me back with its sublime mountain vistas. As my ferry sails back to the mainland I gaze back at Goat Fell, and the words of the writer Nan Shepherd come to mind: “the shortsighted cannot love mountains as the longsighted do”.

The Corrie Hotel has doubles from £115 B&B, Lochranza Youth Hostel has private rooms from £42 or dorm beds from £20, Lagg Inn has doubles from £170. For more information, see Visit Arran

Gaza is the “hungriest place on Earth” and its entire population is at risk of famine, warns the United Nations, as desperate Palestinians are shot at, starved, and forced from their homes by the Israeli forces.

Calling on Israel to stop its campaign of deliberate starvation and allow food into the besieged enclave, the UN on Friday said its mission to help Gaza’s Palestinians is the “most obstructed in recent history”.

“The aid operation that we have ready to roll is being put in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations, not only in the world today, but in recent history,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson, Jens Laerke, said.

He said out of 900 aid trucks that were approved to enter from the Israeli side of the Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom in Israel, fewer than 600 have been offloaded in Gaza, adding that a lower amount of aid had been picked up for distribution.

“I have no flour, no oil, no sugar, no food. I collect mouldy bread and feed it to my children. I want to get a bag of flour for my children. I want to eat. I’m hungry,” a Palestinian told Al Jazeera.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the northern part of the Strip, which includes Gaza City, “has not seen a drop of aid coming in that has been allowed in the past few days”.

“People in the central area, in the [southern] city of Khan Younis and Rafah are also struggling on a daily basis to find food supplies, particularly when it comes to flour and other basic necessities to help them survive these difficult conditions,” he added.

Palestinians leaving aid points empty-handed

After a nearly three-month blockade, Israel, under pressure from Western governments and international humanitarian organisations, allowed limited aid to enter the enclave and the resumption of limited UN operations.

However, Israel also pushed for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a shadowy United States-backed private aid distributor, to provide essential food aid to starving Palestinians.

The UN and other aid groups have refused to work with GHF, saying it lacks neutrality and its distribution model forces the displacement of Palestinians.

Still, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Friday that while any aid that gets to those who need it is “good”, aid deliveries are having “very, very little impact”.

“The catastrophic situation in Gaza is the worst since the war began,” he said.

With only three of the four distribution points set up to receive aid from the GHF, people like Layla al-Masri, a displaced Palestinian, are leaving empty-handed.

“What they are saying about their will to feed the people of Gaza is all lies. They neither feed people nor give them anything to drink,” she said.

‘Parents giving children water’

Abdel Qader Rabie, another displaced Palestinian, said his family has nothing to eat. “No flour, no food, no bread, we have nothing at home,” he said.

“Every time I go to get aid, I hold a box and hundreds of people crowd over me. Earlier, UNRWA [UN agency for Palestinian refugees] used to send me a message, [and] I would go and get aid. Now there’s nothing. If you are strong, you get aid. If you are not, you leave empty-handed,” Qader Rabie said.

Eri Kaneko, UN humanitarian affairs spokesperson, also criticised the type of aid that UN agencies are being allowed to bring into Gaza.

“Israeli authorities have not allowed us to bring in a single ready-to-eat meal. The only food permitted has been flour for bakeries. Even if allowed in unlimited quantities, which it hasn’t been, it wouldn’t amount to a complete diet for anyone,” Kaneko said.

Palestinians who received GHF aid said their packages included rice, flour, canned beans, pasta, olive oil, biscuits, and sugar.

Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, described the GHF as a “bait to corral people” which “violates every principle of international law”.

“This is aid being used … to push people out from the north into militarised zones … and it’s about humiliating people, and it’s about controlling the population. This has nothing to do with stopping starvation,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said not much food is coming into the enclave as the number of trucks entering and the aid they are carrying is very limited

“Despite the trucks’ entry over the past few days, Palestinians say they have not really received any food because there have not been any normal distribution points,” she said, adding that many are going back with their pots empty.

“Some parents say they are giving their children water just to make them feel full. People say they are willing to do anything for one bag of flour or one food parcel. They are very desperate.”

A NEW dog-sized dinosaur species that roamed the Earth 220 million years ago has been discovered.

The Maleriraptor kuttyi is thought to be one of the earliest killer dinosaurs in history.

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The now-extinct dinosaur is believed to have lived some 220 million years ago – during the Triassic period.

The small but mighty beast could grow to a height of 3.2 feet and a length of 6.5 feet – about the size of a large-breed dog such as a Great Dane.

And the creature was one of the earliest known carnivorous dinosaurs, along with the rest of the Herrerasauria family.

Dr. Martín Ezcurra from the Argentina’s Natural Science museum said: “Herrerasaurs represent the oldest radiation of predatory dinosaurs.”

The fossilised dinosaur bones were discovered more than in Telangana, India forty years ago.

But only now have scientists identified exactly what species these bones belonged to.

Herrerasauria fossils were previously found in South and North America.

But the new bombshell discovery has proved that the creatures roamed far more of the Earth than previously thought.

And the dinosaurs in India are believed to have outlived those elsewhere.

Scientists believe this might be because India had a similar climate to South America during the Triassic period.

This comes after a giant horned dinosaur species was unearthed in Egypt.

The predatory dinosaur species, named Tameryraptor markgrafi, was originally discovered in 1914 by Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach who died in 1952.

The 95million-year-old skeleton was excavated in the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt before it was stored in the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology in Munich, Germany.

But the remains were destroyed along with other Egyptian discoveries when Munich was bombed in World War Two.

Tragically the only remnants of the dinosaur discovery were Dr Stromer’s notes, illustrations of the bones and black and white photographs of the skeletons.

But Dr Stromer’s records have now been reanalysed in a new study.

Maximilian Kellermann, the study’s first author said: “What we saw in the historical images surprised us all.

“The Egyptian dinosaur fossil depicted there differs significantly from more recent Carcharodontosaurus found in Morocco.”