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Associated Press
14 minutes ago
- Associated Press
America's only rare earth producer gets a boost from Apple and Pentagon agreements
MP Materials, which runs the only American rare earths mine, announced a new $500 million agreement with tech giant Apple on Tuesday to produce more of the powerful magnets used in iPhones as well as other high-tech products like electric vehicles. This news comes on the heels of last week's announcement that the U.S. Defense Department agreed to invest $400 million in shares of the Las Vegas-based company. That will make the government the largest shareholder in MP Materials and help increase magnet production. Despite their name, the 17 rare earth elements aren't actually rare, but it's hard to find them in a high enough concentration to make a mine worth the investment. They are important ingredients in everything from smartphones and submarines to EVs and fighter jets, and it's those military applications that have made rare earths a key concern in ongoing U.S. trade talks. That's because China dominates the market and imposed new limits on exports after President Donald Trump announced his widespread tariffs. When shipments dried up, the two sides sat down in London. The agreement with Apple will allow MP Materials to further expand its new factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce the magnets that make iPhones vibrate. The company expects to start producing magnets for GM's electric vehicles later this year and this agreement will let it start producing magnets for Apple in 2027. The Apple agreement represents a tenth of the company's pledge to invest $500 billion domestically during the Trump administration. And although the deal will provide a significant boost for MP Materials, the agreement with the Defense Department may be even more meaningful. Neha Mukherjee, a rare earths analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said in a research note that the Pentagon's 10-year promise to guarantee a minimum price for the key elements of neodymium and praseodymium will guarantee stable revenue for MP Minerals and protect it from potential price cuts by Chinese producers that are subsidized by their government. 'This is the kind of long-term commitment needed to reshape global rare earth supply chains,' Mukherjee said. Trump has made it a priority to try to reduce American reliance on China for rare earths. His administration is both helping MP Materials and trying to encourage the development of new mines that would take years to come to fruition. China has agreed to issue some permits for rare earth exports but not for military uses, and much uncertainty remains about their supply. The fear is that the trade war between the world's two biggest economies could lead to a critical shortage of rare earth elements that could disrupt production of a variety of products. MP Materials can't satisfy all of the U.S. demand from its Mountain Pass mine in California's Mojave Desert. The deals by MP Materials come as Beijing and Washington have agreed to walk back on their non-tariff measures: China is to grant export permits for rare earth magnets to the U.S., and the U.S. is easing export controls on chip design software and jet engines. The truce is intended to ease tensions and prevent any catastrophic fall-off in bilateral relations, but is unlikely to address fundamental differences as both governments take steps to reduce dependency on each other. ___ Associated Press reporters David Klepper and Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington D.C. Michael Liedtke contributed from San Francisco.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘American death zones': Trump admin announces $30m for Gaza aid program where dozens have been killed trying to get food
The Trump administration has approved $30 million in funding for a controversial American non-profit to deliver aid in Gaza, even after hundreds of Palestinians have been reported killed trying to get food at its sites in recent weeks. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.-based non-profit now run by an evangelical preacher who was a White House adviser during Donald Trump's first term, launched operations in May following a months-long Israeli blockade of nearly all food and aid. But Gaza's health ministry says that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed since then while attempting to get food at GHF sites and other aid points run by the United Nations in the north of the territory. In response to a question about the high death toll, a State Department spokesperson denied the 'false allegations' of killings at GHF sites, telling The Independent that 'most incidents are occurring at non-GHF aid sites that operate near GHF. And none of this would be happening if Hamas would lay down their arms.' 'Hamas will stop at nothing to stay in power and disseminated false propaganda in order to do so,' they added. But testimony collected by The Independent from Palestinians whose family members have been killed at the sites paints a picture of chaos and death. Some have described them as 'American death zones' because of the contractors who patrol them. Salwa Al-Daghma, 50, told The Independent that her brother Khaled, a 36-year-old father of five, was killed earlier this month while trying to get food for his family. 'Hunger is the reason. There is no food. He went to feed his wife and children. He went to provide them with food, but he left and never returned,' she said. 'When relatives came to tell me something, I assumed it was my son. They told me it was my brother, so I started screaming and crying.' 'This aid is a morsel of food soaked in blood. They don't want to help us; they are actually killing us,' she added. Iyad Abu Darabi, a 48-year-old father of six, said his son was killed when he went to get rice from a GHF distribution point. 'My son went to get some flour for his family, but came back in a coffin and a death shroud,' he said. 'This aid is a trap. It's in a barren land surrounded by fences, and the gates are opened for tens of thousands to fight over without any order. They leave people fighting each other over food,' he added. Almost all aid that has entered Gaza since Israel lifted a total blockade now runs through the GHF, which operates four food distribution sites that are overseen by American private security contractors and situated alongside Israeli army positions, which provide security at the perimeter. Israeli soldiers have described the sites as 'killing fields' and said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians in shocking testimony released this week. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire," one soldier told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces," the soldier added. The soldier quoted by Haaretz said he was 'not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons," at the sites. The story includes testimony from an Israeli army officer who said his unit fired machine guns, mortars and threw grenades at civilians approaching the aid distribution centers because 'a combat brigade doesn't have the tools to handle a civilian population in a war zone.' Despite the dozens of deaths, the U.S. State Department has continued to back the GHF politically, and on Thursday said it would fund the group to deliver aid in Gaza. 'This support is simply the latest iteration of President Trump's and Secretary Rubio's pursuit of peace in the region," State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters at a regular news briefing. It is unclear why the Trump administration has decided to deliver aid to Gaza exclusively through the GHF, but former officials from the U.S. state department and USAID who have worked on emergency aid delivery described the new system as 'grotesque', 'dangerous' and part of a larger plan to use aid to control the movement of Palestinians. 'What is so infuriatingly tragic about this is that it's playing out exactly as any experienced humanitarian could have predicted,' said Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw famine relief at USAID for three years during the Obama administration and is now president of Refugees International. 'When you have an aid distribution model that is premised on forcing huge crowds of desperately hungry people to cluster directly adjacent to IDF military installations, you're going to get massacres,' he added. Mr Konyndyk said it was 'not a coincidence' that most of the distribution sites were in the south of Gaza, at a time when the Israeli army was trying to force Palestinians out of the north of the territory. 'A basic principle of humanitarian response is you move the aid as close to you can to where the people are. They're doing the opposite of that, the diametric opposite of that, which suggests that they want to draw people to the south,' he said. 'I think that is highly suggestive of the longer-term agenda here,' he added. Stacey Gilbert, who resigned from the state department in 2024 over the Biden administration's failure to hold Israel accountable for blocking aid to Gaza, also believes the sites are located primarily in the south to draw Palestinians away from the north. 'This is trying to draw them all to one area, to get them away from the area that Israel doesn't want them in,' she said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz hit out at the Haaretz story in a joint statement, describing the testimonies as 'contemptible blood libels.' 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world,' the statement said. The IDF said it is 'operating to allow and facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid by the American 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' (GHF), and to secure the routes leading to the distribution centers, in order to allow the aid to reach the civilians rather than Hamas.' It added that it 'strongly' rejected the accusations raised in the Haaretz article. 'The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,' it said in a statement. The GHF's Interim Executive Director John Acree said in a statement provided to The Independent that 'there have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites.' 'However, IDF is tasked with providing safe passage for aid-seekers to all humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, including GHF. GHF is not aware of any of these incidents but these allegations are too grave to ignore and we therefore call on Israel to investigate them and transparently publish the results in a timely manner,' he added. Acree said the GHF was 'grateful for the support from President Trump and his administration in getting life-saving aid directly into the hands of the Palestinian people in Gaza'. The GHF's current leader, Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher who was a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X on Thursday that the group has delivered more than 46 million meals to Gazans since it began its operations in May. Israel imposed a full blockade on aid into Gaza when a ceasefire collapsed in March, pushing the population to the edge of famine. When aid is finally permitted to enter, many convoys are overwhelmed by hungry families and civilians in desperation, and armed gangs have reportedly exploited the chaos on occasion to steal the aid.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
State Department puts 1,300 staffers on notice after Supreme Court clears Trump's plan for mass firings
The State Department is firing roughly 1,300 employees by email as part of the Trump administration's plans to radically overhaul American diplomacy, starting with dramatically scaling down global efforts to promote democracy and combat human rights abuses. American diplomats and civil servants will receive layoff notices 'in the coming days,' and 'every effort has been made to support our colleagues who are departing,' according to a memo issued Thursday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress in May that the department planned to shred its workforce by more than 15 percent — roughly 2,000 people — to downsize what he called a 'bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources.' Rubio has also accused bureaus and employees within the agency of advancing 'radical political ideology.' Critics have warned that the administration's dramatic restructuring and wholesale closure of critical diplomatic efforts will have far-reaching global consequences. 'Weakening U.S. human rights promotion and contracting the department's humanitarian assistance offices is not reform, it is retreat,' said Francisca Vigaud-Walsh, director of advocacy and strategy at the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas. The department's reductions will significantly impact efforts to combat prevailing human rights violations and humanitarian crises, she said in a statement shared with The Independent. 'It strips away expertise and institutional memory, impairing mission-critical functions and putting countless lives at risk,' she said. Former State Department diplomat Uzra Zeya, now president of Human Rights First, called the mass layoffs a 'Friday morning massacre.' 'These mass layoffs mean abandonment of human rights reformers abroad who challenged dictators, termination of conflict resolution support that stopped wars, repudiation of U.S. humanitarian leadership that staved off famine, and more kleptocrats, war criminals, and human traffickers escaping justice,' Zeya said. The Independent has requested comment from the State Department. Layoff notices are being delivered to more than 1,000 civil servants and another 246 foreign service officers with domestic assignments in the U.S., according to a senior State Department official who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press. Targeted foreign service officers will be immediately placed on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally be out of their jobs, according to the notice. The separation period is 60 days for most other affected civil servants. 'In connection with the departmental reorganization … the department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,' the notice states. 'Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.' A bulk of those 'reduction in force' efforts in the newly structured State Department target bureaus that focus on promoting human rights and democracy abroad and diplomatic conflict resolution, including the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court opened the door for the Trump administration to begin mass firings of federal workers across 19 agencies and departments while legal challenges continue. A decision from the court's conservative majority lifted a lower-court order that temporarily blocked the administration's plans, which were not approved by Congress. Officials took 'a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,' Rubio told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week. 'It's not a consequence of trying to get rid of people. But if you close the bureau, you don't need those positions,' he said. 'Understand that some of these are positions that are being eliminated, not people.' President Donald Trump, with support from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency embedded across the federal government, has launched a government-wide effort to fire workers and dismantle entire agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been absorbed by the shrinking State Department. Last month, The Independent discovered the State Department was funneling $250 million from refugee services to pay immigrants to leave the country. The money is being moved from the State Department's Migration and Refugee Assistance, which is overseen by the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration, with a mission to 'reduce illegal immigration' and aid refugees 'fleeing persecution, crisis or violence and seek durable solutions for forcibly displaced people,' according to its website. But under Rubio's radical restructuring of the department, the refugee bureau's mission is now explicitly focused on efforts to 'return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status.' Regional offices of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration are now expected to be eliminated.
