Plane crashes in South Sudan, killing 20, official says
The plane crashed at the Unity oilfield airport on Wednesday morning as it was heading to the capital Juba, Gatwech Bipal, Unity State's information minister, said.
Bipal said the passengers were oil workers of the Greater Pioneer Operating Company (GPOC) a consortium that includes China National Petroleum Corporation and state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation.
He said among the dead were two Chinese nationals and one Indian.
Bipal gave no more details on the circumstances that led to the crash. Media reports had initially put the death toll at 18 but Bipal told Reuters two survivors had later died. One person survived.
Several air crashes have occurred in war-torn South Sudan in recent years. In September 2018, at least 19 people died when a small aircraft carrying passengers from the capital Juba to the city of Yirol crashed.
In 2015, dozens of people were killed when a Russian-built cargo plane with passengers on board crashed after taking off from the airport in the capital Juba.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nahar Net
6 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Critical minerals give China an edge in trade negotiations
by Naharnet Newsdesk 12 June 2025, 16:52 China's dominance over critical minerals in global supply chains was a powerful bargaining chip in trade talks between Beijing and Washington that concluded with both sides saying they have a framework to pursue a deal. China has spent decades building the world's main industrial chain for mining and processing such materials, which are used in many industries such as electronics, advanced manufacturing, defense and health care. Mines and factories in and around Ganzhou, a key production hub for rare earths, underpin China's control over the minerals. Many residents grew up collecting rocks containing the valuable minerals from the forested hills surrounding the southern city and today make a living from mining, trading or processing them. Critical minerals as a trade issue Responding to ever higher tariffs and other controls on advanced technology, China told exporters of certain key rare earths and other critical minerals to obtain licenses for every shipment abroad. Approvals can take weeks, leading to supply chain disruptions in the U.S. and other countries. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that China would make it easier for American industry to obtain much-needed needed magnets and rare earth minerals, clearing the way for talks to continue between the world's two biggest economies. In return, Trump said, the U.S. will stop efforts to revoke the visas of Chinese nationals on U.S. college campuses. But details remain scarce. Beijing has not confirmed what the negotiators agreed to, and Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump himself have yet to sign off on it. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said Saturday it had approved a "certain number" of export licenses for rare earth products, apparently acknowledging Trump's personal request to Xi during a phone call last week. And on Wednesday, the Ganzhou-based rare-earth conglomerate JL MAG Rare-Earth Co. confirmed it had obtained some export licenses for shipments to destinations including the U.S., Europe and Southeast Asia. Experts say, however, Beijing is unlikely to do away with the permit system enabling it to control access to those valuable resources. "I think what the Chinese have proven is they have now created an entire export control regime for rare earths," said Daniel Kritenbrink, a partner at The Asia Group consultancy. "They can turn that spigot on and off at will." The only scenario in which China might deregulate its critical minerals export is if the U.S. fully removes tariffs imposed on Chinese goods as part of the trade war, said Wang Yiwei, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University, echoing the Chinese government's earlier stance. "Without that," he said, "it will be difficult to blame China for continuing to strengthen its export controls." An industry built over decades with government support In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, the leader who launched China's ascent as the world's biggest manufacturing power, famously said "the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths," signaling a desire to leverage access to the key minerals. Several generations later, Beijing has made its rich reserves of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals that are abundant in the earth's crust but hard, expensive and environmentally polluting to process, a key element of China's economic security. In 2019, during a visit to a rare earth processing plant in Ganzhou, Xi described rare earths as a "vital strategic resource." China today has an essential monopoly over "heavy rare earths," used for making powerful, heat-resistance magnets used in industries such as defense and electric vehicles. The country also produces around 80% of the world's tungsten, gallium and antimony, and 60% of the world's germanium -– all minerals used in the making of semiconductors, among other advanced technologies. The risks of dependency on Chinese suppliers first came into focus in 2010, when Beijing suspended rare earths exports to Japan due to a territorial dispute. The ban was lifted after about two months, but as a precaution, Japan invested in rare earths processing plants in other countries and began stockpiling the materials. Beijing's across-the-board requirement for export licenses for some critical minerals has put pressure on world electronics manufacturers and automakers. Some auto parts makers in Europe have shut down production lines due to delays in supply deliveries, according to the European Association of Automotive Suppliers. In the U.S., Tesla CEO Elon Musk said a shortage of rare earths is affecting his company's work on humanoid robots. China's critical minerals resources are dwindling In the drab industrial hub of Ganzhou, cradled by the scenic Dayu Mountains, the U.S.-China trade war is still a distant stressor. Miners and small mineral traders interviewed by The Associated Press said they are more concerned about depleting the mountains' once-abundant resources. Zhong, a tungsten factory manager in Ganzhou who would only give his last name, worked his way up to manager from a miner, but he's unsure there is a future for him and others in the industry. "I find growing difficulties to source tungsten these days," he said, adding that smaller mines and trading companies are slowly disappearing as the resources are dwindling. Tungsten is an ultra-hard metal used in armor-piercing ammunition, nuclear reactors and semiconductors. At least five tungsten mines have closed in the area in recent years, according to state media. Remaining reserves are deeper and harder to extract and process after decades of exploitation, said Li Shangkui, chairman of the Ganzhou-based Jiangxi Yuean Advanced Materials Co., Ltd. Processing factories in Ganzhou now routinely source materials from other provinces or other countries. Zhong's plant imports some raw materials from places like Africa and Cambodia. Major state-owned and private companies in Ganzhou are also ramping up investments abroad. Tungsten producer Ganzhou Haisheng, for instance, announced last year a $25 million investment in a new tungsten plant in Thailand. Whatever the challenges in procuring raw materials, China likely will seek to maintain its dominance in critical minerals, said Fabian Villalobos, an engineer and critical minerals expert at the RAND think tank. The U.S. lags far behind China on critical minerals Between 2020 and 2023, the U.S. imported at least 70% of the rare earth compounds it used from China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It has diversified its sources in recent years, but still mainly relies on China. Since beginning his second term in office, Trump has made improving access to critical minerals a matter of national security. But the U.S. has an incredibly long way to go to catch up with China, experts say. The sole operational U.S. rare earths mine, in Mountain Pass, California, is unable to separate heavy rare earths. It sends its ore to China for processing. The U.S. Defense Department has provided funding to the mine's owner, MP Materials, to build new separation facilities. It will take months to build and still only produce a fraction of what is needed. Friction over the issue has opened the way for government-backed financing that was unavailable before, said Mark Smith, who ran the Mountain Pass mine in the early 2010s and now leads NioCorp. It's seeking about $780 million in financing through the U.S. Export-Import Bank to build a processing facility in Nebraska for critical minerals including rare earths. The Defense Department has committed $439 million to building domestic rare earth supply chains, but building a complete mining and processing industrial chain like China's could take decades. "There are going to be some real issues here unless we can figure out how to get along with China for a period of time while we're developing our own resources and our mainstream processing," Smith said. The spotlight on critical minerals also provides opportunities for smaller miners to invest in extracting and processing some critical minerals, such as tungsten, considered "niche" because they are needed in relatively small amounts in key industries, said Milo McBride, an expert on sustainability and geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "For many of these companies, the business strategy hedges on a scenario where the U.S. and China become more confrontational and where trade relations become more uncomfortable," McBride said. "And all of a sudden, what was once an uneconomic project somewhere outside of China starts to make more sense."
MTV Lebanon
10 hours ago
- MTV Lebanon
12 Jun 2025 13:32 PM Trump unveils website for $5 million US residency visa
President Donald Trump touted a new website for his planned $5 million US residency permit on Wednesday, saying the waiting list for the golden visa has opened on "Thousands have been calling and asking how they can sign up to ride a beautiful road in gaining access to the Greatest Country and Market anywhere in the World," Trump wrote in a social media post. Trump unveiled the first such visa aboard Air Force One in April, holding a golden prototype that bore his face and promising the special permit would probably be available "in less than two weeks." The visas are not available yet, but the website announced Wednesday allows interested parties to submit their name, desired visa and email address under a header that says "The Trump Card is Coming." Trump previously said the new visa, a high-price version of the traditional green card, would bring in job creators and could be used to reduce the US national deficit. The announcement comes as deportation raids are being ramped up across the country, prompting protests, and as Trump's administration faces ongoing lawsuits and accusations of rights violations over its anti-immigration blitz. Trump has said the new card would be a route to highly prized US citizenship. He said in February that his administration hoped to sell "maybe a million" of the cards and did not rule out that Russian oligarchs may be eligible.
Nahar Net
a day ago
- Nahar Net
Trump says China deal 'done', Beijing to supply rare earths
by Naharnet Newsdesk 11 June 2025, 15:49 President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the United States will get magnets and rare earth minerals from China under a new trade deal and that tariffs on Chinese goods will rise to 55%. In return, Trump said, the U.S. will provide China "what was agreed to," including allowing Chinese students to attend American colleges and universities. The Republican president had recently begun to clamp down on the presence of Chinese nationals on U.S. college campuses. The new 55% tariff rate would mark a meaningful increase from the 30% levy set in Switzerland during talks in May. "OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME.," Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media site. He said full magnets and any necessary rare earths will be supplied up front by China. "WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT!" Trump wrote. Senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators announced late Tuesday in London that they had agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them. The announcement came at the end of two days of talks in the British capital that wrapped up late Tuesday. It came as an international rights group said that several global brands are among dozens of companies at risk of using forced labor through their Chinese supply chains because they use critical minerals or buy minerals-based products sourced from the far-western Xinjiang region of China. The report by the Netherlands-based Global Rights Compliance says companies including Avon, Walmart, Nescafe, Coca-Cola and paint supplier Sherwin-Williams may be linked to titanium sourced from Xinjiang, where rights groups allege the Chinese government runs coercive labor practices targeting predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities. The report found 77 Chinese suppliers in the titanium, lithium, beryllium and magnesium industries operating in Xinjiang. It said the suppliers are at risk of participating in the Chinese government's "labor transfer programs," in which Uyghurs are forced to work in factories as part of a long-standing campaign of assimilation and mass detention. Asked about the report, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that "no one has ever been forcibly transferred in China's Xinjiang under work programs." The named companies didn't immediately comment on the report.
