Election throws up surprise result as independence from Denmark remains tough to define.
Greenland had a message for Donald Trump as islanders went to the polls this week: thanks, but no thanks.
The U.S. president’s repeated noises about acquiring the vast Arctic island — not ruling out military force or economic coercion — were rejected at the ballot box, as a party that denounced Trump’s ambitions came out on top.
There are plans to mine the ‘Cornish alps’ reserves for use in EVs and the energy system, but not everyone is so bullish about their viability
“This area is affectionately known as the Cornish alps,” says Neil Elliot, pointing at a spike-shaped mound in the hills above St Austell. “The peaks round here are all man-made. They’re waste left over from the old china clay mines.”
The mines are mostly closed now, put out of business by competition from Brazil, but Elliot is part of a new rush for the riches in this landscape. If your kitchen has a granite work surface, you can probably see those riches for yourself. The tiny brown flecks in Cornwall’s granite contain a mineral for which the world has a sudden and ravenous appetite: lithium.
Ukraine’s minerals have become central to global geopolitics, with the US president, Donald Trump, seeking a deal with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to access them. But what are these minerals exactly and why are they so sought after? Ukraine is often recognised for its vast agricultural lands and industrial heritage, but beneath its surface lies one of the world’s most remarkable geological formations, the “Ukrainian Shield”.
This massive, exposed crystalline rock formed over 2.5 billion years ago, stretches across much of Ukraine. It represents one of Earth’s oldest and most stable continental blocks. The formation has undergone multiple episodes of mountain building, the formation and movement of magma and other change throughout time.
United States President Donald Trump and his Ukraine counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy cancelled a mineral rights and security agreement at the White House on Friday after a news conference degenerated into a rare spectacle of raised voices and name-calling.
The deal would have been a showpiece for Trump’s transactional presidency and another sign of the resource nationalism that’s swept the globe in recent years as countries transition away from fossil fuels. The scrubbed signing comes as overt U.S. support for Nato declines and Trump pushes for a stronger European role in its own defence.
In an interview broadcast on Monday, President Vladimir Putin said U.S. companies stood to profit in Russia, but suggested a Ukraine peace deal was still far off.
President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday said American companies could do lucrative business deals in Russia and even help mine rare earths in Russian-occupied Ukraine, further amplifying the Kremlin’s message to President Trump that there was money to be made from a better relationship with Moscow.
Mr. Putin, in an interview with Russian state television that was released late Monday, said that Russia had an “order of magnitude” more rare earth metals than Ukraine and that Moscow was “ready to work with our foreign partners, including the Americans,” in developing those deposits.
Ukrainian and US negotiators are seeking to move past the breakdown in transatlantic relations this week to finalize a deal on critical minerals, a person with knowledge of the talks said.
Two days after President Donald Trump hectored President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “dictator” who needed to move quickly on a peace deal, Ukrainian officials are discussing the minerals issue with US special envoy Keith Kellogg during a visit to Kyiv, the person said on condition of anonymity as talks take place behind closed doors.
https://www.gemporia.com/en-gb/
Idar-Oberstein is a German town located in the west of the country just 45 miles from the border with Luxembourg, and 80 miles west of Frankfurt. As the crow flies, it is just under 450 miles away from our TV studios in the Midlands.
You might not have heard of it before, but it’s an incredibly important place for the gemstone cutting industry, and it has been held in high regard for hundreds of years. Here, we delve into the history and significance of the town and learn how a small area of Germany came to have such a significant impact on the gemstone world.
KIROVOHRAD REGION, Ukraine (AP) — The mineral ilmenite is extracted from mounds of sand deep in the earth and refined using a method that summons the force of gravity, resulting in a substance that glimmers like a moonlit sky.
Ukraine boasts vast reserves of ilmenite — a key element used to produce titanium — in the heavy mineral sands that stretch for miles along the country’s embattled east. Much of it, as with all of Ukraine’s critical minerals industry, is underdeveloped because of war as well as onerous state policies.
U.S. access to Ukraine’s vast and largely untapped rare earths and other critical minerals in exchange for a “security shield” is the latest twist in the potential peace plan for the war in Ukraine. And it is picking up steam with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Kyiv and President Donald Trump stunning Europe by revealing he has already begun talks with Vladimir Putin.
But while U.S. investment in this underdeveloped sector would be an important positive development for both Ukraine’s economy and immediate security, it’s only one element in an absent economic strategy that Ukraine needs to create a lasting security guarantee from future Russian aggression.
NUUK, Greenland – The mining company that owns the licence to Greenland’s Kvanefjeld deposit is hopeful that a new government will repeal a ban on uranium mining after next month’s election, potentially rejuvenating one of the world’s largest rare earth projects.
U.S President Donald Trump last month voiced renewed interest in acquiring the strategically important Arctic island. In response to Trump’s comments, CEO Daniel Mamadou of Kvanefjeld licence holder Energy Transition Minerals said: “I think it certainly puts everything related to minerals back on the map.”
The U.S. president’s relentless pursuit of raw materials is storing up trouble for Greenland, but could well be good news for Ukraine.
After years of arguing its democracy is worth fighting for, Ukraine quickly calculated Donald Trump was likelier to think the country is worth saving because of its abundant mineral wealth.
To win over a United States president who wants to claim Greenland for its vast reserves of raw materials and strategic position in the Arctic, Kyiv has for months been stressing that its rich deposits of everything from titanium to graphite could help Trump beat China in the global race for resources.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
Global powers vie for vast mineral wealth of Greenland, caught in the crossfire of Western resource independence, Arctic security.
Far from the halls of Washington and Copenhagen, where political posturing has placed it unwittingly at the center of an escalating dispute over its resource potential, Greenland sits on a wealth of untapped resources critical to the world’s technological and strategic future.
Long enduring as a land of resilient communities and Arctic majesty, the island has become the focus of global powers vying for control over rare earths, graphite, and other minerals and metals essential to clean energy, defense, and industry.
The great battle for Greenland is probably all about resources to make apps like ChatGPT better.
Our new president’s obsession with buying Greenland has inspired jeers, laughs, and jokes about the cost of eggs, but more and more, the attempted procurement looks less like a joke and more like a big handout for the tech companies that backed him during the election. Multiple new reports show that some of Donald Trump’s most prominent financial benefactors have long been pursuing financial opportunities in the Arctic nation.
The Lever reports on the activities of KoBold Metals, a startup that is actively engaged in mining Greenland for raw materials that can be used to build AI products. KoBold, which is based in Berkeley, California, and uses AI to hunt for metals like cobalt, lithium, copper, and nickel, is basically the property of the tech industry’s most powerful executives.
Russia’s army is around six kilometres (four miles) from the centre of Pokrovsk, a formerly thriving mining hub on top of Ukraine’s largest coal reserves.
Fighting desperately to cling on to coal mines that were once the lifeblood of its industrial east, Ukraine’s soldiers conceded they were struggling against intensifying Russian attacks. “There’s only so much we can do. No matter what super warriors are fighting in our ranks, the Russians outnumber us. It hurts,” said the chief sergeant of Ukraine’s 59th brigade, deployed in the Donetsk region, who goes by the call sign “San Sanych”.
Russia’s army is around six kilometres (four miles) from the centre of Pokrovsk, a formerly thriving mining hub on top of Ukraine’s largest coal reserves. The capture of the city and surrounding mines — some of which are even closer to Russian positions — would be a painful blow to Ukraine’s army, local communities and the national economy, compounding months of setbacks on the front.
President Donald Trump has said he thinks the US will gain control of Greenland, underlining his persistent claim on the Arctic island, on one occasion pointing to “economic security” as the reason. While the autonomous Danish territory has been quick to say it isn’t for sale, its vast and mostly untapped mineral resources are in great demand.
Jagged grey peaks suddenly appear before us, as the motorboat navigates choppy coastal waters and dramatic fjords at Greenland’s southern tip.”Those very high pointy mountains, it’s basically a gold belt,” gestures Eldur Olafsson, the chief executive of mining company Amaroq Minerals.
