The Morning Briefing: Rare earth materials

"The Morning Briefing" is SmartPlanet's daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we're reading about rare earth materials.

1.) Koreas mulling joint rare earths development cooperation. Stirred up by the ongoing scuffle among the four economic leaders U.S., European Union, Japan and China plus the persisting reality that alternative suppliers are hard to come by, the two Koreas are mulling a joint development cooperation to mine rare earth metals in the North.

2.) Malaysia court refuses to gag rare earth critics. Australian miner Lynas Corp. has failed to secure a court order preventing Malaysian activists from criticizing its plan for a rare earths plant.

3.) WTO acts over Chinese rare earth restrictions: Late and irrelevant as usual. The World Trade Organisation has just announced that it is finally going to do something about the Chinese restrictions on rare earths. No, no, not to actually do anything, don’t be so absurd, they’ve agreed to sit down and study and discuss the points being made, that’s all.

4.) Rare earth element prices -– a problem for high tech companies. The price spiral of the 17 rare earth elements has slowly been losing momentum. But prices remain high – a problem mainly for high-tech companies.

5.) CPSC sues to get 'Buckeyballs' rare earth magnet toys off U.S. market (Video).

Image credit: Matthew Juran

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com