Q- Panama’s Supreme Court on Oct. 15 rejected for the second time a lawsuit challenging a 2023 moratorium on metallic mining, constraining the administration of President José Raúl Mulino’s legal avenues to reopen the Cobre Panamá mine. Economy and Finance Minister Felipe Chapman has stipulated that any agreement to reopen the mine must state clearly that Panama is the legal owner of the land and resources and has reallocated funds toward social spending in the revised 2026 budget. What options does the Mulino administration have left to legally reopen the mine after the court’s latest ruling? What are the risks of reigniting protests or political backlash if the mine is ultimately reopened? Could potential efforts to link mining revenue to social spending help shift public opinion? ...

As part of president Trump’s agreement with Chinese president Xi, China agreed to temporarily back off some of its restrictions on rare earth elements — these are the weird elements toward the bottom of the periodic table with special magnetic and optical properties that find their way into everything from MRIs to intercontinental missiles....

As China flexes its rare-earth muscle in trade talks, U.S. President Donald Trump has been waging an all-out effort to ramp up domestic critical mineral production and secure new partnerships abroad....

WASHINGTON/GYEONGJU, South Korea -- The summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping ended with a rewinding of some trade war measures and threats, pulling the world's two largest economies out of a game of geopolitical chicken....

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping used their first meeting since Trump returned to office to agree to a temporary truce on their trade tensions, stopping short of a full agreement but dialing back some of their harshest mutual countermeasures. It leaves the U.S.-China trade relationship only slightly worse than it was one year ago but less contentious than it could be....

The US trade deal with China seeks to resolve a major sticking point of their ongoing trade war: rare-earth minerals....

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Critical minerals — especially the rare earth variety — have been crucial to trade talks since US President Donald Trump returned to office this year. The US has inked mineral deals with countries across the globe. Bolstering access to these minerals used in everything from smartphones to electric cars and military hardware is crucial as the US decouples from China, which has cornered the market on these raw resources. The World’s Host Marco Werman learned more from Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies....

The State Department has told Fox News Digital it is working to reduce the "national security" threat to the U.S. from China’s domination of the rare earth minerals market, with new signs that Africa can assist Washington in breaking Beijing’s stranglehold on this vital sector. ...

Earlier this month, China announced tightened export restrictions on rare earth minerals, including a complete prohibition on all exports for defense applications, potentially leaving the US defense industry without a key input across a range of weapons systems....

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical-minerals deal at the White House on Monday as the U.S. eyes the continent’s rich rare-earth resources at a time when China is imposing tougher rules on exporting its own critical minerals abroad....