Via the Kansas City Star:
... new 3,000-foot hole bored into the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska potentially drills away at a troubling Chinese monopoly.
The drills pull up cylinders of rock in search of exotic minerals like neodymium, praseodymium and ytterbium.
Those so-called rare earths are critical ingredients of your car’s catalytic converter and your computer’s flat-screen display, of smartphones...
