Huge day for President Donald Trump.  First, he  met in the White House with Saudi Arabia Crown  Prince Mohammed bin Salman  ( MBS ), a man who soon will be king.  His father, King Salman, is 86 years old and frail. They were exceedingly friendly to each other.   The last time they met in DC was in 2017 in Trump's first term. The 2018  Jamal Khashoggi matter  came up, and Trump brushed that off in the same manner that he lies about in his own affairs. On the Gaza strip issue, MBS steered closer to joining the  Abraham Accords  and indicated support for Palestinian statehood. Saudi Arabia will invest $1 trillion in the U.S . Trump agreed to sell F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia. These fighters cost around $100 million each, and 48 will  be sold. The total investment will approach $4 billion when you add parts, services, etc. The deal will be similar to what Israel got. Looked like an ambush, but... Vanessa Balintec and Zoe Law A report...

I was  scanning back   to determine my nostalgic posting to focus on today, and saw:  WILL RARE EARTHS BECOME A PRODUCT OF THE BLUE REVOLUTION ?  I mentioned I had two previous experiences with this subject:   In the 1970's the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where I worked was trying to accomplish fusion using Neodymium YAG lasers.  YAG stands for Yttrium, Aluminum and Garnet, which is a silicate mineral mostly used as gemstones and abrasives.    Neodymium and Yttrium are rare earths. I then went on to work for the U.S. Senate and my first task in 1979 was to staff the effort of the  Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Act , whose chief sponsor was Senator Spark Matsunaga when the bill passed.  While deep ocean manganese nodules were then of particular attraction, turns out that among the wide variety of minerals found in these deposits, rare earths more recently have turned out to be the most important with  concentrations as hi...

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