However, there are only a handful of places in the world where rare earths are found in high enough concentrations to make extracting them commercially feasible.
China currently produces 97% of the world's rare earths, vital in the manufacture of mobile phones and other high-tech products.
From the 1960s until the 1980s, the Mountain Pass mine in California made the US the world leader in rare earth production, but it was later closed, largely due to competition with the elements imported from China.
China consumes some 65% of the world's rare earths, Reuters reported last year, compared to 25% a decade earlier.
The US wants to reduce its dependency on China, which produces more than 95% of the world's rare earth elements, and address local shortages.
China has maintained a rather tight grip over the world's rare earths market, thanks to a slew of export controls, quotas and government-erected barriers to entry.
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China had several competitive advantages over the U.S. First, it has some of the best concentrations of rare earths in the world, including the huge Bayan Obo mine in Inner Mongolia.
When the present decade began, the biggest rare earth mine in the world was operating in California.
The most common security hazards are "bandit" runners who jump on the course without registering - or racers who take shortcuts, and for the most part, mass violence at sporting events is exceptionally rare across the world.
With less than 150 breeding females in the world, Whitebred Shorthorns are on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's critical list.
Beijing is also obtaining colonial-style control of energy and other natural resources (including, notably some 98% of the world's exports of rare earth minerals that are indispensable for state-of-the-art manufacturing for a host of commercial and military purposes).
At the higher level, the company would be one of the world's leading rare earth producers.
On October 19, he'll join the World Orchestra for Peace for a rare performance in Jerusalem to promote unity in the Middle East.
But these numbers are challenged by the opponents of abortion, who argue that it is a rare phenomenon in the developing world, and that legalising it will make it more common.
Initial tests looking for "markers" on the surface of the bacterium showed it to be the O104 strain, which the World Health Organization said was rare, had been seen in humans before, but never in an outbreak.
One penultimate index of health, or lack thereof, is the IUCN Red List, which elucidates those many species that are vulnerable, rare and endangered throughout the world.
He has 17 warbirds--World War II fighters such as the Rare Bear, a Grumman F8F Bearcat that has set records as the world's fastest piston-driven plane, hitting 528 mph.
In the commodity world the momentum has been found in such areas as rare earth, precious metal, coals and uranium however the steel names have not performed as one would expect.
In the past year relations with Turkey, once a rare friend of Israel in the Muslim world, have gone from cool to icy.
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In July and August, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center took the rare step of warning people around the world about the impending threat of the "Code Red" worm -- named after the soft drink favored by the security team that first analyzed it.
They described their friendship as rare in the competitive world of show business, or perhaps anywhere.
Such munificence is rare in the music world, where business is unsteady for most travelling bands.
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"She makes you think, and that's a rare thing in the world of insta-pundits, wine or otherwise, " Steinberger says.
Ozbek was given free rein downstairs which is rare in the Birley world and the result is a singular vision of madcap originality.
The IPO offers these companies an increasingly rare opportunity to invest in one of the world's most promising sources of oil.
This conversation offers rare access to the world of selective college admissions as it takes you inside the office at both an Ivy League university and a flagship state university.
In sum, Bangladesh's government is far from perfect, but it deserves credit for attempting to pull off something all too rare in the Muslim world: a war of ideas against Islamists.
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