FBI Urges Universities To Monitor Some Chinese Students And Scholars In The U.S. : NPR
The story of South Africa’s ‘prosciutt…
It’s winter in South Africa – biltong season.
Give any meat-loving South African a chance and they’ll you about their favourite kind, their first biltong memories and the way they’ve hooked their foreign friends on it. We can get lyrical. And so we should.
One biltong-loving WEG! reader, Buks Barnard, describes beef biltong as “a gift of the gods and a way to world peace”. He’s not wrong. Biltong is synonymous with being South African.
South African children are weaned on biltong; a dry piece makes for a tasty teething stick. Biltong is smuggled across many international borders to SA expats longing for a taste of home. It’s a meaningful “gift” to the local traffic department staff when you’re trying to pass your driver’s licence. It’s the go-to gift for Father’s Day and I’ve yet to hear a dad complain. It’s also big money. According to the South African Institute, Food & Trees for Africa, the biltong trade is worth R2.5-billion.
Wyoming Man Unlawfully Takes 500 Pounds of Antlers for Dog Chew Company
Joshua Anders Rae, formerly of Jackson, Wyoming, recently pleaded guilty to possessing and transporting over 104 pounds of illegally obtained elk antlers, according to a press release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Rae, the owner of Great American Antler Co., has made a career out of selling cut-up pieces of elk antlers for dogs to chew on. But a joint investigation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and Wyoming Game and Fish Department revealed he'd been entering the National Elk Refuge and the Bridger-Teton National Forest during the elk overwinertering season. ADVERTISING
Trade war vulnerability – Reuters
Rising tensions between the United States and China have sparked concerns that Beijing could use its dominant position as a supplier of rare earths for leverage in the trade war between the two global economic powers. China supplied 80% of the rare earths imported by the United States from 2014 to 2017. China is home to at least 85% of the world’s capacity to process rare earth ores into material manufacturers can use, according to research firm Adamas Intelligence.
I am not convinced that higher prices would have all that much impact on electronics, mainly because rare earths cost is a relatively small part of the total cost, and their would be substitution of rare earths for other designs. Capitalism is very efficient when it comes to things like that.