natatravel/iStock via Getty Images Welcome to the Vanadium miners news. May saw China spot vanadium pentoxide prices lower and ferrovanadium prices slightly lower for the past month. Very low vanadium prices are hurting the vanadium producers, with several reporting net losses in recent periods. Vanadium uses Vanadium is traditionally used to harden steel. Chinese rebar standards are requiring mor...
natatravel/iStock via Getty Images Welcome to the Vanadium miners news. May saw China spot vanadium pentoxide prices lower and ferrovanadium prices slightly lower for the past month. Very low vanadium prices are hurting the vanadium producers, with several reporting net losses in recent periods. Vanadium uses Vanadium is traditionally used to harden steel. Chinese rebar standards are requiring more vanadium. Moreover, vanadium redox flow batteries [VRFBs] are becoming increasingly popular, especially for commercial energy storage, most notably in China. Vanadium pentoxide [V₂O₅] is used in VRFBs, and ferrovanadium [FeV] is used in the steel industry. Vanadium spot price history China V₂O₅ prices were higher last month. The Shanghai Metal Market price on May 27 was US$10,344 /t (VAT excluded) (~USD 4.69/lb) , down from US$10,923/t (VAT excluded) last month. Europe & China Vanadium Pentoxide [V2O5] Flake 98% one year price chart - Europe price (not updated) = US$6.11/lb, China Price = US$4.81/lb ( source ) Vanadiumprice.com Asian Metal reports China ferro-vanadium (50% min) delivered price was down 2.04% for the past month. Europe and China Ferrovanadium [FeV] 80% one-year price chart: Europe price = US$28.56/kg, China price (not updated) = US$27.80/kg ( source ) Vanadiumprice.com Vanadium demand versus supply An April 2021 Wood Mackenzie report stated : Global energy storage deployment surged a remarkable 62% in 2020, with 5 GW/9 GWh of new capacity added. This brought the total energy storage market to more than 27 GWh. Furthermore, we expect the global (energy storage) market to grow 27-fold by 2030. Global VRFB forecast growth by region, 2022-2031 Guidehouse Insights Large-scale global deployments of VRFBs are becoming more common: chart sourced as of April 2025 ( source ) VandiumCorp Resource Inc. VRFB installations are rapidly appearing globally, notably in China ( source ) VandiumCorp Resource Inc. Vanadium (8.5x) & lithium (10x) demand is forecast to surge the...
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket dramatically exploded on the launch pad during a test on Thursday, in a setback for Jeff Bezos’ space venture as it seeks to narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Video posted by NASASpaceflight, a YouTube channel that live-streams launches from Florida, showed the New Glenn igniting on the pad before erupting into a massive fireball that billowed skyward, sending...
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket dramatically exploded on the launch pad during a test on Thursday, in a setback for Jeff Bezos’ space venture as it seeks to narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Video posted by NASASpaceflight, a YouTube channel that live-streams launches from Florida, showed the New Glenn igniting on the pad before erupting into a massive fireball that billowed skyward, sending a towering plume of flames and smoke into the air. Blue Origin said it had experienced an “anomaly”, a term commonly used by rocket companies to describe a launch failure or explosion. Advertisement “We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more,” the company said in a post on X. A hot-fire test is where a rocket engine is fired up while anchored to the ground. Advertisement In a separate X post, Bezos said it was “too early to know the root cause” of the incident.
China launched the sale of 6 billion yuan (US$886 million) of green sovereign bonds in Hong Kong late on Thursday night, the first such sale in the city, as Beijing continues to build its presence in offshore debt markets and seeks ways to fund climate action. The response was good, indicating international market confidence, said HSBC Holdings, a joint lead manager and joint bookrunner of the bon...
China launched the sale of 6 billion yuan (US$886 million) of green sovereign bonds in Hong Kong late on Thursday night, the first such sale in the city, as Beijing continues to build its presence in offshore debt markets and seeks ways to fund climate action. The response was good, indicating international market confidence, said HSBC Holdings, a joint lead manager and joint bookrunner of the bond issuance. The strong response came as central banks globally had been increasing the share of yuan in their reserve portfolios, it said. The Ministry of Finance is selling two tranches of the green bonds maturing in three and five years, with each being worth 3 billion yuan. The three-year debt had a coupon rate of 1.42 per cent, while the five-year one carried a yield of 1.56 per cent. The short-dated bond matures on June 4, 2029, and the longer one on June 4, 2031. Advertisement China has been expanding offshore green financing, aiming to issue offshore sovereign green bonds and tap global capital to invest in its green development. The capital raised from this bond will be used to fund or refinance green spending from China’s fiscal budget under its sovereign green bond framework. The ministry sold its first offshore yuan-denominated green sovereign bond in London in April last year, raising 6 billion yuan to fund activities including cutting greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity preservation and pollution control. Advertisement David Liao, co-chief executive for Asia and the Middle East at HSBC, said on Friday the latest issuance had received “a very positive response from international investors, reflecting the international market’s strong confidence in the growth potential of China’s economy”.
New Zealand will play their first World Cup game in 16 years with much of the planet watching what is surely the biggest event of the group stage. But little attention will be on whether New Zealand can record their first World Cup win with Iran their opposition on 15 June. As well as all the headlines and anticipation, the global spotlight adds an extra layer to the challenge for New Zealand coac...
New Zealand will play their first World Cup game in 16 years with much of the planet watching what is surely the biggest event of the group stage. But little attention will be on whether New Zealand can record their first World Cup win with Iran their opposition on 15 June. As well as all the headlines and anticipation, the global spotlight adds an extra layer to the challenge for New Zealand coach Darren Bazeley and his team. Ever since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, there has been uncertainty surrounding this World Cup fixture in Los Angeles. There were conflicting signals whether the Islamic Republic of Iran would allow the national football team to travel to the home of its attacker, and whether the US would welcome Team Melli. With kick-off now weeks away, it appears the game will go ahead as planned. Still, there is the possibility of protests by the large local Iranian population in “Tehrangeles”, many of whom fled the 1979 revolution, and acts of defiance by players. It’s more than a football story. New Zealand, who also face Egypt and Belgium in their group, are very much the supporting cast in this drama. It is an unusual situation for any team to be in but that has been the case for the past three months with Bazeley never quite sure who the opposition would be for New Zealand’s biggest game since 2010. “Right now we’re still continuing as though we’re playing Iran,” Bazeley said in March. “They’re the team that qualified and we got drawn against them. That’s still the fixture and until we get told otherwise, we’ll continue with that preparation. Obviously, if things change, then we’ll deal with that.” View image in fullscreen Iran football team ramps up preparations for the 2026 World Cup with a training session in Antalya. Photograph: Oner San/AFP/Getty Images Nothing has changed yet despite Iran’s request that the game be switched to a different country, leading to the prospect of New Zealand having to play in Mexico before heading t...
The United States is reportedly bringing a powerful new weapon to the Iran war : large artificial intelligence (AI) models tasked with automating every stage of the targeting process, from satellite imagery analysis to final strike selection. But how these systems operate remains strictly classified, with incidents such as the February bombing of a primary school that killed more than 200 children...
The United States is reportedly bringing a powerful new weapon to the Iran war : large artificial intelligence (AI) models tasked with automating every stage of the targeting process, from satellite imagery analysis to final strike selection. But how these systems operate remains strictly classified, with incidents such as the February bombing of a primary school that killed more than 200 children in southern Iran raising public concerns about AI’s potential role in committing war crimes Now China has taken a first step towards transparency. Advertisement Chinese aerospace researchers last month unveiled the Air Target Agent System, a powerful LLM agent collaboration AI tool designed to take satellite surveillance beyond image recognition – enabling it to analyse what it sees, draw conclusions and act on them autonomously In the future, we will further explore deployment and optimisation strategies in larger-scale, real application scenarios Wang Lei, Chinese Academy of Sciences The system combines large language models (LLMs) with AI agents capable of breaking down complex tasks, automatically selecting algorithms, coordinating workflows and recovering from failures without human intervention.