A record 177.1 million tons of soybeans are expected to be collected in the harvest that starts early in 2026, Brazil’s crop agency Conab said Thursday — a minor cut from previous estimates and still a 3.3% boost from last year. That raises the possibility of an escalating oversupply problem that pushes global prices lower.

“We’re growing at a scale that’s greater than demand,” said Thiago Facco, vice president of producers’ group Aprosoja Tocantins. He said that while output this year will fit the market’s needs well, “in a very near future we will have excess production.”

The situation threatens to intensify pressure across a market already rattled by fragile geopolitics. Trump is pressing Beijing to purchase more soybeans, even as China has spent years shifting purchases toward South America. If Brazil floods the market with even cheaper supplies, U.S. farmers could face sharper competition.

One way or another, U.S. debt will stop expanding unsustainably, but the most likely outcome is also among the most painful, according to Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard professor and former member of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Publicly held debt is already at 99% of GDP and is on track to hit 107% by 2029, breaking the record set after the end of World War II. Debt service alone is more than $11 billion a week, or 15% of federal spending in the current fiscal year.

In a Project Syndicate op-ed last week, Frankel went down the list of possible debt solutions: faster economic growth, lower interest rates, default, inflation, financial repression, and fiscal austerity.

High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide intensify climate change, but high carbon dioxide levels can also stimulate plant growth. Plant growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, partially mitigating the effects of climate change. However, plants only grow faster in the presence of high levels of carbon dioxide if they can also acquire enough nitrogen from the atmosphere to do so.

The actual amount of nitrogen acquired from the atmosphere was reassessed in a previous study co-led by Columbia faculty that was published this summer; it was shown to be significantly lower than previously estimated.

The climate implications of the overestimation of nitrogen fixation are the focus of a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This new study found that, in Earth system models, the amount of natural nitrogen fixation directly correlates to future plant growth. Therefore, the lower amount of natural nitrogen fixation than previously thought means that Earth system models have been overestimating future plant growth.

Oil major Exxon announced plans in 2022 to build the plant at its refining and chemical complex in Baytown, Texas, with a goal of producing 1 billion cubic feet per day of so-called blue hydrogen, a clean fuel that produces water when burned.
Potential customers have stayed on the sidelines due to the higher cost of using hydrogen, Woods said, adding that an industrial slowdown and economic uncertainty in Europe have further crimped demand.

“You can get shiploads of anywhere from 60 to 80,000 tons through the Panama Canal,” he says. “It would take 150 to 200 ship loads, depending on how large the vessel is that goes through the Panama Canal to hit 12 million tons.”

Recently released data from the USDA shows only two new export sales since last month’s meeting in South Korea. As of Tuesday, China has purchased just over a million tons of U.S. soybeans in the current marketing year.

In a working paper published on Thursday, San Francisco Fed researchers Régis Barnichon and Aayush Singh said higher tariffs lead to reduced economic activity, higher unemployment and lower inflation in the short term.

“The inflation response goes against the predictions of standard models, whereby CPI inflation should go up in response to higher tariffs,” they wrote. “Instead, tariff shocks appear to act as aggregate demand shocks—moving inflation and unemployment in the same directions.”

One possible explanation is that tariffs create uncertainty that hits consumers’ and investors’ confidence, depressing economic activity and putting downward pressure on inflation, according to the study.

Alternatively, tariffs could trigger a drop in asset prices that also weigh on demand, resulting in higher unemployment and lower inflation.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has moved to restrict the use of fluoride supplements for children, marking the latest intervention by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s department concerning a common dental care chemical.

The agency announced on Friday that these products, designed to strengthen children's teeth, are no longer advised for those under three years old, nor for older children who do not face significant risks of tooth decay.

Previously, these supplements were routinely prescribed for infants as young as six months. This decision falls short of earlier FDA indications in May, which suggested regulators might seek to remove the products entirely from the market.

Instead, the FDA has issued warnings to four companies, cautioning them against marketing their products beyond the newly established guidelines.

Black vultures used to mainly live in the southeastern U.S. and farther south in Latin and South America, but over the past century they've started to rapidly stretch northward and also west into the desert Southwest, said Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies bird migration.

Warmer winters on average, fueled by climate change, are making it easier for the birds to stay in places that used to be too cold for them. What's more, the human footprint in suburban and rural areas is enriching their habitat: development means cars, and cars mean roadkill. Cattle farms can also offer a buffet of vulnerable animals for vultures that learn the seasonal calving schedule.

Filed in California, the complaint accuses Toyota, its dealerships, and its credit division of knowingly promoting and selling vehicles that depended on a fragile and inadequate hydrogen ecosystem. Plaintiffs say the company also hid reliability concerns, including fuel leaks, failed refuelling, and acceleration issues, that made the Mirai unsafe and unsuitable for everyday use. The lawsuit also alleges that Toyota continued to market and sell the Mirai despite the knowledge that owners and drivers of these cars were finding it extremely difficult to find working refuelling stations. This lack of infrastructure, claim the plaintiffs, has turned what was promised as a practical zero-emission car into a vehicle that could not be reliably used.

The US Senate rejected an effort on Wednesday to halt a contentious US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) plan to kill nearly half a million barred owls in order to save their cousin, the northern spotted owl.

John Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana, had hoped to block the proposal by bringing the matter to a vote with a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act. The effort failed with 25 votes to 72 votes.