Hybrid Rice.
Da Vinci’s code.
“The first email I read, every morning, is News Items.” — Rick Cordella, President, NBC Sports.
1. Chinese researchers have developed a form of hybrid rice that can replicate itself through seeds that are clones, preserving high-yield traits generation after generation, according to the development team. The scientists say their breakthrough could transform global agriculture by dismantling the biggest barrier to hybrid rice production: the need for farmers to buy expensive new hybrid seeds every season. As hundreds of millions of people around the world face acute food insecurity, hybrid rice has promised dramatically higher yields: nearly four times more in parts of Africa compared to traditional varieties. If all rice farmers could plant the new hybrid variant, the world’s rice production could double, according to some industry estimates. (Source: scmp.com)
2. President Trump yesterday announced he was withdrawing the United States from the bedrock international agreement that forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change. The treaty, which has been in place for 34 years, counts all of the other nations of the world as members. In a social media post, the White House announced that Mr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum that pulled the United States from the climate pact and 65 other international organizations and treaties that “no longer serve American interests.” About half of those are United Nations organizations. (Source: nytimes.com)
3. The race for artificial intelligence and surging defense spending are set to intensify a projected shortage of copper as producers struggle to expand, according to a new study by S&P Global. Demand growth is accelerating just as mine supply faces structural limits, raising the risk that copper becomes a bottleneck for economic growth and technological expansion, S&P Global wrote Thursday in a report backed by the mining industry. Copper has soared to record highs above $13,000 a metric ton in London, driven by a slew of mine outages and traders’ moves to stockpile the metal in the US ahead of possible Trump administration tariffs. While the flow of copper into US warehouses has sent prices beyond levels implied by underlying consumption, new areas of demand signal an even tighter market in the longer term. (Sources: bloomberg.com, spglobal.com)
4. Mr. Trump is set to ask US lawmakers for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, an increase of more than 50 per cent on the current year’s record budget of $901 billion. The dramatic increase would enable the US to build a “dream military” and would be paid for by tariffs, the president said on Wednesday in a post on social media. “I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,” Trump wrote. “Because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring,” he added, “we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number”. (Source: ft.com)
