In the heartland of the tequila industry, in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco, a worsening shortage of agave caused by mounting demand for the liquor from New York to Tokyo has many producers worried.

Challenge: The operations vice president of an oil and pipeline construction company recently admitted there was a time when he wondered if his company’s cargo insurance policy was worth it. The company sources goods from around the world, moves cargo by multiple modes and runs a supply chain through some of the world’s most high-risk countries. Thanks to meticulous packing and some good luck, they'd had very few supply chain incidents over 11 years. Until that summer, a few years back. That June, a truckload of welding equipment heading to Moscow caught fire. The $809,000 shipment was a total loss. One month later, a cargo ship carrying two of the company's containers, worth $150,000, caught fire. Those containers were also total losses.

Public criticism of the German auto industry has escalated after a report that an industry-sponsored entity commissioned a study of the effects of diesel exhaust using monkeys, and that another study exposed humans to low levels of one type of air pollutant.

Discussions to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement moved from stalemate to actual negotiation during the sixth round of talks that concluded on Monday, but a deal was still far from guaranteed as Mexico, Canada and the United States continue to squabble over how to reshape the 24-year-old pact.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said his nation is aiming to break into the Top 10 of global defense exporters and is creating a A$3.8bn ($3.1bn) fund to help boost shipments.

More than three decades after Honda Motor Co. first built an Accord sedan at its Marysville, Ohio, factory in 1982, humans are still an integral part of the assembly process — and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.