Twitter shows interest in acquisition as TikTok plans to sue over ban



BY DUNCAN RILEY AUGUST 09 2020

Twitter Inc. is reportedly the latest company interested in acquiring Chinese-owned social video app TikTok, just as app owner ByteDance Ltd. claims it will sue the Trump administration this week over a ban.

The saga of TikTok, highly popular among young online users, is colorful to say the least. With its roots in China, where it’s known as Douyin, the app has arguably become the largest challenger to U.S. social media tech companies in years.

Its Chinese ownership has led to accusations that the app is being used to spy on behalf of the Chinese government. Bytedance denies spying on behalf of the Chinese government and has established a separate arm in the U.S. to placate critics but with little success in terms of stopping criticism.

President Donald Trump had been threatening to ban the app in the U.S. for weeks and finally followed through on Thursday with an executive order that would, for all intents and purposes, ban TikTok within 45 days if it does not find new owners.

The order doesn’t state that TikTok the app is banned; instead, the U.S. will prohibit “any transaction by any person” with ByteDance. As The Guardian noted, the broad language is open to interpretation: It could simply mean that U.S. advertisers would be banned from buying ads on the platform, but it also could mean that even downloading the app would be considered a transaction.

Microsoft Corp. was the first major U.S. company to show interest in acquiring TikTok from ByteDance last week. The exact status of those talks remains unknown other than they are yet to result in a deal. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has come out against a potential acquisition, saying that the acquisition would be a “poison[ed] chalice” and “no simple game” because Microsoft would have to contend with a whole new level of moderation.

Twitter, which owned a predecessor to TikTok called Vine that it acquired in 2012 for $30 million before closing the service in 2016, is said to have held preliminary talks with ByteDance over a possible acquisition. TechCrunch reported that there are serious questions as to whether a deal might be possible given that Twitter may not have the capacity or investor support to raise the money required.

Twitter itself has a market valuation of $29 billion, whereas the parts of TikTok currently on the table — operations in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand at the least — could have a valuation of between $15 billion and $50 billion. Microsoft, by comparison, has a market cap of $1.6 trillion, with $136.6 billion in cash on hand as of November, and would easily win any bidding war against Twitter should it come to that.

Whichever company ends up possibly buying TikTok — and other bidders may yet emerge — the clock is now ticking. The ban goes into effect Sept. 15 if TikTok remains Chinese-owned at the time.

Whether the ban stands is another matter. According to the South China Morning Post, TikTok intends to file a federal lawsuit as soon as Tuesday. The lawsuit will argue that the president’s action is unconstitutional because it failed to give the company a chance to respond and that the U.S. government’s national-security justification for the order is baseless.

The due process argument is one made before by Huawei Electronics Co. Ltd., another company banned by the Trump administration in a lawsuit that was struck down in February.

Image: TikTok

Reddit hacked and defaced with pro-Trump messages in English and Chinese

BY DUNCAN RILEY  AUGUST 09 2020

Reddit Inc. is the latest company to be hacked, with some 70 groups on the site defaced with pro-Donald Trump messages.

The hack occurred on Friday and involved those behind the attack accessing accounts belonging to moderators of popular subreddits with millions of subscribers, including r/space, r/food, r/Japan, r/nfl, r/cfb and r/podcasts.

The messages posted by the hackers were pro-Trump in both English and simplified Chinese text. The Chinese text in one case (pictured) asked whether former president Barack Obama was a Kenyan, a reference to so-called “birther” conspiracy theories, along with a shout-out to YouTuber David Pakman.

How the accounts were compromised is unknown, but Reddit said it was investigating the incident. On a support thread, Reddit did note that the moderators of the compromised subreddits had not been using two-factor authentication on their accounts. The same thread also added that users should look for signs of a compromise, including an email notification that their password or email address on their account had been changed.

Still, the lack of two-factor authentication doesn’t explain how those behind the hack obtained passwords for the targeted accounts to begin with.

“Most of these popular subreddits are actually ran by volunteers, which makes it tough for Reddit to enforce certain security requirements as it currently stands,” Zack Allen, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity company ZeroFOX Inc., told SiliconANGLE. “The accounts were probably compromised from a credential-stuffing attack (reused passwords from well-known breaches, like the ones from ShinyHunters and/or GnosticPlayers), phishing or a combination of both.”

Matthew Gardiner, principal security strategist at cloud cybersecurity firm Mimecast Ltd., noted that it’s becoming ever more clear that every participant in these social networks must also adopt the “zero-trust” model – that is, not assuming anything is true unless they can independently verify it.

“This Reddit hack and the recent Twitter hack were easy to discern as bogus, but what if the cybercriminals had been a bit more nefarious and a bit more believable?” Gardiner asked. “It is scary to think what actual damage they could do if they really tried.”

Image: Tim Pool/Twitter SCREENSAVE

Kodak Shares Drop After Loan Paused Amid Insider Trading Allegations

BUSINESSMimi Nguyen Ly Aug 11, 2020

Kodak World Headquarters stands in Rochester, New York on Jan 19, 2011. (Guy Solimano/Getty Images)

Eastman Kodak shares fell on Monday after a federal agency put its $765 million loan on hold last week.

“Recent allegations of wrongdoing raise serious concerns,” the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), an independent U.S. government agency that provides financing for private development projects, announced late Friday on Twitter. “We will not proceed any further unless these allegations are cleared.”

On July 28, we signed a Letter of Interest with Eastman Kodak. Recent allegations of wrongdoing raise serious concerns. We will not proceed any further unless these allegations are cleared.
— DFCgov (@DFCgov) August 7, 2020

The agency had signed a letter of interest with Eastman Kodak on July 28 to provide the company with a $765 million loan. President Donald Trump announced the deal on the same day.

The federal loan was intended to launch Kodak Pharmaceuticals to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients for generic drugs, to help reduce the United States’s reliance on other countries. The deal marked Trump’s 33rd use of the Defense Production Act.

Kodak shares skyrocketed more than 1,100 percent just two days after the deal’s July 28 announcement. It reached a high of $60 a share on July 29.

Kodak shares closed at $14.88 on Friday, and at $10.73 by Monday.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter on Aug. 3 asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an independent U.S. government agency that regulates the country’s securities industry, to investigate “potential incidents of insider trading” before July 28.

“There were several instances of unusual trading activity prior to the announcement of this deal, raising questions about whether one or more individuals may have engaged in insider trading or in the unauthorized disclosure of material, nonpublic information regarding the forthcoming loan awarded under the Defense Production Act,” Warren wrote in her letter (pdf).

The Wall Street Journal on July 29 reported that local media outlets in Rochester, New York, may have published some articles and Twitter posts about the deal before the official announcements by Trump and the DFC on July 28.

According to the WSJ report, Kodak reportedly sent a news advisory to news outlets ahead of the official announcement, and did not indicate that news of the $765 million loan deal was not intended to be released until later.


On Aug. 4, the outlet reported, citing anonymous sources, that the SEC was investigating the situation.

When asked on Aug. 4 to comment on reports that the SEC had opened an investigation into the Kodak deal, Trump said, “We’ll do a little study on that, and we’ll find out … If there is any problem, we’ll let you know about it very quickly, but I wasn’t involved in it.”

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Monday that the administration is “certainly aware of the Kodak allegations and take them seriously.” She noted that the DFC put the deal on hold as soon as the administration became aware of the allegations.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Kodak for comment.

Kodak announced on Aug. 7 that it has started an “internal review of recent activity by the company and related parties in connection with the announcement of a potential loan by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals.”

“The company does not intend to make further public comment on the committee’s work during the pendency of the review,” Kodak’s statement read.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro commented on the situation on Twitter, writing, “VERY disappointed last week’s great deal with Kodak tarnished by allegations. Absolutely RIGHT move by DFC! We must redouble efforts to bring our pharma manufacturing home!!”

VERY disappointed last week’s great deal with Kodak tarnished by allegations. Absolutely RIGHT move by DFC!
We must redouble efforts to bring our pharma manufacturing home!! #BuyAmerican https://t.co/2OfAjJFHKH
— Peter Navarro (@PeterNavarro45) August 7, 2020


From The Epoch Times

VOICE OF THE GALUN FONG GANG 

SUPPORTERS OF TRUMP

Google blames software update for Home speakers recording users


BY DUNCAN RILEY
UPDATED AUGUST 10 2020

The ongoing joke around smart home devices is that they are spying devices that people opt to put in their homes and offices. Various companies have always denied this, saying that the devices are only triggered using “wake words.”

As it turns out, that’s not always true.

Google LLC has admitted that its Google Home speakers were recording users even when they hadn’t said, “OK Google” to the device.

The issue came to light after a Reddit user recently wrote that he had received a notification from his Google Home device saying that it had detected a smoke detector going off, but the device should not have been listening in. Other users then chimed in to say that they had also received notifications for events such as glass breaking. The feature is meant to be available only to users who subscribe to the Nest home security service.

Google claims that the feature was “accidentally” turned on after to a software update.

“The issue was caused by a recent software update and only impacted a subset of Google Home, Google Home Mini, and Google Home Max speakers,” a Google spokesperson told Yahoo News U.K. “We have since rolled out a fix that will automatically disable sound detection on devices that are not part of Nest Aware.”

Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory chief information security officer at privileged access management firm Thycotic Software Ltd., told SiliconANGLE that this is a reminder that when you have a microphone nearby, it’s likely recording.

“The important message to any vendor with active smart microphones is that transparency and consent for the users when the device is recording is critical, especially at a time when many employees are working from home and sensitive business details might be leaking via nearby smart devices,” Carson said. “The good news is that Google reported the privacy incident and made an improvement to notify and alert the user when a recording have been made.”

Mohit Tiwari, co-founder and chief executive officer of data store and object security company Symmetry Systems Inc., took a more conciliatory tone, noting that “accidentally recording audio/video can stem from mundane errors, rather than malicious intent on Google’s behalf — they’ve probably too much more to lose from this kind of news than from eavesdropping. While it sounds dramatically bad, in most cases, the underlying cause is that integration-testing big software systems and putting production-time seatbelts on them is a very hard problem.”

More broadly, he added, there are several challenges to users’ privacy from smart-speaker systems. “Permissions on things like Android/iPhone are already very challenging — people just say yes to ‘do you want to give this wallpaper app access to SD card and internet?'” he said. “Things like accelerometer or air-pressure sensors can leak browsing history or location. And speakers add the additional layer that instead of a check-box, the input is a machine learning classifier which can err in unpredictable ways. So being able to precisely say ‘we will only listen to this dictionary of words and delete everything else’ is probably some ways away.”

Photo: BestAI Assistant/Flickr

Facebook investigation reveals QAnon groups have millions of members

BY JAMES FARRELL 
UPDATED AUGUST 10 2020

Facebook Inc. has found that the QAnon community on its platform could have as many as 3 million members, according to an investigation that was reviewed today by NBC News.

The top 10 of the groups contain about 1 million members, according to people who spoke with NBC on the condition of anonymity. That number is closer to 3 million when all groups and pages are included.

On top of that, the internal investigation found that 185 ads had been bought and published on the platform, ads that were found to be “praising, supporting or representing” QAnon. The ads generated in the region of $12,000 for Facebook and had about 4 million impressions over the last 30 days.

As for what’s to be done about the community that has been called a far-right conspiracy theory-touting alliance, Facebook employees that spoke with NBC said they might be dealt with in a similar style to how the company has dealt with anti-vaccination groups. That is, the social network could reduce the visibility of groups and pages and to exclude them from advertising.

The rise of QAnon has said to be in large part a result of Facebook and its groups feature, something that is a cause for concern for the authorities. Last year the FBI said QAnon contains “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” stating that there is potential not only to affect elections but also to harm people. The agency said it has found multiple cases of people referencing things such as “Pizzagate” and the “New World Order,” people who it believed could be dangerous.



Facebook has been active in removing certain groups. Last week, the company took down one QAnon group that contained about 200,000 members.

“Enforcing against QAnon on Facebook is not new: we consistently take action against accounts, Groups, and Pages tied to QAnon that break our rules,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Just last week, we removed a large Group with QAnon affiliations for violating our content policies and removed a network of accounts for violating our policies against coordinated inauthentic behavior. We have teams assessing our policies against QAnon and are currently exploring additional actions we can take.”

Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr

25-mile-deep reservoir of salty water found beneath surface of Ceres

By Nick Lavars August 10, 2020


A mosaic image using false color to highlight the exposed brine on the surface of Ceres
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/USRA/LPI

Through its 11-year stint studying the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, NASA’s Dawn mission has profoundly changed our understanding of the dwarf planet Ceres. New analysis of data collected during the latter stages of this mission has offered some compelling answers to long-standing questions about the makeup of Ceres, starting with presence of a 25-mile-deep reservoir of brine beneath the surface.

Over the past few years as data from the Dawn mission continued to roll in, scientists have been piecing together a puzzle of peculiar geological activity on Ceres. The nature of unusually bright spots that feature in its Occator Crater posed a mystery, with scientists working to understand how they are formed and what they might represent.

Evidence had suggested that these deposits are formed by salty liquid bubbling up to the surface to leave the highly reflective deposits on the crust, but where could such a liquid come from? While an underwater reservoir of brine was seen as a strong possibility, the discovery of new evidence has now led scientists to conclude not only that this is indeed the case, but that ongoing geological activity is keeping these salty surface features fresh and shining brightly.

The environment of Ceres’ surface is one where salts holding water would be expected to dehydrate in just a matter of centuries. But the team found salt compounds concentrated in one of the better-known bright spots, called Cerealia Facula, that were still carrying water, suggesting that they must have made their way to the surface only recently. According to principal investigator for the Dawn mission, Carola Raymond, the pathways for this process could be traced back to the crater impact millions of years ago.

"For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago," she explains."The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface."

A mosaic of the Occator Crater, on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/USRA/LPI

Adding further support to the idea of liquids on Ceres was the discovery of small hills resembling pingos here on Earth, which are small icy mountains found in the polar regions that are created by pressurized groundwater. These had been seen on Mars before but never on a dwarf planet.

The team also carried out new gravity measurements of Ceres using the latest data from Dawn, revealing that the brine reservoir is around 25 miles (40 km) deep, and hundreds of miles wide. These gravity measurements also offered new insights into the dwarf planet’s interior, finding that its crustal density increases with depth. This increase in density is much greater than could be explained by pressure alone, so the team believes that it is the result of the underground reservoir incorporating salt and mud into the lower crust as it freezes.

"Dawn accomplished far more than we hoped when it embarked on its extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition," says Mission Director Marc Rayman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "These exciting new discoveries from the end of its long and productive mission are a wonderful tribute to this remarkable interplanetary explorer."

Three papers describing the discoveries were published in the journals Nature Communications, Nature Geoscience and Nature Astronomy.

Source: NASA

Nick Lavars
Nick has been writing and editing at New Atlas for over six years, where he has covered everything from distant space probes to self-driving cars to oddball animal science. He previously spent time at The Conversation, Mashable and The Santiago Times, earning a Masters degree in communications from Melbourne’s RMIT University along the way.

Planetary science: Dawn’s close-up look at Ceres

Nature Astronomy

August 11, 2020

Observations from the second extended Dawn mission to Ceres are presented in a suite of seven papers published this week in Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications. The findings suggest that Ceres is an ocean world and may have been geologically active in the recent past, shedding further light on the history and formation of the dwarf planet.

The Dawn spacecraft orbited Ceres — a dwarf planet and the largest known asteroid-belt object — from 2015 to 2018, before it ran out of fuel. In its final phase, the Dawn spacecraft orbited just 35 km above the surface of Ceres. It focused on the 20-million-year-old Occator crater, which had been shown earlier in the mission to exhibit bright deposits from brines coming from the interior.

In a Nature Astronomy paper, Carol Raymond and colleagues analysed high-resolution gravity data and imaging from Dawn and found that there is an extensive brine reservoir deep beneath the Occator crater. They suggest that the reservoir could have been mobilized by the impact that created the crater, which contributed to the formation of bright salt deposits on the planet’s surface. In another paper, Maria Cristina De Sanctis and colleagues report the presence of hydrated chloride salts at the centre of Cerealia Facula, the biggest bright area in the center of Occator crater. As these salts dehydrate very quickly, the authors suggest that the brines may still be ascending, indicating that salty fluids could still exist in the interior of the dwarf planet. In separate papers, Ryan Park and colleagues explore the make-up of Ceres’s crust, while Andreas Nathues and colleagues suggest that Ceres underwent a period of cryovolcanic activity starting around nine million years ago, and persisted until very recently.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, Britney Schmidt and colleagues show that the mounds and hills in the Occator crater may have formed when impact-induced water flows froze. This suggests that cryo-hydrologic processes extend beyond Earth and Mars, and were active on Ceres in the geologically recent past.

In two separate papers published in Nature Communications, Paul Schenk and colleagues suggest that water- and salt-rich mud-like impact melts are distinct from, and less expansive than, those on Mars, and Jennifer Scully and colleagues show that the various bright deposits in the Occator crater may have had different sources.

Upon publication, the papers, together with accompanying comments, will be collated at the following URL: https://www.nature.com/natastron/collections/dawnxm2

doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1168-2

Highly efficient process makes seawater drinkable in 30 minutes

By Michael Irving August 10, 2020



A scanning electron microscope image of metal-organic frameworks
CSIRO

THIS IS THE NEWEST TECHNOLOGY ARISING OUT OF NANOTECH

Access to clean, safe drinking water is a necessity that’s worryingly not being met in many parts of the world. A new study has used a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF) to filter pollutants out of seawater, generating large amounts of fresh water per day while using much less energy than other methods.

MOFs are extremely porous materials with high surface areas – theoretically, if one teaspoon of the stuff was unpacked it could cover a football field. That much surface area makes it great for grabbing hold of molecules and particles.

BETTER THAN BRITA

In this case, the team developed a new type of MOF dubbed PSP-MIL-53, and put it to work trapping salt and impurities in brackish water and seawater. When the material is placed in the water, it selectively pulls ions out of the liquid and holds them on its surface. Within 30 minutes, the MOF was able to reduce the total dissolved solids (TDS) in the water from 2,233 parts per million (ppm) to under 500 ppm. That’s well below the threshold of 600 ppm that the World Health Organization recommends for safe drinking water.

Using this technique, the material was able to produce as much as 139.5 L (36.9 gal) of fresh water per kg of MOF per day. And once the MOF is “full” of particles, it can be quickly and easily cleaned for reuse. To do so, it’s placed in sunlight, which causes it to release the captured salts in as little as four minutes.

While there’s no shortage of desalination systems in use or development, the team says that this new MOF is faster-acting than other techniques, and requires much less energy throughout the cycle.

“Thermal desalination processes by evaporation are energy-intensive, and other technologies, such as reverse osmosis, has a number of drawbacks, including high energy consumption and chemical usage in membrane cleaning and dechlorination,” says Huanting Wang, lead author of the study. "Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable source of energy on Earth. Our development of a new adsorbent-based desalination process through the use of sunlight for regeneration provides an energy-efficient and environmentally-sustainable solution for desalination."

The research was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Source: Monash University via Eurekalert

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GIG ECONOMY

Uber and Lyft ordered by judge to classify drivers in California as employees

BY DUNCAN RILEY

A judge in California ruled today that Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. must classify their California-based drivers as employees to comply with state law.

California Assembly Bill 5, signed into law Sept. 18 and in effect since January, forces companies to classify gig-economy and freelance contractors as employees if they work more thanr a certain number of hours. Supporters say the law protects worker rights such as minimum wage, unemployment insurance, paid family leave, workers’ compensation and paid sick leave.

The ruling by Judge Ethan Schulman of the San Francisco Superior Court came after the city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, along with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, filed a lawsuit against both Uber and Lyft, arguing that both companies were violating AB 5 by misclassifying drivers.

Schulman found that Uber’s and Lyft’s refusal to convert their drivers to employees was a “prolonged and brazen refusal to copy with California law” and that “defendants may not evade legislative mandates merely because their businesses are so large that they affect the lives of many thousands of people.”

As Protocol noted, the judgment will not go into effect for 10 days, giving both companies a window to appeal the ruling — which both will do.

“Drivers do not want to be employees, full stop. We’ll immediately appeal this ruling and continue to fight for their independence,” Uber said in a statement. “Ultimately, we believe this issue will be decided by California voters and that they will side with drivers.”

The latter refers to a push by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash for Proposition 22, a ballot measure that asks voters to exempt them from the law. A yes vote on the proposition would define “app-based transportation (rideshare) and delivery drivers as independent contractors and adopt labor and wage policies specific to app-based drivers and companies.”

Although Uber is arguing for its drivers to remain independent contractors, Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said in an op-ed in The New York Times that gig workers deserve better and that there should be a “third way” to classify those working in the gig economy.

Khosrowshahi suggested that companies that rely on gig workers should be required by law to create benefit funds that can be used by workers for anything from health insurance to paid time off. Referring specifically to the California lawsuit, Khosrowshahi claimed that the classification of workers as contractors versus employees was a “false choice.”

“Our current system is binary, meaning that each time a company provides additional benefits to independent workers, the less independent they become,” Khosrowshahi said. “That creates more uncertainty and risk for the company, which is a main reason why we need new laws and can’t act entirely on our own.”

Photo: Stock Catalog/Flickr

Eye candy: More than 50,000 pink flamingos mass in France

by Elaine Ganley

In this Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 photo provided by Salins de Camargue, flamingo experts surround babies pink flamingos in Aigues-Mortes, the Camargue region, southern France, to gather and put bands on baby birds so scientists can track their migration. The numbers of pink flamingos may be the highest since experts began keeping records 45 years ago, said Thierry Marmol, guardian of the lands. France's two months of strict confinement may well be the reason. (Fabrice Pavanello, Salins de Camargue via AP)

Behold a treat for the eyes! Tens of thousands of pink flamingos have amassed in the wetlands of southern France along with their offspring still lacking flamboyant plumage.


The long-legged birds resembling ballerinas in tutus have long drawn tourists to the marshes in the Camargue region that has served as France's salt mine since Roman times. But the numbers of pink flamingos this year may be the highest since experts began keeping records 45 years ago, said Thierry Marmol, the guardian of the vast ecosystem.

France's two months of strict confinement to contain the coronavirus may well be the reason.

Experts relying on aerial photos estimated that 25,000 flamingo couples, or 50,000 adult birds, settled in the area this year, Marmol said. About 12,000 babies were counted. "That's historic," he said, stressing that little ones are hard to count.

"Maybe the confinement helped to make a good year," Marmol said. "It's obvious that with confinement there were no disturbances. There were no airplanes, no noise at all."

It's still too soon to confirm that the anti-virus lockdown was a factor in what he said is "one of the best four years of all time" for pink flamingos in the Salins.

Marmol has watched over 8,000 hectares (19,700 acres) around the commune of Aigues-Mortes for the past 35 years, living on the land "like a trapper in America."

In this Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 photo provided by Salins de Camargue, a flamingo expert walks in the water, in Aigues-Mortes, the Camargue region, southern France, to gather and put bands on baby birds so scientists can track their migration. The numbers of pink flamingos may be the highest since experts began keeping records 45 years ago, said Thierry Marmol, guardian of the lands. France's two months of strict confinement may well be the reason. (Fabrice Pavanello, Salins de Camargue via AP)

He is a keen observer of the birds, fauna and flora that draw ornithologists and other experts for field work. This year's bumper crop of pink flamingos is a treat even for him.

The Salins, with its especially salty water, also supplies France with tons of salt. Aigues-Mortes is about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from Arles, the closest large town.

Flamingo experts spent some three hours Wednesday fitting 320 baby birds with two bands - one plastic, one metal - so scientists can track their migration.

When autumn arrives, many will be migrating to warmer weather in Spain, Italy, Turkey or North Africa. The bands are "like a license plate," Marmol said. The plastic band allows ornithologists to spot them with binoculars or a telescope. The information is relayed to scientists tracking the birds in centers around the world. Each country uses a designated color for the bands.

In this Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 photo provided by Salins de Camargue, flamingo experts walk in the waters, in Aigues-Mortes, the Camargue region, southern France, to gather and put bands on baby birds so scientists can track their migration. The numbers of pink flamingos may be the highest since experts began keeping records 45 years ago, said Thierry Marmol, guardian of the lands. France's two months of strict confinement may well be the reason. (Fabrice Pavanello, Salins de Camargue via AP)

In this Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020 photo provided by Salins de Camargue, flamingo experts walk in the water, in Aigues-Mortes, the Camargue region, southern France, to gather and put bands on baby birds so scientists can track their migration. The numbers of pink flamingos may be the highest since experts began keeping records 45 years ago, said Thierry Marmol, guardian of the lands. France's two months of strict confinement may well be the reason. (Fabrice Pavanello, Salins de Camargue via AP)

Luckily for pink flamingo aficionados, about half will choose to stay behind. Who knows why?

Babies must wait for their plumes to grow. Adults and others ready to take off may decide the coming winter won't be cold so "they take their chance and stay," Marmol said.

He recalled France's very cold winter of 2003, when thousands of pink flamingos were found dead.

"They made a bad choice that year," Marmol said.

Explore further Pinker flamingos more aggressive

© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Personal connections key to climate adaptation

by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

The study found people are more empowered to respond to the devastating impacts of climate change when they see others doing the same. Credit: Dean Miller.

Connections with friends and family are key to helping communities adapt to the devastating impact of climate change on their homes and livelihoods, a new study shows.


The research found people are more empowered to respond when they see others doing the same.

Scientists analysed how an island community in Papua New Guinea of around 700 people coped with the impact of encroaching sea-levels and dwindling fish stocks. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined the actions households took to deal with these impacts.

Lead author Dr. Michele Barnes, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE), said: "We found their actions were related to their social networks, the ways they are connected to other people within the community."

"To cope with the impacts of climate change, existing practices or behaviours can be tweaked—this is adaptation. However, in some cases this won't be enough, and people need to enact more fundamental changes—transformation."

"In our case, adaptation included things like building sea walls to protect existing land use," said co-author Dr. Jacqueline Lau, from Coral CoE and WorldFish. "And transformation involved developing alternative food and income sources away from fish and fishing-related activities."

Essentially both sets of actions are necessary to combat the impacts of climate change. Dr. Barnes says influence within social networks is what encouraged this: the households more socially connected to others taking action were more likely to do the same.

"It may be a situation of 'like-attracts-like' where households with particular mindsets are more socially connected to similar households," Dr. Barnes said. "Another explanation is that households were influencing each other's actions. It's likely a combination of the two," she said.

The authors also found household connections with the marine environment played an important role in determining the responses to climate impacts.

"Climate change and other human impacts rapidly degrade coral reef ecosystems and alter the composition of reef fish communities," said co-author Professor Nick Graham, of Lancaster University in the UK.

"The adaptation of coastal communities is becoming essential. Our research highlights that interacting with and learning from the marine environment is one mechanism through which this adaptation can be achieved," he said.

Dr. Barnes says the policies and programs seeking to reduce vulnerability to climate change often focus on building up material assets or creating infrastructure.

"Our research emphasises a broader set of factors can play an important part in the actions communities end up taking," she said.


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Impact of climate change on tropical fisheries would create ripples across the world

More information: Michele L. Barnes et al, Social determinants of adaptive and transformative responses to climate change, Nature Climate Change (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-0871-4

Journal information: Nature Climate Change

Provided by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies