Hanging Out With Humans Makes This Seed-Eating Bird Bad at Its Job

Humans can be a terrible influence on birds. Crows that live near us end up with high cholesterol, sparrows screech to be heard over oil pumps, and instead of migrating, some storks now just eat trash.

At times, our habits and behaviors are contagious enough to change whole ecosystems. According to a study published in Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday, members of a particular New Zealand bird species, weka, that spend time around humans become worse at a crucial task: seed dispersal.

The study suggests that human interaction with weka “could be changing the spatial structure of new plants to a noticeable extent,” said Kim McConkey, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia, who was not involved in the study.

Weka, ground-dwelling birds found in New Zealand, have long bills, big stomachs and gizzards full of grit. They have no problem swallowing seeds, even big ones — like those in the fruit that falls from New Zealand’s hinau and miro trees, which can be about a centimeter in diameter. In fact, weka are critical seed dispersers for large-seeded plants like these, bringing them into new areas by eating their fruits, moving around and then excreting the seeds. Being spread out in this way helps the plants to avoid pathogens, and allows them to grow without competing with each other for space, nutrients and sunlight.

Weka are also bold and curious, and eat many things besides fruits — including invertebrates, the eggs of other birds and human food, said Dr. Jo Carpenter, a postdoctoral researcher at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and the lead author of the new study. Many New Zealand picnickers have left their lunch unguarded for a moment only to have it snatched by a weka.

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The birds will even “steal a sock, or a teaspoon,” said Dr. Carpenter, who was a researcher at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, when the study was conducted. “They are real rascals.”

In the woods, weka roam around searching for food. But the ones that spend time in campsites and picnic areas tend to lurk, waiting for humans and the snacks they bring, Dr. Carpenter said. Last year, she began to wonder: Are the weka that hang out with people slacking off when it comes to seed dispersal?

ImageSome of the native New Zealand fruits that are part of the weka diet. From left, rimu, kahikatea, matai, pigeonwood, miro and tawa.
Some of the native New Zealand fruits that are part of the weka diet. From left, rimu, kahikatea, matai, pigeonwood, miro and tawa.CreditDave Kelly

To find out, she and her co-authors devised two related tests. First, they used GPS trackers to measure how far weka from a few different areas traveled over the course of two weeks. This involved capturing 46 of the birds, using noose traps baited with cheese. (Weka “are complete cheese fiends,” Dr. Carpenter said.) Some of these study subjects were campsite regulars while others lived in the forest, away from humans.

Next, the researchers wanted to find out how long it takes a seed to move through a weka’s gut. They did this by embedding hinau and miro seeds with passive integrated transponder, or PIT, tags — the same devices used for microchipping pets. She then added a scanner to the shelter where the birds’ food was kept. Each time a weka entered the shelter, the scanner would indicate whether a tagged seed was still in its gut.

Miro seeds were evacuated after an average of 38 hours, while it took five days for the weka to pass the hinau seeds. This is “amazingly long,” and an interesting finding in itself, said Dr. Doug Levy, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, who was not involved in the study. “Most fruit-eating birds have retention times measured in minutes.”

The researchers then combined their two data sets, and used them to run simulations modeling how far the birds might carry the seeds. In these simulations, weka living in the forest moved seeds an average of 50 to 350 meters. They occasionally brought them over two kilometers, far enough to achieve long-distance seed dispersal — “important for gene flow between different plant populations and colonizing new habitats,” Dr. Carpenter said.

The campsite-dwelling birds were less impressive. On average, they carried seeds only about half as far as their forest-roaming peers. “They’d still provide the most basic kind of function” — getting the seeds away from their parent plants, Dr. Carpenter said. But the long-distance effects would be reduced.

The findings serve as a kind of double-edged performance review, showing how good weka can be at seed dispersal while pointing out the ways in which humans are undercutting them. In a conservation landscape that sometimes excludes weka from sanctuaries because of their omnivorous habits, it’s an intriguing twist, Dr. Carpenter said.

“I think we’ve really underestimated weka,” she said. But “we’re impacting how effective they are.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/2ZwSrno

Humans Dominated Earth Earlier Than Previously Thought

Humans substantially altered the planet much earlier than previously thought, a worldwide collection of archaeological experts reported Thursday. By 3,000 years ago, the experts wrote in Science magazine, the planet had been “largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists.”

People farmed, burned forests and grazed their goats, sheep and cattle. By about 1,000 BCE, with Mayan civilization on the rise in Mesoamerica and the Zhou dynasty beginning in China, what the authors describe as intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today.”

The results vary for different farming practices and different regions, said Erle Ellis a geographer and environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a designer of the ArchaeoGLOBE project, as the research effort is called. But, he said, it is clear that the information pushes back the onset and spread of major human change to the global environment earlier than previously thought, sometimes by 1,000 years or more.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

“What we’re showing,” said Lucas Stephens, who helped design and administer the survey of 250 or so archaeologists on which the report is based, “is that there is a deep history of this, going back further than what earth scientists currently recognize.” Dr. Stephens, now at the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, organized the survey while he was at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The report seems to be a first. Archaeologists tend to be local or regional, devoted to particular sites and time periods. “There has never been a real effort to put together an empirical global land-use history,” Dr. Ellis said.

ImageThe Italian Alps. By 3,000 years ago, intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today,” archaeologists have concluded.
The Italian Alps. By 3,000 years ago, intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today,” archaeologists have concluded.CreditAndrea Kay
Image

Agriculture in the Valencia region of Spain.CreditLucas Stephens

Because information about the past informs predictions of global change in the future, in terms of climate and land use, hard evidence of past land use is invaluable, experts say. “It’s an important paper,” said John Williams, a paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the project.

He said it “establishes clearly” that the Anthropocene, the age of human dominance of the planet’s ecological and climate systems, did not begin just a few hundred years ago. “You can trace it back thousands of years,” he said.

The History Database of the Global Environment, developed by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and Utrecht University, and known as the HYDE data set, is a major resource for scientists who forecast global change. It has estimated that humans began altering the planet much more recently than the findings in the new report indicate.

But the person who has been developing the HYDE data set since its beginning, Kees Klein Goldewijk of Utrecht University, is also one of the authors of the new paper, and welcomes the new information. The reason, he said, is that the limitations of HYDE are well known. It is a model that projects estimates into the past, much the way climate change models predict future events.

Hard data on current and recent historical changes and how they relate to population are used to predict backward, so to speak, to project what a given population would have done to the planet in the past. Use of this method is well established, and given the resources at his disposal, Dr. Klein Goldewijk wrote in an email, collecting and incorporating “empirical data from archaeology, paleoecology, geography, etc., etc.,” has been impossible.

Image

Rice terraces in Bali, Indonesia. CreditAndrew Kay
Image

Hadrian’s Wall, begun in A.D. 122, in the United Kingdom.CreditLucas Stephens

That is a common problem, Dr. Ellis said. “We should be able to know the past much better than we know the future but really we don’t,” he said.

The new paper is an attempt to remedy the situation. It is far from definitive, Dr. Stephenson said. Rather, it is more of a first pass — a demonstration of what can be done. It is limited by the archaeologists who chose to respond to the survey and by what they study. But it mirrors other recent evidence, Dr. Williams said, suggesting that the HYDE estimates of when global change began do not reach back far enough.

The paper also represents a change for archaeology. Until now, Dr. Ellis said, “Archaeologists haven’t been able to present their data in a form useful to global change scientists.”

That is changing as archaeology itself changes, Dr. Williams said: “Archaeology is moving step by step into the big data world.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/30UF1Tm

Hanging Out With Humans Makes This Seed-Eating Bird Bad at Its Job

Humans can be a terrible influence on birds. Crows that live near us end up with high cholesterol, sparrows screech to be heard over oil pumps, and instead of migrating, some storks now just eat trash.

At times, our habits and behaviors are contagious enough to change whole ecosystems. According to a study published in Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday, members of a particular New Zealand bird species, weka, that spend time around humans become worse at a crucial task: seed dispersal.

The study suggests that human interaction with weka “could be changing the spatial structure of new plants to a noticeable extent,” said Kim McConkey, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia, who was not involved in the study.

Weka, ground-dwelling birds found in New Zealand, have long bills, big stomachs and gizzards full of grit. They have no problem swallowing seeds, even big ones — like those in the fruit that falls from New Zealand’s hinau and miro trees, which can be about a centimeter in diameter. In fact, weka are critical seed dispersers for large-seeded plants like these, bringing them into new areas by eating their fruits, moving around and then excreting the seeds. Being spread out in this way helps the plants to avoid pathogens, and allows them to grow without competing with each other for space, nutrients and sunlight.

Weka are also bold and curious, and eat many things besides fruits — including invertebrates, the eggs of other birds and human food, said Dr. Jo Carpenter, a postdoctoral researcher at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and the lead author of the new study. Many New Zealand picnickers have left their lunch unguarded for a moment only to have it snatched by a weka.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

The birds will even “steal a sock, or a teaspoon,” said Dr. Carpenter, who was a researcher at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, when the study was conducted. “They are real rascals.”

In the woods, weka roam around searching for food. But the ones that spend time in campsites and picnic areas tend to lurk, waiting for humans and the snacks they bring, Dr. Carpenter said. Last year, she began to wonder: Are the weka that hang out with people slacking off when it comes to seed dispersal?

ImageSome of the native New Zealand fruits that are part of the weka diet. From left, rimu, kahikatea, matai, pigeonwood, miro and tawa.
Some of the native New Zealand fruits that are part of the weka diet. From left, rimu, kahikatea, matai, pigeonwood, miro and tawa.CreditDave Kelly

To find out, she and her co-authors devised two related tests. First, they used GPS trackers to measure how far weka from a few different areas traveled over the course of two weeks. This involved capturing 46 of the birds, using noose traps baited with cheese. (Weka “are complete cheese fiends,” Dr. Carpenter said.) Some of these study subjects were campsite regulars while others lived in the forest, away from humans.

Next, the researchers wanted to find out how long it takes a seed to move through a weka’s gut. They did this by embedding hinau and miro seeds with passive integrated transponder, or PIT, tags — the same devices used for microchipping pets. She then added a scanner to the shelter where the birds’ food was kept. Each time a weka entered the shelter, the scanner would indicate whether a tagged seed was still in its gut.

Miro seeds were evacuated after an average of 38 hours, while it took five days for the weka to pass the hinau seeds. This is “amazingly long,” and an interesting finding in itself, said Dr. Doug Levy, a program officer at the National Science Foundation, who was not involved in the study. “Most fruit-eating birds have retention times measured in minutes.”

The researchers then combined their two data sets, and used them to run simulations modeling how far the birds might carry the seeds. In these simulations, weka living in the forest moved seeds an average of 50 to 350 meters. They occasionally brought them over two kilometers, far enough to achieve long-distance seed dispersal — “important for gene flow between different plant populations and colonizing new habitats,” Dr. Carpenter said.

The campsite-dwelling birds were less impressive. On average, they carried seeds only about half as far as their forest-roaming peers. “They’d still provide the most basic kind of function” — getting the seeds away from their parent plants, Dr. Carpenter said. But the long-distance effects would be reduced.

The findings serve as a kind of double-edged performance review, showing how good weka can be at seed dispersal while pointing out the ways in which humans are undercutting them. In a conservation landscape that sometimes excludes weka from sanctuaries because of their omnivorous habits, it’s an intriguing twist, Dr. Carpenter said.

“I think we’ve really underestimated weka,” she said. But “we’re impacting how effective they are.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/2ZwSrno

Humans Dominated Earth Earlier Than Previously Thought

Humans substantially altered the planet much earlier than previously thought, a worldwide collection of archaeological experts reported Thursday. By 3,000 years ago, the experts wrote in Science magazine, the planet had been “largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists.”

People farmed, burned forests and grazed their goats, sheep and cattle. By about 1,000 BCE, with Mayan civilization on the rise in Mesoamerica and the Zhou dynasty beginning in China, what the authors describe as intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today.”

The results vary for different farming practices and different regions, said Erle Ellis a geographer and environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a designer of the ArchaeoGLOBE project, as the research effort is called. But, he said, it is clear that the information pushes back the onset and spread of major human change to the global environment earlier than previously thought, sometimes by 1,000 years or more.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

“What we’re showing,” said Lucas Stephens, who helped design and administer the survey of 250 or so archaeologists on which the report is based, “is that there is a deep history of this, going back further than what earth scientists currently recognize.” Dr. Stephens, now at the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, organized the survey while he was at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The report seems to be a first. Archaeologists tend to be local or regional, devoted to particular sites and time periods. “There has never been a real effort to put together an empirical global land-use history,” Dr. Ellis said.

ImageThe Italian Alps. By 3,000 years ago, intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today,” archaeologists have concluded.
The Italian Alps. By 3,000 years ago, intensive agriculture, or continuous cultivation of the land, was “common in most regions where it is still practiced today,” archaeologists have concluded.CreditAndrea Kay
Image

Agriculture in the Valencia region of Spain.CreditLucas Stephens

Because information about the past informs predictions of global change in the future, in terms of climate and land use, hard evidence of past land use is invaluable, experts say. “It’s an important paper,” said John Williams, a paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the project.

He said it “establishes clearly” that the Anthropocene, the age of human dominance of the planet’s ecological and climate systems, did not begin just a few hundred years ago. “You can trace it back thousands of years,” he said.

The History Database of the Global Environment, developed by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and Utrecht University, and known as the HYDE data set, is a major resource for scientists who forecast global change. It has estimated that humans began altering the planet much more recently than the findings in the new report indicate.

But the person who has been developing the HYDE data set since its beginning, Kees Klein Goldewijk of Utrecht University, is also one of the authors of the new paper, and welcomes the new information. The reason, he said, is that the limitations of HYDE are well known. It is a model that projects estimates into the past, much the way climate change models predict future events.

Hard data on current and recent historical changes and how they relate to population are used to predict backward, so to speak, to project what a given population would have done to the planet in the past. Use of this method is well established, and given the resources at his disposal, Dr. Klein Goldewijk wrote in an email, collecting and incorporating “empirical data from archaeology, paleoecology, geography, etc., etc.,” has been impossible.

Image

Rice terraces in Bali, Indonesia. CreditAndrew Kay
Image

Hadrian’s Wall, begun in A.D. 122, in the United Kingdom.CreditLucas Stephens

That is a common problem, Dr. Ellis said. “We should be able to know the past much better than we know the future but really we don’t,” he said.

The new paper is an attempt to remedy the situation. It is far from definitive, Dr. Stephenson said. Rather, it is more of a first pass — a demonstration of what can be done. It is limited by the archaeologists who chose to respond to the survey and by what they study. But it mirrors other recent evidence, Dr. Williams said, suggesting that the HYDE estimates of when global change began do not reach back far enough.

The paper also represents a change for archaeology. Until now, Dr. Ellis said, “Archaeologists haven’t been able to present their data in a form useful to global change scientists.”

That is changing as archaeology itself changes, Dr. Williams said: “Archaeology is moving step by step into the big data world.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/30UF1Tm

She’s a World Famous Model. So Why Did an Australian Magazine Get Her Photo Wrong?

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Isabella Kwai, a reporter with the Australia bureau.

______

Adut Akech is a 19-year-old modeling superstar. She’s earned a coveted spot in a Chanel haute couture show, graced magazine covers, and was recently singled out in British Vogue by Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, as one of fifteen women who are forces for change.

But when she saw the Who magazine profile of her during a trip back home to Australia, she noticed something amiss: the accompanying photo was not of her, but of Flavia Lazarus, another black model.

“I felt angry, hurt and disrespected, all at once,” she said when she spoke to me over the phone from Melbourne this week, ahead of the city’s Fashion Week. Even worse, the photo ran next to an interview in which she reflected on racism and her experience of growing up as a Sudanese Australian.

It was like a slap in the face, she said. “How is it that you can’t tell it’s not me?”

On Instagram, she decided to speak up. “We know that this doesn’t happen with white models,” she wrote, adding: “Australia, you’ve a lot of work to do.”

Image
CreditAdut Akech — Instagram

Her post about the misprint has fed into an ongoing conversation about the racism people of color confront in fashion and entertainment where, although diversity is having a moment, white faces are still the norm.

Since she started her career with Chadwick Models three years ago, Adut has become more outspoken about discrimination generally, while becoming one of the industry’s most sought after models. It’s an issue she’s dealt with for years. She arrived in Australia as a child refugee after her family fled South Sudan for Kenya and grew up in Adelaide, where teachers at school called her “Mary” because they could not pronounce her name.

With Who magazine, she said, the photo must have been seen by several editors before it went to print, adding that in her career she had never seen white models being mistaken for one other. “This is an important conversation that needs to happen,” she said.

The magazine has apologized for the error, along with OPR, the public relations agency that sent photos containing of Adut and other models from Melbourne Fashion Week to Who.

But it is not the first example of prominent magazine outlets making mistakes with nonwhite subjects. In January this year, Vogue magazine apologized after Noor Tagouri, a Libyan American journalist, was misidentified as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari in its American issue. Actors from the film “Crazy Rich Asians” also pointed out some of their castmates were misidentified in a photo on People’s digital site.

In Australia, some conservative commentators have defended Who magazine, saying mistakes have occurred to white people too. But Adut is one of many others that say such incidents have been a constant refrain for nonwhite models — and they are no longer staying quiet about it.

While the fashion industry at large needs to improve, she said, Australia is behind in terms of recognizing diversity and the fact that the incident is happening in the place she considers home has saddened her. “It wouldn’t hurt me or surprise me as much if it happened elsewhere,” she told me.

“I don’t want this to ever happen with somebody else,” she said. “This needs to stop right here.”

Do you think Australia does enough to recognize diversity? Write to me at nytaustralia@nytimes.com.

Now on to stories this week from the region.

Australia and New Zealand

Image

Friday Prayer at the Linwood Islamic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week. It was one of two mosques at which a gunman killed dozens of people in March.CreditChristina Simons for The New York Times

Around the Times

Image

Terrain on the trail included arid moonscapes and sprawling, black-sand deserts, hemmed in by mountains.CreditBara Kristinsdottir for The New York Times

And Over to You …

Last week, we wrote about how the conflict in Hong Kong is playing out in Australia and asked you for your experiences.

“The Hong Kong protests are on almost all the time in our household. My family is from Hong Kong, having immigrated here about 20 years ago.

I can understand the pro-democracy slant; it would be baffling if I couldn’t appreciate the freedoms afforded to me as an Australian citizen. That said, I certainly cannot agree with the actions of a subset of the slingshot-wielding, lightpole-chopping, bamboo-pole wielding protesters.

I would summarize my opinion as “conflicted” because I try to understand the reasoning of opinions from both sides (not that I get people candidly explaining both sides to me). I am for a Hong Kong whereby the people can choose a majority government from their own crowd. However I try to ask myself to what extent is democracy worth it? Not to the extent of “give me liberty or give me death,” but what level of social upheaval is worth it? Again with the extremes, would I rather be a free peasant or a shackled elite?”

-Bryan Ho

Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.

For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group.

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/2UhiWfj

She’s a World Famous Model. So Why Did an Australian Magazine Get Her Photo Wrong?

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Isabella Kwai, a reporter with the Australia bureau.

______

Adut Akech is a 19-year-old modeling superstar. She’s earned a coveted spot in a Chanel haute couture show, graced magazine covers, and was recently singled out in British Vogue by Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, as one of fifteen women who are forces for change.

But when she saw the Who magazine profile of her during a trip back home to Australia, she noticed something amiss: the accompanying photo was not of her, but of Flavia Lazarus, another black model.

“I felt angry, hurt and disrespected, all at once,” she said when she spoke to me over the phone from Melbourne this week, ahead of the city’s Fashion Week. Even worse, the photo ran next to an interview in which she reflected on racism and her experience of growing up as a Sudanese Australian.

It was like a slap in the face, she said. “How is it that you can’t tell it’s not me?”

On Instagram, she decided to speak up. “We know that this doesn’t happen with white models,” she wrote, adding: “Australia, you’ve a lot of work to do.”

Image
CreditAdut Akech — Instagram

Her post about the misprint has fed into an ongoing conversation about the racism people of color confront in fashion and entertainment where, although diversity is having a moment, white faces are still the norm.

Since she started her career with Chadwick Models three years ago, Adut has become more outspoken about discrimination generally, while becoming one of the industry’s most sought after models. It’s an issue she’s dealt with for years. She arrived in Australia as a child refugee after her family fled South Sudan for Kenya and grew up in Adelaide, where teachers at school called her “Mary” because they could not pronounce her name.

With Who magazine, she said, the photo must have been seen by several editors before it went to print, adding that in her career she had never seen white models being mistaken for one other. “This is an important conversation that needs to happen,” she said.

The magazine has apologized for the error, along with OPR, the public relations agency that sent photos containing of Adut and other models from Melbourne Fashion Week to Who.

But it is not the first example of prominent magazine outlets making mistakes with nonwhite subjects. In January this year, Vogue magazine apologized after Noor Tagouri, a Libyan American journalist, was misidentified as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari in its American issue. Actors from the film “Crazy Rich Asians” also pointed out some of their castmates were misidentified in a photo on People’s digital site.

In Australia, some conservative commentators have defended Who magazine, saying mistakes have occurred to white people too. But Adut is one of many others that say such incidents have been a constant refrain for nonwhite models — and they are no longer staying quiet about it.

While the fashion industry at large needs to improve, she said, Australia is behind in terms of recognizing diversity and the fact that the incident is happening in the place she considers home has saddened her. “It wouldn’t hurt me or surprise me as much if it happened elsewhere,” she told me.

“I don’t want this to ever happen with somebody else,” she said. “This needs to stop right here.”

Do you think Australia does enough to recognize diversity? Write to me at nytaustralia@nytimes.com.

Now on to stories this week from the region.

Australia and New Zealand

Image

Friday Prayer at the Linwood Islamic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week. It was one of two mosques at which a gunman killed dozens of people in March.CreditChristina Simons for The New York Times

Around the Times

Image

Terrain on the trail included arid moonscapes and sprawling, black-sand deserts, hemmed in by mountains.CreditBara Kristinsdottir for The New York Times

And Over to You …

Last week, we wrote about how the conflict in Hong Kong is playing out in Australia and asked you for your experiences.

“The Hong Kong protests are on almost all the time in our household. My family is from Hong Kong, having immigrated here about 20 years ago.

I can understand the pro-democracy slant; it would be baffling if I couldn’t appreciate the freedoms afforded to me as an Australian citizen. That said, I certainly cannot agree with the actions of a subset of the slingshot-wielding, lightpole-chopping, bamboo-pole wielding protesters.

I would summarize my opinion as “conflicted” because I try to understand the reasoning of opinions from both sides (not that I get people candidly explaining both sides to me). I am for a Hong Kong whereby the people can choose a majority government from their own crowd. However I try to ask myself to what extent is democracy worth it? Not to the extent of “give me liberty or give me death,” but what level of social upheaval is worth it? Again with the extremes, would I rather be a free peasant or a shackled elite?”

-Bryan Ho

Enjoying the Australia Letter? Sign up here or forward to a friend.

For more Australia coverage and discussion, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group.

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/2UhiWfj

Unsure Where Hurricane Dorian Will Strike, All of Florida Gets Ready

MIAMI — As Hurricane Dorian plowed toward the Florida coast on Thursday, the predictions became more dire, the preparations more urgent, the disruptions more immediate.

By the time the storm makes landfall on Monday, forecasters warned, it could be an extremely powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 130 miles per hour, driving a deadly storm surge and causing catastrophic damage. Exactly where that would happen was still unclear, so Florida’s entire Atlantic coast was on alert Thursday, with residents from Miami to Jacksonville crowding sandbag-filling stations and rushing to grocery stores.

“It looks like Thanksgiving,” said Elizabeth Eradiri, who works at a Publix supermarket in Fort Pierce. “It didn’t look like this yesterday. They’re buying everything you can think of — but mostly water.”

If the forecast holds, Dorian would be the first hurricane of Category 4 or higher to make landfall on Florida’s east coast since 1992, when Andrew, a Category 5 storm, ripped through the Miami area. But with Dorian spinning and gathering energy about 300 miles northwest of Puerto Rico on Thursday evening, its likely route toward the Bahamas and then the United States mainland remained maddeningly difficult to pin down with any precision.

“It’s too early to make decisions about evacuations,” said Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville. “We may very well find ourselves, at some point in the next 24 or 48 hours, calling for evacuations — depending on what this storm does.”

Image
CreditSaul Martinez for The New York Times

Even so, Dorian’s impact was already being felt, as Floridians scrapped their Labor Day weekend plans and nervously checked the latest forecasts.

A football game between Florida State and Boise State, scheduled for Saturday evening in Jacksonville, was moved west to Tallahassee and rescheduled for earlier in the day. A Rolling Stones concert in the Miami area that was planned for Saturday night was moved up to Friday, the band announced. And President Trump, who had been planning to travel to Poland for a commemoration of the outbreak of World War II, said Thursday afternoon that he was canceling the trip.

“Our highest priority is the safety and security of the people in the path of the hurricane,” Mr. Trump said.

Forecasting Dorian has been a meteorological struggle for days now. Puerto Rico had been bracing for a direct hit on Wednesday, but the storm skirted the island’s eastern end. It instead hammered St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands, where some surprised residents scrambled to install storm shutters in time. Rain kept falling on Puerto Rico on Thursday, leading to some flooding.

Before the storm reached St. Thomas, the National Weather Service was predicting that it would eventually strengthen to Category 2 by the time it reached Florida. By Thursday morning, the agency was talking about Category 4, and a possible landfall as far up the coast as southeastern Georgia, though Florida still seemed likeliest.

“These storms, they’re just very sensitive to small changes,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

Image

A man in Naguabo, P.R., walked under light rain from Hurricane Dorian, as the storm brushed the island on Wednesday.CreditErika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

[What do storm categories mean? Here’s what you need to know.]

Some forecast models suggested a direct blow to Central Florida on Monday. Others foresaw the storm veering to the north or the south. At least one projection suggested that Dorian could stall just off the Florida coast, delaying landfall past Monday.

“It all depends on this dance of the pressure systems around the storm,” said Hugh Willoughby, a meteorologist at Florida International University in Miami. He said he expected “a major hurricane landfall somewhere between where I’m sitting and the Georgia border,” almost 400 miles to the north.

Because of the uncertainty about where the storm would hit, Gov. Ron DeSantis extended an emergency declaration to all 67 Florida counties, as preparations continued up and down the Atlantic coast. In Daytona Beach, city crews cleared storm drains and reduced the water levels in retention ponds to make more room for rain runoff. At Port Canaveral, boat captains were warned not to wait too long to enter sheltered waters. And in Brevard County, east of Orlando, jail inmates filled sandbags for residents.

Closings and cancellations were already being announced. The University of Central Florida, in Orlando, said it would close from Friday evening through at least Tuesday. At Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, a mandatory campus evacuation was set to take effect on Friday, with classes called off until further notice. Vero Beach officials announced that the city’s parks and beaches would soon close.

But even as officials urged action, they said it was too soon to panic.

“If you have very difficult-to-assemble shutters,” said Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez of Miami-Dade County, “maybe it’s time to start putting a couple of them up. Don’t put them all up yet.”

At an Exxon station in Melbourne, though, public concern was evident. All day, vehicles were lined up bumper to bumper waiting to fill up. The station sold more gasoline in four hours on Thursday than it had all day Tuesday, said Ashli Presnell, an employee who described the scene as “an absolute madhouse.”

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” Ms. Presnell said. “You would think the world is ending right now.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/343g2iO

Unsure Where Hurricane Dorian Will Strike, All of Florida Gets Ready

MIAMI — As Hurricane Dorian plowed toward the Florida coast on Thursday, the predictions became more dire, the preparations more urgent, the disruptions more immediate.

By the time the storm makes landfall on Monday, forecasters warned, it could be an extremely powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 130 miles per hour, driving a deadly storm surge and causing catastrophic damage. Exactly where that would happen was still unclear, so Florida’s entire Atlantic coast was on alert Thursday, with residents from Miami to Jacksonville crowding sandbag-filling stations and rushing to grocery stores.

“It looks like Thanksgiving,” said Elizabeth Eradiri, who works at a Publix supermarket in Fort Pierce. “It didn’t look like this yesterday. They’re buying everything you can think of — but mostly water.”

If the forecast holds, Dorian would be the first hurricane of Category 4 or higher to make landfall on Florida’s east coast since 1992, when Andrew, a Category 5 storm, ripped through the Miami area. But with Dorian spinning and gathering energy about 300 miles northwest of Puerto Rico on Thursday evening, its likely route toward the Bahamas and then the United States mainland remained maddeningly difficult to pin down with any precision.

“It’s too early to make decisions about evacuations,” said Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville. “We may very well find ourselves, at some point in the next 24 or 48 hours, calling for evacuations — depending on what this storm does.”

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CreditSaul Martinez for The New York Times

Even so, Dorian’s impact was already being felt, as Floridians scrapped their Labor Day weekend plans and nervously checked the latest forecasts.

A football game between Florida State and Boise State, scheduled for Saturday evening in Jacksonville, was moved west to Tallahassee and rescheduled for earlier in the day. A Rolling Stones concert in the Miami area that was planned for Saturday night was moved up to Friday, the band announced. And President Trump, who had been planning to travel to Poland for a commemoration of the outbreak of World War II, said Thursday afternoon that he was canceling the trip.

“Our highest priority is the safety and security of the people in the path of the hurricane,” Mr. Trump said.

Forecasting Dorian has been a meteorological struggle for days now. Puerto Rico had been bracing for a direct hit on Wednesday, but the storm skirted the island’s eastern end. It instead hammered St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands, where some surprised residents scrambled to install storm shutters in time. Rain kept falling on Puerto Rico on Thursday, leading to some flooding.

Before the storm reached St. Thomas, the National Weather Service was predicting that it would eventually strengthen to Category 2 by the time it reached Florida. By Thursday morning, the agency was talking about Category 4, and a possible landfall as far up the coast as southeastern Georgia, though Florida still seemed likeliest.

“These storms, they’re just very sensitive to small changes,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

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A man in Naguabo, P.R., walked under light rain from Hurricane Dorian, as the storm brushed the island on Wednesday.CreditErika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

[What do storm categories mean? Here’s what you need to know.]

Some forecast models suggested a direct blow to Central Florida on Monday. Others foresaw the storm veering to the north or the south. At least one projection suggested that Dorian could stall just off the Florida coast, delaying landfall past Monday.

“It all depends on this dance of the pressure systems around the storm,” said Hugh Willoughby, a meteorologist at Florida International University in Miami. He said he expected “a major hurricane landfall somewhere between where I’m sitting and the Georgia border,” almost 400 miles to the north.

Because of the uncertainty about where the storm would hit, Gov. Ron DeSantis extended an emergency declaration to all 67 Florida counties, as preparations continued up and down the Atlantic coast. In Daytona Beach, city crews cleared storm drains and reduced the water levels in retention ponds to make more room for rain runoff. At Port Canaveral, boat captains were warned not to wait too long to enter sheltered waters. And in Brevard County, east of Orlando, jail inmates filled sandbags for residents.

Closings and cancellations were already being announced. The University of Central Florida, in Orlando, said it would close from Friday evening through at least Tuesday. At Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, a mandatory campus evacuation was set to take effect on Friday, with classes called off until further notice. Vero Beach officials announced that the city’s parks and beaches would soon close.

But even as officials urged action, they said it was too soon to panic.

“If you have very difficult-to-assemble shutters,” said Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez of Miami-Dade County, “maybe it’s time to start putting a couple of them up. Don’t put them all up yet.”

At an Exxon station in Melbourne, though, public concern was evident. All day, vehicles were lined up bumper to bumper waiting to fill up. The station sold more gasoline in four hours on Thursday than it had all day Tuesday, said Ashli Presnell, an employee who described the scene as “an absolute madhouse.”

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” Ms. Presnell said. “You would think the world is ending right now.”

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/343g2iO

Jeffrey Epstein, Hurricane Dorian, Popeyes: Your Thursday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

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CreditPatrick McMullan, via Getty Images

1. The Times is reporting on disturbing new accusations that Jeffrey Epstein relied on a ring of women close to him to feed his insatiable appetite for girls.

Mr. Epstein’s accusers contend in court papers that his longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell, along with a small cadre of other women — including several assistants and one known as Ms. Maxwell’s “lieutenant” — helped Mr. Epstein lure girls into his orbit and managed the logistics of his encounters with them. Above, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell in 1995.

Experts also told The Times that prosecutors may face a thorny legal dilemma in deciding whether to charge the women, because some may have initially been victims themselves.

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CreditSaul Martinez for The New York Times

2. Hurricane Dorian is on course to hit Florida as a Category 4 storm.

The storm’s powerful winds could begin bashing the Atlantic Coast as early as Saturday night, with winds up to 130 miles per hour. Forecasters predict that the hurricane will drop 4 to 8 inches of rain, with up to a foot expected in some isolated areas.

Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency and warned all coastal residents to prepare for the storm by gathering seven days’ worth of food, medicine and other supplies. Above, Lake Worth, Fla. Here’s how to read a hurricane tracking map properly.

Airlines are waiving fees and cruise lines are changing itineraries for the busy Labor Day weekend. If you’re traveling in the region, here’s what you need to know.

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CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

3. The Trump administration’s rollback of environmental protections continues, this time with methane, a major contributor to climate change.

The White House plans to end a requirement that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks, one of the main sources of U.S. methane emissions. It will also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. even has the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant. Above, oil fields near Watford City, N.D.

Notably, major oil and gas companies oppose the rollback, one of 80 environmental rules the administration is trying to reverse. Here are six of the biggest.

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CreditNabil Mounzer/EPA, via Shutterstock

4. The latest news from the Middle East reads like a military thriller: covert airstrikes, drone blasts and paramilitary assassinations across three Arab countries.

It’s all part of a weekend-long spate of violence that broke the so-called rules of the game and escalated the multifaceted conflict between Israel and Iran. Above, the remnants of one of the strikes in Beirut.

But the shadow war isn’t always secret — after one strike, Israel’s military taunted an Iranian general on Twitter.

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CreditSenior Airman Ian Dudley/United States Air Force

4. The Space Force may be coming.

President Trump authorized the re-establishment of a U.S. Space Command, a unit to protect American interests in outer space and a precursor to the force, his promised sixth branch of the military.

The organization of the unit has sparked a larger debate about how the U.S. should expand its influence in an increasingly competitive dangerous frontier. Above, a test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

In other space news, a California lab sent clusters of brain cells to the International Space Station. Now, they’re making brain waves similar to those seen in preterm infants.

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CreditJordan Gale for The New York Times

5. The Democratic race is entering a new, field-culling phase.

The qualifying rules for September’s debate created a few final hours of uncertainty over who would make it and whether the debate would be held over multiple nights. There was plenty of complaining.

In the end, 10 candidates made the cut, and the debate will be just one night — but three hours long (!).

Back on the campaign trail, we talked with female voters who were looking past criticism of Joe Biden’s physical contact with women — and standing in line for a hug.

We also looked at two views of President Trump’s re-election chances: Online polls and live-interview polls are split.

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CreditNicholas Konrad

7. There is no “gay gene,” but an ambitious new study found that many genes play a role in sexual behavior.

The study in the journal Science found that genes account for perhaps a third of the influence on whether someone has same-sex sex, along with social and environmental factors.

“I hope that the science can be used to educate people a little bit more about how natural and normal same-sex behavior is,” said one of the lead researchers. “It’s written into our genes and it’s part of our environment. This is part of our species and it’s part of who we are.”

Perspective: One of the study’s researchers and a colleague, both gay men, parse the implications and limitations of the work in an Op-Ed.

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CreditLarry W Smith/EPA, via Shutterstock

8. It began with a jab back at a competitor. Fifteen minutes later, it was (chicken sandwich) war.

A viral social media debate between Popeyes and Chick-fil-A has captivated the internet for a week and a half.

As the fast-food brands traded barbs on Twitter over whose chicken sandwich tasted best, customers flocked to Popeyes restaurants across the country, and location after location sold out of the new menu item. Above, a Popeyes in Greenville, Tex., this week.

Here’s how it became a logistical nightmare.

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CreditJason Minnis

9. “A bit Lord of the Flies.”

La Guardia Airport is hell these days. The New York airport is finally getting an $8 billion makeover after years of being derided by travelers.

But the massive construction project has caused equally massive gridlock, all while the travel hub has logged some of the busiest days on record. You tweeted your tales, we rounded them up.

For a different kind of gridlock: Across the globe, travel providers and government agencies are responding to “overtourism” with suggestions for less-crowded places and quieter seasons.

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CreditTony Cenicola/The New York Times

10. And finally, new books for fall.

September is one of the biggest months for publishing houses, and this year is no exception. On the horizon: a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel and two new books by Times journalists about the #MeToo movement.

Here are 17 new titles to watch for next month (and everything to read and watch before you get your hands on Margaret Atwood’s much-anticipated book).

Ann Patchett’s new novel, “The Dutch House,” is on the list. Your briefing writer’s mother finished it in two days.

Here’s hoping a book carries you away tonight.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

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Uber and Lyft to Spend $60 Million to Maintain California Driver Status

SAN FRANCISCO — A bill in California’s legislature could soon force ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers like employees instead of independent contractors.

But Uber and Lyft, which contend that changing the legal status of their drivers represents a fundamental threat to their businesses, said Thursday that they will spend $60 million on a ballot initiative that would essentially exempt them from the proposed law.

Drivers for Uber and Lyft work as independent contractors, logging into the companies’ apps and providing rides whenever they choose. They have no legally protected minimum wage, guaranteed sick days or traditional health benefits.

The drivers have routinely complained that the companies can cut their earnings without explanation and that they have no recourse if they are kicked off the apps.

As the bill that could give drivers employment status, Assembly Bill 5, winds its way through California’s legislature, Uber and Lyft have urged lawmakers to strike a deal with them that would allow them to continue to treat drivers as independent contractors.

But the bill’s sponsor, Lorena Gonzalez, a Democratic member of the State Assembly from San Diego, has said she does not foresee a compromise with the ride-hailing companies.

California’s current legislative session ends in mid-September, and vote on the bill is expected before the session ends. That means time is running out for Uber and Lyft to strike a bargain.

The companies said their proposed ballot initiative would preserve drivers’ ability to set their own schedules, while Uber and Lyft would offer a concession on minimum wage standards, health benefits and collective bargaining rights.

In an email to drivers that urged them to contact their local lawmakers, Uber said it would guarantee a minimum wage of $21 dollars per hour while a driver has a passenger or is on the way to pick one up.

Uber and Lyft said they will each give $30 million to support their proposition effort. The ride-hailing companies said their initiative, which has not yet been drafted, would preserve those wage concessions.

“As a Plan B, we are reluctantly funding this initiative,” Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in an interview. “This is not our first choice option. We would much rather have an historic deal that is good for drivers, good for innovation, good for labor.”

[Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.]

While officials at Lyft still believe they can strike a deal with state officials, they said they are willing to bring the issue directly to voters.

“We are working on a solution that provides drivers with strong protections that include an earnings guarantee, a system of worker-directed portable benefits, and first-of-its kind industrywide sectoral bargaining, without jeopardizing the flexibility drivers tell us they value so much,” said Adrian Durbin, a Lyft spokesman.

If Assembly Bill 5 becomes law, Uber will continue to litigate employment claims with its drivers, Mr. West said. “Just as we have done for the last decade, we will litigate these cases,” he said.

via The New York Times https://ift.tt/2ZAenOn

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