Nearly 500 million animals killed in Australian bushfires

Around 480 million animals are feared to have died in the bushfires sweeping Australia, including nearly a third of the koalas in New South Wales's main habitat.

www.standard.co.uk

Ecologists at the University of Sydney estimate around 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been killed, directly or indirectly, by the devastating blazes since they began in September, The Times reported.

This includes almost 8,000 koalas, which are believed to have burnt to death on the state’s mid-north coast.

The region, which lies around 240 miles north of Sydney, is home to the largest number of Australia’s koalas, with a population of up to 28,000.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC "up to 30 per cent of the population in that region" may have been killed, because around 30 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed.

More than 100 fires continue to rage across the country, having so far consumed more than five million hectares of land.

Dedicated workers at the The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital reportedly treated 72 badly burnt animals on Christmas Day.

A Gofundme page for the hospital has received more than £1.6million ($2million AUD) since September - the largest single amount raised on the site in Australian history, website Newshub reported.

Read this the below link[1]. Which is a personal account of what's happening and 100% aligned with what I've seen while driving in the outback.

People are leaving. The land is no longer habitable to human or animal life. Trying to write off the last 3 years as 'seasonal phenomena' is fucking insane.

Significant chunk of brumby population died[2] no one's ever seen this before.

Wildlife is unable to reproduce because of the heat and drought[3]

The total wildlife death toll is estimated at 500m for this year alone[4]

None of this is precedented. None of this is part of the 'natural cycle'. This continent is experiencing a mass extinction event and the only reason it's not all over the news is because all of the news outlets are owned by Murdoch the coal mogul who probably understands climate change but will continue funding the public denial of it just because it makes a buck.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ecaqu4/australia...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/mass-brumby-death-dis...

[3] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cattle-hav...

[4] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/australian-bushfires-n...

Scientists lure fish to dead reefs using speakers playing healthy coral sounds

Underwater speakers playing healthy reefs noises double the amount of fish on damaged reefs, giving scientists hope that sound could be used to help restore them.

www.abc.net.au|Nick Kilvert

• Fish numbers doubled and species increased by 50 per cent on acoustically "enriched" sites
• Coral polyps have also been found to navigate toward healthy sounding reef, despite not having ears
• Bigger stressors like climate change, pollution and overfishing still need to be addressed

Researchers have used the sounds of healthy reefs to entice fish back to areas where coral has been wiped out on the Great Barrier Reef.

They took recordings of shrimp snapping, fish grunting and other sounds taken from healthy regions of reef and played them on underwater speakers at a bunch of "coral-rubble patch reefs" at Lizard Island.

The number of fish doubled at the sites where they placed the speakers compared with control sites with no audio over the 40-day study period, they reported in Nature Communications.

They also found the number of different types of fish — the species richness — increased by 50 per cent during that time.

The researchers hope their findings may help in restoring some of the ecosystem functions to coral reefs that have suffered bleaching or been hit by cyclones or other impacts, said Tim Gordon, lead author and PhD student from the University of Exeter.

"Attracting fish to a dead reef won't bring it back to life immediately. But recovery is underpinned by fish that can clean the reef and create space for corals to regrow.",  Dr Mark Meekan

To move reef recovery beyond localised applications such as this one, the bigger issues must be fixed, Professor Nagelkerken said.

"It doesn't solve the greater issue of how we are [harming] the oceans via pollution, climate change and ocean acidification, habitat destruction and overfishing," he said.

"If we don't remove those stressors then reef restoration is not going to happen."

The sounds that come from the Northern Great Barrier Reef have got quieter in the last five years, scientists at the University of Exeter have found.

The noises, which are made by sea creatures, help young fish find their way home.

Trump asked Australian prime minister to help investigate origins of Mueller probe

Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly asked Trump to discuss the topic with Prime Minister Morrison.

www.axios.com

At Attorney General Bill Barr's request, President Trump asked Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a recent phone call to help with a Justice Department investigation looking into the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation, the New York Times first reported and NBC News later confirmed.

Context: In May 2016, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer over drinks that he had been informed Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. After hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee surfaced a few months later, Downer alerted the FBI about his conversation with Papadopoulos, setting off an investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The big picture: Earlier this year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a review of the Russia investigation, specifically looking into whether officials acted inappropriately in launching the probe. The Washington Post reports that despite Durham's appointment, Barr has taken a hands-on approach to the probe and has personally made overtures to British and Italian officials.

• Last week, the Justice Department said it is looking into the extent that other countries, including Ukraine, "played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign."
• Access to the Australia call's transcript had been restricted to a small number of people, "an unusual decision that is similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president," the Times notes.

Fraud charges against Rep. Chris Collins explained

Prosecutors say the Clarence Republican tipped off his son to bad news from a company they owned stock in.

www.democratandchronicle.com

• both from New York State
• Collins was the first member of Congress to back Trump before the 2016 election
• both kept their business interests while in office.
• the Trump Foundation and the Trump Family are being sued by New York State for using their “charity” as their own ‘piggy bank’
• the Trump Foundation and the Trump Family are being investigated for Tax Fraud and Tax Evasion

1. Chris Collins and his 25 year old son Cameron were big shareholders in  Australia-based company Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd.
2. CEO emailed Collins and other Innate directors on June 22, 2017, to say the drug had failed.
3. 7:10 pm:  Collins wrote back at "Wow, "Makes no sense. How are these results even possible???"
4. 7:11 to 7:15 pm: Collins calls his son Cameron 6 times because son didn’t answer
5. 7:16 pm: Cameron answers and they talk for 6 minutes.
6. "He tipped his son to confidential corporate information at the expense of regular investors," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman
7. Collins didn't sell off — but his son and allies did
8. Over the next few days, however, Cameron Collins sold off nearly 1.4 million shares of Innate stock.
9. Prosecutors have also accused Cameron Collins of tipping off his fiancee, his fiancee's parents and a friend. They sold off stock or tried to, too.
10. After markets closed on June 26, Innate announced the news of the failed drug trial public.
11. The stock tanked — dropping from a value of about 46 cents per share on June 26 to about 4 cents per share the next day. 
12. Collins' son, co-conspirators save $768K

• 26 nations have now announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats
• 25 countries have expelled Russian envoys in the last two days
• NATO is expelling seven Russian diplomats

The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?

Assessing the systems in eight countries can inform the debate in the U.S. over universal coverage.

www.nytimes.com|Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt

To better understand one of the most heated U.S. policy debates, we created a tournament to judge which of these nations has the best health system: Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and the U.S.

AARON: Switzerland. This is a tough call. Switzerland does a good job of combining conservative and progressive beliefs about health care systems into a workable model providing top-notch access and quality at a reasonable cost. It doesn't hurt that it does so through private (although heavily regulated) insurance.

CRAIG: France. Its system has more competition among providers than Switzerland’s does.

AUSTIN: Switzerland. The Swiss system is so close to the A.C.A.’s structure (which, to date, has survived all manner of political attacks) that something like it could work in the U.S.

ASHISH: Switzerland Both of these countries spend a lot on health care, outpacing the average among high-income countries, and both perform comparably on measures of access to care. However, in general, the Swiss health care system delivers a higher quality of care across a range of measures and invests more in innovation that fuels new knowledge and, ultimately, better treatments that we all benefit from.

UWE: France. It is cheaper, its financing is more equitable, and its system is simpler.

Being a full-time American student getting a degree in France, I can 100% say their system is far superior. I pay 250 euros per year, get full coverage, and the costs for my prescriptions are so low I don't even bother to get reimbursed as its not even worth the effort (3euros for a 3 month supply of my medication). For non essential doctors yes, there is a wait, but for essential treatments I've never had to wait.

Shark-detecting drones to patrol Australian beaches

Drones equipped with a shark detection system powered by artificial intelligence will start patrolling some Australian beaches from next month in a bid to improve safety.

www.reuters.com

Studies have shown that people have a 20-30 percent accuracy rate when interpreting data from aerial images to detect shark activity. Detection software can boost that rate to 90 percent, said Dr Nabin Sharma, a research associate at the University of Technology Sydney’s School of Software.

Aerial videos of sharks from publicly available sources are used to train the system’s algorithms and differentiate sharks from other marine creatures, surfers, swimmers and boats.

It can then tag sharks and other marine life, such as dolphins and whales, in real time.

Little Ripper drones equipped with the shark-spotter system will be able to warn swimmers through a megaphone when a shark is detected. The drones will patrol various beaches in Australia from September onwards.

What we already knew is that the President of the United States has a particular skill set, that he's identified an illness in Western democracies, but he has no cure for it and seems intent on exploiting it – and we've also learned that 

The G20 became the G19 as it ended. On the Paris climate accords, the US was left isolated and friendless. But given that was always going to happen, a deft president would have found an issue which he could rally most of the leaders. And he had the perfect one – North Korea's missile tests.

So where was the G20 statement condemning North Korea which would have put pressure on China and Russia? Other leaders expected it. They were prepared to back it, but it never came. 

He was an uneasy, lonely, awkward figure at this gathering and you got the strong sense some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him.

Two authoritarian states that will forge a very different set of rules for the 21st century. Some will cheer the decline of America. But I think we'll miss it when it's gone. And that's the biggest threat to the values of the West which he claims to hold so dear.

"The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls. We are winning so much! We are winning like we have never won before. We are winning in the polls. We are! Not the fake polls. Not the fake polls. They're the ones we're not winning in. We're winning in the real polls,"

"You know the online polls. they are so easy to win. I know that. Did you know that? I kind of know that. They are so easy to win. I have this Russian guy. Believe me it's true, it is true,"

“At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? … We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won’t be. They won’t be.”