By Walt Hickey

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Reliable Talent

The box office remains on a roll, as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire became the third-highest grossing movie of the year in a single weekend, bringing in $80 million in North America and then another $114 million at the international box office, a $194 million haul that puts the film behind just Dune: Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 4 this year. China delivered $44 million to the feature, which saw ancient frenemies King Kong and Godzilla feud and brawl against a new threat. Also of note this weekend at the international box office was Oppenheimer opening in its final market, Japan, where a movie about the creation and use of atomic weapons has an understandably complicated reception. There it made $2.5 million, one of Christopher Nolan’s better openings, losing out to the horror movie Strange House and the new Haikyu!! movie that I’m desperate to see.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Presidential Election Campaign Fund

From the 1970s to the late 2000s, a federal program called the Presidential Election Campaign Fund provided candidates who ran for the presidency with additional funds provided they accepted restrictions on how much they could raise. The last contender to use it was John McCain in 2008, as Barack Obama declined funds and raised a war chest of unprecedented size. Since then everyone’s done that, and as a result nobody’s been using the money, though it’s still been growing, hitting $445.6 million as of last year. Well, the latest funding package has finally tapped into that otherwise unusable fund, providing $320 million to operations and support of the Secret Service and $55 million as an election security grant to improve the administration of elections.

Alexandria Jacobson, Raw Story

Eggs

Eggland’s Best, the egg company, is the target of a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company falsely advertises its eggs as containing more nutritional benefits and less saturated fat than rivals. This is one of the latest in a trend of class-action litigation against food and beverage companies, most of which has to do with false labeling. Last year alone, the sector faced 187 class-action suits, which was just shy of double the 94 class-action suits filed 10 years ago. That said, Eggland’s Best has been soft-boiled by this kind of thing before, finding itself in hot water in 1994 when they settled with the FTC after claiming that a person could eat 12 of their eggs per week without increasing their cholesterol, which would appear to fly in the face of the law of conservation of mass.

Sarah Zimmerman, Food Dive

Missing

Two of the most consequential forces in the music industry have collided, as Beyoncé and the rebirth of vinyl are together plunged into the news. Fans who preordered the vinyl edition of the acclaimed artist’s new record, Cowboy Carter, have reported that the country Western album is in fact missing five tracks. Fans who ordered the CD are reporting that the album there is actually missing four tracks as well. This likely means that Beyoncé added those tracks last, and with vinyl pressing plants booked months in advance, lead times ranging anywhere from 10 weeks to six months, it’s entirely possible that even with weeks to go changes would have missed the initial pressing. Congratulations to all involved on creating what inevitably will be a collector’s item, one way or another.

Mark Savage, BBC

Ships

The situation in shipping on the East Coast of the U.S. is in flux as both the Port of Baltimore as well as the entire Eastern Seaboard prepare for the effects of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Locally, there are three bulk carriers, two general cargo ships, one vehicle carrier, one tanker and four Ready Reserve Force vessels stuck on the wrong side of the bridge collapse and will be trapped in harbor until it’s cleared. Regionally, it’s going to be rough: Baltimore handled 9 percent of East Coast container traffic, behind New York/New Jersey (59 percent) and Hampton Roads, Virginia (25 percent), but ahead of Philadelphia (6 percent) and other smaller terminals like Boston and Wilmington. NY/NJ and Virginia will end up handling most of Baltimore’s incoming, which is going to lead to unusually high utilization and potential congestion. As it stands, wait times for ships in New York have settled down to average 0.2 days and currently stand at 0.5 days in Hampton Roads. People will be following those numbers very closely over the coming months.

Mike Schuler, gCaptain and Mike Schuler, gCaptain

European Yellowstone

Foundation Conservation Carpathia is a philanthropy with the ambitious goal of buying as much Romanian forest as they can for indefinite preservation. Because of some historical idiosyncrasies including its remoteness from industrial areas as well as policies during much of the 20th century, Romania is home to 65 percent of the virgin forests of Europe. Transylvania is one of the most vibrant ecosystems across the continent, with megafauna that was hunted to extinction everywhere else. The foundation has bought up 27,027 hectares of forest and has a goal of accumulating 200,000 hectares for a gigantic protected area the likes of which does not exist in Europe, a so-called “European Yellowstone” in Fagaras National Park. The organization’s rangers patrol another 75,000 hectares to stymie illegal logging.

Raúl Sánchez Costa, El País

Ants

A new study published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution attempts to use the aerial laser mapping technique lidar, which is perhaps best known for the recent archaeological advances it’s facilitated, to identify the spread of a species of ant in acacia trees in Kenya. In a symbiotic relationship, the trees feed and shelter the ants while the ants defend the acacia from giraffes and other herbivores. Figuring out where the ants are is important, but hard work for field technicians, taking months and risking ant swarming. The lidar technique maps the landscapes in 3D and allows the researchers to find trees where ants are, given that an ant-laden tree tends to have a more tightly clustered canopy than a typical acacia due to some peculiarities in how the ants reshape their homes. As it stands, the lidar data is 82 percent accurate at identifying trees that in reality have ants in them, a stat which could be improved, but nevertheless accomplishes in an hour what used to take a thousand times as long.

Katherine Irving, Science

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