Quote:

---

760 times more seabirds

Coral reefs face an unlikely threat: black rats. Normally, birds that live on islands feed in rich ocean waters and poop nutrients back on the land, fertilizing it with nitrogen and phosphorous.

This nitrogen leaches back into the water, feeding the sea life, and the phosphorus also helps nearby reefs grow and resist heat. But the damn rats, carried to islands by humans’ ships long ago, eat birds and birds’ eggs. Ratless islands have 760 times more seabirds than rat-filled ones. [The Atlantic]
________________________________________
10,000 products

President Trump’s trade war has escalated, as trade wars do, to include about 10,000 products. It began with just a few, including solar panels and washing machines, and now includes proposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese goods and “could grow to target almost 90 percent of what China sent to the United States last year,” reshaping the world’s economy. [The New York Times]

1.1 billion-year-old rocks

The oldest color on the planet is pink, according to a recent study. Scientists discovered the pink pigment in rocks beneath the Sahara desert that are more than a billion years old. The pigments were produced by “ancient ocean organisms” and are still enjoyed by millennials today. [CNN]

---