France Sends Navy to Eastern Mediterranean Amid Turkey-Greece Standoff

France has become more embroiled in conflicts in the region as the U.S. has disengaged in recent years

President Emmanuel Macron ordered French forces to the eastern Mediterranean, providing military assistance to Greece and raising the stakes in France’s growing regional confrontation against an increasingly assertive Turkey.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-sends-navy-to-eastern-mediterranean-amid-turkey-greece-standoff-11597318623?mod=hp_listb_pos2

North Korea Nuclear Facility Threatened By Floods, Satellite Images Reveal

KEY POINTS

The flooding that struck North Korea last week is thought to have inflicted minimal damage on the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center

This plant is North Korea's only source of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium

Kim Jong-un last May declared his intent to boost North Korea's nuclear deterrence capability

https://www.ibtimes.com/north-korea-nuclear-facility-threatened-floods-satellite-images-reveal-3027730

DOJ confirms death in Philippines of German businessman linked to Wirecard probe

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine authorities confirmed the death of a businessman linked to investigation into scandal-hit Wirecard AG, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Thursday.

“Per official documents submitted to the [National Bureau of Investigation], Christopher Reinhard Bauer, a German national [and] businessman, died on July 27, 2020 in a Parañaque hospital, due to natural causes,” the DOJ chief told reporters.

Guevarra last week said that the NBI is investigating a certain Christopher Bauer in connection with the global search for the $2.1 billion missing funds of Wirecard.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/08/13/2035040/doj-confirms-death-philippines-german-businessman-linked-wirecard-probe

Weaponized wild: Scientists discover how to control locust swarms using single chemical

Researchers have discovered a possible secret weapon which could be used to not only keep the billions-strong hordes of locusts plaguing crops around the world at bay, but kill them off entirely.

Gigantic locust swarms have been threatening the food supplies of millions of humans in Asia and Africa since January, which along with wildfires were the only two plagues humanity had to worry about at the time, before the coronavirus spread across the globe.

These swarms can devastate crops and turn day to night almost instantly, but now scientists have unlocked the secret to swarm behavior among migratory locusts: a pheromone called 4-vinylanisole (4VA).

4VA is specific to only one subspecies of locust but could pave the way to discovering similar swarm control pheromones in other locusts.

https://www.rt.com/news/497893-control-locust-swarm-chemical-pheromone/

Hackers can eavesdrop on mobile calls with $7,000 worth of equipment

VoLTE calls were supposed to be more secure. A fatal flaw can unravel that promise.

The emergence of mobile voice calls over the standard known as Long Term Evolution has been a boon for millions of cell phone users around the world. VoLTE, short for Voice over LTE, provides up to three times the capacity of the earlier 3G standard, resulting in high-definition sound quality that’s a huge improvement over earlier generations. VoLTE also uses the same IP standard used to send data over the Internet, so it has the ability to work with a wider range of devices. VoLTE does all of this while also providing a layer of security not available in predecessor cellular technologies.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/your-mobile-calls-may-be-vulnerable-to-a-new-revolting-eavesdrop-attack/

Photoshop Will Help ID Images That Have Been … Photoshopped

Adobe is adding technology to tag images with metadata, part of an effort to identify deepfakes and other efforts at manipulation.

Adobe says it will build the technology into a preview release of Photoshop later this year. That will be the first real test of an ambitious—or perhaps quixotic—response to concerns about the democracy-corroding effects of online misinformation and fake imagery.

https://www.wired.com/story/photoshop-id-images-photoshopped-deepfake/