MINING IS NOT GREEN
Biden awards $2.8 billion to boost U.S. minerals output for EV batteries


U.S. President Biden visits the Detroit Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan

By David Shepardson and Ernest Scheyder
Wed, October 19, 2022 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration said on Wednesday it is awarding $2.8 billion in grants to boost U.S. production of electric vehicle batteries and the minerals used to build them, part of a bid to wean the country off supplies from China.

"By undercutting U.S. manufacturers with their unfair subsidies and trade practices, China seized a significant portion of the market," President Joe Biden said Wednesday in announcing the awards."Today we're stepping up... to take it back, not all of it, but bold goals."

Albemarle Corp is among the 20 manufacturing and processing companies receiving U.S. Energy Department grants to domestically mine lithium, graphite and nickel, build the first large-scale U.S. lithium processing facility, construct facilities to build cathodes and other battery parts, and expand battery recycling.

The grants, which are going to projects across at least 12 states, mark the latest push by the Biden administration to help reduce the country's dependence on China and other nations for the building blocks of the green energy revolution.

The funding recipients, first reported by Reuters, were chosen by a White House steering committee and coordinated by the Energy Department with support from the Interior Department.

But the program does nothing to alleviate permitting delays faced by some in the mining industry.

Albemarle is set to receive $149.7 million to build a facility in North Carolina to lightly process rock containing lithium from a mine it is trying to reopen. That facility would then feed a separate U.S. plant that the company said in June would double the company's lithium production for EV batteries.

Albemarle, which also produces lithium in Australia and Chile, said the grant "increases the speed of lithium processing and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from long-distance transportation of raw minerals."

Piedmont Lithium Inc, whose shares rose nearly 11% following the news, was awarded $141.7 million to build its own lithium processing facility in Tennessee, where the company will initially process the metal sourced from Quebec and Ghana. Piedmont's plans to build a lithium mine in North Carolina have faced strong opposition.

Talon Metals Corp, which has a nickel supply deal with Tesla Inc, will receive $114.8 million to build a processing plant in North Dakota. That plant will process rock extracted from its planned underground mine in Minnesota.

The grants are "a clear recognition that production of domestic nickel and other battery minerals is a national priority," Talon said.

Other grants include $316.2 million to privately-held Ascend Elements to build a battery parts plant, $50 million to privately-held Lilac Solutions Inc for a demonstration plant for so-called direct lithium extraction technologies, $75 million to privately-held Cirba Solutions to expand an Ohio battery recycling plant, and $219.8 million to Syrah Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Syrah Resources Ltd, to expand a graphite processing plant in Louisiana.

BIDEN'S GOAL

By 2030, Biden wants 50% of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric or plug-in hybrid electric models along with 500,000 new EV charging stations. He has not endorsed the phasing-out of new gasoline-powered vehicle sales by 2030.

Legislation tied to the program that Biden signed in August sets new strict battery component and sourcing requirements for $7,500 consumer EV tax credits. A separate $1 trillion infrastructure law signed in November 2021 allocates $7 billion to ensure U.S. manufacturers can access critical minerals and other components to manufacture the batteries.

The White House said that the United States and allies do not produce enough of the critical minerals and materials used in EV batteries.

"China currently controls much of the critical mineral supply chain and the lack of mining, processing, and recycling capacity in the U.S. could hinder electric vehicle development and adoption, leaving the U.S. dependent on unreliable foreign supply chains," the White House said.

In March, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to support the production and processing of minerals and materials used for EV batteries.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Ernest Scheyder in Houston; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Alexandra Alper; Bernadette Baum, Matthew Lewis, Paul Simao and Deepa Babington)

'Massive gaps' seen in countries' plans to tackle climate change -study


 Smoke and steam billows from Belchatow Power Station, Europe's largest coal-fired power plant operated by PGE Group, near Belchatow

Tue, October 18, 2022 
By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The latest pledges by countries to tackle global warming under the Paris Agreement are "woefully inadequate" to avert a rise in global temperatures that scientists say will worsen droughts, storms and floods, a report said on Wednesday.

The 2015 pact launched at a U.N. global climate summit requires 194 countries to detail their plans to fight climate change in what are known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.

In pledges made through September, the NDCs would reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases only 7% from 2019 levels by 2030, said the report titled "The State of NDCs: 2022." It was written by the World Resources Institute (WRI) global nonprofit research group.

Countries must strengthen their targets by about six times that, or at least 43%, to align with what the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is enough to reach the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting the global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F), it said.

"It really looks like we're hitting a bit of a plateau," Taryn Fransen, a senior fellow at WRI and author of the report said in an interview. She added that the COVID-19 pandemic and economic woes may have mostly capped countries' ambitions to boost their NDCs since 2021.

Current NDCs propose to reduce emissions by 5.5 gigatonnes compared with the initial NDCs from 2015, nearly equal to eliminating the annual emissions of the United States. But only 10% of that planned reduction has been pledged since 2021.

On the bright side, Australia and Indonesia did boost their NDCs this year. "That got us some progress," Fransen said, "but there hasn't been a lot beyond that." Countries in the Paris Agreement are required to update their NDCs by 2025.

"If the pace of improvement from 2016 to today continues, the world will not only miss the Paris Agreement goals, but it will miss them by a long shot," the report said.

Much of the focus of this year's global climate talks, to be held next month in Egypt, will center on reducing emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. In an example of the work yet to be done, WRI found that only 15 of the 119 countries that signed a Global Methane Pledge launched last year included a specific, quantified methane reduction target in their NDCs.

Fransen said economic and health benefits of reducing emissions, such as the build-out of the energy transition and reduced air pollution, can help build momentum to deeper cuts. "Seeing those benefits can only help drive more ambitions, but it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem," she said.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Climate Questions: Why do small degrees of warming matter?


Why do small degrees of warming matter? (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin) 

SETH BORENSTEIN and DANA BELTAJI
Wed, October 19, 2022 

On a thermometer, a tenth of a degree seems tiny, barely noticeable. But small changes in average temperature can reverberate in a global climate to turn into big disasters as weather gets wilder and more extreme in a warmer world.

In 2015, countries around the world agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pursue a goal of curbing warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) as part of the Paris Agreement.

Two degrees of difference might not be noticeable if you're gauging the weather outside, but for global average temperatures, these small numbers make a big difference.

“Every tenth of a degree matters,” is a phrase that climate scientists around the world keep repeating.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series answering some of the most fundamental questions around climate change, the science behind it, the effects of a warming planet and how the world is addressing it.

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The Earth has already warmed at least 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, giving the world around 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.7 Fahrenheit) of more heating before passing the goal and suffering even more catastrophic climate change events, scientists have said.

These tenths of a degree are a big deal because the temperatures represent a global average of warming. Some parts of the world, especially land mass and northern latitudes like the Arctic have already warmed more than the 1.1 Celsius average and have far surpassed 1.5 Celsius, according to estimates.

It's helpful to look at temperatures like a bell curve, rather than just the average which doesn't reveal “hidden extremes,” said Princeton University climate scientist Gabe Vecchi.

“On the far end where the bell shape is very narrow, that is telling you the odds of very extreme events,” he said. “If you have a slight shift of the average of the peak of that bell to the warming direction, what that results in is a substantial decrease in the odds of extremely cold temperatures and a substantial increase in the odds of extremely warm temperatures.”

It's a similar picture with sea level rise, where the average obscures how some places are seeing much higher sea level increases than others, he said.

Most nations — including the world’s two largest emitters, the U.S. and China — aren’t on track to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius or even 2 Celsius, according to scientists and experts who track global action on climate change, despite promises to cut their emissions to “net zero”.

If temperatures increase by about 2 more degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the world will experience five times the floods, storms, drought and heat waves, according to estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“All bets are off” when it comes to how climate systems will respond to more warming, warned Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. The threat of some irreversible changes and feedback loops that amplify warming, such as the thawing of permafrost that traps massive amounts of greenhouse gas, could trigger even more heating.

“It’s just staggering to think about how many people will be under immediate threat of climate-related extremes in a two degree world," Cobb said.

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi meets with Minister of Sports in Tehran

Daniel Stewart - 5h ago

Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi met on Wednesday in Tehran with the country's Minister of Sports, Said Hamid Sajjadi, just hours after arriving in Iran following her controversial participation in a competition in South Korea where she took part without a veil.


File - Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi, during a competition in Toulouse in 2019.

 - MICKAEL CHAVET / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO© Provided by News 360

During her meeting with Sajjadi, Rekabi explained aspects related to her professional activity and her participation in the championship, according to the Iranian news agency IRNA, which went into more details about the conversation between the minister and the climber.

The head of the Sports Ministry has told Rekabi that this ministry "belongs to all athletes" and stressed that "all legal tools are and will always be at the service of athletes".

The Iranian climber returned to Tehran on Wednesday, where she was welcomed by a crowd shouting "heroine" although she herself has insisted that if she competed without a veil it was by accident, not as a political gesture against the Government of the Islamic Republic.

Rekabi, who was reported missing on Tuesday, has insisted in statements to the official media on the thesis that she had previously defended on Instagram. Thus, she said that the organizers of the competition in Seoul called her out of the blue and she could not wear the hijab, included in the official clothing of the national team for women.

Iranian climber who competed without hijab returns to cheering crowds amid concerns for her safety

Hyder Abbasi and Helena Skinner and Meagan Fitzgerald and Yuliya Talmazan - 10h ago

An Iranian rock climber who drew global headlines and concern after competing without the Islamic Republic's compulsory headscarf arrived home early Wednesday to cheering crowds.

Elnaz Rekabi's return from the competition in South Korea sparked alarm among activists and rights groups, with the country gripped by a deadly crackdown on anti-government protests triggered by the death of a young woman in a hospital three days after being arrested by the morality police.

In a video broadcast by the state-run IRNA news agency, the 33-year-old athlete appeared to repeat an earlier explanation posted to her Instagram that said she had unintentionally competed without a hijab.

Speaking to journalists in Farsi at an airport in the capital Tehran, Rekabi said that: "I was busy putting on my shoes and gear when I was called to compete and I forgot to put on the hijab I had with me.”

Rekabi can be seen in the video wearing a baseball cap with a black hoodie covering her hair.

Separate videos posted on social media and verified by NBC News show a crowd clapping and chanting at a terminal at the Imam Khomenei International Airport and again as a white van drives past.

The circumstances under which the interview and the Instagram message were delivered remain unclear. NBC News could not independently verify if Rekabi wrote the message herself.


Image: Iranian competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi returns home (Borna News / via EPA)© Provided by NBC News

The Islamic headscarf has become a focus of weeks of social unrest that have engulfed Iran and developed into the most serious challenge to the government in more than a decade.

Rekabi did not wear the hijab during Sunday’s final at the International Federation of Sport Climbing’s Asia Championship, in which she finished fourth.

Given that female athletes from Iran always wear a hijab while competing abroad and Rekabi had previously done so herself, her appearance without the headscarf was interpreted by many observers as a display of solidarity with the protesters at home.

Human rights groups expressed growing fears for Rekabi's safety Tuesday as it emerged she was flying home from South Korea.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, said in an emailed statement that he was very concerned for Rekabi and suspects that Iranian authorities had “forced” her to say that she did not wear her hijab by accident.

“Based on our knowledge of the Islamic Republic, they will go very far to set an example for other athletes and young girls in general, so that this kind of disobedience doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The Iranian Embassy in Seoul said in a tweet, written in English, that Rekabi had departed from the South Korean capital for Iran “along with the other members of the team.”

“The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in South Korea strongly denies all the fake, false news and disinformation regarding Ms. Elnaz Rekabi,” it added.

Rekabi is not the first female Iranian involved in competitions abroad to face issues after appearing in attire that violates the dress code.

Boxer Sadaf Khadem was forced to stay in France after she said Iranian authorities issued a warrant for her arrest when she competed without a headscarf and in shorts in 2019.

Iranian chess referee Shohreh Bayat who fled to the U.K. in 2020 and claimed asylum after being accused by an Iranian official of not wearing her headscarf correctly while refereeing that year's Women’s World Chess Championship in Shanghai.

"What happened to me was that after one round, one round of the tournament, I received a message that the hijab is not proper," Bayat told NBC News Tuesday. "The next day I decided to fight against it," she said, explaining she decided to push the headscarf back "to send the message that leave me alone because I’m tolerating it already with difficulty."

Bayat, 35, said she saw parallels in Rekabi's situation, especially after the Instagram post.

"This was exactly the same thing that happened to me," she said, explaining that she was forced to write an apology for not wearing the hijab correctly. "This was the first thing that I was asked to do, to write an apology letter on Instagram."

Bayat also said that she was told to give interviews to two Iranian state-run news agencies and to blame photographers for publishing the photos showing her not wearing the hijab correctly. "And they told me to tell that all my achievements was because of the Islamic regime," she said.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing said in a statement Tuesday that it has been in contact with Rekabi and the Iranian Climbing Federation.

“There is a lot of information in the public sphere regarding Ms Rekabi and as an organization we have been trying to establish the facts,” the statement said. “Our understanding is that she is returning to Iran, and we will continue to monitor the situation as it develops on her arrival.”

The organization added that it supported any efforts to “keep a valued member of our community safe in this situation,” while emphasizing athletes’ rights and expression of free speech.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Elnaz Rekabi: Fans cheer, clap as climber returns to Iran

Wed, October 19, 2022 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi, who caused controversy by competing in an international contest without a headscarf, has returned to Iran to cheering supporters, reiterating in comments to state media she had climbed without a hijab unintentionally.

Footage had shown Rekabi, 33, scaling a wall without her head covered while representing Iran at a competition in South Korea, at a time of unprecedented protests in Iran over the death in custody of a young woman detained by morality police for "inappropriate attire."

In comments to state TV upon her arrival in Tehran, Rekabi said she had returned in "full health" and apologised to "the people of Iran for the turbulence and worry that I created", her head covered by a baseball cap and a hood as she spoke.

“The struggle that I had with wearing my shoes and preparing my gear made me forget about the proper hijab that I should have had, and I went to the wall and ascended," she added.

A crowd of well-wishers cheered, clapped and recorded the scene on mobile phones as she was driven away from the airport, according to footage posted on Twitter.

In a statement published on her Instagram account on Tuesday, Rekabi cited poor scheduling as the reason she had competed without a headscarf, saying she had been called to climb unexpectedly.

In her televised comments Rekabi, who came fourth in the competition, denied she had been unreachable for 48 hours, and said the team had returned to Iran as planned. She said she had no plan to quit the national team.

BBC Persian had reported on Tuesday that friends had been unable to contact her, and there were fears for her safety. Iran’s embassy in South Korea, on Twitter, denied reports about her going missing after the competition.

The International Olympic Committee said it had talked to the athlete and had received assurances from the Iran's national Olympic committee (NOC) she would not face consequences.

"A joint meeting took place today between the IOC, the (international climbing federation) IFSC and the Iranian NOC, during which the IOC and the IFSC received clear assurances that Ms Rekabi will not suffer any consequences and will continue to train and compete," an IOC spokesperson said.

Another joint meeting was then held between the groups and Rekabi, the spokesperson said, adding that the IOC would monitor the situation closely in the days and weeks to come.

The death last month of Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the Islamic Republic's morality police, who detained her for "inappropriate attire", prompted nationwide protests during which women have removed and burned headscarves.

The protests ignited by Amini's death have grown into one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution, though the unrest does not appear close to toppling the system.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Additional reporting by Karolos Grohmann, Editing by William Maclean and Frank Jack Daniel)

FAKE NEWS

Iranian Athlete Elnaz Rekabi Will Be Jailed for Competing Without Hijab

AFTER BEING WELCOMED HOME A HERO

I DON'T THINK SO


Iranian Athlete Elnaz Rekabi Will Be Jailed for Competing Without Hijab

Jason Duaine Hahn
Tue, October 18, 2022

An Iranian rock climber who appeared without a hijab while competing in South Korea will be jailed, a news organization in the country has reported.

On Sunday, 33-year-old Elnaz Rekabi made headlines during the Asian Championships climbing competition in Seoul when she competed without a head covering, which Iran's government requires women to wear. The hijab is even required during sporting competitions when they are representing the country abroad, per CNN.

Footage of Rekabi's climb was shared on social media, with many saying her appearance was likely an "act of defiance" against the requirement.

According to the New York Times, Rekabi returned to Iran with her team on Tuesday. A post to her Instagram page later said that she did not wear a hijab during her climb because of "bad timing."

"Due to bad timing, and the unanticipated call for me to climb the wall, my head covering inadvertently came off," the message said, per a translation shared by BBC.

The message said Rekabi was "alongside the team based on the pre-arranged schedule".

RELATED: Iran's Soccer Team Covers Up Their National Emblem as Mahsa Amini Protests Continue

A correspondent at BBC Persian told the network that the wording of Rekabi's message made it appear as if it were written by someone under intimidation. Iran has previously been criticized for forcing people, often activists, into making public forced confessions.

The controversy over Rekabi's lack of hijab comes as protests continue throughout Iran after the death of a 22-year-old woman, who authorities arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely, according to CNN.

RELATED: U.S. Men's National Soccer Team Secures Spot in 2022 World Cup After 8-Year Drought: 'Proud Moment'

Iranian news outlet IranWire reported on Tuesday that Rekabi will be jailed by authorities after her return to the country. IranWire said the government has required women to wear a hijab since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

RELATED VIDEO: Abby Wambach Says USWNT Equal Pay Victory Is a 'Huge Deal' for 'Women Everywhere'

An International Federation of Sport Climbing official told CNN that they were "aware" of Rekabi's ordeal.

"There is a lot of information in the public sphere regarding Ms. Rekabi and as an organization we have been trying to establish the facts. We have also been in contact with Ms. Rekabi and the Iranian Climbing Federation," a statement by the IFSC said.

They added: "We will continue to monitor the situation as it develops on her arrival."

TORIES HARRASS TAM

Tam has lost trust of Canadians, say  Conservative MPs

WE TRUST HER MORE THAN TORIES

OR DANIELLE SMITH

Postmedia News - Toronto Sun

Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam listens to a question during a news conference on Jan. 5, 2021 in Ottawa.

Canada’s top doctor does not have the trust of Canadians when it comes to COVID-19.

So say Commons health committee MPs, who told Dr. Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer, it will not blindly follow the advice of her Public Health Agency, according to Blacklock’s Reporter .

To back that up, Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux (Edmonton Riverbend) read a string of Tam’s incorrect statements made about COVID-19 early in the pandemic into the record.

“Hindsight is 20-20,” said Tam. “Information and the evolution of the understanding of the virus was changing all the time. We need to have humility in the face of these viruses for sure. I am sure there’s a lot we can do.”

Conservative MP Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, Sask.) said constituents became frustrated by PHA advice said to be based on science given it occasionally contradicted that of Saskatchewan’s own chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab.

TOO BAD MOE DID NOT LISTEN

“What is your plan to build back that trust?” asked Hoback.

“This is really important and this is why we must come together and work together and earn that trust,” replied Tam.

Added Jeneroux: “Is the Public Health Agency and Health Canada planning to conduct a full review and report on the handling of COVID?”

“That decision is not up to me,” replied Tam.

Ethiopia civil war: IMPERIALIST WAR OF AGGRESSION

 

Hyenas scavenge on corpses as Tigray forces retreat

Farouk Chothia & Teklemariam Bekit - BBC News
Wed, October 19, 2022 

Tigray is a sparsely populated mountainous region

Hyenas scavenging on the corpses of villagers, cities and towns hit in air strikes, elderly men and young women conscripted into armies - these are the horrific accounts emerging from a war that has left tens, if not hundreds, of thousands dead in Ethiopia's historic region of Tigray.

The region was once a tourist attraction, with visitors drawn to its rock-hewn churches, Muslim shrines and ancient scripts in the Ge'ez language.

Now Tigray is the site of a vicious war, as the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies on the one side, and the army of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) on the other, fight for control in a region that has long been seen as the key to power in Ethiopia - or what was historically part of Abyssinia.

It has been under a blockade for 17 months - with no banking, telephone or internet services - and no media access.

Over the last two years, the fortunes of the two sides have constantly changed on the battlefield, with:

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces capturing the Tigray capital, Mekelle, in November 2020 after the TPLF was accused of launching a rebellion

The Tigrayans launching a counter-offensive in the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, bringing them close to the federal capital, Addis Ababa, about a year later

The Ethiopian and Eritrean forces regaining territory in Tigray - including the key city of Shire - in the latest round of fighting, raising the prospect of them trying to capture Mekelle once more.

"There are at least 500,000 Eritrean and Ethiopian federal troops in active combat, plus 200,000 from the Tigrayan side," said Alex de Waal, the executive director of the US-based World Peace Foundation.

He added that after more than 50 days of non-stop fighting, this week the Tigrayan defence lines around Shire could no longer hold out because of a lack of ammunition.

"It's a big setback for the Tigrayans. It leaves civilians exposed to massacre, rape and starvation," Prof De Waal said, though the Ethiopian government has promised aid and the restoration of services in Shire and other areas under its control.

The war has led to millions of people in Ethiopia needing aid

Shire reflects the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, with an aid worker saying that around 600,000 civilians were taking refuge in the city and its surrounding areas after earlier fleeing war-hit areas.

"More than 120,000 were out in the open, sleeping under trees and bushes," he told the BBC, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Almost all humanitarian workers withdrew from Shire last week after it came under ferocious bombardment from Ethiopian forces.

Thousands of residents are also fleeing Shire amid fears that they could be subjected to atrocities - similar to those in other areas that fell under the control of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops.

"Four witnesses reported that in the village of Shimblina in September, 46 people were rounded up and summarily executed. Other villagers found their bodies lying mixed with domestic animals, which had also been killed," the aid worker said.

"Hyenas had eaten a few of the bodies, and they could be identified only by the remains of their clothing. The witnesses said they had no time to bury the bodies, and the hyenas must have finished them by now," he added.

What made the atrocity stand out, he said, was the fact that most of the victims came from the small Kunama ethnic group, which has not been involved in the conflict.

"Both sides are losing soldiers, and when they come into a village they take out their anger on locals," the aid worker added.

Tigrayan forces faced similar accusations - including of rape, extra-judicial killings and looting - during their advances into Amhara and Afar, before being pushed back into Tigray. The region has a population of around seven million, a small number in a country with a population of more than 100 million.
Old-fashioned warfare

Apart from atrocities, all the armies have been accused of forcibly recruiting civilians to fight, and of using the "human wave" tactic to gain ground.

"People are drafted into the armies and, after only a few weeks of training, they are sent in large numbers through mined areas towards the trenches of the enemy," said UK-based Horn of Africa analyst Abdurahman Sayed.

"The enemy opens fire and kills many of them, but they keep coming in waves until the enemy runs of ammunition and they occupy their trenches.

"It is the old way of warfare. It was first used by the king of Abyssinia to defeat the Italian invaders in the 1890s. Despite their superior firepower, the Italians were overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who confronted them."

Mr Abdurahman said that this tactic leads to massive casualties, with his estimate being that between 700,000 and 800,000 people have already lost their lives in almost two years of fighting.

"This is the most brutal war in the history of Ethiopia," he added.

Though US-based Horn of Africa analyst Faisal Roble disputed that the Tigrayans used human wave attacks, his estimate of the death toll was not very different.

"In the first two phases of the war, around 500,000 died in combat, and 100,000 have probably died in this third phase," he said.

Mekelle, which has a population of around 500,000, has been hit by several drone strikes

Mr Roble added that the Tigrayan army was well trained, with "the heart" to fight, but the Ethiopian army had two advantages: numbers and airpower.

"A general who is now an ambassador said they could enlist one million young men every year, and they have fighter jets and Turkish drones that have proved very effective. The Tigrayans have no air force."

The command of the Ethiopian air force had moved to Eritrea's capital Asmara, he explained, from where fighter jets were taking off as the city was much closer to Tigray than their usual base in Bishoftu in central Ethiopia.

"The drones are still leaving from Bishoftu," Mr Roble said.
Settling old scores

Eritrea intervened in the conflict as the TPLF is its sworn enemy. The TPLF dominated a coalition government in Ethiopia until current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rose to power in 2018.

Map

Under the TPLF, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a border war which claimed the lives of about 80,000 people. An international tribunal later ruled that Ethiopia should hand over territory to Eritrea, but the TPLF-controlled government failed to do so.

Eritrea regained the territory soon after the latest war started in November 2020, and its critics say that President Isaias Afwerki is determined to help Mr Abiy finish off the TPLF so that it does not threaten his nation again.

"Eritrea's concern is that the TPLF wants to either regain power in Ethiopia, or its wants a satellite government in Asmara that will give it access to the Red Sea because Tigray is a landlocked, impoverished region," Mr Abdurahman said.

As the war in Tigray escalated in recent weeks, Eritrea's government intensified its military mobilisation and hunted down draft dodgers across the country, multiple sources in Eritrea told the BBC.

In one instance in September, Eritrean troops raided a church in the southern town of Akrur, detaining a priest, young worshippers and choir members who had not heeded the military call-up, the sources said.

Prof De Waal said the call-up showed that Mr Isaias was "not taking any chances", but he has not deployed conscripts to Tigray in large numbers.

"Eritrea has units in Tigray, but most of the fighting is being done by Ethiopian forces. What Isaias is doing is running the war because he believes he can show Abiy how to win, but the Tigrayans will fight, even if it means with knives and stones because it is a matter of life and death for them," he said.
Talks unlikely

According to Mr Abdurahman, the war is being fought on four to six fronts, with tens of thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops stationed near the Tigray town of Adigrat.

"They are ready to launch an attack on Adigrat, and Mekelle," he said.

Sources on the battlefront told the BBC that the two armies were already advancing from Shire towards the historic city of Aksum, as well as Adwa and Adigrat, in an operation that has seen them move from west to east.

While foreign powers have been urging the two sides to resolve the conflict peacefully, Mr Abdurahman said this was unlikely to happen.

"Historically, the ruling classes of Abyssinia, and now Ethiopia, always fought their way to power. The powerful becomes the king of kings until someone else emerges. There is no tradition of resolving matters peacefully. It is a zero-sum game," he said.

Prof De Waal said that the international community needed to act urgently to impose a ceasefire.

"Otherwise there is the risk of a genocide, and mass starvation," he said, pointing to research in August from a Belgian-led academic team that calculated total civilian deaths during the war in Tigray - caused by the fighting, famine and lack of health care - stood at between 385,000 and 600,000.

"Harvesting is supposed to start now, but the Eritrean-led armies are turning Tigray into a wasteland."

Ethiopia's Tigray conflict: Nasa shows how a war zone faded from space


Catherine Byaruhanga - Africa correspondent, BBC News
Wed, October 19, 2022 

New images taken from space at night starkly show how the conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region has left a population facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Cities are shown fading to black over 20 months as electricity supplies are shut down.

The Nasa satellite photos have been shared with the BBC as Ethiopian troops and militias, along with soldiers from neighbouring ally Eritrea, appear to be gaining the upper hand against Tigrayan forces.

On Tuesday, Ethiopia said its army had taken control of Shire, one of Tigray's biggest cities, and the towns of Alamata and Korem, which lie to the south of the regional capital, Mekelle.

The UN, African Union and the US, among others, warn that the resurgence of heavy warfare could worsen the already catastrophic situation for civilians.

New data from the Tigray Bureau of Health, shared with the BBC, reveals how the blockade on the region - which has largely halted humanitarian aid as well as other services like electricity and banking - has affected young children.

The figures show that the number of those under the age of five who have died from malnutrition has risen by a staggering 1,533% over the two years from July 2020 - four months before the war broke out.

Dr Kokeb Hagos, who collates the Tigray Health Bureau data, told the BBC that 2,450 children had died in hospitals between July 2021 and July 2022 - a huge underrepresentation, he says, of the true figure as health workers cannot travel around the region because of a shortage of fuel while phone lines and the internet have also been cut.

A recent academic study estimates total civilian deaths in Tigray - caused by the fighting, starvation and lack of health care - stand at between 385,000 and 600,000

Numbers have to be jotted down on pieces of paper and sent by any available transport to the bureau for collation, including the information that 70% of children found to be severely malnourished have not been treated because of a lack of food and medicine.

One of the children known to have died this year is Surafeal Mearig. The BBC first reported on his case in January 2022. At the time he was three months old and weighed just 2.3kg (5lb), 1kg less than he did at birth. His parents had run out of money to buy food after they lost their jobs. Doctors at Mekelle's Ayder Referral Hospital, where he was being treated, told us he died a month later.

Hydroelectric dam bombed

In Nasa's Black Marble images (from November 2020 until August 2022) the trajectory of the conflict can almost be mapped - as they show light levels decreasing in the cities of Shire, Aksum and Mekelle. It is a monthly composite of the light emitted from the respective cities and an indication of their access to electricity.

Ethiopia's federal government controls the national power grid but has been accused of cutting off Tigray, where power was pretty consistent in the region's towns before the war, several sources have told the BBC.

According to an investigation published in September by the UN's International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, the government "suspended electricity, internet and telecommunications, and banking services in Tigray on 4 November 2020" - the day the conflict started.

The images show a sharp fall in light over the cities of Shire and Aksum from November 2020. The lights in the two cities get stronger between March and June 2021 when they are in government hands.

Mekelle remains well-lit until July 2021, just after the city was recaptured by Tigray forces. It had fallen within the first month of the conflict and remained bright during the seven months it was under government control.

"When Tigrayan forces retook control of large parts of Tigray, including Mekelle, in late June 2021, the federal government responded by again shutting down electricity, internet and telecommunications, and banking services for the region," the UN report says.

During the conflict the only major power source for Tigray's seven million people has been the Tekeze Hydroelectric Dam, which was bombed in December 2021.

The images show how the lights dimmed sharply in Mekelle later in December 2021 after the dam was bombed. This affected two of four turbines, according to Canada-based academic Getachew Assefa.

"Engineers are making two turbines active by utilising spare parts from the other two, but the condition is dire. Even the two turbines that are working are generating electricity inefficiently as they have several faults that could have been rectified if spare parts were accessible," the associate professor of sustainable design at Calgary University told the BBC.

Tigray is also home to the 84-turbine Ashegoda windfarm, dubbed Africa's biggest when it opened in 2013 near Mekelle, but it has been out of action during the conflict, says Prof Getachew.

A herder seen by Tigray's Ashegoda windfarm, pictured a few years before conflict erupted

Engineers there have managed to get 19 turbines working, but cannot get them to feed into a grid for Tigray alone.

There was a virtual blackout in Shire and Aksum in July and August 2021 and Mekelle gets darker and darker.

Some of the patchiness - especially in July and August this year - can be put down to seasonal levels of the dam, as the power plant is designed to be part of an integrated power supply and is unable to produce electricity all the time, Prof Getachew explains.
Future fears

Ethiopia's government continues to deny blocking access to electricity, banks and communications in Tigray, though after seizing Shire this week, it promised access to humanitarian organisations in areas it now controls via the city's airport.

Sources on the front lines told the BBC the coalition of forces is now advancing eastwards from Shire and on to Aksum, Adwa and Adigrat.

This is almost a repeat of the start of the conflict nearly two years ago when the Ethiopian government seized Shire and went on to take the other towns before capturing Mekelle, which has been hit by frequent drone strikes especially since fighting restarted in August following a five-month humanitarian truce.

It is a terrifying time for the city's estimated 500,000 residents.

"The war has intensified. We are always wondering, when will the drone come? Will I find my children alive?" a nurse at the Ayder Referral Hospital told me.

One of the few aid workers left in the region said that her colleagues were now also going hungry.

"The remaining food has been depleted and the entire population is starving," she said. "Hundreds and thousands of desperate people knock on our doors seeking support. There are scores more starving in their homes, foregoing food for days on end."

They fear what will happen - especially possible reprisals from the Ethiopian and Eritrean troops.

For Prof Getachew, the war is bound to have a long-lasting impact on the region's infrastructure even if a blockade is lifted.

There are already reports of looting in Shire with allegations that items are being shipped back to Eritrea, as was reported to have happened widely in towns Eritrean troops took over early in the conflict.

"If true, they will continue with what is left of the electricity infrastructure."

UN genocide official: 

Hate speech is fueling

Ethiopia's war

RODNEY MUHUMUZA

Wed, October 19, 2022 

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — A U.N. official is urging tech companies to do everything possible to stop the onslaught of hate speech fueling the war in Ethiopia's north, where a violent war pits federal troops and their allies against Tigray's rebellious leaders.

Inflammatory language by political leaders and armed groups in the Tigray conflict “continues unabated,” Alice Wairimu Nderitu, U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said in a statement Wednesday.

“There is discourse often propagated through social media, which dehumanizes groups by likening them to a ‘virus’ that should be eradicated, to a ‘cancer’ that should be treated because ”if a single cell is left untreated, that single cell will expand and affect the whole body” and calling for the “killing of every single youth from Tigray” which is particularly dangerous, the statement said.

Fighting resumed between Tigray forces and federal troops in August, bringing an end to a cease-fire since March that had allowed much-needed aid to enter the region. Eritrean troops are fighting on the side of Ethiopia’s federal military.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks as federal troops try to take control of towns in Tigray. Earlier this week they took control of three towns, including one hosting a large number of internally displaced people in the Shire area.

Aid distributions are being hampered by a lack of fuel and a communications blackout in Tigray. The AP reported Saturday that a U.N. team found there were “10 starvation-related deaths” at seven camps for internally displaced people in northwestern Tigray, according to an internal document.

The conflict, which began nearly two years ago, has spread from Tigray into the neighboring regions of Afar and Amhara as Tigray's leaders try to break the blockade of their region.

The head of the continent-wide African Union and the U.N. secretary-general are urging the warring parties to stop fighting and meet for peace talks that were meant to start earlier this month in South Africa. The talks were delayed because of logistical issues.

“The conflict has reached new worrying levels of violence,” with widespread rape and sexual violence, Nderitu said in the statement that cited “horrifying levels of hate speech and incitement to violence.”

“The atrocious abuses taking place are spurred by the deluge of ethnically motivated hate speech that is propagated online,” the statement said, urging tech companies and their social networks to use “all tools available to stop the spread of hate speech that could constitute incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence on their platforms.”

Millions of people in Tigray, Amhara and Afar have been uprooted from their homes and tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the conflict that started in November 2020

More on Ethiopia's civil war:

Inside the Tigray capital, Mekelle


Hunted down for avoiding Eritrea military call-up


My patients are doomed to die in Tigray blockade


Why the war in Ethiopia has reignited


A simple guide to the Tigray conflict

TAX THEM
Christian Group Seeks to Promote Jesus Christ in a New Light with $100 Million Ad Campaign: 'He Gets Us'

Abigail Adams
Wed, October 19, 2022

Times Square billboards of the "He Gets Us" campaign on

 Wednesday Mar. 16, 2022 in New York.
Loren Matthew/AP Images for HeGetsUs.com

A Christian group is spending $100 million on a new campaign to promote Jesus Christ and the values they believe he held.

The "He Gets Us" campaign has already started appearing online and will take over billboards and airwaves across the nation with the goal of presenting Jesus in a new light to Millennials and Gen Z, according to Christianity Today.

The group's TV commercials — including a Super Bowl ad, per The Washington Post — and content optimized for other high-profile platforms were created with assistance from Michigan-based marketing agency Haven.

"A lot of times, the perception is that Christianity is kind of working against people," campaign spokesperson and Haven president Jason Vanderground told NBC News. "We wanted to help them see that in Jesus, there was someone who had a lot of common experience just like they did."

The campaign is funded by The Servant Christian Foundation, a nonprofit backed by a Kansas-based, Christian donor-advised fund called The Signatry.

According to Vanderground, the "He Gets Us" campaign has two main goals: "increase the respect and personal relevancy of Jesus" and "encourage Christians to follow the example of Jesus in how they treat other people."

The ads will encourage users to visit HeGetsUs.com and connect using features such as a live chat function, a text line for "prayer and positive vibes" and more, Christianity Today reports.

Merchandise available on the website — including a t-shirt that says, "Jesus was wrongly judged," and a hat that says, "Jesus was a refugee" — doesn't cost money but it's not exactly free.

"The price you'll find on each item is not monetary but something you'll be asked to do: help a neighbor, serve the poor, forgive a family member, etc.," the site explains.

RELATED: New Orleans Nun Who Was Kidnapped Reveals How She Made It Out Alive: 'Prayer Sustained Me'

$100M Ad Campaign Launches to Promote Jesus Christ to Young People

Courtesy 'He Gets Us'

The push to promote Jesus with a slick marketing campaign comes amid a trend of negative opinions surrounding religion, including Christianity, across the country.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in May, the number of U.S. adults that believe in God has dipped to 81%, falling six points from 87% in 2017. Up until 2011, Gallup polls showed that 90% of Amercans believed in God.

The year prior, in 2021, Gallup reported that the number of U.S. adults who belong to a church, synagogue or mosque dropped below 50% for the first time in eight decades.

RELATED: Sex Scandals, Celebrities and the Business of Christianity: Inside Hillsong Church's Rise and Fall

Simultaneously, positive views of Christianity are on the decline, something Vanderground acknowledged during his interview with NBC News.

Yet despite the trend — and the campaign's efforts to market Jesus — Vanderground doesn't think Christianity's central figure needs an image makeover. Rather, he believes people should listen more to Jesus' message.

"I think if people could hear from him [and] his message of love and compassion and forgiveness — something that we still deeply desire, we need these things one way or another — and we believe he gave an example for it," Vanderground said.

"So we understand it, but there's just something about the love and forgiveness of Jesus that a lot of people who are spiritually open just can't get over," he added.

RELATED: Hillsong's First Black Pastor Leaves Church, Saying His Congregants Don't 'Trust' Leadership After Scandals

According to its website, the "He Gets Us" campaign "does not represent any church or religious denomination, and is not a political organization." But the organization does not shy away from mentioning politics and other topics on its site.

On its main page, the pro-Christ campaign suggests that Jesus "was fed up with politics" in addition to living "in the middle of a culture war" of his own. The page also suggests that some people wanted Christ "canceled" because they "felt threatened" by his words, including "his extreme views on love."

Vanderground said the hope is that Jesus' teachings — and the message put forth by the campaign — will resonate with people, especially those who have felt judged in their lives.

"He never gave up his beliefs and conviction and mission, and it's that model that we're kind of trying to say, 'Hey, this is an example we can all follow,' no matter where you are on the political spectrum," he explained.

THE ORIGINAL CONSPIRACY THEORY

'What are they hiding?': Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records


Bettmann Archive

Marc Caputo
Wed, October 19, 2022 

The country's largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday one year after Biden issued a memo postponing the release of a final trove of 16,000 records assembled under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which Congress passed without opposition in response to Oliver Stone's Oscar-nominated film “JFK.”

The JFK records act, signed by President Bill Clinton, required that the documents be made public by Oct. 26, 2017, but President Donald Trump delayed the release and kicked the can to Biden, who critics say continued the policy of federal obfuscation that has existed since Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in an open motorcade at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

“It’s high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,” said the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination and the CIA.

“This is about our history and our right to know it,” said Morley, the author of the JFK Facts blog.

Morley’s sentiment is shared by fellow historians, open government advocates and even some members of the Kennedy family, who usually don’t comment on the assassination.



“It was a momentous crime, a crime against American democracy. And the American people have the right to know,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., the son and namesake of JFK’s brother. “The law requires the records be released. It’s bizarre. It’s been almost 60 years since my uncle’s death. What are they hiding?”

Most experts believe that the unreleased or heavily redacted records almost certainly don’t include irrefutable proof that shows others were complicit in the murder of Kennedy along with accused shooter Lee Harvey Oswald.

What the records would shed more light on, they say, is a seminal period in American history linked to JFK’s presidency and assassination: Cold War operations by U.S. intelligence agents, U.S.-Cuba relations and the plot to kill dictator Fidel Castro, and the war on the Mafia waged by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated five years after his brother.

The hidden documents, however, could also show something potentially more sinister: CIA contacts with Oswald while Kennedy was still alive, which the CIA has repeatedly covered up, according to experts like Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA agent who is critical of the agency and has lectured about JFK's assassination at Harvard University.

“What I think happened, in a nutshell, is that Oswald was recruited into a rogue CIA plot,” Mowatt-Larssen said. “This group of three, four or five rogues decided their motive [was] to get rid of Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis because they thought it was their patriotic duty given the threat the country was under at the time and their views, which would be more hard-line or more radically anti-communist and very extreme politically.”

In a statement to NBC News, the CIA said it is adhering to the JFK records act and Biden’s memo, which called for the release of the documents by Dec. 15. The National Archives and Records Administration, the agency in charge of the JFK documents, also said it’s complying with the law and the procedures Biden outlined.

But the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, argues that the federal agencies haven’t followed the law and that both Biden’s executive order and Trump's previous delay violated the 1992 statute, creating new loopholes and avenues for further unjustifiable postponements after six decades of opacity.

The suit asks a judge to declare Biden's memo void and disclose the records as Congress intended 30 years ago. Biden’s memo blamed the coronavirus pandemic for slowing the disclosure process, an argument rejected by the foundation’s attorney, Bill Simpich.

“It’s a ‘dog ate my homework’ argument,” Simpich said. “This case is all about delay. The agencies always have new and better excuses.”

The foundation fears that agencies haven’t made enough progress in the year since the memo was issued in meeting the basic rules of disclosure under the JFK records act, necessitating the lawsuit.

The 16,000 documents are among the most sensitive records concerning JFK’s assassination. About 70% of them are controlled by the CIA, followed by the FBI, which is in charge of about 23% of the records, according to Morley’s count.

The suit alleges the federal government unlawfully redacted 11 specific records, including: a 1961 memo to reorganize the CIA after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, personnel files of three CIA officers tied to Oswald, a 1962 Defense Department “false flag” plan to stage a “violent incident” in the U.S. that would be blamed on Cuba, records relating to the Castro assassination plot, and a JFK document removed from Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt’s security file.

The foundation is also asking the court to order the National Archives to find records that are “known to exist but that are not part of the JFK Collection.”

One of those records, according to the lawsuit, concerns George Joannides, who was the chief of covert action at the CIA’s Miami station and “served as case officer for a New Orleans-based CIA-funded exile group that had a series of encounters with Lee Oswald in 1963.” The lawsuit accuses the CIA of wrongly withholding files related to Joannides from the National Archives.

In another instance, the lawsuit asks the court to compel the public release of taped recordings of a man named Carlos Marcello, who allegedly told a cellmate that he was involved in JFK’s assassination. Transcripts of the recordings exist, but the foundation wants to hear the recordings to “fully evaluate the veracity and significance of these conversations.” Marcello died in 1993.

The foundation says the timing of the lawsuit is coincidental to Trump’s fight over classified records with the Justice Department and the National Archives, an agency that is seldom in the news but now plays a central role in the investigation of records stored at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after he left office.

JFK assassination historian David Talbot, a Trump critic, said he sees an irony in the two cases.

“They decided to pillory Trump over this issue because he’s a political enemy, but they’re guilty of violating records laws themselves with the JFK records act: Trump took documents the federal government owned, but they’re sitting on documents that belong to the American people,” said Talbot, the author of “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” and “The Devil’s Chessboard,” about the rise of the national security state.

A spokesman for Trump declined to comment.

Talbot said the agencies' stonewalling and the Warren Commission’s disputed conclusion in 1964 that Oswald was a lone wolf has only led people to mistrust the government.

An expert on conspiracy theories, Joseph E. Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor, says his polling and research have shown that a majority of Americans don’t believe Oswald acted alone, making it the most popular conspiracy theory in the country.

Uscinski said he’s hesitant to draw a direct line between lack of trust in the government and the refusal to release the JFK records, but he argued the feds essentially have themselves to blame.

"The whole argument about documents is stupid. The CIA is wrong. All of this should have been released a long time ago, and it’s shameful the government has yet to do so," Uscinski said. "At the same time, there’s not a document sitting in a government vault somewhere that says, ‘We did it.’”

ATTENTION AQUARISTS
Sparkling fish, murky methods: the global aquarium trade

LES, Indonesia (AP) — After diving into the warm sea off the coast of northern Bali, Indonesia, Made Partiana hovers above a bed of coral, holding his breath and scanning for flashes of color and movement. Hours later, exhausted, he returns to a rocky beach, towing plastic bags filled with his darting, exquisite quarry: tropical fish of all shades and shapes.



Millions of saltwater fish like these are caught in Indonesia and other countries every year to fill ever more elaborate aquariums in living rooms, waiting rooms and restaurants around the world with vivid, otherworldly life.

“It’s just so much fun to just watch the antics between different varieties of fish,” said Jack Siravo, a Rhode Island fish enthusiast who began building aquariums after an accident paralyzed him and now has four saltwater tanks. He calls the fish “an endless source of fascination.”

But the long journey from places like Bali to places like Rhode Island is perilous for the fish and for the reefs they come from. Some are captured using squirts of cyanide to stun them. Many die along the way.

And even when they are captured carefully, by people like Partiana, experts say the global demand for these fish is contributing to the degradation of delicate coral ecosystems, especially in major export countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

There have been efforts to reduce some of the most destructive practices, such as cyanide fishing. But the trade is extraordinarily difficult to regulate and track as it stretches from small-scale fishermen in tropical seaside villages through local middlemen, export warehouses, international trade hubs and finally to pet stores in the U.S., China, Europe and elsewhere.

“There’s no enforcement, no management, no data collection,” said Gayatri Reksodihardjo-Lilley, founder of LINI, a Bali-based nonprofit for the conservation and management of coastal marine resources.

That leaves enthusiasts like Siravo in the dark.

“Consumers often don't know where their fish are coming from, and they don't know how they are collected,” said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

STUNNED BY CYANIDE

Most ornamental saltwater fish species are caught in the wild because breeding them in captivity can be expensive, difficult and often impossible. The conditions they need to reproduce are extremely particular and poorly understood, even by scientists and expert breeders who have been trying for years.

Small-scale collection and export of saltwater aquarium fish began in Sri Lanka in the 1930s and the trade has grown steadily since. Nearly 3 million homes in the U.S. keep saltwater fish as pets, according to a 2021-2022 American Pet Products Association survey. (Freshwater aquariums are far more common because freshwater fish are generally cheaper and easier to breed and care for.) About 7.6 million saltwater fish are imported into the U.S. every year.

For decades, a common fishing technique has involved cyanide, with dire consequences for fish and marine ecosystems.

Fishermen crush the blue or white pellets into a bottle filled with water. The diluted cyanide forms a poisonous mixture fishermen squirt onto coral reefs, where fish usually hide in crevices. The fish become temporarily stunned, allowing fishermen to easily pick or scoop them from the coral.

Many die in transit, weakened by the cyanide – which means even more fish need to be captured to meet demand. The chemicals damage the living coral and make it more difficult for new coral to grow.

LAX ENFORCEMENT

Cyanide fishing has been banned in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines but enforcement of the law remains difficult, and experts say the practice continues.

Part of the problem is geography, Reksodihardjo-Lilley explains. In the vast archipelago of Indonesia, there are about 34,000 miles (54,720 kilometers) of coastline across some 17,500 islands. That makes monitoring the first step of the tropical fish supply chain a task so gargantuan it is all but ignored.

“We have been working at the national level, trying to push national government to give attention to ornamental fish in Indonesia, but it’s fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

Indonesian officials counter that laws do exist that require exporters to meet quality, sustainability, traceability and animal welfare conditions. “We will arrest anyone who implements destructive fishing. There are punishments for it,” said Machmud, an official at Indonesia’s marine affairs and fisheries ministry, who uses only one name.

“NO REAL RECORD-KEEPING”

Another obstacle to monitoring and regulating of the trade is the quick pace that the fish can move from one location to another, making it difficult to trace their origins.

At a fish export warehouse in Denpasar, thousands of fish a day can be delivered to the big industrial-style facility located off a main road in Bali’s largest city. Trucks and motorbikes arrive with white Styrofoam coolers crammed with plastic bags of fish from around the archipelago. The fish are swiftly unpacked, sorted into tanks or new plastic bags and given fresh sea water. Carcasses of ones that died in transit are tossed into a basket or onto the pavement, then later thrown in the trash.

Some fish will remain in small rectangular tanks in the warehouse for weeks, while others are shipped out quickly in plastic bags in cardboard boxes, fulfilling orders from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. According to data provided to The Associated Press by Indonesian government officials, the U.S. was the largest importer of saltwater aquarium fish from the country.

Once the fish make the plane ride halfway around the world from Indonesia to the U.S., they’re checked by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which cross-references the shipment with customs declaration forms.

But that’s designed to ensure no protected fish, such as the endangered Banggai Cardinal, are being imported. The process cannot determine if the fish were caught legally.

A U.S. law known as the Lacey Act bans trafficking in fish, wildlife, or plants that were illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold – according to the laws in the country of origin or sale. That means that any fish caught using cyanide in a country where it’s prohibited would be illegal to import or sell in the U.S.

But that helps little when it’s impossible to tell how the fish was caught. For example, no test exists to provide accurate results on whether a fish has been caught with cyanide, said Rhyne, the Roger Williams marine biology expert.

“The reality is that the Lacey Act isn’t used often because generally there’s no real record-keeping or way to enforce it,” said Rhyne.

LOCAL RESPONSE

In the absence of rigorous national enforcement, conservation groups and local fishermen have long been working to reduce cyanide fishing in places like Les, a well-known saltwater aquarium fishing town tucked between the mountains and ocean in northern Bali.

Partiana started catching fish – using cyanide -- shortly after elementary school, when his parents could no longer afford to pay for his education. Every catch would help provide a few dollars of income for his family.

But over the years Partiana began to notice the reef was changing. “I saw the reef dying, turning black,” he said. “You could see there were less fish.”

He became part of a group of local fishermen who were taught by a local conservation organization how to use nets, care for the reef and patrol the area to guard against cyanide use. He later became a lead trainer for the organization, and has trained more than 200 fellow aquarium fishermen across Indonesia in use of less harmful techniques.

Reksodihardjo-Lilley says it this type of local education and training that should be expanded to reduce harmful fishing. “People can see that they’re directly benefitting from the reefs being in good health.”

For Partiana, now the father of two children, it's not just for his benefit. “I hope that (healthier) coral reefs will make it possible for the next generation of children and grandchildren under me,” He wants them to be able to “see what coral looks like and that there can be ornamental fish in the sea.”

A world away in Rhode Island, Siravo, the fish enthusiast, shares Partiana's hopes for a less distructive saltwater aquarium industry.

“I don't want fish that are not collected sustainably,” he says. "Because I won't be able to get fish tomorrow if I buy (unsustainably caught fish) today."

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Associated Press video journalist Kathy Young reported from New York. Marshall Ritzel contributed to this report from Rhode Island. Edna Tarigan contributed from Jakarta.

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Follow Victoria Milko on Twitter: @thevmilko

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Victoria Milko, Firdia Lisnawati And Kathy Young, The Associated Press