PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit problem


BBC
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Indian student Rishi Rajpopat cracked the 2,500-year-old problem

A Sanskrit grammatical problem which has perplexed scholars since the 5th Century BC has been solved by a University of Cambridge PhD student.

Rishi Rajpopat, 27, decoded a rule taught by Panini, a master of the ancient Sanskrit language who lived around 2,500 years ago.

Sanskrit is only spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people out of a population of more than one billion, the university said.

Mr Rajpopat said he had "a eureka moment in Cambridge" after spending nine months "getting nowhere".

"I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer - swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating," he said.

"Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense."

He said he "would spend hours in the library including in the middle of the night", but still needed to work for another two-and-a-half years on the problem.

The student used a page from an 18th Century copy of a Panini Sanskrit text to help prove his theory

Sanskrit, although not widely spoken, is the sacred language of Hinduism and has been used in India's science, philosophy, poetry and other secular literature over the centuries.

Panini's grammar, known as the Astadhyayi, relied on a system that functioned like an algorithm to turn the base and suffix of a word into grammatically correct words and sentences.

However, two or more of Panini's rules often apply simultaneously, resulting in conflicts.

Panini taught a "metarule", which is traditionally interpreted by scholars as meaning "in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar's serial order wins".

However, this often led to grammatically incorrect results.

Mr Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of the metarule. Instead, he argued that Panini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side.

Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.

"I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride and hope that they too can achieve great things," said Mr Rajpopat, from India.

His supervisor at Cambridge, professor of Sanskrit Vincenzo Vergiani, said: "He has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem which has perplexed scholars for centuries.

"This discovery will revolutionise the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise."

The Hunt Is on Yet Again for a CEO to Fill South Africa’s Toughest Job


Eskom CEO De Ruyter Quits Amid Record South African Power Cuts

Mike Cohen
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 3:31 AM·4 min read

(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s debt-ridden state power utility is recruiting its 14th chief executive officer in a decade, but finding someone who can do the job and actually wants it will be a tall ask.ctricity, has more than 42,000 employees and doesn’t earn enough to cover its operating costs and service its mountain of debt. The utility’s old and poorly maintained plants can’t meet demand for power and have forced it to institute rolling blackouts since 2008. The energy crisis has hamstrung the economy and raised the ire of the government, the ruling party, labor unions and the public.

Andre de Ruyter, who’s served as CEO for almost three years, announced on Wednesday he’ll quit at the end of March. He told News24, a Cape Town-based website, that it was untenable for him to stay on given that senior government officials had repeatedly attacked him and Eskom’s strategy.

Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe has said that De Ruyter is unsuitable for the CEO position and accused Eskom of “agitating to overthrow the state.”

Phakamani Hadebe, the previous permanent appointee, resigned after less than two years because the “unimaginable demands” of the job took a toll on his health.

“A replacement seems so difficult to find, never mind to attract,” Citibank South Africa analysts Gina Schoeman and Alexander Rozhetskin said in a note to clients.

There’s also been an exodus of other senior staff: Two heads of the company’s flailing generation division and its energy transition manager have quit this year alone, while Chief Operating Officer Jan Oberholzer is set to retire in April.

Investors are concerned about management stability at Eskom and the knock-on effect it will have on Africa’s most-industrialized economy. The yield on Eskom’s 2028 dollar bonds that don’t carry a government guarantee climbed two basis points on Thursday to 11.25%, after rising nine basis points on Wednesday, while the rand weakened as much as 1.2% against the dollar.

Eskom CEO De Ruyter Quits Amid Record South African Power Cuts

Eskom’s problems date back to the 2000s, when the government failed to heed warnings that generation capacity was running out. Two giant new coal-fired power plants were eventually approved in 2007 that were expected to cost 163 billion rand ($9.4 billion) and be completed within eight years. But those projects have been plagued by mismanagement and cost overruns that have crippled Eskom’s finances, with the likely final price tag having ballooned to more than 460 billion rand.

A judicial commission of inquiry also found Eskom was at the epicenter of a looting spree of taxpayer funds during former President Jacob Zuma’s nine-year tenure.

De Ruyter has made some headway in getting rid of compromised officials and tackling graft, but he’s fallen short on a pledge to end blackouts within two years of taking office. Outages, known locally as load-shedding, have been instituted on a record 189 days this year.

The CEO’s plans to accelerate the retirement of coal-fired generation capacity and produce more green energy also ran into opposition from Mantashe and labor groups who fear job losses at plants and coal mines. The National Union of Mineworkers described his exit as “long overdue,” because he’d failed to find a viable strategy to address the blackouts.

“We must face the reality that Eskom is simply unmanageable within the political context,” said Peter Attard Montalto, head of capital markets at Intellidex. De Ruyter “did everything he possibly could within that context, but ultimately was not enough given non-nonsensical demands of political principals,” he said.

The National Treasury said in October that the government may shift between one-third and two-thirds of the utility’s debt of about 400 billion rand onto the government’s balance sheet, with details to be announced in the February budget.

While that may help put Eskom’s finances on a more sustainable footing, it won’t address a more immediate crisis: the utility needs 19.5 billion rand to buy diesel to run turbines that are used to bolster generation during peak-demand periods and mitigate blackouts. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said last month the government simply doesn’t have the money.

Longer term, De Ruyter’s successor will have to navigate a political minefield when replacing almost half of Eskom current installed capacity that’s due to be lost by 2035 as old plants are shut, and boosting output to cater for even more demand.

“De Ruyter needed more time to turn things around at Eskom,” said Raymond Parsons, a professor at North-West University’s Business School in Potchefstroom, west of Johannesburg “There are no quick solutions to the complex energy crisis and load-shedding situation.”

--With assistance from Paul Burkhardt, Prinesha Naidoo, Robert Brand and S'thembile Cele.

 PAID SICK TIME OFF IS NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK

U.S. Rail workers air their frustrations with rallies, vote

JOSH FUNK
December 14, 2022, 


Rail Rally

Workers of the two biggest rail unions rally outside of Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Railroad workers who are fed up with demanding work schedules and disappointed in the contract they received aired their frustrations this week at rallies across the country and in a leadership vote at one of their biggest unions.

Workers gathered in Washington D.C. and nearly a dozen other locations across the country Tuesday to emphasize their quality of life concerns and fight for paid sick leave after Congress intervened in the stalled contract talks earlier this month and imposed a deal on four unions that had rejected it. And thousands of engineers voted to oust their long-time union president although that result won't be final until next week.

The five-year contract that roughly 115,000 workers in 12 unions received includes 24% raises, $5,000 in bonuses and one additional paid leave day, but the unions say it didn't do enough to address workers' quality-of-life concerns. President Joe Biden urged Congress to get involved because the potential economic damage that would come with a railroad strike was too great to bear, but their action left many workers disappointed because lawmakers opted not to require the railroads to add sick time.

“The American people should know that while this round of collective bargaining is over, the underlying issues facing the workforce and rail customers remain,” said the Transportation Trades Department coalition of the AFL-CIO that includes all the rail unions. “Over the last seven years, the freight railroad industry has moved to a business model that has cut their workforces to the bone, devastated worker morale by creating unsustainable working conditions across the industry, and put the safety of their workers and the American public at risk.”

The unions have said that the roughly 45,000 job cuts across the industry as railroads overhauled their operations over the past several years have increased the workload for everyone who remains and prompted the railroads to adopt strict attendance policies that make it hard for workers to take a day off. Railroads say they don't need as many workers as they used to because they have cut down on the number of trains and locomotives they are using by relying on longer trains with a mix of freight that run on a tighter schedule.

Union Pacific railroad shipping limits generate complaints


A Union Pacific train engine sits in a rail yard on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, in Commerce, Calif. Federal regulators and shippers questioned Union Pacific’s decision to temporarily limit shipments from certain businesses more than 1,000 times this year as part of its effort to clear up congestion across the railroad. The head of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board Martin Oberman said Wednesday, Dec. 14, he’s concerned about UP’s increasing use of these embargoes because they disrupt operations of the businesses that rely on the railroad, and they haven’t seemed to help UP’s performance significantly either. 

(AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File) 

JOSH FUNK
Wed, December 14, 2022 

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Federal regulators and shippers are questioning Union Pacific's decision to temporarily limit some businesses' shipments as part of its effort to clear up congestion across the railroad.

The head of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, Martin Oberman, said Wednesday he's concerned about Union Pacific's increasing use of the embargoes because they disrupt operations of the businesses that rely on the railroad, and they haven't seemed to help its performance significantly.

Union Pacific has ordered companies to remove some of their railcars from the network more than 1,000 times this year, up from 140 times in 2018, according to the transportation board.

An embargo can force a business to consider cutting production or resorting to more expensive shipping options, like trucking, if that's even an option. And they can make it harder for other businesses to get the key products, such as shipments of chlorine used to treat water, or grain for feeding animals.

“The customer is bearing the brunt of the pain. You guys are still making money,” Surface Transportation Board member Robert Primus said, addressing Union Pacific executives during two days of board hearings this week.

For much of this year, Union Pacific and the other major freight railroads have struggled to deliver products on time and handle all the shipments companies want to move because they were short on crews coming out of the pandemic. The railroads have been improving throughout the year as they hired more workers, but regulators say they're still lagging behind where they should be. Union Pacific is using significantly more embargoes than any other railroad.

At the hearings, Union Pacific executives defended their practices, arguing that their embargoes are needed to help get the railroad running better. CEO Lance Fritz said the embargoes are targeted and temporary measures that shouldn't place an undue burden on individual businesses.

“We only use embargoes when necessary and when no longer necessary, we end them,” Fritz said.

But several shippers and trade groups testified that the embargoes are hurting their businesses.

Cargill executive Brock Lautenschlager said Union Pacific's actions make it hard to plan. Last month, the railroad told Cargill it needed to pull 130 railcars it owns from the network within a week or face shipment limits at five of its plants. The agribusiness giant complied because it worried that an embargo could force it to shut down a plant.

“We believe embargoes should be the exception not the norm,” Lautenschlager said.

It's accepted practice for railroads to temporarily place limits on shipments in extreme conditions when something outside their control, like a flood or bridge fire, hurts their ability to haul freight. Business groups, however, say they believe deep cuts in UP's workforce are a major reason the Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad is having so much trouble meeting customer expectations.

Oberman said there seems to be a direct correlation between the sharp drop in Union Pacific employees since 2018, as it overhauled its operations, and the increased use of embargoes. The number of train crews the railroad employed went from roughly 18,000 in 2018 to about 13,000 today and that includes all the hiring the railroad has done since the economy started to rebound from the pandemic.

Greg Twist with grain processor Ag Processing Inc. compared the situation to going shopping at a grocery store and finding that the store refuses to hire more than one clerk, and then the store's manager tells him he must come back at a certain time of day if he wants service. And unlike with groceries, his company generally can't shop around to ship its goods because Union Pacific is the only railroad that serves several of its plants.

Twist said Ag Processing should have “the freedom to decide how we operate our facilities” without having the railroad dictate how much they can produce with its shipping limits.

The Climate Movement Needs to Embrace Property Destruction



Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd
Wed, December 14, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- The past few months have seen a flurry of climate protests. In Marseilles, a cement factory was sabotaged by activists for its high emissions. In London, tomato soup was thrown at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers by members of the group Just Stop Oil. Other activists have taken to deflating SUV tires in cities across Europe and the US to discourage use of the gas-guzzling vehicles.

This is only the beginning of what climate activists need to do in order to be effective, says Andreas Malm, associate professor of human ecology at Lund University and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. “The task for the climate movement is to make clear for people that building new pipelines, new gas terminals, opening new oil fields are acts of violence that need to be stopped — they kill people,” Malm says on Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast.

Malm argues that while the majority of climate action should remain non-violent, no social sea change — from the suffragettes to the Civil Rights Movement — has succeeded through completely peaceful activism. “We shouldn't engage in assassinations or terrorism, or use arms and things like that,” he says. “But until that line or boundary, we need virtually everything … all the way up to sabotage and property destruction.”

The stakes are high for protesters engaged in disruptive tactics, as governments around the world target them with increasingly punitive legislation. Last month in the UK, Just Stop Oil activist Jan Goodey was sentenced to six months in prison for causing disruption on a major London motorway. Earlier this month in Australia, climate protester Deanna “Violet” Coco was sentenced to 15 months in jail for blocking a lane of traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for 28 minutes.

Malm says this response is to be expected. “That's what always happens when you escalate. As soon as you pose a danger to the system, this is what you'll get in return,” he says. “And that's a sign that you're doing something good, that you are actually challenging some interests.”

You can listen to the full conversation with Malm below, and read a full transcript here. Check out more episodes of Zero, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify and Google to get new episodes each week.

COP15

UN nature talks teeter on brink as ministers arrive for home stretch

Benjamin Legendre and Issam Ahmed
Wed, December 14, 2022


Hopes of sealing a historic "peace pact with nature" at a United Nations biodiversity summit will soon rest on the world's environment ministers, arriving in Montreal for the final phase of talks beginning Thursday.

Stark divisions remain to be bridged, foremost among them the subject of how much developed countries will pay the developing to help them save ecosystems, and whether there should be a new, dedicated fund for this purpose.

At stake is the future of the planet and whether humanity can roll back habitat destruction, pollution and the climate crisis, which are threatening an estimated million species with extinction.

The draft agreement contains more than 20 targets, including a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world's land and seas by 2030, eliminate harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies, tackle invasive species and reduce pesticides.

"I hope what we would have at the end of this... is a Paris moment," said Zakri Abdul Hamid, science advisor for the Campaign for Nature, referencing the landmark climate accord that agreed to hold long-term warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"Decades of study have also clarified what the world must do," he added.

In the absence of heads of state and government, more than a hundred ministers will have to drag the text, three years in the making, over the finish line.

But its success still hangs in the balance after disagreements over the thorny issue of biodiversity financing led to a walkout by negotiators from developing nations overnight Tuesday and a temporary pause in talks.

- New fund sought -

The Global South, home to most of the world's biological diversity, wants a new global biodiversity fund (GBF), something rich countries oppose -- proposing instead making existing financial mechanisms more accessible.

This debate mirrors a similar disagreement during recent UN climate talks in Egypt on creating a "loss and damages" fund for the most climate-vulnerable nations -- though that demand was eventually met.

Dozens of nations, including Brazil, India, Indonesia and many African countries are also seeking funding of $100 billion yearly, or one percent of global GDP, until 2030.

Current financial flows from high-income countries to lower income ones are in the order of $10 billion per year.

A crisis meeting of heads of delegations, organized on Wednesday by China, which is chairing the meeting, brought negotiators back to the table following the breakdown.

A Western negotiator who declined to be named told AFP: "The African group wants to reach an agreement with money in front, other developing countries too, but Brazil is using the financial question to derail the process."

The source said the Brazilian delegation is still following the policies of outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who is very close to the agricultural industry, which is hostile to reducing pesticide use.

Nevertheless, developing countries are angered by what they see as a lack of ambition.

"This has led to the negotiations now being on the edge of a full breakdown," said Innocent Maloba of WWF International.


Beyond the moral implications, there is the question of self-interest: $44 trillion of economic value generation -- more than half the world's total GDP -- is dependent on nature and its services.

The summit has failed to garner the same level of attention as the UN climate meeting held in Egypt in November, which brought together more than a hundred world leaders.

This meeting is being held in Canada after China declined to host because of its strict Covid rules, and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been the only leader in attendance.

ia/caw

SCI FI TECH OF THE FUTURE
What is nuclear fusion, and could it change our energy future?

David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Tue, December 13, 2022 

When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced Tuesday that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain, she hailed the event as “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.”

Nuclear fusion, after all, is the same energy that powers the sun and every other star in the universe. Being able to harness and replicate it means that humankind could one day tap an almost limitless source of energy that wouldn't contribute to the climate crisis caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

But what is nuclear fusion, and how did the team of scientists in California succeed in achieving what Granholm characterized as a breakthrough?

Learning from the sun

Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms of a light element such as hydrogen are heated and fused together to form a heavier element such as helium. In order for that process to occur, the atoms must be subjected to extremely high temperatures and pressure. When that chemical reaction happens, it gives off energy.

Fission vs. fusion

Nuclear fission is the opposite of nuclear fusion in that the former unleashes energy by splitting heavy atoms apart. While fission and fusion both produce clean energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, fission comes with a glaring downside.

“Nuclear fission power plants have the disadvantage of generating unstable nuclei; some of these are radioactive for millions of years,” the International Atomic Energy Agency states on its website. “Fusion, on the other hand, does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste.”

The waste byproduct of a fusion reaction is far less radioactive than in fission, and decays far more quickly.

The upsides to fusion over fission have long been known to scientists.

“Fusion could generate four times more energy per kilogram of fuel than fission (used in nuclear power plants) and nearly four million times more energy than burning oil or coal,” the IAEA says on its website.

Laser energy is converted into X-rays inside a cylindrical shell known as a hohlraum. (John Jett and Jake Long/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Handout via Reuters)

Star power

In order to replicate the chemical process that powers stars in the universe, researchers at the National Ignition Facility employed the world’s most energetic lasers — 192 of them, to be exact — further compressing their intensity before shooting them into a cylinder the size of a small pebble that contained a small portion of hydrogen encased in diamond.

By blasting the hydrogen pellet with 2.05 megajoules of energy, which the New York Times noted is the equivalent of a pound of TNT, the chemical reaction was achieved, resulting in the release of 3 megajoules of energy.
No small feat

Researchers from 50 countries have been working on the problem of how to re-create and harness the energy of a fission reaction since the 1960s. In 2009, when work began in earnest at the National Ignition Facility, the Livermore laboratory released a video explaining its work.

The Arctic Is Becoming Wetter and Stormier, Scientists Warn


The Arctic Is Becoming Wetter and Stormier, Scientists Warn

Raymond Zhong
Tue, December 13, 2022 

As humans warm the planet, the once reliably frigid and frozen Arctic is becoming wetter and stormier, with shifts in its climate and seasons that are forcing local communities, wildlife and ecosystems to adapt, scientists said Tuesday in an annual assessment of the region.

Even though 2022 was only the Arctic’s sixth warmest year on record, researchers saw plenty of new signs this year of how the region is changing.

A September heat wave in Greenland, for instance, caused the most severe melting of the island’s ice sheet for that time of the year in over four decades of continuous satellite monitoring. In 2021, an August heat wave had caused it to rain at the ice sheet’s summit for the first time.

“Insights about the circumpolar region are relevant to the conversation about our warming planet now more than ever,” said Richard Spinrad, administrator of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We’re seeing the impacts of climate change happen first in polar regions.”

Temperatures in the Arctic Circle have been rising much more quickly than those in the rest of the planet, transforming the region’s climate into one defined less by sea ice, snow and permafrost and more by open water, rain and green landscapes.

Over the past four decades, the region has warmed at four times the global average rate, not two or three times as had often been reported, scientists in Finland said this year. Some parts of the Arctic are warming at up to seven times the global rate, they said.

Nearly 150 experts from 11 nations compiled this year’s assessment of Arctic conditions, the Arctic Report Card, which NOAA has produced since 2006. This year’s report card was issued on Tuesday in Chicago at a conference of the American Geophysical Union, the society of earth, atmospheric and oceanic scientists.

Warming at the top of the Earth raises sea levels worldwide, changes the way heat and water circulate in the oceans, and might even influence extreme weather events like heat waves and rainstorms, scientists say. But Arctic communities feel the impacts first.

“Our homes, livelihoods and physical safety are threatened by the rapid-melting ice, thawing permafrost, increasing heat, wildfires and other changes,” said Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer, an author of a chapter in the report card on local communities, the director of climate initiatives for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, Alaska.

Between October 2021 and September, air temperatures above Arctic lands were the sixth warmest since 1900, the report card said, noting that the seven warmest years have been the last seven. Rising temperatures have helped plants, shrubs and grasses grow in parts of the Arctic tundra, and 2022 saw levels of green vegetation that were the fourth highest since 2000, particularly in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, northern Quebec and central Siberia.

A new chapter in this year’s report deals with Arctic precipitation. Measuring snow, rain and freezing rain is tricky there: In the northernmost reaches of the region, there aren’t many weather gauges. Those that are in place might not measure snow accurately because of windy conditions.

Instead, scientists have begun combining direct measurements with sophisticated computer modeling to get a fuller picture. These methods have given them confidence to say that precipitation levels have increased significantly in the Arctic since the mid-20th century. This year was the region’s third-wettest since 1950, the report card said.

Because of warmer temperatures, though, extra snow doesn’t necessarily remain on the ground. Snow accumulation in the Arctic was above average during the 2021-22 winter, the assessment said. But by June, snow cover in the North American Arctic was the second-lowest on record. In the Eurasian Arctic, it was third lowest.

Three main factors could be increasing precipitation in different parts of the Arctic, said John Walsh, a scientist at the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and an author of the report card. First, warmer air can hold more moisture. Second, as sea ice retreats, storms can suck up more open ocean water.

Indicators of sea ice rebounded this year after near-record-lows in 2021, but they were still below long-term averages, the assessment found. March is typically when the ice is at its greatest extent each year, September its lowest. At both points this year, ice levels were among the lowest since satellites have been making reliable measurements.

The third factor is that storms are passing over warmer water before reaching the Arctic, feeding them with more energy, Walsh said. The remnants of Typhoon Merbok traveled over unusually warm water in the north Pacific in September before pummeling communities along more than 1,000 miles of Alaskan coast.

The Greenland ice sheet has lost ice for the last 25 years, and this year was no different. But what stood out to scientists was an extraordinary burst of melting in September, the kind of event that would normally be seen in the middle of summer.

In early September, a high pressure system brought warm, wet air that sent temperatures in parts of Greenland to as high as 36 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for that time of year. More than a third of the ice sheet experienced melting, according to the report card. Later that month, the remnants of Hurricane Fiona traveled over the island and caused further melting over 15% of the ice sheet.

The seasons are blending together across the Arctic, said Matthew Druckenmiller, a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an editor of the report card. Just last week, the mercury hit 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the northern Alaskan community of Utqiagvik, smashing winter records.

“At this time of year, the sun’s not even rising” in that part of Alaska, Druckenmiller said.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Michigan, native tribes reach new Great Lakes fishing deal

FILE - In this photo provided by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a lake trout swims off Isle Royale, Mich., in Lake Superior, Sept. 12, 2018. Four Native American tribes have agreed with Michigan and federal officials on a revised fishing policy for parts of three of the Great Lakes, officials said Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. 

(Andrew Muiri/Great Lakes Fishery Commission via AP, File) 


JOHN FLESHER
Mon, December 12, 2022 

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Four Native American tribes have agreed with Michigan and federal officials on a revised fishing policy for parts of three of the Great Lakes, officials said Monday.

The tentative deal involves contentious issues for groups wanting shares of a valuable resource as populations of some species — particularly whitefish and salmon — have fallen over the past two decades.

A proposed order submitted to a federal judge would extend for 24 years a system overseeing commercial and sport fishing in areas of lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior covered by an 1836 treaty. Those sections of the lakes are entirely within the U.S. and under Michigan's jurisdiction.

Under the treaty, the Odawa and Ojibway nations described collectively as Anishinaabek ceded lands that would comprise nearly 40% of Michigan's eventual territory, while retaining hunting and fishing rights.

Rising tensions between tribal commercial operations and sport anglers led to a fishery management pact in 1985, which was updated in 2000. That version was due to expire two years ago but was extended to allow continued negotiations.

“We believe this agreement has clear benefits for all the parties,” said David Caroffino, tribal coordination unit manager for the fisheries division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

In addition to the state and federal governments, participants include the Bay Mills Indian Community, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, which has joined the previous deals, hasn't signed this one, Caroffino said. The tribe has filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, who is overseeing the case, seeking the authority to regulate its own fishing. Officials from that tribe didn't immediately respond Monday to messages seeking comment.

Maloney has scheduled a conference for Friday to review where the case stands and consider the Sault tribe's proposal.

The agreement, like its predecessors, sets zones where tribal fishing crews can operate and areas where commercial fishing is off limits. It deals with topics such as catch limits and which gear tribal operations can use.

Particularly controversial is tribes' use of large-mesh gill nets, an effective tool that hangs in the water column like a wall. Critics say they indiscriminately catch and kill too many fish. The new deal let tribes use the nets in more places, with restrictions on depth in the water they're placed, the times of year they're used and how much netting is deployed.

State biologists are confident that the limited expansion of gill netting won't harm fish populations and will have “minimal impacts" on sport fishing, Caroffino said.

Sport fishing groups believe otherwise, said Amy Trotter, executive director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs. Under the 2000 consent decree, she said, Michigan spent more than $14 million paying tribal operations to transition from gill nets to trap nets, which are more selective.

More gill netting will upset a roughly 50-50 balance between harvesting opportunities for tribes and state-licensed sport anglers, Trotter said. The consent decree appears to tilt in the direction of tribal interests at the expense of sport anglers, charter boat operators and tourism-dependent communities, she said.

“We've lived in relative harmony for the past 22 years,” Trotter said. But if sport anglers struggle to find fish or encounter nets stretched across bays as they try to reach open waters in boats, “we definitely will have conflicts in the future.”

Caroffino said tribal crews' need for gill netting to improve harvests has risen with the collapse of whitefish populations, which have suffered as invasive quagga mussels have gobbled up plankton and unraveled food chains.

The nets are particularly important for landing lake trout, which have become a more important commercial species as whitefish have plummeted. Lake trout, once devastated by parasitic sea lamprey, have bounced back in recent decades because of lamprey controls and trout restoration efforts.

Grand Traverse Band attorney Bill Rastetter said the overall structure and balance between tribal and sport interests remain intact under the new agreement, although one side or the other might do better in particular areas.

“We've reached an agreement that's consistent with what's been in place for 37 years but reacts to a changed fishery,” Rastetter said. “It won't create any burden on state-licensed fishers. The harvest limits will remain in place.”

WW3.0

Vietnam in big push to expand South China Sea outposts - U.S. think tank
A ship of Chinese Coast Guard is seen near a ship of Vietnam
Wed, December 14, 2022

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vietnam has conducted a major expansion of dredging and landfill work at several of its South China Sea outposts in the second half of this year, signaling an intent to significantly fortify its claims in the disputed waterway, a U.S. think tank reported on Wednesday.

Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said the work in the Spratly Islands, which are also claimed by China and others, had created roughly 420 acres (170 hectares) of new land and brought the total area Vietnam had reclaimed in the past decade to 540 acres (220 hectares).

Basing its findings on commercial satellite imagery, CSIS's Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said the effort included expanded landfill work at four features and new dredging at five others.

"The scale of the landfill work, while still falling far short of the more than 3,200 acres of land created by China from 2013 to 2016, is significantly larger than previous efforts from Vietnam and represents a major move toward reinforcing its position in the Spratlys," the report said.

Vietnam's Washington embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

AMTI said Vietnam's midsized outposts at Namyit Island, Pearson Reef and Sand Cay were undergoing major expansions, with a dredged port capable of hosting larger vessels already taking shape at Namyit and Pearson.

Namyit Island, at 117 acres (47 hectares) and Pearson Reef, at 119 acres (48 hectares), were both now larger than Spratly Island at 97 acres (39 hectares), which had been Vietnam's largest outpost. Tennent Reef, which previously only hosted two small pillbox structures, now had 64 acres (26 hectares)of artificial land, the report said.

AMTI said Vietnam used clamshell dredgers to scoop up sections of shallow reef and deposit the sediment for landfill, a less destructive process than the cutter-suction dredging China had used to build its artificial islands.

"But Vietnam’s dredging and landfill activities in 2022 are substantial and signal an intent to significantly fortify its occupied features in the Spratlys," the report said.

"(W)hat infrastructure the expanded outposts will host remains to be seen. Whether and to what degree China and other claimants react will bear watching," it said.

China claims most of the South China Sea and has established military outposts on artificial islands it has built there. Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all have overlapping claims in the sea, which is crisscrossed by vital shipping lanes and contains gas fields and rich fishing grounds.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; editing by Jonathan Oatis)