Hello, this is Ilchibuko Todd. You are watching Tao Thursday with Ilchibuko on Brain Decation TV. Today, I will talk about how can I create a positive relationship. When we are talking about relationship, automatically you may think relationship with someone or other people. But I want to mention about the relationship with yourself first. When we are in relationship with other people, we feel some emotions. We feel you are hurt by others and automatically we are looking at other people. Other people hurt me and I am a victim of this situation. But before we look at improving the relationship with other people, you want to look at yourself. I get a lot of times this question, how can I improve the relationship with my husband or with my wife because things are not going well? And I hear that they are going to counseling and working things out with each other. And I tell them usually first each person improve relationship with himself or herself and later on come together to work on a relationship to create positivity in a relationship. So then what is this relationship with myself mean? So in this study of Tao, we say that there are three things or three bodies. So when we are talking about body, you know as a physical body as me, but you want to be looking at these three things. Physical body as a container that holds different things. So for example, emotion. Emotion is not out there. Emotion is right here within this physical being. Also how about information, information or stories of the past? Isn't that inside of this container so-called physical body too? Absolutely. In this container, we hold different things like story of the past, information that you keep saying in your mind all the time and also the emotion that is going up and down depending on situation and circumstances. So this body also contains different things like we can say our soul. This is the greatest energy or the being existing inside of you that physical body holds. Also information wise, we say we have different state of consciousness. Level of information goes up and down. So the greatest and best information you can have is the we say divinity. Those different information, different level of energy reside inside of our physical body. Next is second body, energy body. So the energy body is something that goes beyond this physical existence and it can expand or shrink. It can be very small and tiny or it can be wide and big depending on what information you carry. Third body is information body or we call spiritual body. So this is related to what kind of information you carry all the time. So you can be saying like the self talk, why is this happening to me or I am not good or I am great, I am loving. This is the range of we say consciousness. So dark consciousness or information can be what limits you and keep you in the same place and the brighter consciousness can be expensive and wide that can tap into the limitless potential of yourself. Now when you look at physical body, when you look at energy and when you look at your information, you will be able to observe and reflect what is going on and get to know about yourself. What kind of emotion do you carry all the time? How about your information you carry, what do you say to yourself? So positive relationship means that quantity and quality of information is bright, consciousness is bright, also the quantity and quality of emotion is more of joy, happiness, peace and also how you see yourself, your body become positive or being patient with your body and allowing your body to communicate with you through the communication with your body, communication with the pain of the emotion as if you are talking to somebody. This will help you to be more of observer existing inside to see what is going on and be able to be honest and patient with yourself. So if you increase your awareness about those, then you will have better communication and better relationship with yourself. Now if you have that then you can go step two which is creating the better relationship with other people. So when you create better relationship with other people, what is that mean? You show up as this honest, sincere being to other people. If you do the step one to help yourself communicate with yourself and have awareness, that means that you will not be reacting, you have this processing time inside of you. We can say observation or watching yourself. And through that, what you output, what you say to others will be more considerate for others or sincere or respectful for another human being. Even that situation is difficult and hard and even somebody says something to you that can be hurtful. If you ended up hurting another person, naturally you can say to another human being, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. So if you ask me what is the positive relationship like? It's not really about being nice or having some kind of the relationship on the surface. It's really about connecting to your senses and knowing about yourself more. And that will turn into loving yourself more and uncovering this self that is beyond your imagination which is just the pure love itself. And even the state of your mind, your consciousness, you will discover from the dark state of consciousness which is blaming other people or blaming even yourself for a long time from the past heart. But you will be able to shift from that state into the bright one which is peace or absolute love for yourself and seeing hope for the future about yourself. And with that you will be able to see in others the love that is existing inside of them and hope for the relationship with you and others to be a better one and positive one. Thank you so much. So I hope what I talked about today will be improving relationship with others and with yourself. Next time I'll be talking about overcoming negative feelings. Thank you for watching Tower Thursday with Ilchebooko on Brain Education TV. See you next time.


Hi, my name is Mitch Mitchell. A couple of weeks ago I went to visit my mother out of town. Mom's 77 years old. Her memory isn't totally sharp, but she can take care of herself.  My mother was always kind of heavy. Well, I can just tell the truth. Mom was always heavy, at least as far as I knew her. Then when my dad got sick back in late 2001, mom started to lose a lot of weight. And she lost weight. She was trying to take care of my dad. And when my dad got worse, mom wouldn't eat because dad wouldn't eat. And then after dad passed, mom still really wasn't eating, even though I was trying to do what I could. And mom basically lost more than half of her weight. Mom's only 5'2", so you can imagine. And so she got to this point where she lost basically all of her strength, because mom at least could take care of herself as far as, you know, being physically strong. But she lost her physical strength and, you know, her joints and everything, you know, they all just kind of started to fail her in a way, to the point now that mom moves really slow. But because mom's memory also isn't the best, and it happens. She's 77 years old. You know, every once in a while it takes her a little while longer to think about stuff. So I went to visit mom and we went to Wegmans in Rochester area. Wegmans is a major grocery chain in the Northeast in case you don't know what Wegmans is. Best store, usually ranked in the top five for employee satisfaction, just to get that out of the way. Love Wegmans. As a matter of fact, I share a backyard with one of the Wegmans where I live. So there. Anyway, so we're at Wegmans and we've gotten all the stuff that she needed to buy because I go there every couple weeks to get the heavy stuff so that I can take it in the house instead. And we're there in line and they had these toys up on the side that had different dollar amounts.  And mom says, well, I usually try to give money instead.  So we get to the line and the woman runs everything through and mom pulls out some extra money to give to the woman. And I didn't know that Wegmans did that. Well, it turns out they don't. But I didn't know that at the time. I had a feeling that they didn't. So anyway, there's this guy behind her. Now, you know, he had seen everything kind of going on. He knew better, but he got behind it. So mom pays for the thing. Now she's trying to give this woman this extra $5. And the woman doesn't know what it is. And suddenly this guy starts beating on the whatever the thing is called for the grocery that you put your, your, your, you know, stuff on. He starts beating on it. And I got angry. I got angry to the point where I really wanted to hit this guy. I really did. I had all kinds of things flash in my mind, but I had to stay calm because I'm there with mom who didn't notice it.  We'll donate next time. I think this guy behind you is in some difficulty and needs to leave. And I just wanted to get my little pot shot out, but I really wanted to smack him around. And I sat there thinking, what's with this guy?  He's at least close to my age, and he's going to be in that position one day. You know what? Cause we're all going to be in that position. And I was really angry. And I stayed angry for about 15 minutes, which really wasn't fair because now I'm trying to contain myself when I'm with mom who didn't notice him.  And I was irked. And then I started to think about it a little later on. I said, you know what, Mitchell? Truth of the matter is sometimes you have a little bit of that difficulty.  You want to know how slow mom moves? We will stop at subway.  This is mom's thing. Mom eats pretty much the exact same thing every single day. But when I go up, we now go to Subway. Yeah, she can't go to Subway on her own. She needs me. I don't know why, but that's just how it is. So whenever we go to subway, then we swing over to McDonald's, get her a strawberry shake and we get home. It usually takes 15 to 20 minutes before mom will start eating. The reason being, she has to make sure that everything is all set down in the kitchen. We bought stuff. Usually I put that like I said, I put heavy stuff away, but sometimes she has her little puttering to do. Then she has to go upstairs, which takes her a long time to get upstairs, because she has to change because she says, I can't have tight stuff on me when I eat because it makes me uncomfortable. I'm thinking, you know what, mom, you wait 115. What tight stuff do you have? But you know, the elastic, I guess, bothers her. So she has to go upstairs. She has to change. Then whatever consumes her mind upstairs, because I don't follow my mother upstairs to watch her change, she has to do with that. Then she has to come back downstairs. Now she has to go get her beanos, because well, the beanos help to beat the gas, which you wouldn't have if you weren't drinking the milkshake. But I understand because you know what, I have my few predilections as well, you know what, I get them from her. And now she'll sit down with the sandwich and she'll open it up. Then she'll think of something else she has to go get and whatever.  And that milkshake's just kind of withering away and then mom sits down and eventually starts to eat and by that time I'm done. And sometimes I'll sit there with her or sometimes I'll go sit in the chair in the living room and we're sitting there watching Little House on the Prairie, because that's what mom likes to watch. But it's one of those kind of things where I've had to kind of get used to things like that. My mother doesn't move that well, we had the handicap sticker on the car. And, and you know, I thought about that. You know, I've always been a fast walker. When I was in my 20s, that was one thing that I was impressed with myself about, you know, not a whole lot, you know, because we all kind of be ourselves up, but I was always the fast walker. So if I went to the mall, I was the fast walker, if I didn't go to the lake as much in my 20s. But if I did, I was a fast walker and I was always the one that people had to kind of keep up with and I had to slow myself down. Now, I find myself at the lake thinking I'm this fast walker.  I'm just saying it that way. Who just like zip by me as if I'm standing still. And I'm like, dad, what happened to me? I thought I was moving along. Well, you know, I'm kind of huffing puff in here. And they're just bypassing me like nothing. Yeah. You know, I could, I could be ashamed of myself. But I said, you know what, at least I'm out here trying to do this. I'm exercising.  But I thought about the patients thing, because I've had to be patient with myself. Mitchell, you're 56 years old, you can't totally keep up with everyone like you could anymore. If I'm at the mall, and I'm behind these people who are walking really slow and there's no lane to pass them, I have to tell myself, calm down, relax, walk a little slower. Just look at stuff.  You can't go zipping in and out because frankly, you don't have that zipping in and out speed anymore. I still have a dexterity. I could still slide between people for a guy my size that that's pretty impressive. I can slide between people without touching them, or I can give my quick excuse me. And if they give me a little little space, bam, I'm through it. Don't bump into people. But I do realize that sometimes you just have to relax and slow down. And I tell that to you folks today, because that's what this is all about. Sometimes you have to relax and slow down.  If they're going slower than the speed limit, well, you know what, that's just tough. You know, stop hitting the horn, stop riding people. My God, I hate that. I've actually followed a couple of people home and that freaks them out. Okay, that was years ago.  So, you know, I'm not looking to get killed. I'm not looking to hurt myself. I'm not looking to hurt anybody else. The rest of you, slow down, calm down. Patience really is a virtue sometimes. You know, we have to take other people into consideration because you know what? It's going to be you someday. It's going to be me. I'm already slowing down and I thought I was walking really fast and I'm 56. I'm going to get slower, but I'm not going to get smaller. And I'm just saying, you know, there could be that kind of thing. You never know.  I don't care any weapons. I'm realizing that I'm not as strong as I used to be anymore. Yeah, it is what it is. So, do you have patience? Do you think you should have patience? Do you know somebody else who needs patience? Let me know your thoughts on this below. Share it with people. Discuss it amongst yourselves. Like I said, you're going to be in this position if you're lucky to live long enough to get here. It's going to get us all. I'm Mitch Mitchell. Let me know your thoughts. Y'all take care.


I was looking through eBay for a Simpsons VHS, until I stumbled across one which was clearly a bootleg.  It came the day after ordering it. I put it in my VHS player, and yet play. It seemed like a season 1 VHS, so I watched it, hoping for something weird. I finished the season, and when I was about to fall asleep, loud static awakened me. I looked at the TV screen, noticing a low quality version of the Simpsons intro, so I watched it. The episode began with a realistic Homer, which looked like a mascot costume, just laying down, seeming drunk. He then stood up. It then cut to the same Homer looking at a TV. After that, it cut to a low quality video of a barplush laying on concrete, zooming in and out. It then cut, again, to what seems like a realistic version of the Simpsons living room, with a different realistic Homer, just sitting there. A realistic Marge then walks in the room, and they both start talking, but nothing is heard. It was just, ambience. Homer then picks up a phone, and seems like he is doing a joke, but I still can't hear it at all. Homer then hangs up the phone, and then Marge walks out, and back in the living room. It then cuts to Bart, in the normal 2D style, but his eyes were tinted red, and he was screaming. It cut to the Tracy Oman Simpsons at a funeral, and when Bart walked up to the coffin, he warped and turned red. It cut to a graveyard, where it shows Lisa pulling her eyes out. It cuts back to the same scene with the screaming Bart, but it was filtered in black and white. That was when the episode ended, and the tape popped out. I decided to keep the tape, and post it online.


Hello, my name is Ed, or commonly known as Ed at MaxProp. I'm the CEO of MaxProp Digital, and I'm delighted to be talking to you today about the shift towards a digital mindset and technology, and the opportunities to make money whilst keeping your day job. And through the presentation, I hope to show you how to do that. The four different worlds and property. Retail, office, residential and industrial. These are performing very differently at the moment, and even post-COVID, very differently than before COVID. I think we've seen a massive move online in general, not just with offices, but with retail as well. So let's start with retail. Retail's been under pressure for a while with a weak economy, and now with online shopping, people are buying the groceries online, they're buying all sorts of things online and getting them delivered, and bigger items are getting bought online. Fridges and washing machines, and some people even buying cars online. So the online movement has gained massive momentum during COVID-19 across the world, and I think malls and shops are going to have to start reimagining how they operate. I think they're going to become showrooms. People are going to be going in just to see and touch and feel the product, and possibly then buying online anyway, and I think that's been going on for a while. Businesses, we've seen a massive reduction in office space. Everyone's looking at their businesses through a different lens and saying, do we need all the office space? Can we do things differently? Can we hot desk? And can we reduce our costs? And one of the easiest ways to reduce costs is to reduce your space. So offices are under pressure, and I think will be for a while. I think we'll see some conversions of offices, possibly to residential and other uses over time. Industrial is doing a lot better than other sectors. However, it's challenges or a weak economy. The logistics sector is doing well, and goods have to get from source to destination, whether you buy them online or whether you buy them at a shop. Goods have to be moved. So logistics is done well, and I think we'll continue to do well. And then the most exciting sector is residential, which has certainly caught me off guard and very excited about what's happening there. There's a wave of first-time buyers that have come into the market due to the reduction in the interest rate. And interest rate at 7% now is making it very attractive for first-time buyers that are renting. For the price of a rental, around 8,000 grand, 9,000 grand, you can buy a nice property. So there's a great first-time buying opportunity, which first-time buyers are taking advantage of, and we're seeing a lot of activity in the market at the moment. And I think hopefully it lost, and I think that the residential space is certainly very exciting. It shows confidence in the country as well that if you are buying, you certainly are staying and investing in the economy. And so it certainly bodes well for the future of South Africa that we're seeing the residential market hold up under such challenging economic times. So digital technology as an enabler, what does digital do for us and what does technology do for us as an industry? So it clearly reduces costs. And at MaxProp Digital, we've started a token-new business called MaxProp Digital. We're totally remote. We don't have any offices. We have the best tools to support our practitioners and also give our clients a professional experience. And that is what technology does for us these days. So it first of all reduces your costs in that you don't have to have this expensive rental and overhead. It allows us to scale so we can have one practitioner or a thousand practitioners. We don't have to keep on expanding office space, getting desks, et cetera, et cetera. We're able to grow really quickly and we can also jump borders. So we can go to Mauritius and Namibia and that's part of our bigger vision in time to come. And then it provides data to become more productive and effective. So we can use data which can be measured and what's critical in any business is measuring what you do and then learning from it. Verifying that data and verifying those lessons and then making it better. So that's what digital does. And a classic example is if you put an advert in a newspaper, how many people have seen that advert and what is your response? You don't know. Once you put the advert in the newspaper, well, you just hope that someone phones you off it. Whereas if you place an advert on a digital social media, you can then have very deep insight into who is seeing that advert and whether that advert is working. So that's one example of how digital is helping. And then we are creating business tools to leverage property practitioners' efforts. So we've created what we call the digital office, which is a fantastic tool for property practitioners. It gives them the tools to win. It's a listing in a CRM system and it has a whole lot of other features which make our practitioners far more productive but more importantly give the client a better service and a more professional service and more deeper insight into the transaction. And then what digital enables is to create opportunities for supplementary income and that's where we are saying we can create opportunities for people like yourselves to make money whilst still being in your day job. And I'll speak to that right at the end. We've created a program called the Connector Program and very excited to be launching it at this virtual property show. So what else is digital done? Well, it's certainly enabled working remotely and I think we've all had a taste of it. And working remotely is being exacerbated by the COVID-19 lockdown and I think people that are thinking about it or now certainly have a very good idea what it's about. And it's not for everybody and it's not for every job. So what jobs do suit remote work? In my opinion, it's jobs that or not don't need monitoring on an hourly basis. If you're monitoring your employees on an hourly basis and measuring their productivity on how many hours they spend, then I don't think remote work is going to work for your business. However, one of the jobs that is perfectly suited to remote work is professional practitioners in real estate and the reason is that they are success-based workers, employees and they make money out of commission. So practitioners make money out of commission. The harder they work, the more money they make and as a result, they don't need to be in an office space. In fact, if you go into a lot of offices, you will notice there's very few practitioners behind their desks and rightly so. They need to be in front of clients and that's why at Mashbox Digital, we are totally remote. We have fantastic tools where we stay connected. We use Teams and Office 365 and our digital office to stay connected. And there are certain people that suit remote work and certain people that absolutely don't suit it. So the advantages are you do you. If you need to drop your children if it's school or you prefer working in the afternoons and the evenings rather than the mornings or you prefer working in the mornings and want the afternoons and evenings off, you do you. You can work when you want to work and when it makes sense to work. When is it productive? It's pointless working when clients are not available. So is 9 o'clock on a Monday morning the right time to try and get a hold of a buyer or seller when they probably had worked themselves. I don't think so. I think possibly early evenings when they're relaxed maybe that's the time to engage with them around progress on their property. So it's completely flexible and it's up to the practitioners to you do you. You do what suits you and what's going to make you most productive. It makes for a digital. We certainly don't prescribe when people work and we don't measure on hours. We work on different KPIs. We work on productivity listings, quality of listings, quality of service to the client and the big number is how many sales have you done. That's always the exciting part for both the business and the practitioner is how much money are you making. Disadvantages of remote work clearly are distractions. I mean we've all had children kind of tapping us on the shoulder while we're in the middle of a team's call and we've had the gardener who's knocked on the door halfway through a meeting and all those distractions that you pick up at home. I do think that for remote work there's going to be some very clever remote working pods that come out where maybe you'll have a dedicated space in your house where you can enclose a corner with a pod and have cut out those distractions when you go into your pod then that's going to be where you work. If you're lucky enough to have a dedicated room in an office where you can close the door, well that's fantastic. But I do think that there's going to be a lot of movement in the space now that remote work is with us in a very, very big way. And now for the best part, opportunities to supplement your income. At MaxProp Digital we've created a program called the Connector Program to assist you with making money out of information that you have. Do you know a bio or seller? Is it someone in your network, a friend or a family member? If you do, you can simply register for free on our website MaxProp the Digital Backslash Connector. You can register your lead. We will then follow up and make sure that they are a bio or a seller and we do the rest. Our professional practitioners will then conclude the sale transaction and if we're successful in concluding a sale you will be paid a fee. And if you're good at generating these leads then maybe you should consider becoming a practitioner yourself. So becoming a MaxProp Digital Practitioner would be a fantastic choice.  We have developed some fantastic online tools. We have a MaxProp Digital Office which gives all the tools that you'll need plus we use Microsoft 365 environment to support you as much as possible. The processes you'll start as an intern and we'll mentor you remotely. We've linked up with some online service providers that will take you through the necessary training for you to become a full status agent. If this is something that interests you then go to www.maxprop.digital and register your interest there and we'll be in touch with you shortly. If you're a qualified agent we'd certainly love to hear from you and if you're looking for something different. We work remotely. We support your lifestyle in terms of you do you and we certainly look forward to making you successful. We have a fantastic value proposition. We give you revenue share and we give you shareholding that you meet and so I think that our value proposition is unrivaled out there and I look forward to taking you through it and giving you more information. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I really enjoyed sharing some information with you and I look forward to taking some of your questions and please come and visit us at iExhibition Booth. I'd love to chat to you further about any questions that you may have. Thank you.


Welcome, weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and the unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes. This is a special 12 Nightmares of Christmas episode. Each day from December 13th through December 24th, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from the new book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Be sure to come back every day from December 13th through the 24th for more holiday horrors.  The middle years of the 19th century were a time of great advances and great optimism. Social reforms were the order of the day and many people felt they could change the world for the better through their ideas. It was not only in New England, cradle of the young nation that these changes were taking place. Even in the Midwest, at that time still considered the wild frontier, social reformers sought to spread their ideas. Judge Wade Loefboro purchased over a thousand acres of land bordering the Ohio River in Claremont County and in 1844 he found a village he called simply Utopia. Loefboro and his followers were supporters of the philosophy of a Frenchman named Charles Fourier. Fourier envisioned a society based on agriculture, far removed from the evils of mechanization where people would live and work together. Work would be assigned to people according to their natural inclinations and abilities. In short, he envisioned a commune where every person's need would be provided for and where people would help one another. Loefboro and his group were eager to try out this social experiment for themselves. They built a two-story brick building with 30 rooms for everyone to live in. Unfortunately, communal living is not always the easiest way to run a society and within two years it became obvious that the community was not going to be a viable option. In 1846, Loefboro, seeking a way to make at least some of his investment back, sold the land and house to John O. Waters, the leader of a group of 100 spiritualists. The spiritualists too were seeking a better way to a perfect society. Spiritualism was intensely popular during the mid-19th century, gaining even more followers during and after the Civil War. Spiritualists believed that human beings don't really die. Although physical bodies might decay, the spirit lives on in the afterlife. Spiritualists sought to communicate with the shades of the deceased with the help of mediums. The souls of the dead, they believed, could speak with those they'd left behind through many avenues such as manifestations, written messages, spirit photography, trance speaking, automatic writing, even music. Waddles was a medium blessed with the ability to converse with the spirits. He was not, however, a builder. When the spiritualists bought the house that Loefboro's group had built, they decided for some reason not to leave it where it was. Instead, they moved it closer to the river, adding a basement and a third story. The housewarming party for the reconstructed building and the spiritualist's grand experiment was planned for December 13, 1847. The house was filled with people, all gathered to mark the beginning of a new adventure. For most of the partygoers, though, it was not the beginning, but the end. As people mangled and chatted sipping cups of punch, no one suspected the insidious danger that stopped the new building, drawing even closer. Eventually, though, someone noticed that water was trickling across the floor in a slow but steady stream. Suddenly, the trickle became a torrent. Water from the Ohio River pushed its unstoppable way through the house, flooding everything in its path. It's been said that only six people survived the calamity. The house is still home to several spirits, according to reports going back to the early 20th century. The spirits, including a lady in a blue dress and bonnet, always appear soaking wet. Families have lived in the Waddles House since 1917. The second floor bedroom is believed to have been John Waddles' room, as many people report having a peculiar experience there. People say they feel an unnatural sense of drowsiness there, almost like a trance state. In this twilight dose, people say they experience a vision of six travelers coming up a dirt road, entering the Waddles House and walking up the staircase to the bedroom. As they come closer to the room, the visions fade away. The woman in blue is invariably a part of the group in the vision. Witnesses sometimes see her accompanied by a young boy and a man in Amish-style clothing. If this bedroom was once used by John Waddles, these witnesses might be experiencing a hint of the trance state used by that long ago spiritualist when he communicated with phantoms in his own time. Richard Crawford, a historian and writer who has made the study of the Waddles House's passion, described an odd experience he had at the house. He was there with a film crew to shoot an annual Halloween show. The owner's daughter, says Crawford, who couldn't have been more than three or four years old, just started jumping up and down, saying she wanted to be on television. Understandable behavior for an excitable little kid. The girl's mother shushed her, telling her she had to stay out of the way and leave the film crew alone while they were working. Of course, you can tell a kid a hundred times to stay out from underfoot, but making sure she does, it is another thing entirely. Filming was delayed several times because of the girl's interruptions. The mother insisted that the crew keep quiet about the ghost stories associated with the home. She didn't want her kid freaked out by the thought of ghosts. Finally, the crew was finished shooting and ready to wrap. They were in John Waddles' bedroom when the door burst open and the little girl came barreling into the room yet again. The mother, exasperated, asked the girl what she wanted. Crawford says that the girl asked her mother if she remembered what had happened just a couple of nights earlier. The mother recalled aloud that she had been baking and had asked the girl to stop bothering her. I'm beginning to see a pattern here. The girl nodded agreement and, according to Crawford's recollection, said, Yes, and I didn't bug you anymore. I didn't even let the people who came to the door into the house. There were six people outside and there was a lady in a blue dress with a blue bonnet and they were all wet. Mother and film crew sat, stunned. The girl's mother had been vigilant about shielding her young daughter from the unsettling stories of the house's history. But all on her own, the girl had just described the apparitions people had been seeing for years down to the smallest detail. They say children are more receptive to seeing spirits, simply because they haven't yet learned that they can't. It seems the little girl was picking up on the psychic echo of that long ago tragedy. The morning of December 12, 1928, dawned bright and brisk in Carbondale, Illinois. Before midnight that evening, the town would be rocked with news of a horrific double murder. One of the victims was John Charles Hundley, who had been mayor of Carbondale in 1907-1908. He was a wealthy, well-respected businessman who had many friends and business associates in the area. Also dead was Hundley's second wife, Luella. Although he had the respect of his peers, John Hundley had made some mistakes in his life. In 1893, he had killed a man. Hundley had murdered a music teacher but was acquitted by the jury after he explained his reason. The man had been sleeping with Hundley's wife. By invoking the unwritten law, Hundley gained the sympathy of the husbands and brothers sitting in the jury box. After this incident, Hundley divorced his unfaithful wife. This caused a family rift between Hundley and his son Victor. The spat has supposedly been smoothed over years before John's murder, but there were those in town who hadn't forgotten the bitter feelings between father and son. Hundley remarried a few years after his divorce, choosing Luella Harrison as his new bride. Luella herself came from a business-minded family. Her father was Ruffin Harrison, one of the founders of the town of Heron, Illinois, and the owner of numerous coal mines in the region, and she was sister to George Harrison, president of Heron's First National Bank. In 1915, John and Luella Hundley bought a lot at the corner of Main and Maple streets and built a lavish, luxurious home for themselves. John was the model of a gilded age tycoon, partnering with his son Victor in the younger Hundley's coal business. Luella, as benefiting the wife of an upper-class businessman, was very active in charity work and was an accomplished musician besides. Luella in particular was regarded as having no enemies, which made her murder even more shocking. A family friend, Job Goodall, visited the Hundleys on the evening of Wednesday, December 12. The Hundleys were planning a motor trip to their winter home in Florida, and they were looking forward with high spirits to their departure on Sunday. Goodall left the house around 8 p.m., and Luella locked the back door behind him. Just before midnight, Olga Kasper, the Hundley's next-door neighbor, heard several pistol shots ring out into the night. Peering out her window, she saw the lights in the Hundley house go out. Later, she heard someone running past her house, coming from the Hundley's home and heading towards Victor's house just 200 yards away. In response to phone calls from the neighbors, police were on the scene in minutes. The investigation determined that John Hundley was murdered first. His body was found in an upstairs bedroom, dressed only in a night shirt and socks. He had been shot from behind, six times with a .45 caliber revolver. Luella Hundley had been killed, it seemed, on a rear stairwell, attacked as she went to investigate the earlier shots. She had been shot twice in the head and once in the heart. From the stairs, her body had rolled into the kitchen. A pencil lay on the floor next to her left hand, and an unfinished letter was still sitting on the table in the next room. Luellas was a life suddenly interrupted. At first, Chief of Police Joe Montgomery told the press that robbery seemed to be the motive for the murders. However, there was only the slimmest evidence for this theory, an empty pocketbook on the floor near Luella's body. Other than that, nothing in the house was disturbed, not the valuable artwork, not the expensive furnishings, and not the considerable amount of cash. The police quickly focused their investigation elsewhere. On the morning of December 13, investigators thoroughly searched the Hundley house. They discovered that the back door that Joe Goodall said Luella had locked behind him after his visit was unlocked at the time of the murders, with no sign of forced entry. That hinted strongly that the Hundleys knew their attacker. Perhaps Luella even got up from her letter writing to let him into the house. Tracking dogs were brought in and put on the trail of the killer. Four times the dogs led their handlers straight to the home of Victor Hundley, John's son. This did not look good for Victor. Even worse, investigators from the Jackson County Sheriff's Office searched the route between the two houses along the path. The investigators found several slips of paper that seemed to have been dropped unnoticed, perhaps as the killer fled the Hundley house. One paper, dated December 5, was a notice of the termination of partnership of Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Hundley with Victor Hundley, dissolving their support of Victor's prominent coal business. Another paper was a blank deposit slip. On the back, a note in Luella's handwriting figured the interest on a loan in the amount of $532. At the top of the slip, also in Luella's handwriting was the name Vic. All of this was enough for Sheriff William Flanagan to bring Victor Hundley in for questioning. Things began to look even bleaker for Victor when investigators found a bloodstained khaki shirt during their search of his house. Victor claimed he'd been wearing the shirt when he'd been told of his father and stepmother's murders. Police had come to his door, Victor said, and had woken him and asked him to come to the elder Hundley's house. He had picked up his stepmother's body while he was wearing the shirt, and that is where the blood had come from. Investigators countered with the fact that Victor hadn't touched the body. Victor immediately changed his story. He remembered suddenly that he'd been wearing the shirt while out hunting quail, and that's where the blood had come from. Sheriff Flanagan hammered on Victor for seven hours. Victor told investigators that on Wednesday night, the night of the murders, he'd been home all evening, reading and playing with his son. He had gone to bed early. Then he'd been awakened by the police. He admitted that he owned a .45 caliber revolver, but he claimed he had recently loaned it to his father. Police searched both houses for the gun, but found nothing. To this day, the murder weapon has never been found. All of Victor's protestations did not prove his innocence. He was put under house arrest as the investigation continued. At the inquest, Job Goodall testified that John Hundley had recently told him that he planned to ride up a new will. John planned to disinherit Victor because he was no good. If this was the case, Victor stood to lose a lot of money by being cut out of his father's will. John Hundley's estate was worth over $350,000, but Victor was faced with having to settle for just his trust fund, worth less than $15,000. Victor was arrested for the murders of John Charles and Luella Hundley on December 15th immediately after their funerals. The state's attorney, Fletcher Lewis, felt sure he could prove Victor's guilt in court. Incredibly, though, Lewis was wrong. In an amazing display of the accused being innocent until proven guilty, Lewis was forced to let Victor go free on December 31st. After the hearing, the disappointed prosecutor made a statement to the press. While the facts and circumstances learned from the investigation amply justified the holding of Victor Hundley and the filing of a complaint charging him with murder, I have decided to prosecute this case no further. As if washing down this bitter pill, Lewis added, I feel quite sure that the atrociousness of this crime will compel the conscious of the person who committed it to someday make public his guilt. But if Lewis thought to shame Victor or anyone else into confessing to the double murder, it didn't work. The shooting of JC and Luella Hundley has never been solved. Maybe that's why the house in which they died still echoes with their presence. The mansion sat empty for two years after the murders. The only physical evidence of the tragedy was a bullet hole in the wall near where Luella's body was found. But the community's memory was long, especially when it came to murder. In 1930, Edwin Vogler Sr. bought the mansion and its contents from the Hundley estate. In 1972, the house was sold to the Simmons family, who converted the mansion into a gift shop with apartments upstairs. Several of the past owners and tenants have reported oddities in the building. One resident heard the piano downstairs playing faintly by itself. Her family also heard footsteps going up and down the stairs. Former owner Victoria Sprayhee felt that Luella's ghost followed her home from work at least once. Sprayhee ran the gift shop in the Hundley's house for five years. One evening, as she let herself into the empty house, she noticed that the kitchen lights were on and she heard pots and pans clanging. She wasn't spooked by the industrious spirit, though. It's a very peaceful vibe. Sprayhee's daughter, Nina Bucciorelli, had her own odd experience with the ghosts of the Hundley house. She and her husband have both seen the porch swing move by itself, even when there was no wind. I think Mr. and Mrs. Hundley still liked to swing at night, she said. A trucker named Mark L shared an eerie experience he had that stretched out over two Christmas seasons. In late autumn of 1996, Mark's father had gone to a friend's house for a visit. As soon as he walked into the house, he clutched his chest, dropped to the floor, and died of a massive heart attack. The police called Mark and asked him to go take care of his mother. Mark rushed to his mother's side and made all the necessary phone calls. As evening faded into night, family began to gather at the house. Mark needed to go out for cigarettes, so knowing his mother now had the comfort of family around her, he left the house for a quick trip to the gas station. As he pulled into the gas station parking lot, Mark said he just had the strange feeling that his father's soul just wasn't where it should be. He couldn't explain the feeling, even to himself. Mark got out of the car and started to walk to the convenience store. Spare some change, mister? Could I maybe wash your windshield for you? The bum looked harmless enough, but Mark wasn't in the mood for much interaction. Instead, he pulled out a five-dollar bill, gave it to the guy, and asked him to pray for his dad. The bum happily took the fiver and started praying, loudly. Mark gave the guy a good hard look. It was then that he noticed the bum's eyes or a penetrating shade of blue. So piercing blue they could stop you in your tracks. Mark thanked the guy for his prayers and asked him his name. The bum replied, I'm Irish. Chaking his head, Mark went into the convenience store, bought his cigarettes and headed home. Several months later, the encounter with the bum stuck in Mark's mind, and every time he went to that gas station, he kept an eye out for the guy. A few years later, Mark saw the man again. Mark asked the guy if he remembered him, and if his name was Irish. Yeah, I'm Irish, but nah, I don't remember you. Mark realized with a jolt that the guy's eyes were a brown, so deep they were almost black. They were not the startling blue Mark had seen the night his father had passed away. But that was only part of Mark's story. Much of Mark's driving took place on I-80 in all kinds of weather. Mark grew up in California, so he didn't have much experience with driving in snow and ice. Once though, he was teamed with another driver who managed to jackknife the truck during a blizzard in Kansas. After that, Mark had a healthy respect for driving in winter conditions. Christmas was fast approaching, and Mark was doing short hops from Chicago to California, making his way home for Christmas. On December 23, he pulled in to the Alamo truck stop for a break. Donner Pass was before him. Mark was toying with the idea of trying to get a little sleep before tackling the pass, but he was so exhausted he knew an hour nap might turn into eight hours of solid sleep. A storm was blowing in, and Mark still wasn't sure what his next move should be. He climbed down from the cab of his truck and headed in to use the restroom. Mark was walking about ten feet behind a group of other drivers when one of them turned around and spoke to him. If you're trying to get home, you better go over the pass right now. Mark didn't know this guy and had never talked to him, but the man had the same brilliant blue eyes Mark had seen the night his father had died. Mark turned on his heel and went straight back to his truck. He gunned the engine and headed up Donner Pass. The Seabee crackled with incoming weather reports as Mark drove. He made it all the way through the pass and stopped at a rest area when he was safely through the mountains. As Mark pulled out of that rest area, the snow was falling thickly and he heard over the radio that Donner Pass had been shut down and it stayed closed for a day and a half. He had made it through the pass just in time. If Mark hadn't followed that unknown trucker's advice, he'd have been stuck at the truck stop over Christmas. As it was, he made it safely home to Los Angeles after delivering his final load. My mother had a smile for the first time on Christmas since my father had passed away the Christmas before, Mark said. Mark has never seen anyone with blue eyes quite like that again, but he's always on the lookout for them. To this day, if I see piercing blue eyes like that, he says, I listen to the words being spoken. Madison County, Illinois in the southern part of the state is a quiet rural area. In 1879, Timothy Grouse built a home for himself in the town of Highland. A hundred years later, in the early 1980s, Ken and Judy Ernst rented part of the house for use as a small bakery. Within a decade, Judy's baked goods business had become so popular, the couple bought the entire house. For a while, they lived in the house and ran a small restaurant business, but by the end of the 1980s, the restaurant had grown to fill the entire building, and the couple made their home elsewhere. The house of plenty restaurant is thought to be haunted by the spirit of the original owner, Timothy Grouse. The story goes that Grouse hosted a party in his home in honor of the town's early Swiss settlers who were planning a trip back to Switzerland to visit their families. The plans for a joyful reunion turned to tragedy though. The ship carrying the travelers sank, claiming the lives of over 300 passengers. According to Chad Lewis writing in Illinois Road Guide to Haunted Locations, some people believe that after losing so many of his friends in the sinking, Timothy Grouse continues to wait for their return. The restaurant building is notorious for having things mysteriously go missing. One day, Judy Ernst was in the kitchen making an angel food cake. She left it on the counter to cool. Several hours later, she came back to find that the cake had vanished. Neither the cake nor the pan was ever found. Well, you might be thinking to yourself, a missing cake, that's not so bad. Someone left an angel food cake unattended in my kitchen for several hours, of course it would be gone. But try this on for size. Someone who had once lived in the home stopped by for a visit. She asked Judy if she had ever had anything go missing and Judy mentioned the story of the cake and the pan. As she spoke, the visitor's face blanched a ghostly white. Then the visitor shared a story of her own. Years before, her mother had been boiling potatoes on the stove in that same kitchen. Her husband had come home and Bama went into the living room to greet him. She gave him a quick kiss then came immediately back to the kitchen to check on the food. The mother was stunned to discover on her return that the pot of boiling potatoes had vanished into thin air. The dining room of the restaurant is the scene of a strange phenomenon that happens every Christmas. There was a fireplace in the dining room with several tables for guests dining that are arranged near the hearth. Every year around Christmas, Ken Ernst would notice a small pile of charred pipe tobacco on the corner of one of the tables. How it got there was a mystery until a former occupant of the home brought in an old photograph of the Graz family, the home's original owners. Standing in the photograph was a young man who was smoking a pipe. He was identified as Graz's son and it is believed that he liked to spend his winter evenings in that very room smoking a pipe while sitting next to the fireplace. The house of plenty is now closed and the good smells of home-cooked food no longer fill the air. However, as Christmas approaches, maybe the scent of good pipe tobacco still lingers in the dining room and Timothy Graz's pipe-loving son still knocks his spent ash onto a handy table near the fireplace. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of my 12 Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in this episode are all from her book, The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find a link to that book in the show notes. Also in the show notes, you can find a link to Sylvia Schultz blog, also a big thanks to everyone who continues to post reviews about the podcast. Thank you all for rating, reviewing and subscribing to Weird Darkness. Do you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. Find a link to purchase this dark Christmas music in the show notes. I'm your creator and host Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Bye for now.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazzy's casebreaks.com. I'm coming at you with a 2020 Panini Select Blaster Box Break. This is gonna help you win spots in that absolute break that's gonna happen right after this. Now, we're gonna introduce Sean right here. This is his very first video. He's gonna be hopefully doing some of our late night. So after I do the prime time shift, then we'll have someone do a few more hours on the late night time. And we're just gonna get Sean trained up on this whole process so he can get uses and eventually do it on his own. So a big thanks to Sean and thanks everybody for giving him some slack while he learns all of this. So I'm gonna have him pop on. Say hi to everybody, Sean. Hey guys, welcome to jazzy's after dark. Oh, is that what we're gonna call it? We're called it. Okay. It's your show. It's your show now. Teddy suggested jazzy's up all night. Up all night? Oh, but then the people might think he'll be here until six. Exactly. So we're gonna start with the 2020 Panini Select Blaster one, sorry, one box. Number 11, random teams. Get a dice roll for us. Gonna randomize the names that we're gonna randomize the teams. Seven times. So full list starting with Robin down to Jonathan. Jonathan with last mojo. And we're doing seven times on this. One, two, three, four. Five, six, nope. Yep. And seventh and last time. Good luck. If it hangs, you can just wait, wait for the circle thing to complete otherwise you might next line. Okay, sounds good. So Luke down to Brian. Luke, Brian. He's a good singer. And now we're gonna randomize the teams seven times. One, two, three, four, five, six. And seventh and final time. From Red Sox down to the Reds. So you can see Luke on top with Boston Red Sox, Brian down with the Cincinnati Reds. We'll put it in order by teams. So you can see, for example, Arizona, Arizona Diamondbacks, Jacob Johnson will end up on top. And there he is. Also pro tip, if you click that blank box right there and then you double wait till the arrow turns left and right. Yeah. Hover over the line. It'll expand it. And then double click that. And it'll expand it exactly to the size of whatever's in yourselves from A all through A through Z. Oh nice. Yeah, I usually just highlight the two boxes and then do it. But if you have A through A, if you work on the last brave sheets, your Excel skills will maximize. I would go through the list. Tell everyone what they have. Perfect. So Jacob with Arizona, Tom Jones. Sometimes I just click that percent button, make it to 125 or 150, however you want to do it. Cool. And then you can change fonts and stuff if you want to. Jacob Johnson with the Diamondbacks, Tom Jones with the Braves, Gary Teshema with the Orioles, Luke Smith with the Red Sox, Mark Liebshire with the Cubs, Rick Thomas with the White Sox, Brian Crouch with the Reds, Craig McGinnis with the Indians, Tyler Brenner with the Rockies, Mark Liebshire with the Tigers, Robin Burke with the Astros, Anthony Venturino with the Royals, Rick Beckett with the Angels, Jason Kay with the Dodgers, Tom Jones with the Marlins, Rick Thomas with the Brewers, Barry Roberts with the Twins, Ron Rittner with the Mets, Anthony Venturino with the Yankees, Victor Zamora with the A's, Robin Burke with the Phillies, Daniel Ruiz with the Pirates, Ron Rittner with the Padres, Chad Breitner with the Giants, Jonathan Fresquez, last spot mojo with the Mariners, Anthony Venturino with the Cardinals, Mark Liebshire with the Rays, Victor Zamora with the Rangers and the Jays, and Ron Rittner with the Nationals. And just print now, Joe. Woot woot, MTG, woot woot. Hey guys, quick trade window if you guys would like that. Give you about a minute or less. So any trades? First break, any trades, guys? Yeah, well, you get to see it firsthand. He's a proud father, guys. He's got a hover. It's okay. It did. Oh, wait, hold on. Click print again. So that's gonna help you for the shipping team. You want it in... Yeah, do a portrait. Or I guess you can do a landscape if you want to. And then go to headers and footers. Click that and then do workbook title. And then it'll bring it there, that's how you do it. That's nice. Much better. Do you think I would know that by now? You know, seeing the paper. Seeing the paperwork all the time? Like this one doesn't look normal. There we go. Okay guys, now you can click that. The braking screen right there and I'll take you to your camera. Cool. Oh, nice. And then you can angle the camera just so you can get Jaspie's case breaks on there. Make sure it's lined up.  So as long as the horizon is level. That looks good. Sure. Looks even. As long as it looks good. Yeah, looks even. Good luck, guys. Big time blaster box here. Biggest nine cards of my life, Lail. Don't you make this a little thing for me. Starting off with Keston Hira. Lucas Gilito. Blake Snell. Trey Turner. Scope. No numbering. Michael King. Tyrone Taylor. Silver Scope. Garrett Cole. Fernando Tautiz Jr. D.J. Lameju. Marcus Strowman, Silver Scope. Anthony K. Rookie Silver. And Victor Robles. Let's take a look and see what the giveaway is with this one. Give it away. Regular large or regular large? Large on the left, regular on the right. Okay, cool. I think we're giving away absolute spots in this. Sounds good. All right, so we can flip the... Flip it back to the camera. I mean, to the random. Move back there. Let's open up another Dyson list. Close out these ones. I just leave them open. Okay. All right, so there's... So you flip back to the product page. And it'll scroll down. How many are you giving away? 10? 10 names each win a spot. Absolute Baseball Random Team number three. Nice, which is sold out. So we're gonna be doing that afterwards. Let's go back to the spreadsheet. Grab everybody's names again. Let's exit out of that, get a new list. Yeah. I think you can't select the entire column, I guess. Copy the blank spot and then... Cool. All right, so then you dice roll. Randomize it again. And then top 10 are in the absolute brick. So we're gonna do this two times. Easy. One. And two. Second last time. Good luck, everybody. Top 10. Daniel. Anthony. Robin. Jason. Craig. Rick. Chad. Ron. Robin. And Anthony. Congratulations, guys. And then we're gonna add that into... Right, and that's it. You can shut the... And then you can just close out the video because you can do this later. Perfect. Well, thank you guys for being part of my first blaster box.


I was speaking with John or East John. Tell us in your words what the ruling said today. What the ruling said is the judges don't trust the United States to run a fair trial. They don't trust that Julian will be treated like an American citizen would be. They don't trust that he'll be given First Amendment rights. And they don't trust that he won't be given the death penalty if he's found guilty. Now that is a pretty severe condemnation of the proposed trial in the United States. And so the decision not to extradite him is very, very welcome. I wish that they'd said this whole process should be dropped. I wish that they'd said he could have a full and fair hearing in front of the High Court in this country. We aren't there yet, but we aren't at the end of the road either. There's going to be another hearing on May 20th. I think there's a huge however in which you just said. There's been a huge however in every stage of this. But at least the however is that this could open up a way out. The other decision would have been to close down that possibility. Now these judges asked for the US to give assurances on three matters, is that right? That's right, yes. First Amendment rights that he wouldn't be treated differently because he's not an American citizen and that he wouldn't face capital punishment if found guilty. But what that adds up to is the judges saying to the Americans, we don't trust that you can run a free and fair trial. But if they give those assurances, will they trust them in the way the previous two High Court judges accepted the assurances? Well, that's still open, as I understand it. Even if they give the assurances, then they're opening up a possibility that Julian's lawyers can argue that those shouldn't be taken at face value. So even that isn't closed down. That's interesting because they can do further submissions where in the previous High Court decision there was no argument about the assurances. We've always said that this is a political trial. What this shows is that the political ground is shifting and it's shifting in Julian's favor. What happens on May 20th? Well, that's where we hear what assurances, if any, the Americans have given, whether the judges and others find them satisfactory, whether or not they'll open up the possibility of a full appeal here. So that's just a deadline, not a hearing date? I don't know. Okay, thank you very much.


TfNN, The Tiger, Financial News Network. Update. Good morning everyone, Basel Chapman. Yeah, thank you Tommy O'Brien for our market kickoff at 9 a.m. this morning. This is the 10 o'clock Tiger Financial News Network market update, 1,132 at 30,048. Gosh, that 30,000 millennial millennium level is going to be quite important psychologically and physically. So we're going to be watching that very closely here. We're looking at this, so the Dow is down a half a percent. Look at this, the S&P is down 0.72 percent, down 27 at 37.62. The QQQ, and this is after the Fed announcement yesterday where the market slump then had a huge spike to the upside and then just collapsed going all the way into the close. We've got the QQQ and the X100 trading down 3.29 over a percent at 280.23. All the technicals are right at support levels. That is where the stochastic is, either single digits or just getting close to the single digits. We're very close to at least an oversold attempt at a balance. We're looking at the IWM, the Russell 2000 on 2.83 at 172.52. Yeah, the stochastic is at 11 percent. Gold is trying to find some kind of support. It's up 5 at 1680. Once again, we're looking at 1,234. This is the sixth, this is called the seventh day that's testing the 1660 area. We're at 1681 and we'll see how we can close over the next few days. Going into next week, the gold needs to get to the 1720s if it's going to show any strength at all, certainly not under the 1650s. If you're looking at the dollar, King dollar, looking at it up 28 ticks at 110.92, multi-decade high. This is going to be very important. How does it follow through over the next few days? Does it start to give back some in the next couple of days? We'll see. We're looking at the TLT and now this is something. Again, down 2.78, 105.34, going into the monthly inside track support level. This is terrible. That means yields are going much higher and you're looking at the crude oil holding steady at about 84. We'll talk about this when I get back. Basel Chapman, Tidegate Transitions Hour coming up. Check out my opening call


join us. I think we're ready to start. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us here this afternoon on day one of the World Economic Forum on Africa 2016. Now there are no industry more important in Africa than agriculture. We know that 40% of food currently produced does not make it from farm to fork. There's a huge wastage issue that leaders have been grappling with for some time. We know that there is a no bigger employer. It's 400 million or 65% of Africans rely on agriculture for their income. We know that for Africa to progress and move at the value chain it needs to develop better facilities and storage is one of them. So I'm very delighted right at the end of the the closing of our Grow Africa investment forum which happened across town this morning over the past couple of days to be able to be joined by some of the leaders here who are going to announce a very ambitious scheme to open up and produce one million tons of cold storage. Now to tell that story and to give a bit of a bit of an insight into the processes and what exactly it means and what's going to be done what kind of action we're going to see I'm very delighted to be joined by my first panelist Agnes Matilda Calibata president the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa and of course delighted to say a member of our global agenda council on food and nutrition. My second guest is Gerardine Mukeshimana minister of agriculture and animal resources here in Rwanda and of course Jay Shroff chief executive officer of UPL in India who's been instrumental in getting this program off the ground. Agnes if I could start with you to give us some insight into what this scheme means. It's a very ambitious target you've set yourself. Thank you. Thank you. So the institution that I lead the Alliance for Green Inversion in Africa Agra focuses on working smallholder farmers and increasing and helping them increase productivity by ensuring that we really focus on the things that are holding smallholder farmers back. Now one of the areas that have been identified as very critical to supporting farmers but is also a low-hanging fruit on the continent is the area of potatoes. Today between three countries in East Africa Kenya Uganda and Rwanda 1.7 million farmers are producing 6 million tons of potatoes but this could actually be 120 million tons of potatoes so these farmers are held back by a number of factors called storage being one of them. Access to the right input systems being another disease management being another right seeds and you know credit our presidents in the morning we are talking about all the challenges that are holding back the agricultural sector we had that and these are the very challenges that are holding back the potato industry except the potato industry also suffers from being highly perishable the potatoes are quite perishable and because of that code storage becomes a significant need today we have a growing industry in potatoes that is mostly fed from imports in nearly every chip you eat in a decent hotel in Africa is imported just think about it every time you're eating a potato chip that potato chip has been imported yet we are consuming lots of potatoes because you know the reason they have to be imported today because there's an industrial process that happens that gets potatoes to those chips through a pre-cooking process I would call it so hotels actually import them when they are nearly done so the reason this there hasn't been major investment opportunities in that is because of lack of cold chain potatoes don't stay long enough we produce potatoes on the season and they don't stay long enough for an industry to be supported so today we are very proud to be going into partnership with a number of institutions that have seen the need governments definitely the government of one has been a champion in this business really ensuring that potatoes that farmers that are producing potatoes see a rise and the minister will talk about that there's been a major increase in potato production in the last few years but also there could be much more the government of Uganda also is engaged in this and the government of Kenya is engaged in this so this is going to be a partnership between governments between investors and UPL as they will be saying they will be telling us later today are looking to be investing and we'll talk about it but we also have other investors that are looking to bring in finance we also have other investors that are looking to bring in input systems all the things that I talked about that are weaknesses in the in the environment in the landscape of potato growing and potato processing so that we get a potato on the table that is not only grown in Africa but is also processed in Africa so that's the the that's what we are going to be discussing today and the minister I hand back over to you thank you I'm going to hand right back over to the minister it's a fascinating story and as you say you're stuck with a low hanging fruit I'd love to hear more about the Rwandan story what efforts you've been made so far to move at the value chain and what this project means to you doing your job Rwanda is trying to address the production issues through a value chain approach all the way from research production and post harvest handling and management so we have been investing a lot of money into production factors but also into post harvest management because we know that in this country there are two main factors that we need to focus on the increasing the productivity but also reducing post harvest losses so the government of Rwanda has been dealing in reducing post harvest losses in the different ways by providing warehouses making a rural road and so on but this area of commodities that are consumed or sold as a fresh commodities we have not been doing as well as we wish where the in the area of potatoes there are some processing industries coming in chip making frozen fries coming in so the issue is that how these processing plants are going to have sustainable supply of raw material so this project is going to be tackling that but on top of that it's critical that small holder producers are getting access to markets so it's important that this project is going to be to be bridging the gap in the middle between the production and the market access thank you thanks Jay Shroff you're the chief executive officer of UPL based in India this is a this is not CSR is it this is a business venture for you tell us about a bit about why you're getting involved so UPL and UPL foundation are very excited to be part of this project we have been working on it for more than three years with Minister Kali Bhatta and we are very pleased that it's seeing the light of the day there's a lot of discussion gone on on this project with many different stakeholders but UPL you know we are involved in bringing technologies to farmers to improve farm productivity and the the biggest challenge we find that in Africa is that improving farm productivity does not necessarily mean improving improvement in prosperity and soon we realize that connecting the small holder farmers to value chain is is really critical missing link in Africa to improve small farmer or farmer prosperity they need to have and to get them to have sustainable income the key challenge is to really connect them to value chains and when we look more carefully at how do we connect to value chains and how do we get farmers to really grow higher value crops we realize that there is almost no existence of coal chains in in this part of Africa and many parts of Africa and so to really make agriculture more sustainable to increase the farm economy to improve the really revenues this is we believe the huge biggest impact impactful investment is is investing in coal chain and this discussion has led to this project where we will have a million tons of coal chain primarily focused initially on potatoes but obviously available for other perishable farmers farming produce and we believe there's enough market in Africa itself but if Africa is to export high quality foods you know we need to have a coal chain where the farmer can can can use to to to really you know deliver high quality goods not only in within Africa but also exported so long term this sort of investment will really impact the whole economy as we've all known and I think with with the whole commodity price you know difficulties the world is facing I think most governments have realized most presidents have realized that making sure that agriculture is profitable and sustainable small farmer agriculture even large farmer agriculture is sustainable is critical to the economies of Africa and if the world if we need to really have sustainable food supplies Africa is going to be a key key player in the future and this sort of investment which we are initiating is is going to be critical for this thanks I'm happy to take questions from the floor again to start with one of my own this is a ambitious scheme is said two billion dollars of investments going to be mobilized though commendable start but what are we going to see first one of the mechanics how can we start seeing this this plan put into practice and what kind of timeline are we looking at maybe I'll take a shot go at it what we are going to see first is the convening the getting together so part of what we've been working on this is that this is a discussion that has been happening for probably over three years now yes through the graphical forum so one of the things that graphical does well is to bring people together and through Africa we did meet Jay and his company up here and we've been we started a discussion where the wonder government expressed interest and now three other two other countries have expressed interest we've also gotten a whole list of people that are interested other investors that are looking at the opportunities that are getting created around this value chain like I said earlier they were looking to sell inputs to farmers once a farmer has a market and and sees the real real value in that market those start buying real good seeds good quality seeds and they'll start buying fertilizer so that they can increase their produce so that they can move from five tons to 25 tons that's where we want to be so the role of Agra in this is to help in that system of first of all convening getting people together to have a discussion around who is investing in what number one number two to support we're needed in investing on the part of farmers to ensure that the devil of aggregation in terms of getting the yields and the the produce that we want to see going to these warehouses is actually happening so it's really our role is going to be mostly bringing people together number one and supporting bring putting resources on the table to support farmers to do the aggregation part enjoy when are we gonna see the first facilities coming online so I mean we are in active dialogue with the three governments ministers here we were just talking about the nitty gritties about energy costs and how we're gonna make it affordable I think that you know from from our side we are very eager to move ahead and we have committed that the first few ones we we are willing to commit or whatever resources necessary to get the pilots off the ground we believe that end of 2017 is is feasible we we are hoping that we get all the permits and whatever necessary paperwork we can move quickly sometimes these things take some time but we have two very important people from from from these countries here and I think we should be able to get them off the ground in in middle to late 2017 fantastic and Agnes you hinted at the question about to ask which is it's this is a low-hanging fruit what's what's been holding us back is an obvious missing link in in moving out the valley chain is having cold storage facilities yeah I guess the most critical part is the fact that potatoes are perishable crop it can't be stored for very long the markets become erratic because of that they get concentrated around the production time and because of that farmers lose so much a farmer could be making a thousand dollars a ton today when a farmer makes 200 dollars a ton so it that's where I say it's a low-hanging fruit it's also a low-hanging fruit because the market is increasing as as most of these countries start becoming moving towards middle-income countries as they start moving towards I mean Rwanda and Kenya for example and even Uganda have been growing very fast part of this growth is influencing eating habits and one of the things that is getting consumed more and more is potatoes so it's a really lucrative business except farmers are not gaining from it except it's not structured enough to allow industrialization to start happening so that's why I say it's a low-hanging fruit for it has huge potential for farmers but also it has huge potential for economic why the economic benefits Madam Minister finally how does this how does how does this scheme tie in with other efforts to move out the valley chain and what are your expectations what what what what structure what form will agriculture in Rwanda have in the years ahead what are you building to what's your vision actually in Rwanda this area for potato production is pretty advanced as we speak the farmers are really interested in increasing their productivity and I think we are the highest country that is having a good productivity in potatoes and we have been setting up aggregation aggregation points so that the people coming to buy the potatoes they are we're knowing where to get it from and we are in the process of establishing a horse or market for the potatoes but as I mentioned before being a highly perishable product it's important that we think of for ways of storing it I know this project has been discussed for almost three years and what has been holding us back was the cost of energy so as this country has a huge ambition of getting electricity to at least 70 percent of our population by 2018 so with that pace of for increasing electricity access and looking at how much investment that government is putting at generating electricity but also at transporting it into different areas we see it as an opportunity to start thinking of all these kinds of investments I know your name but my colleagues here might not so please let us know who you are and why you're from okay thank you my name is Collins why I'm a writer with the New Times Daily my anism to madam and anybody else on the panel one of the one of the biggest reasons why Africa has not been able to feed itself is because a large number of farmers across the continent or in the sub-Saharan African small-holder farmers they have traditional practices in most of their produce is for sub is is for subsistence use so now that you have a storage cooling for the facility how are you going to make sure that or what mechanisms are in place to to change their productive to improve the volumes of all production to to not only export but actually fit the the the continent thank you and which are the three card and which are the two countries are on board thank you is it is it build it and they come how can you guarantee that people are going to to use these facilities and how can we turn that into export rather than import I think the minister mentioned it red dishes the minister said they're working on aggregation centers already and that's a real step forward in many ways making sure that farmers are coming together and in addition to aggregation systems is also working on productivity to ensure that farmers are getting higher returns per unit I mean potato farming is one of the areas where you actually the possibility to increase increase the unit per hectare of a small-holder farmer is that is one of the largest so there's a real value around that so the I think the benefit that farmers will see in cold storage that they will want to be part of it is because there's a real value to increase now they can move from the subsistence that you're talking about of five tons which farmers you know do when they don't have any reason to do more to 30 tons to the 30 tons and I mean picture a farmer earning 30 tons versus the 5 tons it's it's huge difference and the cold storage will allow this farmer to store these potatoes and be able to sell whenever the market is is is functioning to his benefit so this is a real protein turn I think that's going to be the largest incentive but also I mean to me what I had said earlier is also the impact it's having on the economy the fact that now other processes that we are not happening on industrializing and adding value to potatoes are going to happen because potatoes will be available throughout the year through cold storage so there's a huge incentive for farmers to be part of that and I'm sure it's not a very hard sell and college you're asking which countries were involved in this scheme yes the countries involved in this scheme is Rwanda Uganda and Kenya the three actually the three largest producers of potatoes in the region I can go so one of the the key challenges in this project or to make it successful is really to create you know industry around the crop so we want potato processing industry setup we are going to invite other players local and international players to set up potato processing companies we are talking to you know multilateral organization we are talking to NGOs is that how can you help make this sustainable by making sure you procure higher value added crops from that we have realized in many parts of the world particularly India where we are from is that when an industry is set up they are willing to pay a little higher price for sustainable good quality of product so they can onward sell more sustain good quality product and and this really creates that the the whole chain where if I'm developing a brand of high quality product I need high quality raw material so we are looking for partners who will set up processing industry around these cold chain units to buy potatoes around the year either the farmer can own the potatoes or the the processing industry can buy it in the beginning of the season and store it so it'll be a mixed model and and we think that this will give the farmers an option to sell potatoes three months later four months later when the prices are much higher when all of them are harvesting it together so it's a very exciting thing and we think it'll take some time for everybody to digest it but once it kicks off we're going to see a huge revolution of you know people folk farmers for focusing on increasing yield and using whatever tools they can to increase productivity thank you Joe one last question for me taking advantage of my position here to ask what I want Agnes you mentioned this is a low hanging fruit obviously is it the one missing link between getting Africa to have a food processing industry of notes and to become a real exporter are there any other pain points we should also be looking at are you all looking at that we might be hearing about in the future oh there are a number of them during the this graphic committing a number of other committees were discussed including but not limited to including rice there was a rice value chain going on really looking to to to ensure that Africa become self-sufficient in rice given that we have huge area that we are not using huge trucks of land there was also there's also a value chain happening around Kosovo and so so when I say value chain happening in rural Africa it means that the critical partners have been catalyzed enough and see the opportunities enough to want to come together so that they start investing to ensure that the $40 billion in food import bill that Africa is actually experiencing that is going to grow to 110 billion dollars in by 2025 in less than another 10 years is is going to be also catalyzing African markets that's a huge opportunity and people are beginning to look at how do we start working to catalyze these Africans to take advantage of their own market another value chain that we are looking at with UPL actually is pulses how do we start working on ensuring that farmers who are producing pulses whether it's beans whether it's all sorts of pulses that we have in the region cow peas pigeon peas are taking advantage of the markets that are being created around in India and other continents that are looking for those opportunities so it's it's a beginning of of huge interests around creating markets for farmers because we've noticed that it markets are becoming more a limiting factor the input system is a beginning to work but markets are becoming a limiting factor and I think it's the case for wonder just like it is the case for many other countries and the convening paragraph for investment forum a plug for you Lauren seems to be working there are lots of conversations let's finally I can't help myself one last question Jay it's just widened out you mentioned about food import exports and that you're interested in other areas or other food chains how where does Africa features part of your your global plan you know UPI is a global company and we are present in almost 120 countries Africa is is an exciting place to be for us it's not a key market but it is somewhere where we think that the technologies which we can bring to the table particularly with our heritage being Indian and we have we are dealing with millions of small farmers on a daily basis in India average farm size in India may be same or smaller than in Africa we believe that all our experience and knowledge and technologies which we have developed to deal with small farmers can really create an impactful huge impact in Africa and it's something which comes naturally to us so we believe that over the next 10-15 years UPL and it's our experience our ability to work with small hold of farmers we can we can make a huge impact and that's why we are excited about being in Africa fascinating well it's been an absolute pleasure to see how our cousins of the graphic investment form of being working on for the past two days really exciting to see great progress being made I'd like to thank you for joining us here today I'd like to thank you for joining us here in the room and for watching is live on weforum.org this session is now over thank you


Many Americans like Michael Huffham take multivitamin or supplement pills for a number of reasons. A little health routine I always do. It's part of my diet, stuff like that.  More accurately, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplement. But experts believe that the average healthy individual doesn't even need those vitamin pills. So many people think they look to vitamin pills because they need energy. And really, when you get energy from food, specifically carbohydrates, protein, and fat that's in foods. In fact, a number of studies have determined whether supplement pills are actually beneficial. The only real reason why people should be taking these pills is if their diet is inadequate in any way. Jones-Algie Blake, a clinical associate professor at Boston University, suggests that older people and pregnant women are some common people who rely on supplement pills for the right reasons. Some people that actually may need one is just the vast majority of, say, young people who are eating a well-balanced diet and are not restricting their calories could probably get rid of all their needs without taking a supplement. Michael Cantor, store owner of Cambridge Naturals, agrees with Salgie Blake. He and his employees don't want their customers to rely solely on vitamin pills for a healthy diet. We only call them supplements. We don't believe people should live on them. People should be thoughtful about which ones they're taking. People should do some research. Americans spend billions of dollars a year on vitamin pills. In 2010, Americans spent $28 billion on this ever-expanding industry. And by 2011, they were spending up to $30 billion. And healthy people who take a daily vitamin pill could be wasting their money. Now, there are 12 major vitamins, and ingesting too much of a certain vitamin or vitamins can lead to overdoses, which can be extremely unsafe in all cases. You've got to be careful because summer is good, but more may not be better. In fact, more may be downright dangerous. Some of the vitamins, like the fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D, could be taken to the point where they become toxic, and that's not good. In addition to vitamins A and D, vitamin C is a popular vitamin that people tend to overuse, thanks to the myth that it cures the common cold. However, no studies prove that that's true. And although the build-up may not be as toxic, it can lead to other body issues, including GI stress. So here you are, taking a lot because you have a common cold, and then you end up with GI distress, and you're questioning, gee, I'm not so sure, I'm ahead of the game here. In 2011, numerous studies showed how dangerous vitamins can be in a healthy individual. In October 2011, a study at the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took too much vitamin E had increased risks of prostate cancer. Another study at the University of Minnesota that same month found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at higher rates than those who didn't. However, cancer doesn't think that vitamins are as dangerous as studies show, but regardless, he still does encourage his clients to get their vitamins the natural way through food. Vitamin supplements are actually quite safe. There are very few reported cases of their being problems. Even in some cases where they say they didn't work, they weren't using the right kind, the right dose, the right sources. We never look at these as the answer, people should eat food. Now deciding whether to take a multivitamin or a supplement pill should be an individual decision because everybody obtains and absorbs vitamins and minerals differently. But if you're not sure whether you should be taking these pills, you should contact your physician or register a dietitian. In Boston for BETV, I'm Maria Martino-Lech.