Good morning from Washington, D.C. Good afternoon to everyone in Benghie. Good afternoon from Washington. And good afternoon to you in Benghie. My name is Arsalan Suleiman and I work at the United States State Department as the deputy envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. I'm Arsalan Suleiman. I work here at the State Department. And I'm the special envoy in June of the Department of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. I want to thank all of you for participating in today's panel. We are very happy to see all of you in Benghie. We want to thank you all for having accepted to participate in this round table. We are very happy to be able to meet you in Benghie. The purpose of this panel is to recognize the important work that religious leaders in Benghie are doing to work for peace. As well as to link them and introduce them to religious leaders in the United States who are doing similar work and who are hopefully they want to help the religious leaders in Benghie do their work. So I'm going to be moderating the panel and I will call on the panelists at different times for their input and for remarks. As you can hear, Fommas is helping us with simultaneous translation between French and English. From the Washington D.C. side, the panelists include Rashad Hussein, who is President Obama's special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. To my immediate left, I have Stephen Hilbert, who works for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Office of International Justice and Peace. And at the end of the table, we have Imam Hamid Majid, who is the President of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest organization of Muslims in North America. And he is also the Imam of the Adams Center in Virginia. From Benghie, we have His Grace Diodone Nazapalinga, the Archbishop of Benghie. We have Reverend Nikola Ger Koyame, the President of the Evangelical Association. We have Imam Omar Kabineh Layama, President of the National Islamic Association. And we have Madame Catherine Samapanza, the Mayor of Benghie. As we start the panel, I would like to call on Imam Majid to have a short introductory prayer from the United States. And afterwards, I'm going to call on the Archbishop to also have a short introductory prayer. I greet you with a greeting of peace. As God Almighty to help us as we gather here today with our brothers and sisters in the Republic of Central African Republic to look into how can we get together at the people of faith to overcome the difficult time that this beautiful country is going through and unite our heart to bring together people of faith, Christians and Muslims because the Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of mercy and Jesus is the messenger of love and two beautiful religions can come together and create harmony in this country. My God, Almighty help us as we gather today to be able to help you in this difficult time. In Benghie, I hope we will be able to work and come to help and give our competition to the people of Central Africa to do this unity work of faith because the Prophet Muhammad is the messenger of mercy and Jesus is the prophet of love. Why do I think that the two religions can come together to work together in favor of this mission for the faith? Thank you, Imam Majid. Your grace Archbishop Nazapalinga, could I call on you to have a short introductory prayer as well? In the name of the Lord, the God of heaven and earth.  So what's the path of acceptance, the path of forgiveness, the path of forgiveness in order that we in our country all together in faith will be able to accept others as they are our brothers, as Jesus our Lord did so. Amen. Thank you, Archbishop. A nouveau remercion. To begin the panel discussion, I would like to call on Special Envoy Rashad Hussain to make some remarks. Special Envoy Hussain is the Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. And in his work, he also is one of the leading US officials who engages with religious leaders on a range of issues, including on promoting peace and reconciliation. I would first like to ask Mr. Hussain to take the floor, who is the Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. And in his work, he deals with a number of important issues on religious and confessional issues. Thank you, Hussain. Thank you. Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you all. Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you all. Thank you so much to the religious leaders from the Central African Republic for joining us today for this important conversation. It's really wonderful to see you. And I hope that we'll have a chance to meet in person soon. Discussions like the one that we're having today are ones that I know that you've been having almost every day in your country. And they serve as an example of cooperation and peaceful coexistence that is actually a model for all of us. My role as the Special Envoy to the OIC is to deepen and expand our partnerships with Muslim communities around the world. We'll have the. Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you all. Thank you so much to the religious leaders from the Central African Republic for joining us to participate in this important discussion today. It's really wonderful to see you. And I hope that we'll have a chance to meet in person soon. Discussions like the one that we're having this morning are ones that I've been having almost every day. And they are examples of the cooperation and peaceful coexistence that is a model for all of us. Imam Majid, who you have heard from, you heard the prayer from, is one of the leaders of the Muslim community here in the United States, which is a community of about 7 million people. Imam Majid, who just came to take the floor, is one of the leaders, one of the leaders of the Muslim community in the United States, which has about 7 million believers. It's a dynamic community of Muslims from nearly every country in the world, and a community that has really excelled in all areas of American life. I think most Muslims would tell you that this success has been possible not despite of, but because of the country's diversity and the positive relations we have had here with people of all faiths. There's a famous verse in the Quran, which states, And roughly translated as, Oh mankind, we have indeed created you for male and female and made you people and tribes that you may know one another. This is what we have tried to do, And we've definitely had to work at it in the United States. We work at it from a young age as school children, as we study together and play sports together. We work together in the university setting and our places of employment. We run businesses together and serve our communities together in projects across our cities. It's not uncommon to see Muslim speakers at churches on Sundays and Christian guests at Christian guests that are mosques. The Friday prayer, which I attend, actually occurs in a church building that the Christian community here opens for Muslims on Fridays. As a part of our cooperation, we have also tried to come together to assist each other in times of difficulty. Based on the principle of qounu qawwami nabilqisti shuhada ala Allahi wala wa ala anfusikum, stand for justice even if it's against yourself or parents or relatives. Our communities have worked to stand for justice when the rights of others are threatened. So you hear Imam Majib, for example, speak out when Christians and people of other faiths are mistreated in Muslim countries. And you hear from our Christian community that the rights of Muslims are violated. There's of course still much work to be done, but what has been very powerful here is that we've had outstanding religious leaders like yourselves keep our communities on track. You are the ones that have helped efforts to bring peace by urging followers to respect their faiths, by respecting the rights of others even in difficult times. And the United States recognizes and greatly appreciates your efforts in promoting peace in the Central African Republic. In addition to providing humanitarian assistance and support for the security efforts in the Central African Republic, we are also promoting conflict mitigation and reconciliation efforts. President Obama's message to the people of the Central African Republic last month focused on reconciliation, and Ambassador Samantha Power also highlighted this message during her trip to your country. Your calls for peace and reconciliation are vital and powerful in bringing peace and stability back to the Central African Republic. And along with the religious leaders here in the United States, we stand with you at this challenging time. Your calls for peace and reconciliation are vital and powerful in bringing peace and stability back to the Central African Republic. And along with the religious leaders here in the United States, we stand with you at this challenging time. Thank you so much again for all of your efforts, your statements, your example, and your leadership. I look forward to the discussion today on how we can work together to continue to address the challenges in our communities. Thank you Special Envoy Hussain. Here in the United States, we've been reading with great interest the heroic and inspiring work of religious leaders in the Central African Republic. We would love to hear directly from the religious leaders about the situation in the Central African Republic, their efforts, and how religious leaders in the United States can help to support their efforts. We would like to hear from all the panelists, so whomever wants to go first from Bangui, please. Here we are. We wish all the panelists from Bangui can speak. So if anyone wants to go first, if anyone wants to speak first, please. So don't hesitate. I am Reverend Nicola Gereko-Amebangu. I am Reverend Nicola. I am a member of the Evangelical Movement of Central Africa. I am a member of the multi-faith platform. I would like to thank the United States for your concern about our situation in the Central African Republic. Since the beginning of the crisis in our country when the Seleka Movement reached the city of Bangui, and at the time the government sent out appeals, the government sent out appeals. The appeal was sent out to religious leaders to work towards appeasement and the Archbishop, the Imam and myself got together to strengthen the situation in which we all work together to try to stem the violence. And as you have been following the situation very closely, you do know that the situation is of great concern right now. And as you know, there's killings on both sides. There are killings perpetrated by the members of the Seleka and there's also killings being committed by the anti-Ibalaka movement. I would like to bring this... I wanted to make this clarification because oftentimes it's being portrayed as an interfaith or inter-religious conflict, but I've never seen Muslims call upon Seleka. And we religious leaders have never said that this is a Christian country. So what we're trying to do to our flock and to our parishioners is to explain to them that this conflict is not a religious conflict, that this is fundamentally a political conflict. So what can we hope and what can we expect from the United States? So what we would be seeking your assistance with is to call upon the parties to begin negotiations in order to bring an end to the conflict. Up until now, it was believed that only France had the capacity to have... leverage on the parties, on all the parties in order to begin negotiations. And perhaps I'll give the phone out to one of my colleagues. I would like to thank you for organizing this get-together. As my colleague stated, our current situation has been long-standing and in terms of our work, we did a lot of work upstream beforehand. So we traveled throughout the country to lay the groundwork. And it's in this way that we could strengthen our work because... Our religions preach love and brotherhood. And this is the work that we are doing amongst the youth alongside with the imams to spread this message to calm down these men, to quell the fears, to teach their brotherhood. And we also work with women of faith because women play an important role in our religion. We've organized press conferences, meetings, so people can speak and listen to the conversation to maintain the social cohesion of the country and all of this on behalf of peace. So these are the types of activities that we are conducting and plan on continuing. I would like to answer your third question. I think we can also discuss this issue further. Thank you. I am Archbishop Zappalinga. I would like to thank the U.S. government for all of the efforts that you are carrying out to bring back peace to our country. I would like to express my thanks to all who are working on a behalf. Everybody can provide his own contribution towards peace and reconciliation in the Central African Republic. May the Lord bless you. The events that we experienced have demonstrated that some people have tried to exclude others and they have sought to create divisions. The results stemming from impunity in our country. Some of you have mentioned the fact that people have been killed, executing, that there have been lootings. And when there is a country where there is no law, no justice, this can lead to anarchy. And we were on the verge of falling into anarchy and we must have asked ourselves what kind of world are we living in. We have had outbreaks of hatred and some people prepared themselves. And you saw the results of that everywhere. We lost all sense of reason and fell into irrationality. After everything that we experienced, we now hope that the United States will be able to assist us. The French are here with Sangaris. Miska is here. But in light of their limitations, you must understand that the Central African Republic is a very large country, more than 600,000 square kilometers. And the numbers of troops that have been announced appear to be quite insufficient. We feel that this situation calls for an intervention from the United Nations. This would allow the presence of professional staff that would help the population to secure the situation. The state no longer exists. Everything has to be reorganized. And we must organize elections to ensure that whatever may happen, that we have transparency. We also hope the United States will be able to help us with the humanitarian project. Since 1997, I think USAID has left the country. We now believe that the time has come to return to help us in our recovery process. We also hope that the United States will help us with our communities. For example, do advocacy work and do reconciliation work to ensure that everybody accepts one another. And we already wish to thank you in advance for everything that you are doing and for everything that you will be doing in the future. Good morning. I would like to associate myself with the statements of my colleagues and thank the US government in its attempt to remedy the situation of the populations in the Central African Republic. I am the mayor of the city of Bangui. I am the mayor of a city where operations on the ground are very important. I am also the chairwoman of the association of mayors of the Central African Republic. Which means that the situation of the city of Bangui but of all towns and communities in the Central African Republic is of concern and interest to me. The outbreaks of violence that we have seen for more than a year now have been witnessed in various communities in the country before they reached Bangui. This is to say that the entire population has greatly suffered. These populations are experiencing dramatic humanitarian situations. Most communities have been affected by the crisis. Many local authorities have basically abdicated their area of jurisdiction and abandoning the populations to their fate. And this means that all of their dwellings have been looted. And the government is no longer capable of providing basic services. We have problems with water, electricity, hygiene, water treatment, health care problems and also we have food security problems. There are more than 300,000 displaced people in the various communities. The populations are living under horrible conditions. So we need immediate and urgent humanitarian relief. The humanitarian aid workers on the ground are doing what they can or trying to help with immediate problems but not all needs are being met. So we need support to provide urgent relief to these displaced populations. In addition to this emergency, we need to work together to heal the social divide, the social fracture that opened up after these events. That is the role of local government that has to be done towards the populations. We have come up with some strategies and the local governments reached out to the populations trying to provide answers to the populations' questions. They are trying to provide moral support to the populations to provide answers to these populations. Thank you so much for all of those remarks and I just want to repeat again that we are very inspired and impressed by the heroic work that you are doing there to promote peace and reconciliation. We appreciate the recommendations that you have made for increased assistance from the United States. I would like to ask that you continue to think about what the United States and what religious leaders in particular can do to support your work. And now I am going to turn to Imam Majid and Stephen Hilbert to discuss some of the reactions from the Muslim community in the Catholic community in the United States and some of the efforts that they have been taking. And now I am going to give the floor to Imam and Stephen Hilbert to talk about the efforts that were made in the United States by the Muslim and Catholic communities. First I would like to say my heart goes to those who lost loved ones in this conflict. I really have shook me when I saw the amount of conflict in people's lives. But with people like you in this room I have now some hope. You will overcome this. And we are here to help you overcome it. The will of God. As an Imam I do believe that the Muslim community in America with the Muslim community and the people of faith in the Central African Republic can work together. By sharing our experience, how we overcome issues even in the United States and our effort to help bring peace and harmony with people of other faith. We have great relationship with Muslim scholars around the world. Also we can seek their help in addressing any issue that may be needed. Specifically in the neighboring countries whether Chad or Sudan. And we can share our experience of how we train Imams for example in the issue of Darfur. I myself spent a few days there twice training Imam the issue of conflict and how to overcome the difficulties. We have been able to talk about the training that we have provided to Imams for example in Darfur. And we have been able to talk about the methods and approaches that we have followed to help them overcome the conflicts. We can help also to engage the youth because we have also experience here by training youth leaders in the issue of conflict. I am very happy to hear that there is a form of women in this issue. I am also very happy to learn that women actively participate in the resolution of these problems. I see that women play an important role in the country to restore confidence. If you allow me I would like to give you some suggestions and then listen to your reactions to these suggestions. Our mosque for example have been built two churches in Pakistan after it was burnt down by some members of that community. I heard that there are some mosques and churches being burnt down. And one of the processes that we built in the confidence at the health of the mosques and the mosques and the mosques and the mosques and the mosques and the mosques. And one of the processes that we built in the confidence at the health can come also through the healing by having the Christians and the Muslim rebuilding churches and mosques at the same time. And we can ask here in the United States different relief agencies, Muslims and Christians to work together on providing the help so that they know there is a gift from both communities. And therefore I am looking at it from three perspectives, help, healing and hope. I would like to tell you that in America 29 religious organizations have come together and built a coalition to help Muslim communities. And I would like to tell you that in America 29 religious organizations have come together and built a coalition to help Muslim communities. I would like to tell you that in America 29 religious organizations have come together and built a coalition to help Muslims in difficult times in the United States. I would like to tell you that in America 29 religious organizations have come together and built a coalition to help Muslim communities. Whatever we can do to help in this regard, I would be very happy to, whether the delegation from the interfaith community coming to visit you or we continue engaging with you. We have very close working relationship with the Catholic community for many years. And therefore whatever we can do together, I think we will be very happy. I pray that our effort will be perfect. Thank you very much, Steve. I have spent many years in Africa, especially in francophone. I am happy to be with you today through this wonderful technology. And one day I hope to meet you in person. I am taking the liberty to speak to you directly in French given the fact that I spent many years in French speaking Africa. And I do hope that one day I will be able to meet with you in person. I would like to join first on the topic of the imam, on what concerns those who have lost their lives, who have lost their goods, by sharing the pain of these people and by sharing also your pain. And I would like to associate myself with the statement of the imam who expressed his solidarity for the people who have lost their lives and goods in this conflict. In the name of the Committee and the Bureau for Justice and International Peace and in my personal name, I express my feelings of solidarity and fraternity during these difficult times that you have gone through. On behalf of the Committee and on behalf of myself, I would like to express my solidarity and my concern for this difficult period that you are undergoing. Rest assured you are not abandoned, you are not alone in this moment of sorrow that your population is experiencing. Since the beginning of the crisis we have been following the events in Central Africa with a sense of sorrow. But at the same time we want to recognize your lovable efforts to comfort those who are in debt or who have lost everything during the violent attacks of these last months. But at the same time we want to applaud all of the efforts that you have been conducting to those people who have lost loved ones who are in mourning and as well towards people who have lost their property during this violent crisis. We want your initiatives to convince people to resist the peace of violence and to promote dialogue, peace and reconciliation. We applaud your efforts to urge people to resist this temptation, this call to violence and we applaud your efforts on behalf of peace and reconciliation and love. And we also support your calls towards Central African leaders and to the international community. And precisely to support the efforts of Play-Doyance, organized by the Catholic Church with all its Muslim and Christian partners to promote peace and dialogue. Precisely one of the goals of our Committee for International Peace and Justice is to promote all of our advocacy work towards people of faith, Christians and Muslims. As part of these initiatives we work closely with the Catholic Relief Services which are also working with you. And it's in this context that we have done work with the Church in Central Africa. In July 2013, the President of our Committee, Monsignor Richard Petz and I, met with the Vice President of the Catholic Conference of Central Africans, Monsignor Nestor Desiree Nongo. For example, in July 2013, the Chairman of our Committee, Monsignor Petz, met together with Monsignor Nongo. We listened with great interest to his summary of the situation and of all of the work done by the Church. And for example, in September, Monsignor Nongo came to the United States accompanied by delegation of members of the Social Society in order to meet officials from the United Nations and the United States. During his stay, I was able to organize several meetings for him with members of the House and the Senate, including here at the State Department with Mr. David Brown, who I believe you have met. And in November of 2013, Monsignor Nongo came back to the United States in order to testify before Congress to talk about the worrisome situation in Central Africa. His very insightful testimony made it possible for members of Congress to get a much better understanding of the situation in your country. The members of the Committee congratulated and encouraged the actions of the Church and its partners, Christians and Muslims. And finally, in December of last year, the Sub-Committee on South Africa of the Senate, this time, invited the members of Congress to present an official statement on the situation in Central Africa. And I'm happy to say that alongside with these Catholic Relief Services, we helped the translation and the communication of this important statement. Thanks to all of these efforts, it is clear that religious leaders have worked very hard on behalf of peace and reconciliation. You are all truly peace builders and blessed children of God. And our conference is ready to support you and stand by your side throughout this crisis. We are ready to listen to your ideas to give greater depth and strength to our cooperation, of course, acknowledging our limited resources. Allow me just to say one word about the Catholic Relief Services, which is one of our partners. The Catholic Relief Services were created by the American Catholic Church in 1943. And CRS began working in the Central African Republic in 1999. And it's thanks to CRS Cameroon that I was working with at the time and it was thanks to them that I myself was able to engage in activities in the Central African Republic. Thanks to support from the US government, the Catholic Relief Services is providing food aid to over 10,000 people in the district of Lobay. The Catholic Relief Services has provided support to populations within religious, within churches, compounds. CRS, alongside with USID, is engaged in peace building projects to rebuild this peace, which has always existed amongst the various religious communities in your country. I do know that CRS is working with the religious leaders and with the youth in order to develop projects to get rid of this mistrust, to attenuate this mistrust that does exist amongst the populations. And this mistrust which was triggered by the crisis and the violence. And I do know that CRS is proud of its work and of its achievements. CRS would like to thank the evangelical, the Catholic and Muslim communities for the support that you provided us. And we hope to maintain or even expand our activities in the future. So to conclude, dear brothers and sisters, we seek to encourage you. We hope you will succeed in the future and that the Lord may bless you with your efforts and protect you from evil. Thank you, Stephen. I'd now like to ask the participants in Bangui if they had any reactions to some of these suggestions made by Imam Majid and Stephen Hilbert, including some of the suggestions like cooperatively rebuilding houses of worship or perhaps having a delegation of religious leaders from the United States to visit your country perhaps later this year. We'd be very interested in your reactions to those or other suggestions you may have. Now I would like to know if Bangui, if you have any comments or reflections to make in relation to the suggestions made by the participants in the panel, for example, this possibility that has been evoked, to work collaboratively in the reconstruction of the Church or for example the delivery of a delegation, do you have any reactions or comments to make in relation to the various suggestions made by the participants in the panel here in Washington? Yes, I'm back again, Reverend Nicola Greco-Amigwangu. The Bible says two is better than one. We'll be happy extremely happy to host a delegation from the United States in order to help us with our activities on the ground. We must understand that we are not alone in Central Africa. They must understand that they do have brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world. And that's how we will prove, we will demonstrate the solidarity of faith. As far as I'm concerned, I will take it upon myself to immediately make this announcement towards my evangelical brethren that our Christian brothers and Muslims from the United States will come to us to encourage us, not only to bring us material help, but also to bring us moral and spiritual help. Brothers and sisters from the United States, Christian and Muslim will reach out to us not only to provide material assistance, but also moral support and moral aid. We have been encouraged by your statements. And that with other brothers and sisters, we will continue our efforts to find peace. And with our brothers and sisters, we will unite our efforts in order to restore this peace and stability that have been lost. And already we would like to extend our welcome to you. This is Imam Omar Kobinlayim. Thank you Imam and Mr. Hilber, who have really taken on the difficulties of all their first prayers. We also wish to thank the U.S. government that stands ready to rush to our aid. We also have in our hands, in relation to the need for reconciliation, to rebuild our trafficking, the problem of the formation of our anti-reconciliation animators. We also acknowledge the urgent need in light of the situation in Central Africa, the urgent need to provide training and education to our moderators in reconciliation work. We really hope that this project will implement as quickly as possible. We had something going on in November, but unfortunately, still as of now, nothing has started yet. We are hoping to receive some teaching materials to carry out this important project to very quickly engage in a national reconciliation. I do believe that my brothers of the United States have not forgotten us and they will provide us with this support for this educational work, and we'd like to thank you for that. I am the Archbishop of Bangui. I would like to express my gratitude in the form of a prayer, and I would like to thank you for having expressed your concern for the people of Central Africa. The efforts to be carried out in the future will actually be an enrichment for us. The experiences that you have had in the United States between Muslims and Christians will be able to show us the path to enlighten us. Sometimes, when we are born in the Kingdom, we also need a third person to help us get a little further. Let us not forget that Abraham was welcoming strangers who were passing by. He also welcomed the angels of God as part of our dream for a future Central African Republic. We want to create bridges, gateways, and these bridges will connect Muslims, Christians, people of other faiths who will be able to meet together and to gather together. For example, we had this dream where in the same school, Muslim children and Christian children could all study together and share the same school benches. Let us work to eradicate this mistrust that has become entrenched in our population and do it via education, peace, and development. And I think that Muslims and Christians must take on their responsibility, assume this responsibility towards the populations. Many people are waiting or expecting answers from us. Thanks to all the promises and the pledges that we have made. We hope that we will bring hope back to our brothers and sisters. Thank you very much for those statements and the beautiful vision Archbishop that you described. I can say from at least from my personal perspective, I went to a Catholic high school as well as a Catholic university. And I hope and pray that your vision for an interfaith education in the Central African Republic will come true. I want to ask Imam Majid or Stephen Hilber for any reactions from the statements that we received. I share your desires and your ideas and wishes. Thank you. I'm convinced that education and multi-faith schools are very good ideas. Being people of faith, as you noted, as human beings, we do need material support but we also need moral support. And I do believe that it is indeed the role of our religion, Christian, Catholic and Muslim to provide not only material support but also moral and spiritual support. I hope that this moral and spiritual support can change people's hearts, especially young people, to end this conflict and spread a country that is peaceful and prosperous. I would like first to say that I appreciate the effort being done by the religious leaders. And I salute this vision for peace. From our side here, I would like to say that from the Muslim community perspective, I would like to hear more maybe offline and the Imams and others and the Muslim community can provide us with the need of this material and the teaching of materials that we can provide for you. We have great Muslim scholars who have been working on this issue for a while, among them Sheikh Abdullah Mbaya, who is a big fluent French and maybe you are familiar with. There are a lot of Muslim intellectuals, including some who are totally Francophones, who have been working on these issues for a long time, who are quite aware of these issues. I think maybe we will have a conversation after this meeting to see how can we help also of reconciliation after bringing peace. Because we have been also working on the issue of violence and extremism for a while, a misuse of religion in the issue of conflict. I hope that we will be able to work together to help you. Thank you very much to all the participants, our esteemed guests in Bangui, our esteemed panelists here in the United States. I think we will definitely continue this conversation between the religious leaders and between the United States and the other representatives in Bangui. There are a number of very excellent ideas that were discussed here today, including the idea of a delegation, as well as support for education, reconciliation and peace building efforts and training. So we will follow up on these ideas and hopefully we will be able to move forward with these together. I would like to ask Imam Majid and one of our religious leaders in Bangui to share a closing prayer with us. I have asked God Almighty to bring peace and tranquility to this beautiful country and to help all of you with the great effort that you are doing. I pray that the people of Central African Republic will enjoy peace and harmony and to guide all of us as the people of faith. To unite people's hearts and to overcome hatred and division. And to create a community that follows the teaching of the father Ibrahim of the people of faith. As had been mentioned, he welcomed the stranger, my God healed this country and made the neighbors work together to rebuild peace and tranquility in the public home. Thank you. We will pray. We would like to thank you Lord. We would like to thank you for what we would wish to call tonight an answer to the prayer of we believers. And to answer to satisfy the prayers of all the faiths in Central Africa which are reaching out to you. We would like to thank you Lord that in other parts of the world in other areas there are other people who are concerned and who are worried about our situation. And we believe that thanks to their prayers, our country, the Central African Republic will return to peace. And that there will be in the future a reconciliation of the hearts. We ask you to bless the United States, bless the government and also bless our communion. Thank you for that which belongs to you. In the name of Jesus we have prayed. Amen. Thank you again very much and to all the panelists and to everyone joining. And to all of our colleagues who helped to set up this discussion. And we hope to see you all again in the future soon. Thank you. Good evening. This program has been brought to you by Kinex.


Hi, I'm Matthew Horky. Hi, I'm Shurin Tan. Welcome to... Croatian Wine in 60 Seconds. Today we're going to introduce some sparkling wine of Croatia. Sparkling wine has been in all four wine regions in Croatia. Croatian sparkling wines are made in both shaman and traditional method. Croatian sparklers come in all levels of sweetness, all the way from root zero to brook to demi-sec. It's like the usual shatomani and pinot nola Croatian sparklers can also be made from local varieties such as Tehran and bullshit. Here we have three examples. First we have the Vina Laguna Perla Rose.  Like all Vina Laguna bottleings, this offers great value for money. I love the Kota Katarina Savio because it doesn't break the expectations of the sparkling wine, but yet at the same time, it provides a different aroma of bullshit. It really reminds me of a California sparkling. Veralta Zero Brew has a little bit more color from Tehran. In addition to the red fruit flavors, you're also going to get a little bit of an orange peel note. It's really balanced from a root zero. And that's Croatian wine at 60 seconds!


you can 100% increase the connection to your intuition but you have to be willing to step away from your over dependence on your head on your thinking and get still and listen to another still small voice really is what it is because it doesn't actually compete and shout for attention it needs you to get still long enough to sense and feel and hear and experience what your intuition sounds and feels like as it were.


So check this out, you could have your 65 inch 4K OLED right there rolling up, it could be right in front of your window with the view out on the beach or out on the city and then you have the TV coming up so you can watch TV at night for example and use the same space and position the TV in a different place in the living room instead of having it against the wall you can have it in the middle of the room or you can have it in front of the window so that's really cool let's check it out like this so hi so hi my name is Harry Kim and I'm from LG Display so welcome to SID Nicholas that's a really exciting 65 inch rollable OLED and it's fully 4K fully OLED and it has all the great benefits of OLED yes deep blacks you know wide viewing angles the vibrant colors it's all there all the billions of colors and stuff yes it with the addition of this big sound coming out down here is like a sound bar so when the display rolls down that's its compartment is where the display is being stored but it can also double as a sound bar so this product has a sound bar attached to the compartment but there are many possibilities you can you know apply furniture to that technology as well it's a one of many possibilities there it comes down and you can have it as like a smart home dashboard yes and for instance if you can if you want to just watch the regular TV you can have it as up all the way in 16 by 9 aspect ratio or you can have a cinematic experience with 21 by 9 as well that's one of the coolest flexible displays ever yes let's see it is rollable it is but this SID display week 2019 I want to see 8K you have some 8k 8k this is our 88 8k that's a lot of aches but so it has the four times the pixel density of a 4k regular 4k yeah so close up to the pixels okay talk to the mic sure so this is like crazy high resolution yeah you can even see I bet you can see your house from and you could be reading a newspaper like crazy quality of the text yeah it's almost a paper like quality because there's 33 million pixels inside what I want to see an 8k is a it's just like something like family pictures anything that's higher than 8 megapixel it's gonna look great in an 8k TV yes that's true so this is coming to the market soon is a real product is not just straight show right this is not just for straight show it will be coming to the market very soon and you have the same black level technology pixel dimming the same brightness same same deal same deal in the same package just in 8k nice 88 inch 8k it's like a dream dream display so you have a new generation of the crystal sound I can hear the sound localized and the sound is coming right there in a corner so that brings an extra kind of realism and hearing what a sound is and you can really immerse yourself in a localization of the sound so the sound matches the images that's being played on the TV and here you have some information about that so there's a person and the person will be speaking on the right side of the screen right sound is coming out where the person is exactly so let's say that you have a movie and a person shoots a gun from the right side of the TV then the sound of the gunshot will come from the right side and once the bullet hits the target then in the left side then that sound will also come from the left so that's the synchronized sound and also CFO can give you more immersive sound because the conventional TVs they have to fire their sound downwards under the screen yes that's because that makes it unnatural that breaks the psychological experience exactly I mean that when the sound hits the ground it becomes it doesn't hit the viewers you know first time around every other TV has a sound coming from outside the TV yes this one has it coming from inside the TV inside the TV outside the TVs you know TVs with sound boxes or home theater they tend to they tend to obstruct the viewers from enjoying their content to the fullest because it's just another another equipment around the content that they're trying to watch right but I think it's the big question is how the quality compared to like a high-quality soundbar or compared to satellite speakers right so obviously this isn't going to compare up one to one against really home theater environment which is a big speaker speakers with you know thousands of dollars of investment you know but if compared to conventional TVs and even some with you know dedicated sound box it can it scored very high in terms of this quality yes and how about combining both can you have both the exactly you can have this and that's always the option today you're just seeing a glimpse of the future you can see another so what is this so this we call it we call it the rose and what it is is there are four OLED panels 65 inch UHD OLED panels and they are combined together to form this unique so it's a another demonstration of the flexibility of OLED it is a demonstration of flexibility as well as how the slim you can you can touch the screen and see just how thin it is it's thin like a phone and the OLED display panel itself yeah even thinner this is this is the thickness of the entire housing so this is like an art installation kind of right it is an art installation and because all it can have a very simple structure it can have these sort of flexible form factors right and our list would like to have as much creative freedom in terms of their artworks so if they get a hands-on with OLED products then they can also do a similar installation or something better this is so exciting that LG is able to provide us all this amazing technology for the world yes the OLED people are really enjoying that more it's the big quantities is increasing it's getting slightly more affordable also yes it will be yes it's going to be we hope to see all it take over the world basically we want it to be more prevalent and we wish that people it enters more and more people's lives in the future


Interesting story out of California. So California, as you know, California as a massive homeless crisis, they are more homeless in California really than any place else in the country. The homeless crisis is primarily a West Coast crisis. It's Oregon and California predominantly. Anyway, a lot of cities in California are basically cracking down on homeless people. So San Diego, the city of San Diego, which has basically, I think, a 100% Democratic city council. The city of San Diego has clamped down on homeless encampments. They've made it illegal for them to be on the sidewalks in downtown. The police are now emboldened to go in there and, you know, scare them away, I guess. And indeed, the number of homeless in downtown San Diego has dropped significantly. And this is something that many other cities around California and in Oregon would like to do and are talking about doing. There is a court case, though. In the court case, it was a result from a case in Oregon, where a city in Oregon has tried to do this, Grant's Pass, I think, in southern Oregon. Grant's Pass passed a law that said you can't camp on sidewalks, streets, parks, and other public spaces. And they outlawed this and they affected this and they were sued by some by some homeless advocacy group saying it was unconstitutional. It was a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibiting against, quote, coolant and usual punishment. That's an interesting one, right? A, you know, a court ruled in favor of the city, but then the appellate court, I think it was the Ninth District, is that right? The Ninth District Court overturned that and ruled for the homeless advocacy group. And the case is now going to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will rule where the cities have the power to enforce laws that prohibit homeless people from living on the sidewalks. Now, I think the way to solve this problem is to privatize the sidewalks, you know, and that would do it because then it's clearly constitutional for me to keep people off trespassing on my private property. The challenge, of course, is, and the reason this is even an issue and the reason why it has to go to courts and the reason why, you know, there's even a question mark on this, is the fact that streets, sidewalks, parks, a public, quote, property and therefore not who they belong to. Now, in spite of that, I think the courts should uphold the city's right to kick people off. It would be absurd and ridiculous if they didn't and then they couldn't. We should treat it as if it was private property with the city owning it even though we know that's bogus. But ideally and ultimately, wouldn't it be cool if some town, let's say Supreme Court rules, Nana, you can't kick homeless people out of your streets. Wouldn't it be cool if one of these towns just said, all right, then we're privatizing all the streets, hey, shopkeepers, we're going to, for $1, we're going to give you a deed to the pavement in front of your store and to the road. And boom, you make a private property and the private owners decide that it's trespassing and they could send them to jail and you've done, you've done it. So that is my solution. But it is interesting, isn't it, that, and this is true of so many of these left-wing cases, democratic governments, local democratic governments in a overwhelmingly democratic state like California are moving against the homeless and against this idea of homelessness and they are insisting that, you know, that homeless be evacuated from the streets and you're seeing this even in San Francisco where the city wants to do this and where, by the way, there are a number of ballot initiatives on the ballot in San Francisco to dramatically increase police, police enforcement, going after criminals, going after crime, and going after the homeless. Where the mayor of San Francisco, the democratic mayor of San Francisco is supportive of these voter initiatives. So it looks like on issues of homelessness and an issue of crime, the leftists of California are moving towards a more rational perspective, a more pro-human life perspective, a private property perspective, even in a state like California. And this is why I've told you many times that, I believe at least, I believe that many of these leftist ideas will never take roots, deep roots at least, in America, even in the most, even in the bluest part of it, parts of it.  They won't accept all their stores closing on them because of shoplifting. They won't accept. No, it might take them homelessness everywhere. It might take them decades to figure this out as it has. But ultimately, people will rebel against this. They don't want lawlessness. And they don't want anarchy. They don't want anarchy. They don't want the disintegration of society, which is what the crazy left is explicitly advocating for. And therefore, they are already clamping down on it and good for them, interestingly as well. The governor of California, another real leftist, right? The governor of California is, has submitted a, in a sense, a statement to the Supreme Court supporting the city's rights to get, to move the homeless out of the streets, even though it's a case in Oregon, the state of California is siting with the city, not with the homeless people. So again, and this is Gavin Newsom. So this is not some centrist Democrat. This is a pretty left-wing Democrat. He's asked the conservative majority Supreme Court to take up the Oregon case. And in a brief, he said, the ruling by San Francisco, by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the measure in Grand Pass and Boise, Idaho, have paralyzed efforts to address unsafe and unsanitary encampments. So a real effort in California to get rid of, to at least minimize the, the homeless issue. That was from Reuters. I was reading from Reuters news release about Gavin Newsom.


view was that there's lack of access and it is for various reasons that people can't get to their doctors to the best Masters for teaching or learning and for other things. So in 2012 we created Arnhem Moving Pictures, which is a platform agnostic digital content company and the idea was simple that all screens would converge and become one and In the process of doing that the user would decide how they learned what they learned What content they took in and what access they got Along that journey I was building out the health related entities and one day we started looking at it and we said look why couldn't we do this for education and Really the kernel of the germ of this wasn't dance It was to teach in a disseminated fashion using technology media and brick-and-mortar come together and Go to the last mile and now it's scaled to where it's on four different DTHs It goes to 206 countries with our apps and our our Online platforms and now we're scaling it up and in the lockdown It's been really amazing because we've given people the opportunity to learn and we kept a bunch of stuff free I mean we wanted to give Upon and learn any kind of dance that they want we had competitions. You know keeping People busy So that you know, they have something to do during the lockdown and something creative Something they love doing and something they can carry forward Well, I think there's a lot more Discipline now in the entertainment business when I had started it was not a very sleep streamline business. It was very skewed, you know where people were making movies for passion and You know once they have an idea then they very few production houses, which were like, you know Like these big corporates that have stepped in now very few production houses like yes She is b. R. Chopra or subhash guy in thoughts You know all these were the only ones were established and that was their business Making and a lot of other people used to come in make a movie because you know, it was their passion But today when I came back it's much more disciplined everything a streamline um, you know Right from the scripts to what you're going to wear how you're going to look and you know, everything is worked out beforehand So for an artist, it's a great It's a great thing because when once you're on the set, you're completely prepared with whatever You're supposed to do you everything is in your head and you're right there Another thing that I see which is wonderful on the sets is When I used to walk on the sets In the 90s the only women on the sets were But the hairdressers or the actress and her Co-actors were women but today when I walk in, you know, they're women everywhere in every department people will choose How they want to get the entertainment where they want to go and get the entertainment That's what uh, that's what we even talked about when we started I think the bigger issue right now is theaters are closed How do you do things are different Filming is done for now. You're starting in serials. You're doing things. So We really have to re-engineer what we do For uh 20 years of my life um, I practiced as an art surgeon and We would You know fill the gap we would take care of people when they were the sickest and um, you know try to bring them back from the abyss and Fortunately with with the techniques we used and Science the way it is in medicine in most cases they would do great But I couldn't turn back the clock no matter how hard I work. I couldn't undo what they'd done their whole lives Yeah, the same thing is I I think as a Uh thing what we're envisioning is What is it that every person needs from health care? Right? It's when you don't have it And a catastrophe happens no matter what else you have in your life You're in jeopardy. So what we have cooked up is something which is personalized precision health care which really focuses on individuals and tries to create a Entity which protects them from cradle to grave and is aligned with their well-being forever And their families and all that and so it looks at their different variables including their lifestyle And what they have to go through because no two people are like and the disease can be similar How you you know, manipulate the variables is very different. It's a combination of media technology and brick and mortar which serves to educate the patient and take care of them give them the building blocks of Um cloud-based Which is smart and then a smart services marketplace And so, you know in the end with all the iot devices all the other things it'll have It's going to be a feedback loop which continuously monitors you We have recorded the song in LA and the purpose of the song was I love to sing and you know, we thought The someone heard my voice and they said, why don't you sing? Because you have a great voice. You should you should try singing and so we got into the studio with Raja kumari and narendra kumar and narendra sing and And ram and me and we all got together and we said, okay. What do you want to sing about? and I thought, you know that One thing which is common to everybody and in everybody's life is struggles And when you are faced with struggles, how do you overcome it? um Sometimes you feel so down and so uncertain about the future that Um, you know, you have to really look into yourself and gather the strength and light a candle You know of sorts which can be placed in hurricane or a storm and you're still going to be Burn burning bright because we are public figures and we have to be like the beacon of light For everyone whatever may be happening in our lives And so that was the idea behind the song and that's when we wrote the song and I sung it But there's a lot of thing we got to do and another thing I think this lockdown has given us is time to spend with our families Yeah, because everybody's so busy and everybody used to complain. We don't get enough time with the family's dinner Was the only time where the whole family used to come together because everybody's working the kids are busy You're busy, but this time I think we got a lot of time with the family So I try to spend as much time as possible. Though both of them are teenagers and boys So as much time as I could, you know with and Read a book finally, which I was not getting to do then, you know cooking and Like the song that we shot and you know doing so many different things That has been amazing I think in the end you realize how lucky all of us are and the idea is I look at the bright side.  She's 88 years old and she's got a wit Which I mean she's the one who made mother who she is But the bottom line is it's been and and even our people a few of them Supported us through this right and they stayed with us and we are eternally grateful and and you know my whole team 20 people 16 are sheltering at home four have stayed with me And I've supported all of them and the amazing part about it is we have these You know friday night kind of get-togethers on zoom just to talk And we'll play guitars and sing and even inside will make music I have a full studio here now And and do stuff together and and so look you have to Not worry about what you can't change You have to cherish what you do have and enjoy life because you don't know you know, I mean And then change other people's lives. Yes. Yes, and we've worked hard on that one