Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. Today's video is my week 38 update of my fitness journey. Pretty much now Pamela Reef challenged because I've just been doing her workouts because I really like them. I do wanna try other people, but like as of now, I'm just kinda like sticking with what I know and I like. So like normal, let's start out with what I did this week and then the updates and then the photos. This video will definitely be probably short because I don't have much to update on.  Then on Sunday, I did the 20 minute intense workout. This was my very first workout of Pamela Reefs. It's probably one of my favorites. I love all the songs, I love the workouts.  And then I did the Jason Derulo ab hit workout and that one's super hard for some reason on Sunday. I was just having a really hard time and my mom was even like, are you okay over there? And I was like, yeah, it was just a really hard day for some reason. I didn't even feel like working out, but I'm like, you know, I'm just gonna do the 20 minute plus the Jason, because it's like a 30 minute, you know, hardcore workout. And then on Monday, I did the day six of the sweaty hard challenge plan from week 30. So if you guys don't know where you can find Pamela Reefs workout plans, it's on her Instagram and look on her highlights. She has all of these amazing things that she just like puts together and they all include her videos, leg day, abs and arms, upper body hit, like she does a lot of like cool stuff. So I just kind of wanted to share with you guys where I actually find these little plans. So back to Monday, I did the day six of the sweaty hard. So day six includes the warmup, you choose cardio, calorie killer and the leg stretch. This day was super hard. As you can see, it says cardio day. It was definitely a workout and really liked that one. So I don't know if I'm actually gonna do this plan again this week because I really enjoyed it. Tuesday, I don't work out because I just take the day off because I work, like I say in every video. And then Wednesday, day one of the sweaty hard plan, which is booty extreme. I have kind of made Wednesday, but in leg day, just because I really wanna work on my lower body. I don't know why, I just kind of want to. My legs have always been strong, but like really working on them. I feel like they can definitely be stronger. So the day one includes the warmup, a 15 minute booty exercise, 20 minute booty and then the leg stretch. The leg stretch is one of her newest videos and I really like it. It's good cool down exercise. And then Thursday, I don't work out. I just again, take the day off. And then Friday, today I did the day three of the sweaty hard plan, which is the abs and hip workouts. So includes the warmup, this new video, which is really cool. It's called the six minute brutal abs. And it really is brutal. Like I don't know how she gets through that to be honest. Like I wonder her mental, like what she is thinking when she's doing them. Cause like I can't do that. And then the 15 minute hip workout, the trained waist, which is again, that's a really hard one for me. And then the five minute daily stretch. So overall this plan this week was a super hard sweaty week, which I love. I love, you know, getting back into swinging things. This week is finally kind of just like getting really back into working out, not eating as much, you know, cookies and like sweets and stuff. But that's going to quickly change cause my aunt's coming literally today. Like I'm probably going to be editing this video when she's at my house because my cousin's birthday party is on Sunday. So keep an eye out for that vlog. Hopefully I'll get some footage there. But overall my diet is probably going to go back to like trash after being super good this week. I feel like I've really focused on like eating this week and eating well, except for Teriyaki Tuesday. I think that's about it for the updates. This week was great. I had a really good week this week. And I hope you guys are also having good week or had a good week for that matter. I love reading your comments when you say that you've been working out this week or haven't been moving on to the photos. So Alex on the left is last week and Alex on the right is this week. And here is the side view of that. I feel like, again, I'm getting back into it like mentally, physically. And now I've had two weeks of doing the hard sweaty plans. And then here is pre-workout Alex. So pre-workout Alex is on the left and current Alex is on the right. And here is the side view of that. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure to give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to comment down below. The question of the day is, what is your favorite season? I think mine would definitely have to be fall. I really like fall. It used to be spring, but then I acquired allergies and I don't like spring anymore. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.


Many of these caffeinated drinks can you have before it's dangerous. According to recommendations from the FDA, you're going to want to stick to five or less eight ounce cans of Red Bull a day, while 15 in a short period of time can be toxic. While you can have two cans of Celsius in a day and still be safe, while six can be toxic, you can only have two of these tiny bottles to stay in the safe range, and you for sure don't want to get up to six. A medium cup of Dunkin' Coffee packs more of a punch than you think. You shouldn't have more than 1.9 cups in a day to be safe, with 5.7 in a short period of time potentially causing toxicity. But you should be most careful with Starbucks's Nitro Cold Brew. You can't even have one and a half grande cups of it and stay in the safe range, and just over four cups could lead to toxic side effects like seizures.


Since the passage of NAFTA loan in 1994, Indiana, this great state has lost 113,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs. Look around this state and you will find once vibrant and strong manufacturing towns like Gary, South Bend, Muncie, Bloomington, Indianapolis, and Evansville shattered by abandoned factories, shutdown steel mills, sky-high poverty rates, and foreclosed homes. You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to understand that our policy of unfettered free trade where American workers are forced to compete against desperate people all over this world have been a disaster for the people of the United States. We need a new set of trade policies, trade policies designed to protect working families in the middle class, not just the CEOs of large corporations.


I think we're going to get started. This is great. Thanks, everybody, for coming. What a nice crowd. We're here today to talk about the trade and development nexus, and we have a very interesting group assembled. This is part of the US Leadership and Development Project here at CSIS. I'm Dan Rondi. I'm co-leading the US Leadership and Development Project with my colleague, Joanna Nesseth, who's in the back there, waving. And then we're doing this in partnership with Chevron. I don't know if my friend Mamadou is here or not. Is Mamadou Bay or someone else from Chevron here? They always said Mamadou will be here shortly, I suspect. And it's a new three to five-year initiative that we've launched with. There's information about it outside. But one of the areas that we're focusing on is the role of the private sector in development. And so we've had a series of discussions with folks from OPIC and from USTDA. And today we're very honored to have Assistant Secretary Fernandez from the US Department of State here, who's going to be leading a discussion. And we have a number of other participants with me, along with Bill Lane, who's Director of Government Affairs here in Washington for Caterpillar. But it's also a real pleasure to have my colleague, Meredith Broadbent, who's the shoal chair for trade here as well and who's going to make some introductory remarks to frame up the conversation. But I'm going to stop there. I'm going to ask my friend and colleague Meredith just to make a few framing remarks about the trade and development nexus. Thanks, Dan. I really wanted to welcome Bill and Assistant Secretary Fernandez today. It's going to be, it's an exciting time for trade. And I was further excited to see in Wikipedia, Secretary Fernandez's bio that says he's a lifelong supporter of commercial engagement. And so I say that with some trepidation for winning Wikipedia. But since you're here to correct the record if it's not true, I feel safe in saying that. And I think it is true. What have we come to, Wikipedia? By way of introduction, I just wanted to sort of, as we launch our Chevron program here on the role of trade, the trade aspects of development. Our general orientation is that we see that trade agreements and the expansion of commercial relations through private sector investment in developing countries are a major contributor to economic development. And they're an effective means to project the rule of law and US influence around the globe. In addition, trade agreements can be a strong tool in the president's foreign policy toolkit, but only if you can get on the same page with Congress. And I think there's good news on that front. After a few very quiet years, there's been some sort of a terribly exciting time for the trade types in this audience. And you know who you are because it's a special world, and we start talking about non-markups of trade agreements. And the Congress and the administration actively getting the details down on the legislative language that we'll take to implement these agreements. We're making huge progress. And I'm confident that we're going to get there. And it's going to be very important for the United States that we'll be able to speak with a single voice on our posture towards these very important agreements. The role of trade in development is something that we want to investigate further. And we'll be working with many of you in the audience to sort of bring to bear some of the new ideas that are out there. But the FTAs that are under active consideration in Congress are valuable market access agreements. They pry open foreign markets for US exporters and farmers and service providers. But they also promote the development purpose of aiding the establishment of environments that are welcoming to business and to private sector initiatives because they're characterized by more due process and governmental transparency. USTR in the past has pointed out that countries that open highly regulated sectors like telecommunications and financial services under trade agreements grow 1.5 percentage points faster than countries where these markets in those countries are closed and non-transparent. And all three of these free trade agreements have robust investment chapters that set up strong rule of law disciplines and access to dispute settlement and those protections. So as we move into an interesting conversation here between the administration setting the policy and how the private sector is going to play in that role, I'm looking forward to the comments that we'll have on these trade agreements, the issues of capacity building, what maybe some of our experience on the path that has shown us the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And what we see coming forward is US policy toward the Arab countries, the Arab spring countries that are undergoing so much change right now. So I really look forward to today's panel. Thanks. Thanks, Meredith. Maybe we could start with a question about the trade and development nexus. I think Meredith did a great job of framing up what the benefits are. But maybe Assistant Secretary Fernandez, maybe you could start just from your perspective. Obviously, you've done a lot of thinking about this. And also, both your work in the private sector and also your work in public service is really at that sweet spot. And then I'm hoping Bill will also comment on that. Thank you, Dan. And it's good to see Bill. And thank you, Meredith, for those words. One of the things that brought me into government was what I saw as an opportunity to really take that sweet spot that you mentioned, Dan, of business and development. And really, OK. Is it on? Can you hear me now? Yep. OK. Yep. Thank you. The sweet spot of business and development. Anyway, in our bureau, economics, energy, and business, one of the things that we always talk about, and it's really one of the things that brought me into government was to be able to mine that convergence of business and development. Business is not always an angel. I know that from having worked for 30 years as a lawyer in New York. But there are spots where if you do it right, you can both make money and you can also help develop. And I'm looking at, for example, some of the initiatives that we've taken on that we talk about all the time in our bureau, agriculture. You have US agricultural companies that are able to have the technology today to be able to grow more food in places like Africa and do it in a sustainable way. And at the same time, do good for their shareholders. And so that sweet spot of business and development is something that I think we have overlooked too often. And I think it's something good that I and people in my bureau and government in general, certainly, Secretary Clinton has spoken about it. It's something that we're intending to really drive. Bill, you're on the US Global Leadership Campaign's board. You've been on the Sid Washington board. Thank you for that. Can you talk about, there's an obvious reason why as director of government affairs for Caterpillar, you've been so involved in development issues. And could you talk about the trade and development nexus? Yeah, if I could, and especially if the students are in the audience, you couldn't pick a better month to come to Washington because it's really cool this month and it's very uncomfortable. But I mean, this is actually a month that we could really see a pivot point that could move the direction on a wide range of issues, hopefully in the right direction. I've been with Caterpillar for 36 years, a long time. And I have to say, in some ways, we haven't changed. In some ways, we have. I mean, we've always been focused on exports and on overseas markets. But if you go back long enough, you would hear an expression from a lot of our executives, which would be something like, we believe in trade, not aid. Well, we probably believe in trade more now than we ever have in our whole corporate history. But we also realize that for some problems, dealing with disease, clean water, things of that sort, that unless you hit a certain hygiene level, trade's not going to make a big difference. So you really do have to address the AIDS epidemic in Africa or Latin America or Asia. You really do have to go after governance issues we're trying to do with the MCC and what have you. So I mean, there's a threshold there. And I think this isn't just unique to Caterpillar. I think corporate America gets it. And as a result of the US Global Leadership Coalition, we've got a couple hundred companies that play a big role to try to make sure that the international affairs budget is adequately funded. And we've seen pretty good growth in that budget over the last 10 years. Secondly, over half of what we make in the United States at Caterpillar, we export. And we've always been big exporters. But in the last four years, something else has changed. Over half of what we export now, we export to non-OECD countries. So this notion that there's a great promise in the developing world, the promise isn't there anymore. It's a reality. And if you're not part of it, you're really missing out an opportunity. One of the initiatives I'm trying to champion up at Penn State is young people love to go overseas. We like to go overseas when we were students. And we always went to countries that were really hardship assignments like in Italy or in France and things like that. And the students still like to have those type of hardship experiences. The question is how do you get folks to go to other countries that really are not quite as exotic or glamorous? And that's a challenge. And that's what we're trying to promote. So the point being, there's a lot of ways you can address this. And we're gonna talk about bilateral agreements. We're gonna talk about regional agreements. But more than anything else, there has to be a change in focus. And that change in focus has to be one, dealing with engagement, dealing with embracing the future and trying to hide from the future. The American companies that have done the best job, and this is a bit of an advertisement. I think Caterpillar falls in those ranks are the ones that have seen the future as an opportunity and we haven't tried to hide from it. So whether it's proposed sanctions against China or whether it's protectionist initiatives dealing with rapidly growing countries like in India and in Latin America, countries or companies and peoples that have focused on opportunities have had the most success. Those that have tried to hide or buy time or manage decline are the ones where you've really seen a downward spiral. Bill, let me start with you and I wanna bring in Assistant Secretary Fernandez and also Meredith might comment on this as well about, we've talked a lot about Columbia and Panama. We were talking about this earlier. Could you just talk a little bit about how you say, how plan Columbia sort of teed up the agreement that we currently have with Columbia? Well, everybody loves to talk about failure. And we like to talk about how partisan this town is.  But I have to tell you, as far as I'm concerned, plan Columbia may be the best counterinsurgency program this country's ever embarked on.  There was all sorts of, between paramilitary and the FARC and the narco traffickers and what have you, the government was losing battalion size battles in a very important country. The US, by embracing smart power, and this was President Clinton teaming up with Speaker Hastert. They started up a program, Plan Columbia, which was really a effort to embrace both improving the hard power aspects of foreign policy but also the civil society aspects. They did it for a sustained period of time. It was never an inexpensive endeavor. It was never a perfect endeavor. But when you look at the cost of the entire 12 year period, it's about equal to three weeks in Afghanistan. And today we have a thriving democracy, like all democracies it's not perfect, but it's made a difference. Today, wherever you go people talk about we need to do a better job embracing smart power. Well this is a place where we really did do smart power. And now hopefully in the next few weeks we're gonna cement those gains with a free trade agreement. So what do we get out of the free trade agreement? For those of you who need to regulate your fatigue, we have a guaranteed access to good coffee for as long as the eye can see. For those of you who sometimes miss important dates, you have an ample supply of flowers.  Not only that, people don't realize how important the Latin markets are. Some of the biggest coal mines in the world are in Columbia. So one of Caterpillar's 10 largest export markets. Peru that a free trade agreement went into effect two years ago, we saw our exports to Peru go up 60%. And one of my favorite trade agreements that I've ever worked on was on Chile. And what we saw with Chile was US exports to Chile went up three fold and US imports from Chile went up three fold. But what did we get? We got fresh grapes in the winter which made us all a little healthier. And we got crushed grapes year round which made us all a little happier. So the trade notion doesn't solve everything but I have to say one thing, it does make life better by both those who export and those who import. And if I had one slight criticism of some of our current leaders, we're now talking about trade but only in an export context. We need to talk about trade both ways because we benefit for the really young people in here, the Pokeman card that you receive, was that more valuable than the one you traded? And trade is important and we benefit both from the export side of things but also from the import side. Assistant Secretary Fernandez, playing Columbia, the Columbia and Panama free trade agreements, the opportunity. Well look, in Latin America, not just in Columbia, the real challenge going forward is to have growth with social inclusion. How do you do that? Well, you help to create a middle class, you try and promote the rule of law, you try and get people opportunities that weren't there before. That's what trade does. And in a place like Columbia, the free trade agreement will enable Columbia and exporters to continue exporting here. But more importantly from our side, and I take what Bill said in terms of the criticism of the current leadership in government. But in terms of our exports, we have to realize that most, if not all of Columbia's exports today come into this country duty free. And yet our exports into Columbia pay an average of seven to 15% in custom duties. Some of them pay as much as 260%. So yes, you'll be able to get flowers to give your loved ones at some point of the year. But at the same time, we will be able to export automobiles, we'll be able to export agricultural products, Caterpillar will be able to export its equipment without a customs duty. And in doing so, we'll be able to compete with countries in the Mercosur region that will not pay any with the European Union and with others that have signed agreements with Columbia. So what we have to realize is we will help and it's a good combination of business and development. It will help our exports, we'll be able to continue exporting into what is today the third largest market of in Latin America for the US. But at the same time, we'll be able to promote growth and we'll be able to promote stability and we'll be able to solidify the changes that have been brought about by Plan Columbia. Plan Columbia has gone through its first stage and that first stage was an economic, sorry, it was a military stage. But at this point, the challenge is to solidify that and to do that in a way that's sustainable. And the only way you're gonna be able to do that is with trade, with growth, and with social inclusion. Great. Okay, well, let me ask you, we were talking about earlier as well in the green room about the Arab Spring and you gave some remarks at the Egypt Forward Conference that I thought was a great conference that USTDA put on last week. On less than two months' notice, had 1,000 people, any number of different ministers from the traditional governments in Egypt had the whole Obama administration, you guys were there in force. It was really a great success on the part of TDA and I think a great success for the Obama administration. You gave some remarks there and you've also given some remarks recently. You were in Tunisia, so you've been thinking about and working on the issues of how to consolidate the gains of the Arab Spring. Could you talk a little bit about what needs to happen there? Sure. Well, I mean, that was a great conference and by the way, USTDA, if there's an agency where you get the bank for your buck, that's a great little agency and it does a fabulous job. We have been at the State Department in our bureau, we've been working in North Africa really for the last six to nine months before the beginning of the Arab Spring. My first trip to the region was back in November and the reason we did that is that you could see that there was a problem brewing. You had demographic bulge, you had 30 to 40% of the population between 18 to 25 years of age. The unemployment rates were high and the more educated that you were as a young person, the harder it was to get a job. That was a recipe for a disaster. That was a recipe for unrest. What we've been trying to do since then, basically again since the end of last year, was to look for ways where we could work with governments to help create jobs and to do so by using the private sector by trying to create small and medium enterprises by bringing entrepreneurs into the region, by bringing US investors into the region, by talking about what the private sector could do in North Africa and in Egypt and to do so in a way we could both benefit where our businesses could export and could invest in these places and at the same time having their private sector also have better links with the private sector in the US. Great. If you could talk about the Doha round, I want to ship to the Doha round. We've had a discussion about this, Bill. Maybe I'll ask you to lead off and then maybe, Meredith, you might comment on the Doha round as well and then we'll let Assistant Secretary Fernandez comment. Bill, we're at sort of an interesting place in the Doha round. Maybe you could just comment on, maybe this was supposed to be the development round. You know, you're always trying to find the right cliche, if you have a cliche generator and one of them is it's always darkest before the dawn and the only thing I can say it's been a very long night and we're hoping that's true but so far we're still in that dark period. Historically, we've had these rounds, if you will, through the multilateral negotiations and the last one was the Urgway round which was completed in 1995. Very comprehensive. It was probably the most ambitious of any of the rounds. I think there was about nine of them going back. This was sort of the unwinding of the protectionism of the 30s that took place and it was part of the Brenton Woods reforms and what had it and it's worked. It's reduced trade barriers pretty remarkably and after 9-11 we launched the Doha round and the goal was to focus primarily on developing countries but of course you're always using this as a way to reduce trade barriers overall. We've got a 10th year anniversary coming up and there's always positioning that takes place but you have whether they're companies or whether they're NGOs or whether they're governments, everybody has their own strategy that they're involved with. From a caterpillar point of view, I mean this could be the mother load of free trade for caterpillar. As part of the Urgway round, developed countries eliminated their tariffs on the machines that we make. So if you buy a caterpillar bulldozer in the United States or Europe or Japan, there's no tariff on it right now but there's still pretty sizable tariffs in a lot of the developing world and as part of the last proposal by the Europeans, they said for these 10 sectors of the economy that agreed to zero tariffs in developed countries, let's make that for everybody and so that included machinery or agricultural machinery and medical equipment and paper and wood products, beer, had beer, you imagine that would come right to the top of the list. Distilled spirits was in the list but anyway, there's pharmaceuticals was another one. So there's some strong commercial benefits but good for consumers as well. But it's really not got a whole lot of traction. Nobody's really embraced that concept so far. And then you've got sort of, okay, let's just focus on what helps developing countries. So there's talk about a plan B and that deals with capacity building, essentially removing trade barriers that are sort of manmade in the sense of bad customs, regimes and what have you. Or duty-free quota-free, in other words, for the LDC countries, for the poorest of the poorest countries, let's get rid of all tariffs and quotas which would be very, very positive particularly for the Cambodias of the worlds and the Bangladesh, just a factoid if you will. The US gives Bangladesh about 70 million dollars a year in aid and we collect about 600 million dollars a year in revenue in the way of tariffs because they produce the products that have the highest tariffs on them, clothes and shoes. So this would be an opportunity to really help those LDC countries and that really hasn't gotten much traction which really raises the question. And here I want to criticize business. I want to criticize the NGO community and I want to criticize governments. It's been 10 years but you don't hear business in a big energetic way saying we need a robust round and we need to get this done. And when I say business, I'm not just talking about US business, I'm talking about business around the world. Very, you know, this is an opportunity to really generate economic growth over the next 10, 20 years. And so far that's an opportunity we haven't focused on. NGO community, the goal is to help development. And if the goal is to help development, everyone should be embracing a world with duty-free, quota-free access for the poorest of the poor countries.  You know, you don't have to really pile on with high taxes.  And as far as governments are concerned, you know, there's nothing exciting talking about multilateral agreements. But we all know if you do it right, you really can generate positive benefits, not just on a regional or bilateral basis, but you can do it on a global basis. And we really need the governments. We don't have folks talking like they did when we had the Bretton Woods talks. We don't have some of the leaders on both sides of the party that will really address these issues. I remember during the Uruguay round, Senator Moynihan in a talk show that was dealing with some scandal at the time stopped the talk show for seven minutes to give a boring rendition about the cat. And I'm sure the ratings dropped, but it was an important thing to do. We need to have some leaders that are willing to bore people to death and force them to do the right thing. Merida? Yeah, you know, I think that's a great summary of a lot of the options and possibilities that are available in the Doha round. I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of great groundwork that's been laid, but it's not coming to fruition in the short term. I think all of us will continue to work on it. And there was, I think, a different viewpoint on really what energized development. And part of the United States' view on that was that opening up trade, reducing all of our high tariffs for developing countries, ought to be reciprocated a bit by some market openings in advanced developing countries. And you have a lot of countries that are benefiting a lot from the trading system. The WTO is guarding their imports through rules of nondiscrimination and fair treatment in their export markets. And still, it was very hard to measure what some of the advanced developing countries were really willing to contribute in terms of market opening. And I think the last I heard on even on their applied tariffs, they weren't willing to bind the tariffs that they were collecting. They wanted to only commit to opening at a much higher level that's not even really relevant to the real world trade. So I would be interested to hear what the Assistant Secretary has to say about development and the Doha round and what we might be able to achieve in the future. So Assistant Secretary Fnatic, are you going to divorce to death? Yeah, that I can do easily on any subject. But I was hoping to just sort of be ignored for a while on this one. Look, I think both of you have laid out the problem. I think we all have a right to be concerned about the state of the Doha round. We are not ready to throw in the towel. We have a number of colleagues who are spending all of their time and effort trying to see if there's any way that we can bring it to fruition. The fundamental question and the thing that divides all sites at this point is what kinds of contributions are you going to ask from the advanced emerging countries, from the China's of the world, Brazil, India. The current state of negotiations would have 97% of India's industrial goods be shielded from competition. We don't think that's an appropriate result. There's no movement, as far as we can tell, on services. So I think there's a lot of negotiations to be done. We are, but we're still at the table. And we are going to remain at the table until the last possible minute, because we think that ultimately there's a deal that ought to be done and that I think we would all benefit from. But what's on the table now is just not acceptable. OK, we're going to open it up for questions. We've got some microphones. So I'm looking for, I'll call on hands. People have questions for Assistant Secretary Fernandez or the other folks up here. OK, well, we're going to bunch a couple of them. So if you can identify yourself, your name, and also if you can put place it in the form of a question. Thank you very much, Rao-Ghubigweil. I cover the State Department also from India, globe, and Asia today. My question is, recently US and India had a largest economic and financial agreement, or whether it's a dialogue at the Treasury Department. So where do we stand now as far as India, US economic relations and trade relations are concerned? Because now India is seeking second green revolution also from the United States. And also finally, some equipments also, they are seeking security and also economic development. Other questions? Let me bunch these together. Other questions that we can take? The woman in the back, I think this one, yep. Assuming that the free trade agreements between Panama, Colombia, and South Korea are going to get passed, what would you say is going to be the toughest part about implementing those free trade agreements? And then there's another one. There's a woman up here. Thank you so much, Sherry Stevenson, Organization of American States. When the panelists responded to the question about duty-free, quota-free, I don't think that they actually responded to the duty-free, quota-free element which is only applicable to the least developed countries. The response was more that what's on the table is not adequate for the bricks or the large emerging developing markets. What is the position with respect to duty-free, quota-free? Is there a problem with that being a part of the package for the end of this year, 2011, as what Director General Lamy sort of is proposing in terms of an initial development early harvest, and then we can continue to negotiate next year? Let me start with Bill, if you want to just take any of those questions. I don't think that there should be a problem. The notion is less is easier to sell than more. It's always been my experience, more is easier to sell than less. But there's some folks that will oppose duty-free, quota-free because of the commercial element with some of the LDC countries. We, in this case, I'm referring to Caterpillar, we're still a plan A company. We still would like to see something that's more robust. And I agree with the Secretary. There's not a lot on the table right now, but a lot of our negotiating partners have also indicated there won't be until the very end of the negotiations. So in a way, there's an element of chicken when you finally do light the fuse for the final time. The goal would be to be as close as we can when we get to that final effort, because there's really been so many disappointments. I mean, only the Doha round after 10 years can use the word early harvest and not have the room start laughing. But from that standpoint, I think help for the LDC or LDC duty-free, quota-free. In the hemisphere, that's primarily just Haiti. But even with Haiti, you would think we should be able to import ethanol and sugar and things of that sort. But the second question dealt with implementation, I don't think the implementation is going to be very hard. We've had good examples, at least in Latin America, as far as Peru and Chile and CAFTA. And they've all had very positive outcomes. One fact that I'd just like to leave you with is when you look at the US trade deficit, which is large, and you break it into the different components, the US has a trade surplus in services. The US has a trade surplus in agriculture. The US has a big trade deficit in oil. And we have an even bigger trade deficit in manufactured goods with the exception of the 17 countries as a group that we have free trade agreements with. We have a trade surplus in manufacturing goods as a group of those 17 countries. And that includes everyone from Israel to Chile to Canada and to Mexico, some of those individual countries we have a deficit. But overall, we have a surplus, which tells you that if we really do have a level playing field, American manufacturers can hold their own and some. So what do we need if we really are concerned about the trade deficit? We need more domestic energy, and we need more free trade. And the next first step in that direction will be with these three free trade agreements. Is this the second one, Ed? Yeah, let me take a couple of other questions. In India, I actually was in India a couple of months ago. And my colleague Bob Hormath has been there a number of times. And in fact, the schedule to be there in the next couple of weeks. And I know that Secretary Clinton at some point is going to go there fairly soon. I think the opportunities in India are immense. And especially in something that I think Caterpillar and a number of other companies are good at. And that's infrastructure. The Indian government has announced plans to invest up to $1 billion of infrastructure in the next couple of years. That means roads, water systems, power plants. They are interested in what we have to offer in the renewable energy front. They're interested in what we have to offer in terms of post-harvest technologies. India, you mentioned the second green revolution. India, as well as a number of other countries, India loses 50% of its produce from the time it leaves the field to the time it gets to the market. If you could do something about that, you'd increase the supply of food in India. That's something that some of our companies are very good at, cold storage, transport. And they're very interested. So I'm very bullish. And I intend to keep pursuing that relationship. On the early harvest, I think there are some wines, actually, the early harvest wines that are sweet wines that some of them take 10 years. But I will agree with you that you can't call anything after 10 years early. The real question, and I think we're open to discussions on early harvest, but the real question is, what about the rest? In any negotiation, what do you leave for a second round? But I think from the USG point of view, as I mentioned, we are not playing a game of chicken. At this stage, we believe we've offered really as much as we can. And therefore, I hope for a good solution. But in terms of an early harvest, that's something we're willing to consider. But again, what do you do with what was supposed to be the rest of a very ambitious agenda? And that's something that still has to be discussed. Nerda. Yeah, I just want to follow up with your comments on the partnerships that are really public, the opportunities in India for investment and so forth. And on the gentleman's question here, expanding trade and economic relations with India, I don't think anyone would think a free trade agreement would be in order with India at this point. But an element of our free trade agreement is a robust investment chapter, or the alternative model would be a bilateral investment tree with Indians, who have amazingly enough showed a bit of interest in the last couple of weeks. And it really, it's an interesting situation the US is in now, because we don't really have a position on what a model bilateral investment treaty would be to engage in that negotiation. And maybe you could update us on some of your internal discussions on this model bit. You've got great information. Well, the Indians have, in fact, expressed interest in pursuing a bilateral investment treaty with us. And in fact, we're expecting to have what we call technical talks with the Indian government soon. And we're really looking forward to that. In terms of the model bit, that was the first item that I tackled back in December of 2009. That was my first assignment. I had just arrived. They said, you're leading, you're co-leading the interagency on the bilateral investment treaty. I didn't even know what an interagency was. Never mind what I was supposed to lead. But I think we still have some issues to resolve. But that's not going to keep us from pursuing technical talks with the Indians. I think the issues that still have to be resolved with the bilateral investment treaty is not surprisingly questions of labor rights, environmental issues, and the like. But for the most part, I think people will find that the new model bit doesn't differ that much from the previous model bit. So we feel with countries such as India that we can start technical negotiations. Time for a couple more questions. Gentleman in the back and then the gentleman up front. Thank you. It's Dana Marshall. Thanks very much for this panel. I wonder if I could draw out to the Assistant Secretary a little bit on the Arab Spring issues and the Doveville Declaration, statements by President Obama, talk about expansion of trade investment initiatives with respect to the region. I wonder if the administration has come up with any more specifics on what might be done in those areas for those countries. And gentleman up here, Steve Landy. Steve Landy, Manchester Trade. CSIS is developing a unique role. And I cannot tell you how happy I'm about it because you're the only group, I should say that, you're the group I know best that seems to combine a trade and a development focus on so many of your programs. And we need more of it. Let me chat a little bit about DFQF and Sherry's question. Who could be opposed to that? I'm not opposed to it if it's put together correctly. We all had a very exciting experience. Few of us had a very exciting experience in Lusaka, including the Assistant Secretary. When Hillary Clinton came, and there's no question, she just rowed the audience, as she rowed most audiences. And what she spoke about again was US commitment to support regional integration. 47 countries in Africa, as Bill Lane just said, can't survive with 47 borders and 47 delays. They really have to be unified. The problem with DFQF as currently constituted is that it excludes 13 countries in Africa. You cannot have regional integration in Africa at the same time as you are giving 30 countries, whatever it is, duty-free access, but not the other countries. And what the European Union did, which at least in my view is both trade and development was a sin, they told the countries, hey, we don't care whether you form a regional integration, if you want to export your cocoa and you're not in LDC, you guys really have to, you guys simply have to enter into a free trade agreement which is completely frozen regional integration in two or three regions in Africa. So the issue which I do really ask is when you're considering this, let's be proud of our goal example. We also have an example in public health. And let's simply say that Africa is on its own development course. We are pushing regional integration and therefore the beneficiaries of DFQF should be the least developed countries, but also the poorer countries or the countries within Africa. I have not heard anybody yet tell me they had a competitive berp about imports from Cameroons. And the US Steelworkers haven't called me and the automobile workers have said they're worried about Congo, Brazzaville, but these are countries which happen not to be LDC. So the only question, and I won't ask the assistant secretary of opposition because I'm just raising the issue, but I really would insist that if we do the DFQF as part of the early harvest that we do include the same kind of thing we have in Agoa and designate all the African countries that belong to regional communities and then require of those regional communities over a number of years that they should begin to negotiate slow increasing forms of reciprocity. Thank you. Well, I thought it was well put and very articulate. Something that's... You're never gonna see a representative from Caterpillar talking about less trade liberalization versus more. We're gonna take free trade wherever and whenever we can get it. And no people call me articulate people. But if I could because we're running out of time, I would like to leave you all with one thought and it's really the challenge that's before us. I've been doing this a long time and when you're in the middle of a lot of these efforts whether it's the free trade agreements right now or whatever, sometimes you lose a sense of perspective and then later on you have a chance to reflect. I now truly believe that Bill Clinton was America's greatest free trade president. I really believe that. And I believe President Bush 43 did more to help poor people around the world, especially in Africa than any American president. And I absolutely convinced that neither one of them got one vote for those two legacy accomplishments. And our challenge here is we gotta figure out a way to get our leaders to do the right thing and to the degree possible to make sure they get credit for doing the right thing. And that is a challenge. Whether it deals with trade, whether it deals with development. I think we all, we can talk about nuances but we all sort of know the right answer. The question is how do we implement the right answer and do it in a way where it's in people's self-interest. And here I'm talking political self-interest. So that's the objective. And so tonight when you're drinking that chilean wine ponder that question and come back to us with some answers. So maybe that's the answer in itself. Meredith, I'll give you a chance on this issue of DFQ. Do you wanna just comment on that? Well, I think it raises, there are a lot of technical issues associated with that and a lot of political issues. And it again raises the being on the same page with Congress and administration because that will take legislation and to implement that. So I think you're gonna need a comprehensive view of where the United States wants to be in the Doha around what the next steps are and whether it would make sense to implement that unilaterally without getting a broader package of contributions from developing countries that will be in their own interest. Assistant Secretary Fernandez. Let's take the Arab Spring question first. We've announced a number of items that I think are concrete. Secretary Clinton announced a $2 billion OPEC fund to help private investment in North Africa and the other parts of the Middle East. Our bureau and the reason I went to Tunisia a month ago was to work on what we call the North African Partnership for Economic Opportunity, NAPIO, you may have heard about that. And that's an effort to bring US entrepreneurs and US investors into North Africa and to have linkages between universities, investors and young people. We will have delegations of entrepreneurs that will be going to Morocco, to Tunisia, and to Algeria in September and October. We'll bring entrepreneurs there. We'll also bring investors. Because one of the things, there's a lot of potential in a place like Tunisia and a place like Egypt, but you've got to find investors that are willing to incubate some of those ideas. And we've, for example, a couple of months ago, we had an entrepreneurship contest in Egypt where we had 100 Egyptian entrepreneurs come and talk to US investors and you actually had some deals that came out of that. So we will have, concretely, entrepreneurship missions, university linkages, missions and cultural missions for entrepreneurs, cultural entrepreneurs in the next two to three months. We're also working to support Egypt's request to be eligible for EBRD funding. That's something that the EBRD did very, very well in 1989 and the late 80s in Eastern Europe. If they can play the same role in North Africa, that's something that we would support as well. So I think you'll see a number of initiatives as well that aren't as public, but I think are also quite important, for example, in Tunisia, one of the things that I've proposed to the government and they seem willing to entertain it is an open skies agreement. Open skies agreement is an agreement to liberalize air traffic between two countries. Well, 11% of Tunisia's GDP is made up of tourism. That tourism is down to 50%. Only 1% of their tourists in good times were from the US and part of that is that it takes forever to get to Tunisia. Well, if we can liberalize traffic, that will help their tourism industry as well. So we've got a number of concrete, both short term, medium term and long term ideas to help support the Arab Spring. Do you have QF, do you want it? Oh, I forgot the question. The, just the... Whether you would unilaterally, we would do a unilateral DFQF absent the rest of the package. You know, I'm not sure. I'd have to get back to you on that one. I think, certainly, I think we are open. The USTR is open to discussing it, whether it's something on its own, we'd be willing to support our need to check with my colleagues. Okay, I think our time has come to an end. Please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you. Thank you, John. Okay, we've got a, just a coming attractions on July 28th, Brian Atwood, TBD, the time, but watch this space. We're gonna have Brian Atwood, who's the head of the DAC and former head of AID will be here. So that's a Thursday, July the 28th. So thanks everybody for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Secretary, good job. Thank you. Thank you. Great job, great job. Yeah, I know. We'll celebrate.


We're standing alongside a fresh water impoundment where the industry stores its water prior to hydraulically fracturing a well. It takes about 5 to 10 million gallons of water to hydraulically fracture a single well.  So if you do the math, the number of water trucks running up and down the roads here to supply enough water to fracture one well might equate to about a thousand truck trips. By piping the water rather than trucking the water you can save a lot of truck traffic along with the fuel to drive the trucks up and down the roads here. Not to mention of the fact that that many trucks would cause quite a disruption to anybody who's trying to enjoy the great outdoors. So whether the water is trucked or piped, ultimately the water will need to be transferred to the nearest well pad. Oftentimes temporary overland pipes will be used to draw the water out of the impoundment and take it to the well pad which might be a mile or more down the road. Another advantage of using the impoundments is that during times of drought you might not be able to draw water out of the stream or the river. And therefore the industry can pull water out during higher flows such as during the spring and fill up these impoundments. And when they need the water later in the season, the water is already there. You'll notice that the impoundment has a black liner. The purpose of that is to prevent the infiltration of any of that water back into the subsurface so it's more effective at actually storing the water. Though on a sunny day like this you may have some evaporative losses. These freshwater impoundments are designed to do just that, store fresh water. There are certain circumstances in which the industry can store brine, that is the salt water that occurs naturally in the earth in these impoundments. But they must have double liners, have leak detection systems, have monitoring wells and be much more strongly engineered than just a freshwater impoundment which really has very little potential impact on the environment. You'll notice that the impoundment has a fence around it and that's to keep out wildlife and humans from injuring themselves.


Hello, it's Bridget. Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. Thanks so much for being here. Hey, have you got your mug yet? Oh, yes, you need a mug to celebrate, so I can fill up your cup with hope. You can support this series and all the other great content that I share on my above-life channel YouTube and my fairy grasshopper channel YouTube by purchasing a mug. It helps to support the operations of my channels. It is a Sunday Morning Coffee mug. Check out the link in the description below. Today's topic is Divine. So grab out your journals and your favorite writing utensil and let's dig in to some of the no-doubt journal prompts that are going to pop up during our conversation today. Divine. So where does this topic come today? Well, it is brought to us by the divine within. This concept of divine, it means many different things, doesn't it? When you have this awesome chocolate truffle mousse dessert and it is so so good on the palette, the taste buds are just jumping for a joy. You might call it divine. This dessert is divine. And that means incredible, wonderful, unexpectedly magnificent. This definition of divine is quite acceptable and very savory, isn't it? At some point, this concept of divine seems as though it is in spiritual terms or religious terms, wherein it's put upon a pedestal and highly regarded as something separate from you, from life, separate from that chocolate mousse cake dessert, and something far out of reach. Divine, divine, a sheer perfection. And whatever side of the neighbor's fence you're on, whether it be in spirituality, context, or religious connotation, this concept of divine does seem out of reach, doesn't it? I mean, let's be real. Let's have a real conversation about divine. The divine, another word for God. Divine, another word for something greater than myself, something guiding me, showing me the way, something all-knowing, powerful oz with all the answers, and yet in my journey, I can tell you this. Divine is something we seek outside of ourselves until we realize one day when we wake up, which is why it's called spiritual awakening, we realize, we realize the divine is us. It's in me. It's in you. And what is it? What is divine? It is that pure, raw, beautiful and perfect connection. Divine means connection. It means connection to yourself without limit, without judgment, without contradiction or conflict. Divine within exists. Without all of the human parameters or specifications of its expression into life for manifestation into life, it is something you are.  You are. Yes, you are.  It is within you. It is not a secret compartment inside of you. It is all of you. It is you. Divine is you. That's what it means. You. It's in. It's I. Divine. The eyes are the most important part. The perfection that you seek externally to manifest in your human form for acceptance and approval exists already. Within the energy of divine. I know I can talk to you till I'm purple in the face. Purple as in crown chakra. That's a divine joke, by the way. Pretty bad one, actually. Sorry about that. I can talk to you and talk to you and talk to you, but it will be like talking to one of my teenagers and you will not listen. You will block me out because I cannot convince you of your worthiness, of your beauty, of your power. But I can. I can. Oh, yes, I can. I can bring you hope. I can bring you that purple crown chakra top of the head kind of hope that comes from the divine. First, if you must, yes, you can seek the divine externally and acknowledge it through spirit guides, through angels, through loved ones, from the other side, through animals. However, you can warm your heart and soften your brain to the idea. Yes, divine, sure. Let's come through the mind if we need to do that. However, it needs to seep into you so that it can activate the divine that already exists within you and multiply in a good way. Multiply, get bigger in a good way. Lower your overprotective, overactive guard, fear of getting out of the comfort zone. We're already uncomfortable. Let's be honest. Let's embrace our divine. Let's embrace it. And if at first it means external, it means God, it means angels, it means my grandma's watching over me, that is completely 100% acceptable, completely 100% right. You are 100% right. If that's where you're at, that's right. It's right for you. It's right for where your belief system is at. And it means that progress is being made as that energy of divine seeps into through your mind, through your throat, into your heart, opening up and softening the edges of the heart, allowing the divine love to escape and be free, free to float all around your energy so that you start to feel better. Because when you feel a little bit better, then you can do a little bit better. And that's what hope is. We're gonna ignite the divine with hope inside of you.  I was always this. Why was I looking outside of myself? I can't believe I wasted so much stressful time accepting the projections and judgments of all these other people who are completely unhappy or even just mislead and thought they were doing the best for you and trying to love you by tough love or trying to cure you of something they thought your procrastination or your shyness or whatever. And now all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I wasted so much time. I wasted so much time when I was always divine all along. I was always part of God. I was always part of this prime energy. I was always part of the universe, the entire universe is inside you. Now that could blow your brain. Uh-huh. When you drop into your low belly and you feel that sacral chakra, that hips and womb space, you know what I'm talking about. It feels like energy of opportunity, of optimism, of, of, hope. That divinity that is inside of you, that divine energy, it grows, it expands. Just as much as negativity can spread inside your body, so too can positive hope build energy and that hope energy, it fuels divine. It is one with divine energy. It is divine. That is empowerment. That is inspiration. That is creativity. That is you just being yourself, simply cut yourself some slack, take a break, kick your feet back and relax for a moment and just wrap yourself up with that heartfelt energy of divine that already exists. It thrives inside of you. It's just waiting for you to recognize that it's already there and it's always been there, here, now. So grab out your journal and take an opportunity to do some journal prompts to deepen the energy with Sunday Marine Coffee with this message today. Really go into a couple of key things and we did actually touch on a couple of chakras, which are energy portals of the body. The crown chakra at the top of the head also connected to the color of purple. You can go ahead and journal about that. Crown chakra, divine, what does that mean to you? What is the connection? And also perhaps the color of purple, what does that symbolize to you? What does it mean for you? What does it represent when you see it? You might also want to tap into sacral chakra or heart chakra. Sacral chakra is the divine womb space, that energy of the hips and the pelvis, the creative center. You might want to spend some time exploring that gorgeous orange energy that comes with that space or the partnership between the heart chakra, that beautiful green or sometimes light pink. I usually see it as both colors. Heart space and the relationship that the heart space has with the sacral space. So the womb and the low hips and the heart and the chest. What is the sacred relationship? How is this connection divine? So give yourself some time to be able to play with that. I would begin, if you can, with the actual definition of what divine means to you. Maybe what it meant to you back when you were like five years old and your youth, maybe as a teenager, maybe as a young adult, maybe in your 30s, your 40s, maybe when you had children, what does this mean to you? Today here right now, what does this mean to and what do you want it? What do you wish for it to grow into or to mean for you as you step into a new vision of what divine means for you? Lots of powerful opportunities here for journal prompts. I love to do things that can deepen the learning and call you in to the process for yourself. Self-discovery, that's part of what I do as a coach in my work as an intuition or intuitive coach. So this is Bridget. Thanks so much for being here for Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. I hope that I've inspired your spirit today and filled you with hope. Filled your cup up, that is. Cheers. Thanks for being here.


First question on this episode, a question from Subs came from my boy, Trey G. He said, something no one is talking about. And Graven, I hope all this is low at you and the family. In light of this messy situation with J.K. Dobbins, I'm wondering why no one has brought up the possibility of the Ravens picking up free agent, Dalvin Cook. Whoa. You know, when he was first released, it was some people bringing it up. And when this J.K. Dobbins stuff first started out, it was a lot of people bringing it up, but it kinda like died down. I haven't heard as much about it, but let's get back to the question. He said, everyone seems to be focused on him going to Miami or the Jets. Yeah. But is it possible that the Ravens actually swoop in in the final hour and sign Cook? If so, how do you feel about that move? P.S. I'm aware it's not a typical Raven signing. We generally develop running backs in-house, but these Ravens are moving different this season. Just a thought. I appreciate everything you do. I appreciate you, Trey. Now, we're gonna answer this question, but before we get into it, let's hear a word from our sponsor. One of the most painful things to see on the football field every Sunday is a blindside hit. And that's because with blindside hits, you don't see them coming.  And the same can unfortunately be said about a car accident. But when football players get whacked, they know exactly who to call. When us regular people get into accidents, sometimes we just don't. And then just a simple thought of the process of hiring a lawyer, it seems super stressful and it can bring a lot of anxiety. But with Morgan and Morgan, they make it easy. What Morgan and Morgan have done is modernize the injury law process. So you can actually submit a claim and have it looked at by a lawyer without even leaving the couch. If you need to sign documents, send any pictures, share any medical records or doctor bills, you can do all of that from your phone. And for those of you like myself who don't feel like being on the phone all day, you can even text message the case manager or the attorney without ever having them to go into an office. If you ever injured in an accident, hiring an attorney is one of the first things that you should do. And with Morgan and Morgan, submitting the claim is super easy. More than three million people have trusted Morgan and Morgan when they've been in an accident. So if you're ever in an accident, hopefully you won't be, but if it does happen, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. You can submit a claim in eight clicks or less. And you can have America's largest injury law firm fighting for you. You can get started at ForThePeople.com or Dial Pound Law. And that's pound 529 from your cell phone. So team keep it clean. Welcome to another episode of questions from subs where you can ask any question you want to and we answer it in a video just like this. We're gonna get to my God tray's question which we appreciate because he sent it to teamkeepitcleanatgmail.com. That's all you got to do. And for the team keep it clean patrons, if you want to become a patron, you can go to patreon.com slash engraving vids. And if you don't want to, that's fine as well. But for the patrons, you don't got to send it to the email. You just send it directly on Patreon and that's it. Simple as that. So I appreciate everybody. I appreciate all y'all. Thank you for being so patient with your questions. I love y'all. Now make sure you subscribe to the channel until your notifications on so you don't miss a thing. And let's get back to my guy's question. So, and that is a really, really good question because in his PS, what does PS stand for by the way? I forgot what it stands for. Anyway, he said, I'm aware it's not a typical Raven signing. It's not signing a running back. Well, a running back of that caliber on the free agent market. No, it's not a typical Raven signing. I mean, the last running backs, we remember them signing besides Melvin Gordon, but LeVion Bill, Devonte, Freeman, Latavius Murray. And they all contributed in different ways. They didn't all make it to the end of the season. There were some cuts like LeVion Bill. Anyway, yeah, that's been the Ravens thing when it comes to running backs, but Mark Ingram. They signed Mark Ingram a couple of years ago and he did pretty good, remember that. But anyway, the part where he said, but these Ravens, meaning the Ravens right now, these Ravens are moving different this season. Cause I mean, yeah, you see that the Odell Beckham June and you talked about, could they swoop in and sign Dalvin Cook at the last minute? Like they swooped in and signed Odell Beckham June at the last minute, could they do the Jets like that? If the Jets are truly even interested, cause he had his visit with the Jets and we ain't heard nothing since. So Jets, obviously they don't feel any kind of pressure. Like, oh man, we gotta get this dude signed right away. We gotta get him in, we gotta bring him in. We gotta, we can't let him leave without a deal. That ain't happened. So how much interest is really there? Is his market just dying down? Is this another DeAndre Hopkins type thing where it's just not much activity there? I don't know, it could be. We won't know till we know, even though right now it kind of seems like we know since we ain't really heard nothing much, but could the Ravens do it? They could. Will the Ravens do it? I don't, I don't think so, but like you said, these Ravens are different. I couldn't rule it out from them, especially if the price comes down, but cause with JK, man, it's crazy. We just, it's crazy. We don't know what's going on with JK. What's gonna happen with JK? I'm waiting to see the report that says, all right, JK Dobbins, he came off the public. He passed his physical, and after that then if he practices, I'm gonna wait and see what happens at that point. Will he practice or will he hold in or what's gonna happen at that point? Especially with all of his comments over this off season, Melvin Gordon's recent comments and JK Dobbins, his actions, his actions. So that's something that we gotta watch out for. But if they were to bring in a Dalvin Cook, then I mean him and JK Dobbins, they train together. They train together, or at least they have before. But would that mean that they would trade in a JK Dobbins? You know, they not cutting them. They ain't gonna cut no JK Dobbins, no man. They, if the only way that JK Dobbins would not play for the Ravens this year, well, two ways, but the only way that they wouldn't have them on the roster this year would be if they trade them.  So, I think it's possible that they brought in Dalvin Cook, but I do not think that it is likely. Next question came from a Team Keeping Clean patient, my guy, Wayne, who's been a patient for a year. He said, this is my first question from so, so I appreciate it, Wayne. He said, this is from your episode where you talked about thinking like a GM. I love to keep all three of our tight ends. Oh wait for young, not a bad idea. Whoa, let's just go broke for broke. Meaning I give you my injured guy for your injured guy. Bateman for young. Whoa, no, I would not do that one. I wouldn't, no, I would go a different avenue for a past Russia. And no, because Bateman, hey, Bateman about to be number one, man. I tell you, he gonna be the number one guy this year, man, as long as he stay healthy. He got it, man. So no, I can't get with this one. Bateman for Chase, no. Next question came from another patron, my guy Martin, who've been a patron for two years. He said, did you see Justin Herbert getting his contract extension? Was one of the quietest things ever, LOL. I miss undisputed. I was always up to date. Fortunately, I never miss a beat with my Ravens news. Thank you for all your hard work, Team Keeper Clean, Stay Hydrated. It's hot out there. Yeah, it sure is. See the thing with the Justin Herbert contract, and it's sad, but it's the truth. We all knew, everybody knew the charges were gonna pay Justin Herbert. It was beyond the shadow of a doubt. There was no questioning. There was no, we knew it was gonna happen. With Joe Burrow, we all know it's gonna happen. We all know Joe Burrow's gonna get paid for the bingles, but with Lamar Jackson, that's where all the media put out all the questions. And then there was a lot of us. I mean, I wasn't sure the Ravens were gonna pay him. I thought they should have, they needed to, but it wasn't sure they were going to. And it got a little ugly. It got a little ugly. It got stretched out. But with, there were no questions. Like as far as the media, like, oh, should the charges pay Justin Herbert? Nah, there ain't no question. And with Joe, should the bingles pay Joe? No questions right there. But with Lamar, should the Ravens really pay him? Lamar Jackson, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. So yeah, that's why you ain't really hear nothing about Justin Herbert and it was super quiet. Next question came from my guy, Travis B, who is not only a Team Keeper Clean patient, but also a Team Keeper Clean channel member. So I appreciate you, Travis. He said, hey man, it's about that time again. The most important time of the year for all Ravens, the pre-season. Do you predict they will remain undefeated? This will be all year to go all the way into the playoffs. Hope you and your family are doing great. Thanks for the content. Appreciate that, Travis. Oh yeah, I think they'll be undefeated again in the playoffs. But my thing is now, all right, Ravens, we know about the whole pre, I mean, excuse me, I said, I think they'll be undefeated in the playoffs. I think they'll be undefeated in the pre-season. But hopefully what they do is treat the regular season like the pre-season. And then hopefully they make it to the playoffs, which I expect them to do, especially if they're healthy, but then treat the playoffs like the pre-season and go all in and go undefeated there too. And that would make for a wonderful Baltimore Ravens 2023 season. Next question came from my guy, Amari, who've been a patron for 11 months. So I appreciate it, Amari. He said, I just wanted to say, man, the loss of Mark Ingram was very underrated. He brought the fun in that 2019 season. I get the feeling O'Dell is a very similar catalyst to help the team have fun, but play at a high level. I see the guys having a lot of fun this season and time will tell. That is a very, very good point, something that I did not ever think about, but it's true. We've talked about a lot on here, how Mark Ingram, yeah, he brought that vibe, he brought a lot of energy. And Mark Ingram, when he got cut, a lot of that energy, it just, it wasn't there like that anymore. Somebody even asked the question, but maybe on the last episode of Questions From Sells, we did, or the one before, talk about who's gonna be that vocal leader? Who's gonna be the hype man? That was his question. Who's gonna be the hype man? And I thought about on defense, like since Kaleas Campbell's going, maybe Marlon Humphrey. But I did mention O'Dell Beckham Jr. on offense. But that is, when you bring up Mark Ingram and just what he did for the Baltimore Ravens, I didn't think about it like that. But yeah, O'Dell Beckham Jr. could be that, that guy with high energy, that guy that's having fun, that's got us dancing around, that's got us getting everybody energizing or whatnot because O'Dell is very outspoken. You can see his vibe, whether he got a good vibe or a bad vibe, you're gonna be able to see it because he puts it on full display, which ain't nothing wrong with that. So he's in a good mood, hyping up his teammates and whatnot, they gonna feed off of that and that could benefit the Ravens in a long way. And last question on this episode came from my guy Jordan. He said, I still think JK knows where he is with the money. So I think he'll be back right before the season and just sitting out as long as he can to not get injured without the money. At the same time, do you think with a good pre-season between Gordon and Keaton Mitchell, can you see the Ravens shipping, Dobbins? If so, what do you think would be the compensation? Oh, so could the Ravens trade JK if they got the right offer? And if the guys have a good pre-season? Again, it's not out the realm of possibilities. I think it's a small possibility, but I think it is a possibility. It's weird. The Ravens, not even that it's a small possibility because they're just in a really weird spot right now. Again, like I said, I'm just waiting to see what happens when or if he comes off that physically unable to perform this. I know I talked about it yesterday. Like right now, I just, I don't see JK playing for the Ravens right now. I just, I don't. Things could obviously be resolved like that. There could be a turnaround like that. There could be a change of heart like that. Right now, I don't see it though. But I don't know. I'm just, I'm so lost on what's gonna happen with JK Dobbins. I just, I have no clue. Cause again, one minute I'll be like, I don't think you're gonna play with the team. Then earlier in this video talking about how, even though I don't, it's weird. I don't see him playing for the team. But at the same time, it's like it's hard to see them trading him. But if they did trade him, what would be the compensation? I think they would get like a fourth round pick for JK Dobbins. If they got a third, I'll be surprised if they traded him. But I think they would get a fourth round pick. Yeah, a fourth round pick for JK Dobbins because the fourth round pick, 14, it's a low risk potential high reward with JK Dobbins. Yeah, you miss some time and whatnot, but you know, you're gonna get a supposed to play a third round pick, maybe even, but it's at this point of the season, third rounder for running back. No, I say, I think probably a fourth round if they did end up going that route.


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Alright, welcome back. Faso C. Serafa D. Natondez is the national president of Amban and he joins me now to look at developing issues in the nation's financial inclusion draft. Many thanks for joining me, Mr. Natondez. Thank you for having me. Good day. The last time we had a discussion or the last time I heard from Amban really was when the NFIC was introduced in Nassarawa state in March the 1st. So far can you tell me how far that policy has been and what are the latest updates? Thank you so much for checking on that development. I think NABO financial inclusion introduced by Amban and officially flagged off by the governor of Nassarawa state has been very, very successful so far. It has created the needed awareness which is the first objective and a lot of stakeholders have actually keyed in to the idea because it's meant to be stakeholder driven. Part of it is that the office of the president on financial inclusion has been able to partner with this and has been able to support us to get into the last mile. And also service providers too, they have been able to also key into this. We have been able to meet with the DG of National Identity Management Commission and we are discussing on how they can also push out most of these critical services. And we all saw it in the news that immediately they are pushing out those services that are difficult to reach. Those services like change of name, change of date of birth. So they hurriedly push it out because of this advocate. And I think all the providers too, they are also reaching out to us and as of today we have been able to activate about 10 states as of today. Our people, the masses of our people are finding it easy to access most of those services.  So let me ask so far, because in your opening self that you talked about how NIMC and of course other agencies are actually binding to that. So would you say the NIMC which handles NINs and all of that, would you say the relationship with Amban has been smooth in terms of maybe giving you access to actually enroll NINs? Of course it's been smooth. And I think for the DG to also mobilize and give us the audience to discuss about this, it shows some level of commitment to solving identity challenge in Nigeria. And I think the process may be slow for them to finally release most of these services, but I think they show some level of commitment. So are you saying that in no distant time would see Amban agents enrolling NINs? As of today, Amban agents are enrolling NINs. I think part of the service that we are trying to get out across to the last mile are services like modification, change of name, change of date of birth, because we know that now that it's a matter of policy that NIN and BVN should be linked to accounts, especially accounts from tier 2 to tier 3. And for you to be able to map the two identities together, their data sets have to be the same. What I mean by that is that the full number you use in BVN or be the same that you use in NIN, your name should be arranged the way it's arranged in BVN and NIN. And we know that BVN is a very old identity in which most of the people, maybe by then, somebody like ladies, they are now women, they are married now, they have name change, so they need to update. And they cannot be looking for NIMC offices around the country, so the easiest place to access is actually agent location. And I think that's one of the reasons why we rolled out Neighborhood Financial Inclusion Centre, so that it can. And also we also got a very high level of support from telecommunication companies. So at that centre today, you can actually welcome back your SIM, you can also swap, you can also link your SIM card to your NIN. Yes, yes, we easily, we are able to get that services out from telcos. Very nice 10 states now, I would be so, so happy if I were to be able to get so much better all the states. Yes, yes, the challenge why the movement is slow is because of the resources. To involve some expenses, you need to provide the gadget by yourself, you have to provide the devices to do the NIN, to do the BVN by yourself. Though we have written to NIMS, Nigerian and Tabank sentiment scheme to also make, I mean, provide some of these devices for agents to be able to reach the last mile. We are also expecting their feedback as regards that. Okay, so have there been any challenge or challenges you've encountered?  What are some of the challenges that you've encountered at the NFICs and how have you been able to tackle them? Yeah, most of the challenges are basically the level of, the kind of the people we are dealing with at the last mile, at the informal sectors. Most of them may not even remember their NIN, they may not remember their BVN. Most of them don't even know the date of birth using their BVN. You know, we are dealing with informal sectors where most things are estimated. Our grandmothers, our fathers outside there, during the BVN enumeration then, when you ask them their age is a matter of a was born before the civil war. So it is not left to you to estimate. And with that, they don't have the accurate date. So we need to do what we call verification using our platform to check which date was used. The grandmothers go ahead to do the KYC and everything. The KYC and everything. Oh, wow. That's a whole lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, yeah. Okay. So let's still talk about concerning agency operations and all that. I know you, Amban, is said to launch something very soon. I need to understand because, okay, before we even get into that, NFI says we are still talking about how do I really know what agent is registered with Amban. So I just don't, just go to one run of the mill, pure as operator and then just ask for such services. Okay. Part of what we have introduced recently is identity. So you can look out for the Amban logo in agent location. And most importantly, most Amban locations are well structured. They are of standard, you know, that can carry out this exercise because there are requirements for you to be able to undo most of the sensitive services. And for the Naval Financial Inclusion, they are easier to get to locate because we actually sign them at open spaces, public schools, markets. So you'll see our banners there. So they are easily located. You can sign them. You said 10 states. So if we just have to just go statistically, 10 states, how many centers so far in the 10 states? Okay. As of today, we have covered about 50% of each local government in the particular states, as of today. So for Lagos, Limosho, Ikeja, Sagotedo area, so Agbado, so we have the intelligence. And that is where they are actually needed. All right. Okay. Let's talk about security now because that's one of the issues that have been brought to the front bonnet and some of your meetings that have attended. Safety of agents, safety of customers, their cash and every other thing. There's something in the offing, agents' joint tax force. And from what I can see from your flyer, I don't know if we can just roll that on a purest agent compliance with CBN regulation to talk about agent identification, agent authorization, verification, agent security. Just shed more light on this. Okay. Thank you so much. There has been a clear on call in the industry on how do we control the menace. The more you expand financial inclusion, the more you relax the policy around a payment system, the more menace you recorded, the more crimes that will come along with it. 12 years ago when central bank of Nigeria rolled out financial inclusion strategy and put it as a target that we need to hit 80% inclusion rate by year 2020. And all the channels were deployed. Additional POS, additional agents, additional ATM machines, increased the number of microfinance, digital platforms, all these were necessary. And to go be the glory, I think we are hitting the numbers. We are very close to 80%. So we are still very close to 80%. But when we are rolling out all that, we may not be aware that the crimes we grew along with it. And as of today, there have been a lot of complaints, especially on POS, on POS agents across the country. I think based on statistics, the largest fraud cases are traced to agent locations as of today. And that can also be confirmed by the recent declaration of the Inspector General of Police that they should stop all POS in all police stations across the country. And when you look at this, you'll look at it that is like killing an enhanced with a sledgehammer. Because when you look at the most of the police facilities today, only agent locations are the ones servicing them. So financial inclusion has been revised by that deliberate action. And we will not actually blame the IG but there is a need for a platform. And that is why we are coming up with a similitude of PCRC, the police community relation committee in our neighborhoods to ensure policing. So this time around, we are coming up with a joint task force in our own constitution and association. We have a standing committee, we call it anti-money laundries committee and task force committee. And based on that, we are working with all the security agents in the country to serve as their intelligence touch points. Because we are the one that are the last mine. We are the one that really have the understanding of the industry. So we can now have a platform where we can escalate to the security agents to come and perform their own duty of, you know, enforcement. When you look at the agent banking regulation documents from the CBN, there are a lot of regulations there that are not being implemented today. So we have them, we have the idea about it and we can now refer based on this committee, this joint task force. We can work with our police, our DSS and at a civil defense to now point those regulations to them for them to intervene and implement. For example, today when you get to our markets, you will see people hanging bags on their neck with their POS and their colleagues, come and withdraw, come and withdraw. You know, a lot of them have scammed. Are they part of your agent? They are not, they are not because in line with the CBN policy, agents are meant to operate in a physical location, you know, so that you will be identified with that location. But somebody that is roaming, roaming agents is not part of the procedure, it's not part of the approved channel of delivery. So how do they get their termination? It's because nobody is checking them, it's because nobody is checking them. So as of today, we can now use this platform, a joint task force, to refer to the police within their neighborhood to get them in check. We all know that this has provided a lot of job opportunities to Nigeria, but you have to do it in a legitimate way. And that is why we are launching joint task force to ensure that people comply with the laid-down policies. All of it here, I can see whistleblowing, you know, one thing about whistleblowing in Nigeria, most people are usually not so forthcoming in, you know, telling the stories or the true picture of what things are, because for the issue of security and them being exposed, so have that been factored in? Oh, very well, very well. Part of what we have been able to bottle for long are those red flags, because fraud doesn't just happen, there are flags, you know. For instance, just to tell you the critical nature of agents, the agent play, you have about 1.8 million agents across the country in the rural of the Ruramis, and it has a lot of, we can't leave them unregulated and unwatched, because they have huge security implications. I was privileged to have an experience in bandicked prawn areas, Beningwari in Niger states, where most of the transactions that are happening at the agent locations, most of those customers are actually bandits, and they are actually bandits, and the red flag is the kind of transaction they are doing in that environment. And when you look at it, we get the backend, we get the notifications, we get the kind, the amount of transactions, and you know, the repetition of the amount of such transaction. Yeah, but there is no platform to escalate it. You know, we look at the situation where bandits will want to collect ransom, and maybe some of them measure the deal in cash, and if you don't have cash and they are forced to collect transfer, all suspected agents, they go to all suspected agent locations, they will send the account number of the agent, receive the transaction, and the agent will not be aware that it's a ransom, it's for ransom, you know, it will just say I want to receive starting money, but I don't have an account, you know. So these agents will be in trouble at the end of the day when police are doing their, you know, investigation. A lot of, a lot of incidents are estimated at the agent location, and these agents have been in trouble for the offenses that they have not, you know, committed. So but with the Gentiles Committee, we will be able to share most of these red flags, so the police can step in. Okay. And we will be able to also, I mean, solve the problem of bandits, you know, in our rural area, because when you don't give access to payments and services for illicit transactions, then you are meant to, you know, to discourage ransom collection. So let's continue now. Let's talk about agent identification and of course, customer privacy checks and all of that as we round off. Thank you so much. I think one thing that has been missing in terms of regulation within this space is agent identity. Who are the agents? How do we even identify the agents? So our association, Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, introduced identity for agents. Are you giving them cards? Yeah, it's, you know, identity is beyond cards now.  So we now have NIN verification on our portal. If you are signing up to be a member today, you have no choice than to leave your, because it has to request for your NIN. We have automated the whole processes. And the beauty of it now is not just for you to carry ID card. Security agents will now be able to verify the authenticity of your ID card. True. It's a QR code technology. So there's a QR code technology. So any police, any DSS can walk to any POS agent location today, identify yourself, and we'll be able to scan it to confirm if they are real. Okay, so let's run off. Let's talk about customer data privacy checks. Yeah. And as you do that, let's also talk about the future of the agency banking in Nigeria. Okay. Thank you so much. You know, we are dealing with sensitive information, card details of customers. We are dealing with a record of customers. So it is important that agents that will be handling such should be properly trained on customer privacy, you know, laws. And I think it is continuous training. And we're also encouraging the service providers to ensure that this is infused into their training curriculum. It is very, very fundamental. We have been alleged today that POS agents now scan ATM details of customers. All those allegations, they may be true because customers don't even know who are the real agent or who are not the real agent. For now, we are now encouraging customers, look out for AMBAR logo so that before you can present your card to be sure that your details are secured. We will be able to depend, you know, anything that happens when you present your card at AMBAR location across the country. That is very fundamental because part of the policy of the CBN is that every agent should display the logo of their financial institution. You can't find it there today. You can only see who has a EPOS. You are meant to present, you know, to display a force bank or money point, you know, if you are an agent to do service provider. But we are working around that. I can't find it anywhere. And that is why this joint tax force is coming into, to calling the attention of the security agents to check all this. And this will also sanitize our space. Also a very big thank you to you, Mr. Atondah, for sharing all of this useful insight. And this recent development so Nigerians can be protected. The agent themselves can also be protected and of course will now enjoy the inclusion that we've been talking about for about 10 years or so. Very well. We do appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. All right. And that's the size of the show for today. My guest has been Sharafuddin Fasasi Atondah. He is the national president of AMBAN. That's the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria. And we have been looking at financial inclusion in the country. We'll see you again next time. I am Justin Akadunye. Many thanks for being there.