Hi, I'm Montay, security architect, Foxguard Solutions, we do industrial control system security stuff. And this is what I think my job is like. No? Yeah? And your job looks like this? Everybody. And this is what my mom thinks my job is like. And this is what other people think my job is like. This is what I wish my job was like. Look carefully. And this is what my job is really like. So do some security research, look at new attacks, do some training classes, lots of conference talks, new product. And look at industry requirements in industrial control systems, right? Where bits meet atoms, where things happen. So let's get started. We're going to talk about things in light of... Anybody here working in industrial control systems? Oh yeah, we got a handful. Anybody heard the term industrial control systems before? A few more. Beautiful. Well now you're an expert. Industrial control systems is the part of security that really matters. Is where bits meet atoms, things move. This is electricity and manufacturing and your water and your power. This is where your iPhones come from. And we're going to take a look at some tools. So since I am thinking of things in terms of industrial control systems. Let's get the mic. Industrial control systems. If you're going to look at this as an industrial control system, what are the mechanics involved? It's like, well, it looks for some button pushes. It does some calculations and it displays something on the screen. That's it's I-O, right? Industrial control, reading things, thinking about things and doing things. Fun enough? As an industrial control system, what does this thing do? Do what? It opens the box. What else? Industrial control system. What? Makes holes. Yeah, but think about the operation. Bits, atoms, movement. What's it doing? Alright, so this is a miniature industrial control system that's monitoring the rate of the spin. That's one of the things that's actually controlling with the pulse width modulation output. What else is it doing? Input. What kind of input? Yeah, so there's a variable resistor here in this trigger and it's reading that value. It's reading analog value, making some calculations to the control system. Do we see anything else? Light. So we have a light on the front. It gets timed. Look, no power. Alright, we got light on the front. What about on the sides here? Yeah, so here's a display. This is a voltage display, so it's measuring voltage. It's also measuring temperature of this battery system and it's measuring temperature of MOSFETs inside. So as far as a very small representation of an industrial control system, this is it. It's measuring different kinds of inputs. It's controlling different kinds of outputs, alright? Which of these two systems do you think is more powerful? Thoughts? Comments? Yes? No? Now which one do you think is more powerful? Yeah, well, so a little bit of fun, but actually the drill is a more powerful control system. So, excuse me? Physically. Also, look, the calculator clocks are 8 to 6 megahertz and the drill, it's 8 megahertz. Besides that, the processor in the calculator takes several clock instructions, takes several clock cycles to do an instruction, so 7, 19, 14, 15, this is just sort of a random sampling of instructions. This drill basically does every operation in one instruction cycle. So computationally, it's a lot more powerful than the calculator as well. Besides it's additional functionality of sort of dedicated pulse with modulation channels and it's ability to read analog input. So if you start looking at, you know, the actual power of the system, the drill is a lot more complex system and a lot more one than I expected, right? This is, it's a battery powered drill. Who expects a computer in the middle of there? So if you were going to attack a control system, let's say this one in particular, you might look to see what's inside of it first. This is a pretty standard drill. It has a, let's see, we've got a PC board and some power connectors and a motor, a transmission. If we look at the, we look at the circuit board and we look up these MOSFETs, by the way, that controls the power to the motor that makes the drill run. They're rated at 202 amps continuous and if you do anything with electronics, that's a fair amount of power. They will also support 800 amps pulse. So, yeah, it's pretty impressive. You might also need a little help reverse engineering the system as a whole. If you're going to look at software, because the hardware provides input and it depends upon the way the drill is set up and the way the circuit board is set up. So you take a look around. I found an AT Mega 32 pin and when I first saw this 32 pin microcontroller, I'm like, you know, they make like eight pin lines and why in the world are they putting this thing in here? But if you go through and trace out all of those circuits, basically almost all of them, almost all the pins are in use. It's running front LEDs and power LEDs and two MOSFETs, MOSFET temperature, battery temperature, voltage, trigger, calm, enable pins. So it's using a lot more of the capability than you expected even in the simple device. It's using a lot of computational resources. All right, now for our little review before we... Ooh, calculator parts. Part of a review before we continue. All right, audience participation, what's RAM? Random Access Memory. Beautiful. You read right, you turn it off, it goes away. What is ROM? Read only memory. All right, so let's talk about early ROM. Early ROM is Masked ROM and it's manufactured that way at the factory.  You have to buy a big lot to make this profitable. And now you have, I don't know, 10,000 of these chips programmed just the way you want them. What do you do with those chips if there was a bug in your software? Not bad. Put them in a landfill. Sell them and don't tell anybody. Sell them and don't tell anybody? You are my head of marketing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or I like to say, throw them in the ocean. Because you can only write to them once, they're made at the factory and now you have to call the factory again and say, hey, for another $100,000 can you send me up another mask and run me another batch of these? So we decided that that didn't work very well and we come up with things like prom. So what's prom stand for? So this is programmable read-only memory. So you get these chips that are typically, let's say, one-time programmable. You get the chip, you can put your piece of code on it and then you can put it in your device. If that chip has vulnerabilities or problems in the software, what do you do with that chip? Yes, you throw in the landfill. But you only have the one because the next chip you get off the shelf, you can program and put it in your device, right? So that works a lot quicker and easier and it's more cost-effective. So manufacturers like that. But you go on to the next level. EEPROM, what's EEPROM? Yeah, so this is a raceable programmable read-only memory. And typically they were UV-erasable. So if you look here, this has a little window in it. A UV light will erase it, set it all back to ones and you can change some of those to zeros and end up with a program. Now, if there is something wrong with this chip, what can we do with it? Yeah, you can pull it out, you can shine some light on it and reprogram it and put it back in. You don't even have to throw anything away. But you did have to pull it out and program it. So EEPROM, what's EEPROM? Yeah, electrically-erasable programmable read-only memory. So now you can program this thing in the circuit. You don't have to pull it out. You don't have to shine UV light on it, you don't have to put it in your nails or something. And if you have a problem, you can fix it in the device. So that's quite a bit easier. Now you think as a manufacturer, that's great. If we screwed something up, we need to update something. We're all good. We can program it back in place. All right, now I'm dependent on you all. What does Flash stand for? What?  No, Flash doesn't stand for anything. It's a marketing term. So Flash is basically a version of EEPROM. Tends to be larger. You write it in larger blocks. It will sustain fewer right cycles before it gets destroyed. But it's basically a marketing term. And that's how we end up. That's a short version of how we end up with devices that you can program sort of by default. It saves you money. It saves you time. So that's a review. For the particular microcontroller in this drill, we see it has some EEPROM, which is designed to be written in smaller blocks and more time. More time. Some RAM, some Flash, and end system programming. We don't have to take it out and clip some clip on it and hook some programmer up to it. It's much easier to set up. You probably buy your hardware. You get it shipped to you. And then back at your plant, you can blow on the latest firmware when you get the device. Much easier. That allows for the updates that you may have changed or made to your firmware, your software. And in some cases, maybe account for some minor manufacturing difficulties. You might be able to adjust for them. Maybe in firmware. So we take it apart. And we're looking at how to manipulate it. And it would be great if we could find an SPI port, typically six pins. And what do we see here? Six pins. And a matter of fact, half the work is already done for us because there is a reset, a clock, and our 3.3 volts. That's a point to something else. So three of our six pins are already labeled. We only have to figure out the other three and we're in. Well, excuse me. Yeah, we need a couple. We need Mimo and MoMe. But if you turn the circuit board over, now you have MoMe and Mimo and Ground. So they labeled the other three for you. That's great. That's awesome. You need a programmer. I was in a hurry. I built one out of a teensy eye head laying around and put a 3D printed case and got some free software. But if you want to buy them, they're available in all your favorite sources across on the... They're great, $3.36. Ship to your door on the slow boat. So I pulled the software off of this device and did a little reverse engineering, maybe a little disassembly. So you end up with assembly code, all ones and zeros. It's hard to figure out, but you're going to disassemble it somehow to make it a little easier. There are a couple of free ones. AVR, OBJ, Dump. That's kind of cool. I read about this cool in RE-AVR, but it was kind of from a sketchy site from Russia and I didn't really want to install it on my computer. So I talked to my buddy and I said, can you install this software and re-run this file through it? And he was like, yeah, I'm like, sweet. I'm too paranoid for that stuff. And other commercial software. But now you end up with just sort of this side, right, the similar language instructions, which still may not mean a lot. And I worked through it quite a bit to try to figure out what these registers and what the instructions meant and what they did. This is just a brief section of it. So I made a few comments as I went along. I thought one of the interests, one of the reasons I just pulled this tiny section of code was this right here is setting up to write to the EE prom. And this is the EE prom right. So this drill has the capability of changing the EE prom, right? It can write things. It can keep track of things. I was going to ask my friend, who I was working with at the time, what do you think this thing is writing? What's it keeping up with? He says, oh, I know, I know. It's looking for warranty day plus one. Right. I'm like, maybe it is looking for, I don't know, usage time or something like that. But there's no real time clock. It doesn't get updated that way. I think it's doing calibration for the trigger, right? They can have slightly different ranges and so forth. So, oh, at this point, we are going to have a little bit of a live demo. I need a volunteer who would come up here and give me a hand. Welcome, sir. Do you have good health insurance? Let's just go. All right, let's just go. Okay, so if you would, hang on, we'll at least take the drill bit out for you. How about that? Yeah, you're standing on my line. You should stand right there. Oh, much better. Okay, can you hold this for me? Excellent, excellent. So, right, you buy them, you build them, whatever. We'll walk over this way just a little bit. We are going to... The only thing I did is I pulled those pins to the outside just to make this go a little quicker and easier. Which way is up? Turn it three times, it'll work. Yeah. You've done this before, haven't you? I can tell. All right, so it takes a line or two of code to do this, but since I can't type and talk, especially in front of people, we've got a couple of scripts. I am going to run hash comparison. So, what this is doing is it's pulling the existing firmware off the device, writing it to my hard drive, and then I'm comparing it to my known good file. And if you look at the bottom, you see it say it says files match. So, the firmware on this device hash matches my expectations. I believe this is a good device. I will be happy to use it. I also wrote some other code for this device. And now we are putting some other code on this device, and we will check the hash. If we receive the device in this state, we're reading the firmware off, we're running the hash on, comparing it to our known good, and it says those files differ. I mean, nice if it said it was malware, but it says those files differ. Oh, do you notice anything strange? There's a blinking red light along the side of the drill. Oh, that's suspicious right there. Let me tell you. Yeah. Okay, hang on. Yeah, so what is this? I thought I heard the comment up front. This is called, it has a name, it's called a Larson scanner. It's named for this guy, Glenn Larson, a TV producer and writer. He created various shows as you see. Buck Rogers in the 25th century. What are the last two? Night writer and what's the last one? Right? Right, so he's responsible for this, but what it really means is this is the start of AI, right? This is where bad AI comes from. Okay, now you have another chore to do. If you will pass me the drills for a second. It is now your job to take this microphone and hold it against the end of this drill. Okay. All right, microphone, drill, you got that? No, I hold the drill. You hold it. Yeah, you got that? All right, we figured it out. You good? Oh, you are good. All right, I like him. I'll keep him. All right, so pay attention. Hold it now. You ready? There we go. And another round of applause for my able helper. Thank you very much. All right, yeah. Darth Vader's theme, of course. What else do you play? All right. Oh, no, I don't have my Darth Vader theme t-shirt on. But let's talk about why I do something silly like this. Pretty impractical attack. This industrial control system is air gapped. There's no network connection, no financial consequences. It's an example of firmware in unexpected places. What I really want people in industrial control systems to take away is this drill is a computer running software. And if the drill is a computer running software, there are a lot of pieces in your important plant that are computers running software that you need to think about securing. Drill's probably not top on your list, but some of the other pieces of hardware in your device, media converters that you don't think of as computers running malware, could be. I mean, you could do interdiction, right? Any good intelligence agency can delay your package for a little while and add you a little special gift. But, you know, not really any financial consequences. The first one I bought looked like this, right? My budget's kind of small. I buy cheap stuff off eBay. The first one I got was broken, but the computers still work. But I noticed, you can't maybe you can see it, that these big MOSFETs, somebody had let the magic smoke out, right? They've been overheated, they've been destroyed. This is actually a thermal sensor, right? And even with that in place, it's looking for overheating. Somebody cracked these accidentally. So, you might have some financial consequences. You can blow up the drill, a couple hundred bucks. Well, lipo's aren't exactly stable. Occasionally, they catch. Who knows what, anybody know what this is? Yeah, Galaxy S7. This one, they're at a conference and somebody's laptop is on fire. And everybody's staring at it and going, oh, look at that. Man, that's bad, isn't it? If you're in the hobby of doing RC stuff, you generally charge lipo's either in a fireproof bag or something with cinder blocks around it, right? You know, so maybe if you could catch it on fire, there might be some consequences. But it's largely impractical. I did come across these things in my research, though. Research, five minutes on Google. Research these things. These two Bosch devices. These two Bosch devices. I'm trying. These two Bosch devices. One of them is called BT Exact and BT Angle Exact. Who knows what the BT stands for? All right, well, there goes part of our air gap. And if you will look at the highlighted text about it, the screwdrivers are locked when they are delivered and can be unlocked only by the access point Exact Connect. So you can't even use it till you connect it. The system can talk to and take commands from external devices like a PLC, which might be an important part of your control system. This device is going to communicate to your control system. By the way, why would you want to communicate with devices like wrenches and drills and... Maybe you wanted to... Sometimes to know where they are? What if you're making very high-tolerant stuff like vehicle suspensions on big trucks like a plant next to where I live does or turbine engines on a jet aircraft? Excuse me? Yeah, precision torque, right? You'll have a torque requirement. You need to make sure every nut is appropriately tightened and you might be checking battery life and RPM and usage. So there are some valid reasons to want to communicate with these tools. And I also saw this available at your favorite home construction store. I guess what this device comes with... All right, its own cell phone app. Because you need an app. I'm lost here. Where you can monitor the RPM, set the torques and it says it will keep track of the last place it saw the device for you, battery charge. And where do you think it stores this information? In the cloud. So now maybe you have some connection between your device and whatever. And we've seen the knowledge of service attacks blocking out parts of the internet from tons and tons of small devices. If you're an industrial control system, the network latency in messaging is very important. You might have maybe a 5 millisecond latency requirement because you are controlling a very large, dangerous piece of equipment and if you can't monitor it, feedback, change its position, see where it is every 5 milliseconds, things can go wrong. And if you're looking for a denial of service on your network, who looks at the drill first? Yeah, not even me, right? And it's not, again, it really isn't the drill. The drill is the extreme example, right? The drill is the fun part. You can see from a lot of different devices that you don't expect. It's firmware and computers in places that you don't expect. And finally, you have a chance to listen to my favorite rant. What is the difference between firmware and software? Yes, sir, in the back. Nothing! You win a prize! Dang, do I have a prize? I'll have to look for a prize. Basically, nothing. At one time, for most considerations, call it nothing. At one time, we might have said an important consideration was that firmware, for instance, you couldn't change it, right? We looked at, you know, the original ROMs, like mass ROMs and one-time programmable, you really couldn't change those. And so that might make a significant difference, sort of, for firmware in terms of security. But even think about that for a second. Let's say you have software on a device and it's software that you cannot change and you discover a vulnerability, right? Best case, you will always have that vulnerability. You can't fix it. Who believes software is perfect? You guys are way smarter than you look. So, I have a couple of... I have people that work in my company, a programming team, and I can come up to them and I say, hey, I've got two projects for you to work on. I have the software project and I have this firmware project. And what I need is you all to divide yourself out because I need all the perfect programmers over here on the firmware side and I want everybody else here on the software side. So after I have this talk, who ends up on this side? Nobody. Or, yeah, you, the liars, right? Either way, it's software. It has as many vulnerabilities or problems as anything else. So that's my rant. Never say firmware again, at least from a security perspective. There really isn't a significant difference there. It's software, it has vulnerabilities, it's written, it can damage things. People sometimes say, oh, firmware. Must be perfect. Can't change it. When we're done, we're going to go someplace else. No. And it's sort of led to my rule of thumb. I think this audience probably knows it, but industrial control systems not as much as folks working there. Is that, look, if it plugs in or if it has batteries and you bought it in the last five years, it's a computer, right? There's nothing that you could buy that plugs in or has batteries that isn't a computer. I was surprised seeing, you know, this is a battery and a switch, right? Not a more powerful computer. Oh, sorry, this is yours. Thank you very much for helping me. You're welcome. Or if not, you can give it to the guy who needs the prize in the back. All right, so it's a computer. It's a computer. And finally, my analysis after tearing down this tool is that it had very nice copper heat sinks. Copper conducts better than aluminum. I thought they were very fine. It has thermal sensors for the battery. It's looking for overload and overload on the MOSFETs. That's a good thing. The PC board has a nice conformal coating. That's a plastic kind of overspray that protects the board from harsh environments. So particularly in industrial control systems, those computers don't live in server rooms. They get bolted to things that shake and have dust and sand and are too hot. So something like, you know, this can avoid things like salt spray and dust and help protect it. I thought that was good. I thought it was good that they didn't, in some instances, you can change a fuse and the device and make the firmware right only. How much protection is that? Notice I said right only. What does that mean if I get this thing and I want to know if it's been modified somehow? I can't read it, right? So one of the things that we did was we pulled the firmware off to check that it was okay. How long would it take me to do this? You know, if I took it to the bathroom with me in a plant, 10 minutes, 5, 10, something like that, 10 years out, it takes as long as it takes, but the screws back in. So by not making the firmware right only, we can validate, verify that this piece of software running this important control system is still valid. I think that's a very good thing to be able to do that. We also have a group of people that help do patches and look up patches for industrial control systems. And I went to them and I'm like, has there been any new firmware release for this drill? And that's kind of what they do for a living and they're like, nope, can't find any. I'm like, okay, some things don't have patches. I'm not going to fault people for not delivering patches. I don't see anything incredibly wrong necessarily with it. But if I did have an ask for this manufacturer, it would be to publish the hash for the firmware that they've installed. Now, I'm taking my good firmware because I have a couple of these drills and that's why it came with, and I assumed that they matched that it was the right one. But to really be sure, I'd like to see a signed hash from the manufacturer. So that would be the one thing that they could really do better. Maybe execute signed only code, that would probably work, but the processing power and storage in this chip is pretty small, so that might be too much of an ask. But they'd at least publish the hash. And I also like that they make these headers easily available, somewhat easily available. I would almost like to see them on the outside because I'm more interested in being able to verify that my device is right. Remember we said somebody might capture it along the way, somebody might take it to the restroom, not this device in particular. There's a computer in this thing, and there are computers in these cameras and there's computers all over the place. And in an industrial plant, that might mean the difference between life and death. I want to make sure that they are, be able to check that they are okay. So if you make programming headers easily available, and often they are pretty easily available, this one didn't even have pins on it. That's fairly easy. A lot of them already have pins available in JTAG parts because they have to program them when they come out. All right. We have a couple more minutes. I want to tell you one more thing. This is mostly for my industrial control system audience, of which there are a few, is that, well, actually it's for both, how do we protect these things from a security point of view? What we talked about being able to validate the firmware. Now, let me plant one idea in your mind. This is a computer running software. So, ignoring the specifics of this device, tell me generically, how do you protect a computer running software? What tools do you have? Excuse me? Signing, if you could sign the code, right? Maybe you could sign code on it, might not have enough processing power, right? What else can we do? Antivirus, right? I might ask my vendor to provide antivirus. They might not be able to support it, they might ask, right? Who runs antivirus on this? At least one, right? I do accept this as my burner. Right, so you can run AV on these devices. So, if you can run AV, run it, and if you're buying, you know, 10,000 whatever devices it is for your plant, at least ask the manufacturer if you can run AV on it. They may not be able to provide it, but maybe. What else do we do to protect control, to protect computers running software? To protect the network, right? If this thing isn't connected, the other ones are, right? We use firewall rules, and firewall rules, and IDSs to protect the network. Anything else? Patches, right, that too. So, we're going to check to see if there are any known vulnerabilities, and we're going to patch these devices. So, the final take-aways are drills are fun, no, wait a minute, are that, everything's a computer running software. And, even if that's what you're faced with, no matter how bizarre they look, you have tools to help protect them.  You have to be a little more thoughtful about how to protect it. But, you have the opportunity to do that, be creative. With that, thank you very much. I'm, oh wait a minute, I took the charger apart too. Anybody, any idea what this is? Another microcontroller. Alright, well, I'm Monte. Thank you all very much. Catch me online somewhere. I'm here the rest of the week.


All right, good morning, folks. Welcome on back here this Thursday, June 2nd. Great to see Grant Norman, Leda, and all of us live inside the Cyber Group Room. Great to see all of us joining us back again on social media, Facebook Live, or YouTube. Fausto out once again here. My name is Josh Levitin. For those of us unfamiliar with myself, I do the afternoon meetings on YouTube and Facebook Live. Of course, for all of us live inside the trading room, you folks. Let's hop right through it, folks here. We have the PDSB trade on the screen to begin. It's up like 18%. We was running up beautifully going into this meeting. So let's talk about this run. Let's talk about why this stock ended up making the push that it made to begin. Market's really flat right now. So just to get that out the way, not a whole lot really happening in pre-market here so far. Market really just flat up a tiny amount. It's actually making a little bit of lower highs on the intraday chart. But hey, PDSB, this was not featured on the C2 pre-market watch list. Why? Well, because when Fausto normally puts the list out, he puts it out at 7.45 Eastern time, right? Before the 8 o'clock move. So it gives our students and members inside the trading room like Kathleen and Phil and Grant and Norman, who had a really nice pre-market himself. It gives students a lot of time to prep and find the levels. But hey, after 8 o'clock, you know that we're going to look to reskin the market and see if there's anything else right away after. And with that, PDSB started to make a nice push. So we were really on top of this trade from the get-go. There's a headline out on this trade. PDSB granted FDA fast-track designation for lead candidate. PDS 0101. There's a whole article, probably three quarters of the words I can't pronounce, so I'm not going to track. So needless to be said, obviously, some good news coming out here on PDSB with FDA fast-track designation. What's interesting about this trade more than anything? I mean, easily we're going to put this on our list just to start, right? Cheap stock. It's up big. Trading good volume. All that good stuff. But is there anything else on this trade for all this live inside the trading room that would pique my interest even more for this stock? Even more? I mean, it's up big. It's cheap. Trading great volume. Again, perfect. Exact type of stock that you would want to follow. But what else about this trade makes it pretty interesting? What if this fails to continue to run higher? Because, hey, we've had a couple of duds on the pre-market list so far. IMMX being one of them. Norman says, shortable. Absolutely. So, hey, we're obviously respecting this move up first. We're not going to try and just short this here, folks. But in the event where this fails to continue to push, much like SIGA, if you folks recall when we first traded SIGA, which give me a chance to get to here, this crazy thing was shortable the whole damn time on trade station. Now, that may not be the case on your platform if you're not on trade station. So always check with your broker. But that's just the icing on the cake right there for me. So obviously, for PDSB, we're going to respect the news, respect the buying more than anything on this run up. But if this fails to run, then we can find this as a pretty interesting short opportunity. I wrote in the trading room earlier for this stock as well just before we started that, hey, I would assume five to be a big level anyway. But from the historical charts, daily, weekly chart more than anything, around five, 4.95 to 5.05, kind of that 10 cent range is going to be a pretty strong area. So the more this pushes up, you can try and look for that to be a major top, if anything. So we have a couple of duds here that we ended up calling out as well, obviously. MF in pre-market here, it was on our pre-market list, rightfully so. But if you've been in our trading room long enough, and even if not, I mean, hey, for a couple of us on YouTube or Facebook Live that are regular attendees here and listen to Fausto every morning, you see these like cheapies that are up at times were never really too interested in these stocks below a dollar because normally they don't make as concise or clean of a move. So this, it was already up like 55, 60% right at eight o'clock in the morning when it was already on the list. We had called it out as it was at 37, 38 cents, pushed up a bit, but just after eight o'clock, this thing did not make any sort of respectable breakout after no signs of buying after or at least just yet. It's possible maybe after the open, we could see it, but for right now, I'm not really as particular about this one. The IMMX trade, unlike the PDSB, this one is hard to borrow, can't short it. I bring that up to you because, well, for as much as this pumped up in after hours and early in pre-market, you would really hope to see another run after eight o'clock, right? I didn't get it, actually so much so. I'll peel back the curtain a bit, folks. And for all of us inside the trading room, I say this all the time, I rarely have the chance to trade pre-market.  I'm lining up my charts for the morning for the next six hours of my day, answering emails, making PowerPoints for Fausto and myself, answering private chats from students, which is my job. So I don't have like the time to like focus on me in pre-market only. So that's all right. I know my boundaries. All right, well, this stock, I'm the next. I trade at pre-market. I jumped in right over 264.  I was like reposting that a couple of times. The only reason I repost that is because I'm actually looking at that myself for a trade. Like I'm in it already or I'm looking at that right away to jump in. All right, well, I was in from 265. I got out at 261, took a 4 cent loss. At the end of the day, I'm happy. I got out where I did. Ended up only dropping off even further. So I'm sure I'll make that money back once the market opens up. But, you know, whether it's on this or something else at least, I'm sure I will. But I'm the next. We'll put back on our list for the morning. You know, it's still really tradable.  You need to see a lot more buying coming in on this trade. But, you know, for right now, I'll give this a second look. You know, we'll see if we can get this to push back up and over 264. But at this point now, I would only assume for that to be resistance. 264 initially. The amount of selling that we had that led to the breakdown of that level that should be resistance there at first. All right, so let's see what else we got here, folks, because we had a couple of others that we had on the list, a couple of others that, you know, we called out after RPTX Repair Therapeutics. You know, we called this out after the eight o'clock move. It was pushing up beforehand, but I was pretty reluctant. It had a really thin volume on the book prior to eight o'clock. And it still does, but, you know, ended up showing a lot more volume getting traded. Either way, it hasn't made a great push since. Hopefully after the morning opens up, after the market opens, it will. But it seems like there's some big move happening coming up here. It looks like it's coiling up for a big move. So RPTX we'll put on our list for right now. I got Chuck calling out Redbox here, which I did see like early in the morning. It was up like five or 6%. Now it's up near 13, now over 13. So yeah, that's definitely making a push. I would imagine for it to. So we'll likely be putting that on our list. Chewy here as we just continue to go down for right now. Chewy, I think, came out with earnings where we ended up seeing a huge pop in the after hours. And, you know, going into the pre-market, if anything, you would be hopeful to see this, if not make a big move right away after eight o'clock for it to at least hold. I guess you could say it's holding the pre-market low from like four o'clock in the morning, but I wanted this to hold off of 28. And there was a pretty big order on the bid that got broken through at 2810. So, you know, again, much like we just saw on the IMMX trade, 28, 2810 coming up after the market opens up, that should be a pretty big resistance here on this Chewy trade. But, you know, for right now, let's look this on the list. All right, let's jump to the, well, we got PDSB on the list already. That looks pretty good. Let's just jump back to that because I think I had a couple of levels plotted out here already. This is the only stock I took the time to like actually chart myself, like kind of relaying this off with my other screen here. But actually, how about this? I'll jump to the weekly chart because this initially held really well. I was calling out five as a historical level from the weekly chart here, but I also had lined up the weekly closes I had here. I think it was right from here. 456, the close from May 13th. The open the following week that Monday, 4.47. Well, a combination of those two, plus just 50 cent level, $4.50. Big drop off after, right? And you may assume for 450 to hold initially just as is, is that's just a 50 cent level. But the more evidence that there is to anticipate resistance, you certainly expect a bigger reaction from that area. And already this thing's dropped off just about 20, 25 cents, right? So it's always the reaction off a level that we find important. So yeah, PDSB, I mean, hey, it's actually pulling back down right now. This could have potentially been a good short right from there, but again, we're expecting the uptrend first. All right, red box from Chuck. Yes, right away. Down. All right, so let's just see if there's any news on this. I don't, it's not a deal breaker either way, I'm just curious. Man, there's no news on this red box trade this morning, it seems. All right, by May, I mean, the stock's been really volatile in a good way for us. I say it in a good way because it's been very liquid, right? Now there are stocks that are volatile and ill liquid and those are dangerous. Those are not good stocks to trade day to day more than anything. But no red box here, day to day, this stock has been volatile and it's been really liquid. So it's been a great trade for us. Very similar to SIGA. So red box we'll put on our list for right now. SIGI here right now, this thing is just flat on the morning, not even just on the intraday chart here, but just net percent change wise. So this will be on the side list, but. All right, let's see what else we got for right now, folks, just keep going down the gainer side. First, path, we ended up seeing the stock make a huge drop off back in the beginning of April. You could see there where late March it was, but those types of drops you recall ended up only continuing to pull back from there. And I mean, hey, ended up making big pop in the after hours, I'm sure off of earning, so that'd be my guess, but it's just like spotty right now. It's not showing a whole lot in terms of volume. Looking at the order book, like we just talked about, if there's a stock that's moving, but it's thinly traded, it's a lot more dangerous and just harder to read as a whole compared to something that's just more liquid. So I don't know, this one's not really doing it for me. Shortable, potentially if it fails to break out, it could be a short and all that stuff, but I don't know, I'm not really too particular about this. All right, let's see what else we got here, boar. I think this is an oil or a drilling stock, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, boar drilling, spotty chart too. So up 5%, this one's right within our price range, trading 151,000 shares on the morning so far. So volume total, that looks good, but man, that's just a spotty chart, like points of inactivity if anything. I'm certain after the market opens up, that order book will fill in, but I wanna see if there's anything looking even better for right now. If this pops after the open, I'm sure that we'll be there to call it, but I wanna keep this kind of on the back burning here first. That's it from the Gainer side, let's hop on over to the losers list here. Like I said, the markets were flat pre-market so far, they're like up a tiny amount, but like barely anything, not a whole lot really happening across the S&P.  IMUX is on the loser side this morning. For anyone that suffers with Trader's Dyslexia here, you got IMMX on Gainers, you got IMUX on losers, and guess what, both are pretty much the same price. Right, $2.50 stock, just about. So don't get tripped up on these folks, if you think that's a joke, it kind of is. It's mostly like really like a caution because that could happen to anyone, myself included, I would assume the same for Fausto, right? But IMUX right now here making a huge drop off early in pre-market, it made a nice little dead cat bounce since a couple of us inside the live trading room ended up jumping in and out on this, I think Norman and Grant, if I'm not mistaken, hey, it's still there, the highs right now are the highs since eight o'clock, trending up really nicely. But yeah, IMUX will put on our list and much like PDSB, this stock is shortable. So coming off of bad news, this was like some sort of pharma phase one clinical trial news that came out, I posted the headline I believe early in the chat board, but hey, this stock is coming off bad news, you expect for it to drop. After this temporary squeeze up, you would assume the drop, well this stock is actually easy to borrow, it's shortable. So in that sense, this could be a really good trade here for after the open. All right, so we got IMUX, we got AI, this one is down big two coming off of some sort of news. Let me just get the news here one last time. I wanna make good use of my time here, but we'll grab the news on this AI trade. So AI, nothing interesting on this one, just quarter one guidance or fiscal year sales guidance below analyst estimates. So earnings related and we typically know with guidance whether it's good or bad. That's usually the bigger talking point with the earnings report that's out. So even if they ended up beating the EPS or the sales estimates, if guidance overall is weak ahead, that is no bueno. And with this ended up making a big drop down over 21% right now. I like this one. I mean, hey, it's trending down pretty nicely here, heading into the open, right? Much like we always teach in phase two class, what's the direction of the stock leading into the open? Leading into the open from 830 to 930 from nine o'clock to 930. Not only is it down percentage wise, but it is trending down and that's a pretty good sign for short. A lot of selling coming in off of roughly 1485, 1484. So that should be a big level to follow. I don't even have my book map up. That's just me doing like classic tape reading here, looking at 85, 86 area. So if history happens to repeat itself in the sense of breaking below 1485, this would be a really good short. Let's see what else we got here because there's a couple more that's just like hard to borrow. So can't really short those really. BHP, it's expensive, gap down, big volume spike. But and actually just aside from this big volume spike, it's not really trading a whole lot of volume across pre. So I mean, it's flat anyway, but we're gonna pass. CPE, this one trading a little bit more volume here across pre-market and on a more consistent level here too. The volume definitely died off after 830, but yeah, I mean, I don't know, it's just shortable. Nothing really doing in here for me on the CPE. You got HPE, CPE, HPE, HPE, Hewlett Packard and at least the company we're familiar with. This one at least just pretty spotty. So not a whole lot doing it for me on the loser side altogether, folks. Now we're dipping below 5% already. So it might look lazy, but the loser side, you could figure out really quickly just the more that you do it, but there's not really a whole lot from the loser side right here that's really piqued my interest. Yeah, so if there's anything else, folks, from YouTube or Facebook Live or from the live trading room here, Cybergrap, up or down, that 5% that we look for. Type it in the chat board, just let me know right here. Normally it says BTOG came down to support at a dollar. Yeah, that was, I mean, again, I'm not gonna say something in the trading room for nothing. BTOG was a pop and drop stock, right? That was the first thing I commented on with this trade. So it ended up making a big pop here and at that point, we're interested and we start following it, but when you look at the volume traded day to day, this thing trades like crap volume day to day. So if it's gonna fail to break higher, just look at the daily chart because I'm certain just any other, that speaks for itself, but either any of these other like bigger red candles here it ended up having a good pre-market but completely dumped back down. History has a tendency to repeat itself and then obviously you look what happened to your back in the end of last year and into this year. So huge pop and drop there. So that's where I'd comment on just generally this is a pop and drop stock, right? And it threw me for a loop when I continued to make one more push up here, right? I wasn't expecting this last push, but same to be said, when the volume dies off, that's the bigger point to focus on. When the volume dies off, so does the stock. All right, let's see if there's anything else from YouTube or Facebook Live. I don't think I have anything from YouTube and then from Benzinga here if there's anything lastly. Geez, I got one, but I don't know if it looks good. Just give me a quick second. SPRB, little pop right after nine o'clock, unfortunately a pop and drop stock too. For right now, it's trading good volume and very liquid on the order book. And for as much as the stock had dropped over the last year, year and a half probably from over 25 down to like sub two. You would think that this could make a nice little squeeze back up at some point. It looks like it tried to back at the end of last year on the daily chart, just looking here at the end of last year, pop, and then just from there fizzled back out. But I don't know, I mean, I'll slip it on our list for right now. It'll be the last one on there, but. All right, folks, so that's pretty much it from me for all of us on Facebook Live and YouTube. You got Fausto back tomorrow morning, but how about this? You got Rich here in the afternoon. I am taking a small vacation, beginning at 10.30 in the morning. Got me for the morning audio for all of us live inside the trading room, but I'm gonna be taking a small little trip to Florida, Sunshine State, and I'll be moving down there later on this year, or probably next month and a half. So I gotta find a nice little apartment for me. So with that in mind, if you have any questions, folks, for all of us on YouTube and Facebook Live, feel more than free to send it on over through email. Got a nice three hour flight ahead. So I'll be writing back to all of us live inside the trading room that may have emailed me over the last day or two. And for all of us on social media, Josh at C2Trading.com is my email. So if you had any questions on stock trading, crypto trading, what we provide here at C2, let me know if you wanted to join our live trading room. Of course, as always, feel more than free to go right down on the link on the blue banner below the stream right there. For Phil, Robert, Norman, Renzo, Skip, you folks got me here for the next hour and a half at least so I look forward to it. We'll talk soon. Come a cyber group member today. Just click the link below and receive all these amazing products and a world of knowledge for just $9.


Over 200 years ago, sailors navigating by the stars sailed in the unknown for the first time. Defending our nation's interests at home and abroad. Their ships have evolved from the days of sail to speed to nuclear power. Their responsibilities have grown. Their uniforms have changed, but one thing has remained. For 237 years, our sailors have navigated through hostile waters. Keeping the sea lanes of communication and commerce open. To bring the power of our nation to the shores of our allies. To bring the fight to those who would dare rouse the giant. But as it has always been, without the sailor, all these ships would be useless. This year we commemorate the men and women who raised their hand. Sworn oath. And carry on the legacy of those who have gone before them. To defend freedom and democracy around the world. On October 13th, we celebrate our Navy's birthday. Happy 237th birthday to the 488,885 active duty and reserve sailors. Happy 237th birthday to all the sailors past and present. Continue to sail into the unknown.


I will not accept a situation in which there are restrictions on subject choices in senior secondary school. That is what the then education secretary Fiona Hyslop said when curriculum for excellence was launched. Has the Government kept that promise? We want pupils in our schools to have the widest choice possible. That is why we are encouraging schools to be flexible in their timetabling, to look at options to give students choices beyond their own school. There are a number of very good examples right now of how that is being done. I do not know whether Ruth Davidson is specifically talking about advanced hires, for example, when we see the number of young people leaving our schools with an advanced hire increasing. Amongst young people from our most deprived communities, the number has increased by 40 per cent since 2011. We will continue to work hard with local authorities and with schools to ensure that our young people have the broadest and widest choice possible. Ruth Davidson. I am surprised by that answer, because subject choice is narrowing. A new survey has made it clear that restrictions are indeed happening right across Scotland right now. The majority of schools now only offer six subjects in S4, but while the survey is new, it only confirms concerns that have been raised by MSPs across this chamber since the SNP took charge. The consequence is severely limited options for young people when it comes to choosing their hires, especially for those who hope to study multiple sciences or languages. We have a broken promise, we have less choice for young people and parents are still in the dark as to what is going on. What does the First Minister say to them? First Minister. Ruth Davidson, when we look at exam passes in our schools, the evidence does not bear out her argument. I think that she is referring when she talks about a study to the work of Dr Jim Scott. We have no criticism whatsoever of Dr Scott's work, but it looks solely at pupils in S4. The senior phase in our schools is designed as three years long. It goes from S4 to S6, because what matters are the qualifications that pupils leave school with, not just the subjects that they study in S4. When we look at the results when people leave school, what we find contrary to what Ruth Davidson is saying is that the picture is steadily improving. Dr Scott looked at the picture since 2013. Since then, the number of higher passes has increased. They do not want to hear this. The number of higher passes has increased by 4 per cent in Scotland. As I said already, the number of pupils leaving school with advanced hires is increasing as well. We have more young people coming out of our education system with more exam passes. I would have thought that that is something that Ruth Davidson should welcome. Ruth Davidson. I am talking about school choice, First Minister. It is well seen that John Swinney is not sitting next to you today. Do not just take it from me. Here is Keir Bloomer, one of the architects of curriculum for excellence. He warned about this five years ago. It will severely limit the options for those who want to study three sciences or several languages. How bad do things have to get before the SNP Government will own up to its own mistakes? We have teacher numbers down, literacy standards slipping, numeracy stagnating and subject choices are falling for our pupils. As always, it is the poorest parts of Scotland that suffer the most. If you go to a school in one of the wealthiest parts of Scotland, you have a 70 per cent chance of being able to choose between 12 or more advanced hires. What is the figure for the poorest neighbourhoods? First Minister. I do not have that figure in front of me, but I can tell Ruth Davidson. I would have thought that this is what matters in terms of the number of our poorest pupils getting advanced hires. The number has risen by 40 per cent from those from our most deprived communities. That is six times as much as the rise in our least deprived communities. The increase was 6.8 per cent in our most deprived communities. The increase was 40 per cent. The qualifications that young people come out of our schools with is what matters. The numbers are going up for advanced hires. The numbers are going up for hires. As I said a moment ago, the number of higher passes has increased by 4 per cent since 2013. Last year, higher passes exceeded £150,000 for the third year in a row. Despite a fall in the size of the school year group involved. When you look at tariff scores overall, which look at qualification results generally, not just hires, we see tariff scores also increasing since 2013 across all attainment groups. Whether we are talking about deprived communities or not deprived communities, we have more young people coming out of our schools with better exam passes. That is what is important. I would have thought that people would have welcomed it. Ruth Davidson. The First Minister does not know. Let me tell her that the figure is two. There are just two schools in the poorest parts of Scotland where you can choose between 12 or more advanced hires, and in the rest you get nowhere near that. That is the reality in SNP Scotland. She wants to talk about Professor Jim Scott. Let's hear what he has to say. The S1 to S3 curriculum is in significant disarray. Pupils are then crashing down suddenly to as few as six subjects in S4, meaning that they are effectively picking their hires at the age of 14, and it's pupils in the poorest areas that are being hit hardest. There is a scandal going on in secondary schools right now, and this Government is curtailing the choice of our young people to pursue that same broad-based education that the First Minister enjoyed, that I enjoyed, that generations of Scots have benefited from, and it can't continue. We support a parliamentary inquiry into this issue. Will the First Minister back it? First Minister. Well, there has been a scandal in Scottish politics this week and it involved the resignation of one of Ruth Davidson's front-benchers just yesterday, but moving back to education. Thank you. Let's have some order. First Minister, please. I think that I've hit a wrong air, Presiding Officer. Back to schools and education. Let's just get back to the facts. Ruth Davidson talks. I don't think that the Conservatives want to hear the answers here. I wonder why. Let's get back to subject choice. I'm not sure if Ruth Davidson is aware of things like the Hobbit Glasgow Caledonian University, the virtual school network in Highland Council, the initiative in the Western Isles. What are those things? Those are about how schools are looking at different ways of timetabling and partnership approaches with nearby schools and other partners to extend choices for their pupils. I cannot believe, Presiding Officer, that Ruth Davidson doesn't think that what is important here are the hires and other qualifications that our young people are leaving school with. So let me recap for the benefit of the Tories who don't want to listen to this. There are more young people, including in our most deprived communities, now leaving school with qualifications, including hires. There are more young people leaving school with advanced hires in case you didn't hear it the last time. 40 per cent increase in our most deprived communities in the young people coming out of our schools with advanced hires. More young people with more qualifications. That's a sign of the success of our education system, which is why the Tories don't want to recognise it. Question 2, Richard Leonard. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Up and down the country, every year, thousands of children and young people are referred to our national health service for mental health treatment. Every year, thousands are turned away, yet this Government does not know the reasons why. As far back as March 2017, after months of pressure, the Government finally promised an audit of those rejected referrals. Well, it's been over a year and this audit report is nowhere to be seen. Do you think that that's acceptable, First Minister? First Minister. The audit is under way. There was always work that had to be done in order to complete the audit. The audit of rejected referrals is well under way. Sam H is conducting interviews and focus groups with young people and their families, as well as speaking directly to referers such as GPs and teachers. That important audit is under way. It is progressing well. I understand that it is due to be published by 30 June. Richard Leonard. I look forward to the publication of this report, but the trouble is this. In the time between the announcement of this review and now, there have been a further 5,410 rejected referrals. Over 500 in Tayside, over 1,000 in Lothian and over 1,500 in Greater Glasgow and Clyde. That represents thousands of Scotland's most vulnerable children who have been let down. This is mental health awareness week, but for those young people this has been a wasted year, time they cannot get back. Many of us believe that mental health must be given the same priority as physical health, but if thousands of children were being referred and rejected for surgery, would it really have taken you over a year to find out why? First Minister. As I think everybody understands, there will be a range of reasons for referrals being rejected, but it's exactly because we want to understand better what those reasons are, where those reasons are perhaps understandable and where they are not and unacceptable. That will then enable us to see what improvements are needed so that we can root young people to the most appropriate help and support. Now, when you undertake to do an audit, you have to then painstakingly do the work to complete that audit and inform any further work that has to be done. As I said, that audit is under way. I hope that Richard Leonard will welcome that. It is going well. Sam H is leading the work around interviews and focus groups with young people and their families. As I said earlier on, I am also speaking to the people who refer young people, GPs and teachers, for example. That work is under way. I think that that will be important work and it will then allow us to base the improvements that are required to be done. I would hope that Richard Leonard, having raised that, and I think that he's right to raise it, will welcome the progress that is being made. Richard Leonard. There was a six-month delay before the audit started. The simple fact is that mental health services for children in Scotland are struggling. Labour has raised this issue with the Government week after week, so have the Liberal Democrats. We have proposed a review of rejected referrals, and we're still waiting. We proposed access to a councillor for every school. You did not listen. We explained that cuts to councils would hit services for young people, but you cut them anyway. Children as young as five are being referred by one part of Scotland's health service to another and then rejected. First Minister, you once said that you had a sacred responsibility to make sure every young person gets the same chance to succeed. Where on earth is that sacred responsibility to those children? First Minister. Before I leave the issue of the audit of rejected referrals, we announced an audit. We had to plan how that audit was going to happen so that we get it right. The work is now under way, and I've given the progress report on that. It's important that we get that work right in order that the action that flows from it are the right actions.  Funding for mental health services is increasing. In 2017-18, the budget for mental health exceeded £1 billion for the first time. The workforce is increasing. The child and adolescent mental health service workforce is up by 65 per cent since 2007. The number of psychologists has more than doubled. We're also investing in additional mental health workers in key settings like accident and emergency, GP surgeries, prisons. There is work under way in schools, an important issue that Richard Leonard has raised. Some schools already provide access to school-based services. In other areas, schools utilise the skills of their pastoral care staff, lazing with the local educational service for specialist support. Every school has a named contact in specialist CAMHS that can provide on-going support. Of course, as part of our mental health strategy we've already started a national review of personal and social education which includes counselling in schools. We also continue to support Childline with funding to provide confidential advice and information to children, young people and their families. There's a whole programme of work under way to address the very issues that Richard Leonard is talking about. It's important that we continue to discuss those things but I don't think it's asking too much for Richard Leonard to at least know what's already happening before he raises these questions at First Minister's Question Time. Thank you. We've got three constituency supplementaries. The first is from Jamie Greene. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This week, Calmax Managing Director told the BBC that ferry services were facing their worst disruption in seven years and that island communities were not always getting the service they expect. I would call that an understatement. The busy summer season hasn't yet started but we're already seeing reductions to services postponed summer timetables and major vessels are offline for lengthy periods of time. Does the First Minister accept that islanders are sick and tired of this constant disruption and how confident is she in her Transport Minister's handling of this catalogue of failures? Those are important issues that the Transport Minister engages with on a regular and on-going basis. We're investing heavily in ferry services including in new ferries, new ferries being built right now, of course, at Ferguson's shipyard. Any disruption to services or reduction in service to any community is deeply regretted and should be avoided in all possible circumstances but sometimes ferries, of course, need maintenance work to be done but we'll continue to work closely with Calmax to make sure that our island communities and ferry services they deserve. Stuart McMillan Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Does the First Minister agree with me in welcoming the news this morning that the stake in the Fixed Oils beth in terminals will be reduced from £100 per spin to £2 per spin? Does she commend all campaigners including the Stop the Forb Teas campaign for ferry gambling and Gambler's Anonymous for the perseverance and determination and will the First Minister acknowledge that welcome decision is one to reduce the maximum stake to £2 and I commend all campaigners for such a move including Stuart McMillan who has long taken an interest in campaigning on the issue. The Scottish Government encourages any actions that can help to reduce the harmful impact of problem gambling and as Stuart McMillan has said Scottish stakeholders and many politicians have long pushed for robust action to be taken all of them. Of course we will study the detailed proposals with interest and continue to call for appropriate action to tackle this problem even more effectively. Johann Lamond Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. First Minister, I was contacted by a constituent at the end of April who having submitted a bill screening test was contacted and advised to secure a follow-up appointment. When she contacted him she was told she could not get a definite appointment and she is still waiting and is understandably highly anxious. I wrote directly to the Cabinet Secretary and following a further follow-up earlier this week was advised that we will not get a response to this issue until about 12 June. I understand that this problem is affecting a significant number of people. Could the First Minister investigate this as a matter of urgency in order that those who are affected can be reassured that whatever the cause of the problem is secured as soon as possible? I know that there is work being done by Gracie Glasgow Health Board to address this issue. Obviously, I do not have all the details of Johann Lamond's constituency case. I will undertake today to investigate this to look into it and the health secretary will respond to Johann Lamond as quickly as possible. Question 3 Patrick Harvie Thank you, Presiding Officer. In 2016, the last Scottish Parliament election, the First Minister stood on a manifesto that promised that we will invest £3 billion to build at least 50,000 affordable homes over the next five years. Does that commitment stand? The First Minister Yes. Patrick Harvie I am very pleased to hear it because that is not what we heard from the housing minister when he spoke to the parliamentary committee asking questions about this week. The change of language from building 50,000 to delivering is abstract, but it is measured in bricks and mortar. Here we are almost approaching the halfway point of that five-year term and more than a third of what has been done so far is not about building new homes. Refurbishing empty homes is a good thing. Bringing former council houses back into social rent is a good thing. Those are good ideas, but they do not increase overall housing supply. We need to build new if we are going to achieve that. Will the First Minister and in particular the modern standards of disability accessibility that need to be built into modern homes will be done best by building new? Will the First Minister have words with our housing minister to make sure that he recommits to that 50,000 target of new-build homes and is that not the only way of ensuring increasing the overall supply of housing in the way that is needed? Our commitment is well known and has not changed and we are determined to deliver on that commitment. I agree with the importance of new-build housing as part of any investment in housing, so I agree with Patrick Harvie on that general point. I would slightly take issue with him on the broader point that there is no other way of increasing the supply of housing. I could point to areas of my constituency where the refurbishment of existing housing is actually bringing houses back into productive use, so I would slightly take issue with Patrick Harvie on that front. The investment that we are putting into this is significant. Patrick Harvie mentioned the £3 billion figure in his opening question. That is a 76 per cent increase on our previous five-year investment. It includes 35,000 for social rent, which is important. There is £756 million more than that. I understand that it is available this year to fund this ambition and much of that has already been allocated to council areas across the country. That is an important commitment from the Scottish Government, and we are absolutely determined to deliver and to deliver in full. A new freedom of information request has found that adult mental health waiting times are getting worse. 1,000 adults waited over a year to get access to mental health treatment. That is more people waiting for longer. Will the First Minister accept that access to mental health services is getting worse in this country? First Minister. As I said in response to an earlier question, we are seeing increased funding in mental health services. That is important and I hope we will be welcome. We are seeing a growing workforce in mental health services. We are also trying to rebalance care away from often hospital and GP care, more into community settings where people would benefit from preventative mental health services. All of that work is encapsulated in our mental health strategy backed by additional funding. In terms of the issue about adult waits, adult waits are not yet where we want them to be and the mental health minister is working closely with local health boards to improve the situation. It is important that that work continues. Just for context, the average wait in Scotland among territorial boards is seven weeks. It ranges from four to 17 weeks and that is published data. That gives some context but we continue to work with health boards to improve that situation and consider that to be extremely important work. I do not think that the First Minister understands that the number of people waiting over a year has doubled since the day that she appointed her dedicated mental health minister. Since Christmas, I have challenged the First Minister about specialist perinatal mental health services. In half of Scotland, there are none. I have challenged about waiting times for children. They are longer and I have challenged her about her suicide prevention plan. The First Minister tells us that the service that people receive is getting better but the evidence says that she is just plain wrong.  Why are mental health services getting worse in this country? First Minister. A number of issues raised there. Willie Rennie is right to say people want answers so let me give him specific answers. If I go through briefly the particular issues he raised. First in terms of waiting times, we want to bring waiting times down and particularly we want to bring the longest waiting times down but I said previously in relation to adult weights. The average weight is seven weeks for children, adolescent mental health services. The average weight there is 10 weeks with 11 out of 14 health boards having an average weight of between 5 to 12 weeks within the 18 week target. That is the context although we continue to work hard to improve that even further. In terms of perinatal mental health an issue that Willie Rennie has raised before and I know that the Liberal Democrats have issued some suggestions there today which are very welcome. As I said the last time we have established and are funding the perinatal managed clinical network the clinical network brings together specialist in perinatal mental health nursing maternity and infant mental health and is working to improve the recognition and treatment of perinatal mental health care. Lastly in terms of the suicide prevention strategy many people including Willie Rennie across this chamber asked us to do more work between the draft strategy and the final strategy. That is under way, the final strategy will be published understand before the summer recess but perhaps this quote from the Samaritans helped again to give some context. The Samaritans who had raised some concerns about the draft strategy said recently that they are encouraged by the commitments made by myself and by the Minister for Mental Health that the final strategy will cover more of the recommendations for change from the pre-engagement report that was shaped by those with experience of suicide. All of that is similar to my replies from Richard Leonard. I absolutely recognize the importance of mental health. We are of course in mental health awareness week. There are more people coming forward for mental health services and treatment. That is something that we should continue to encourage because it shows the stigma for mental health continues to reduce. Our responsibility is to expand the capacity of services and that is what we are working to do across the whole range of issues that have been raised today both by Richard Leonard and Willie Rennie and we will continue to do exactly that. We have got some further supplementaries. The first one is from Joan McAlpine. Thank you Presiding Officer. Journalist STV walked out in response to the announcement of 59 job losses including 34 in news. Does the First Minister agree with me that this is no way for a public service broadcaster to behave, particularly as STV made a profit of 18 million last year and does she share concerns that those cuts are part of a plan to prepare the channel for sale to ITV, which would be an absolute disaster for Scottish broadcasting? First Minister. I do share those concerns. I am very disappointed and concerned that STV is cutting jobs and closing its second channel only a year after that channel was launched. This will be a very worrying time for all employees of STV who are affected by yesterday's announcement and my thoughts and I am sure that the thoughts of the chamber are with them. This is a time when it is more important than ever that the Scottish perspective on local, national and international broadcasting is therefore crucial that the STV news service is not diminished and that its team of excellent journalists can continue to produce a high quality news service covering the whole of Scotland and I hope that STV will listen to the concerns that are being expressed right now. Finally, in terms of the part of Joe McAlpine's question relating to speculation about this being preparation for a sale to STV, I had someone express that concern to me yesterday. I have no knowledge that would suggest that that is the case, but that is not a move that I would wish to see and I think that that move would be opposed and resisted by many people across the country. Monica Lennon. Today is the international day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia, an opportunity for LGBT people and allies around the world to rally against gender identity. 90 per cent of LGBT people in Scotland have faced bullying in schools and I'm troubled by the impact that this has on young people in my region. Scottish Labour welcomes the Government's commitment to work with the TIE campaign. Does the First Minister believe that statutory LGBTI inclusive education in Scotland will become a reality during this Parliament? First Minister. Firstly, let me recognise that today is the international day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia and express my support for that. I'm proud to say that the rainbow flag is flying today outside Scottish Government buildings to mark this occasion. There is absolutely no place in Scotland for prejudice or discrimination. Everybody deserves to be treated fairly. Scotland is recognised and we should all be proud of this as one of the most progressive countries in Europe in terms of LGBTI rights. However, we know that there is a need to do more in all forms of prejudice. We know that that is particularly true when it comes to homophobic bullying in our schools. That is why we are working with the TIE campaign to take forward their pledges through the LGBTI inclusive education working group, which was set up by the Deputy First Minister to promote an inclusive approach to sex and relationships education. We will continue to work with them to take forward their pledges and any recommendations over the course of this Parliament. Ash Denham. Thank you, Presiding Officer. What engagement has the Scottish Government undertaken with the UK Government since Tuesday when this Parliament Tories accepted united to refuse consent to the EU withdrawal bill? First Minister. We continue to ask the UK Government to listen to and more importantly respect the view of this Parliament which was so decisively expressed in the vote on Tuesday. The requirement in the convention to respect the views of this Parliament and not to proceed with legislation that affects the powers of this Parliament without our consent is not a nicety, it is not an add-on, it is a fundamentally important part of our constitutional settlement. Those are actually the words of Adam Tomkins just a matter of weeks ago. I would hope that the Tories would stand up for the rights of this Parliament and demand, like we do, that the UK Government listens. There is still time to get an agreement on this but an agreement can only be reached if it respects the rights of this Parliament and is based on the fundamentally important principle of the genuine consent of this Parliament. George Adam. Thank you, Presiding Officer. At this morning's social security committee we heard evidence from a range of stakeholders. They told us that the roll-out of universal credit will put the Scottish welfare fund under pressure that families and children have been evicted because of Tory benefit caps and carers are losing out because of universal credit. Will the First Minister renew calls for a halt to universal credit and urge the UK Government to think again? First Minister. Yes, I will renew that call. The fact of the matter is universal credit as well as the other welfare cuts being imposed by this Conservative Government are causing misery for people not just in Scotland but across the UK. The Tories appear to be oblivious to the impact of the decisions that they are taking. I hope that we will see a halt to universal credit at least until the problems associated with it are properly sorted out because vulnerable people, the length and breadth of the country should not be paying the price for the ideology of the Conservative Party. Question 5. I refer members to my register of interests and that I am a registered mental health nurse who holds an honorary contract to ask the First Minister how the Scottish Government is marking mental health awareness week. First Minister. We very much welcome mental health awareness week. Good mental health is as important as good physical health and we want to create a Scotland free from stigma around mental health. The theme of this year's week is stress. We can all take small steps to cope better. One of mine is making the time to read books as I have said on many occasions but different people will find different ways. It is important that people pay attention to their mental health. I also took the opportunity when I was in Dumfries yesterday for the National Economic Forum to visit the Crichton campus to talk to students about their own experiences of mental wellbeing. The Minister for Mental Health launched CME's forthcoming campaign on young people's mental health on Tuesday and through that we are seeking to explore directly with young people what mental health means to them as part of the year of young people 2018. Clare Haughey. I thank the First Minister for that answer. In many instances those who complete suicide have accessed websites which actively promote, encourage and give information on methods of self-harm. It has been reported that internet providers are not removing these sites when advised of their existence. However, in suicide prevention organisations having to pay for expensive adverts to appear in search results to signpost those in need to appropriate support. Can the First Minister join me and my colleague Gillian Martin in the campaign for search engines and social media to take more responsibility in preventing access to this dangerous content? First Minister. That is a very serious issue and I commend Clare Haughey and Gillian Martin for raising awareness of the issue. Search engine providers and social media should always take responsibility for preventing access to any form of dangerous content that includes material that advocates suicide methods. Our draft suicide prevention action plan in which we recently ran a public engagement process included a proposed action to work with partners to develop a strong online suicide prevention presence and this type of initiative would be likely to consider the question of providing access to dangerous content and signposting to appropriate sources of support. That will certainly be an issue that the suicide prevention action plan looks at and I hope that members across the chamber will continue to support efforts in that regard. Jenny Marra. It is a glaring gap in mental health services that there is not a mental health crisis centre in Dundee offering out of our support. I visited the Edinburgh crisis centre a couple of weeks ago and found an excellent facility where people can get the care and support they need at any time of the day or night by self-referral. On 18 January, I asked the First Minister if she agreed with me that one of these centres was needed in Dundee. She said that she broadly agreed. What progress has she made since then on delivering a mental health crisis centre in Dundee? First Minister. I'll ask the health secretary to reply to Jenny Marra in more detail on whether the member is aware. NHS Tayside is currently looking at a range of issues around their mental health services. I would hope that this is something that they will give further consideration to, but I will ask the health secretary to write to Jenny Marra with an update on discussions on that issue. Annie Wells. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, welcome mental health awareness week. A recent SAMH severely revealed that two-thirds of teachers do not feel they have received sufficient training in mental health to carry out their role properly. Will the First Minister back calls from the Scottish Conservatives to roll out a national programme of mental health teacher training and improve counselling services for secondary pupils? First Minister. Training is important and we will continue to work with local authorities to ensure that teachers have access to the resources and training that they need to talk in response to an earlier question about some of the other work that has been done in our schools. Generally speaking, what we want to do is to try to get more services in place in a more preventative manner. That means having access to people who can help where there are issues around mental health in schools and in other non-NHS settings. That is part of that and making sure that teachers and young people with mental health issues have the proper backing and training to do that is important. First Minister, mental health awareness week reminds us that personal struggles can end in tragedy. All too often, suicides occur in so-called clusters leaving families, friends and communities devastated, especially when it involves young people. What support can the Scottish Government give to communities facing the tragedy of suicide? First Minister. I do not think that any of us who have not experienced suicide directly through a member of our family or a close friend can properly understand the long-lasting trauma that will be experienced. It is important that as well as doing everything we can to prevent suicide we also provide support to families or communities affected by the tragedy of suicide. We have set out three areas to Parliament already that will be included in the new suicide prevention action plan. One of those is delivery of more constant crisis support for people who have lost a loved one to suicide and the action plan will no doubt cover more ways in which greater support should be given to families and communities but this is an important aspect of this whole issue that is coming through the new action plan to address. Thank you. We move on to question number six, Murdo Fraser. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's position is on extending the right to vote to all prisoners. First Minister. I've noted the Equalities and Human Rights Committee report that was published earlier this week. I've previously been clear that now that this power is devolved the Scottish Parliament will need to consider how to ensure compliance with the European Court and its ruling, but I have to say that I am not of the view that this should lead to the enfranchising of all prisoners and I am to say the least skeptical that complying with the ECHR requires all prisoners to have the right to vote. As the committee makes clear further consultation with a wide range of stakeholders including victims of crime in the general public is needed and the Scottish Government will respond to the committee's report in due course. Murdo Fraser. Can I thank the First Minister and welcome it as she referred to earlier this week Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MSPs on the Parliament's Equalities and Human Rights Committee supported calls to give all prisoners the right to vote. In response to that the victims campaigner John Muir whose son Damian was stabbed to death in 2007 said this it is an obscenity that this is even being considered and an insult to all victims of crime. My son's civil liberties died with him on the street. Why would someone who is committed to murder or carried out a brutal rape be afforded the privilege of being able to vote? Does the First Minister agree that all MSPs should be listening to victims of crime like Mr Muir and standing up for their rights first? First Minister. I would say to Murdo Fraser that I am sure that all MSPs will be very mindful of the views of victims of crime. The comments I made a moment ago I think are very clear. I am not making any criticism of the committee. The committee looked at this issue and has made recommendations as they are entitled to do. These are difficult and sensitive issues. We now have a power devolved to us that was previously reserved. Therefore we have an obligation to make sure that our laws in this country are compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights but it is my view that we should not give the vote to all prisoners. I am certainly not persuaded of enfranchising prisoners who are in prison for the most serious and heinous crimes and are perhaps in prison for lengthy periods of time. I do not think that that is required to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. Beyond that I think that there is a debate, a proper mature grown-up debate that this Parliament requires to have and I would thank the committee for that. I do not agree with all of the recommendations. It does not mean that that is not a debate that we need to have. I hope that all members, as we have this debate, as I said earlier on, the Government in due course will respond formally to the committee's report. I hope that this debate progresses within Parliament. All of us listen to the victims of crime. We have always got a duty to do that on all of these issues. I hope that Parliament together will be aware that the right to vote enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights and many agree with the prison reform trust that voting is not a privilege, rather it is a basic human right. When Tom Halpin, the highly respected head of sacro evidences, the benefits of enfranchising prisoners will you please take the opportunity to ensure that Scotland joins progressive countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland on this important issue? First Minister. I think that there are a range of arrangements in place across other countries. I believe that there are a range of interpretations around ECHR rulings. I think that, as Murdo Fraser was right to say, we have got to listen to the victims of crime. I think that it is also important to listen to those who work with people who are sentenced to prison. I am a huge believer and I think that this is seen in many aspects of the Scottish community. I am a huge believer in the importance of rehabilitation of doing everything that we can through our justice system to rehabilitate prisoners and also reduce re-offending in the process. This is a complex issue and I am perhaps being naïve here in making this plea at the outset of what undoubtedly will be a sensitive debate for this Parliament that none of us come at it from absolutely fit positions, but in a mature grown-up way we look at all of the issues very carefully and come to a balanced outcome. I have been very clear that I do not support in franchising all prisoners but I do think that there is a debate and a decision here that the Parliament requires to take. We have got the opportunity to try to do that and get to the right outcome for the best reasons and I hope all of us, regardless of party, take that opportunity. Thank you very much and that concludes First Minister's questions. We will move on now to members' business in the name of Claire Hockey on the Everyone's Business campaign. We will just take a few moments for members and ministers to change seats and for the gallery to clear.