Γεια σας και καταστασία! Είμαι Vicky εδώ, με Creative, που θα δοκιμάσω 8 κατάσεις με υποχρονόματα από την Αγώνα Ριλής, από τα πιο καταστασία μου. Για την πρώτη κατάστα, θα χρησιμοποιώ χαρδίες παίμπες, αυτό είναι έναν αυσολό αγαλύτερο από αυτή's αγώνα, και ξέρω ότι θα έχεις πολλά αγώνα, αν αγαλύτες εμπανιστές, μπορείς να χρησιμοποιώ τα πιο καταστασία σας, για να χρησιμοποιώ αυτά τα πιο καταστασία μου. Θα χρησιμοποιώ τα πιο καταστασία μου, και θα δοκιμάσω στο χρήσι πλάτο εμπανιστή.  Την πρώτη θέλη, π μπορείς να δει ότι έχω αναγώθει τα πιο καταστασία, στην η μεγάλη σπιωση μου, και αγώνας με την πιο εξαιρετική. Α άλλη θέλη είναι να αντιμετώ και αυτοί τα κόλου της σκέψης της πέτας και then βλέπω τα κόλου με τη σκέψη σου. Τώρα θα κάνω αυτές τις τέχνοι, επίσης και επίσης, για να κόλω όλα τα πόπι, ουσχυρία για κάθε και κάθε κόλου. Εκκλείωσο σκέψης και κόλου, στέμπες και λεπτά, και τότε θα κομμάσω όλα τα πόλια με τα μπράσματα. Εκκείωσο χρηθώ ένα από τα νέα πόλια, αυτά είναι τα μεγαλύματα σκέψης, για να κοψω ένα κομμάτι, δεν θα κοψω για ένα κομμάτι αυτή η ώρα, αλλά ήθελα να έχω αυτή η ώρα, που μπορώ να νεστεί στον πόλεμα και τα λεπτά μου. Λοιπόν, χρησιμοποιώ ένα βασικό κλου, στο κανένα μου, και είμαι πραγματικά να δοκιμάσω με νουβουδελούξ, και τότε θα σημανω τα πόλεμα, αυτή η ώρα με αφήνες τάπιες, γιατί έχω κάποια δημιουργία.  This is from the August release as well. You can see that it's going to cover up your card front. I went ahead and cut out a few of those puzzle pieces from a patterned paper and I picked up different colors that match nicely together. I'm adding foam square at the back and I'm going to stick down three of them connected and one of them is going to be dropped a little bit off as if it is missing from the puzzle. The idea here is to create a miss you card which is a clean and simple that you can send to both a male or a female. Here I'm adding glue at the back of this piece and this is going to lay completely flat.  This is a free with 60 from my favorite things. I'm using white glue at the back and I'm going to stick it down.  So it's like chipboard at the moment. Now I'm going to stick everything down and my card is finished. Nice and simple but really cute. For the next card I'm going to use the rolled rose and the ground greenery dies and I'm going to play with felt today. So I have grabbed my Hitka by Sizzix. I'm going to place it aside and let it warm and I have picked a few colors of felt which I'm going to run through the Sizzix machine with my dies. Now I wanted you to see that these thin dies really cut out felt beautifully and I'm going to run it once and it should be cut out but out of habit I always like to run it twice. So I'm going to peel off the rose and then I went ahead and cut out a few more roses as well as a few leaves and I'm going to put this rose together. This is going to be quite dimensional so I'm using my tweezers and starting to roll from the end of this die cut all the way to the center. It is really easy when you use your tweezers. Just make sure that the bottom line is completely flat. When you reach the end just add some white glue or in my case my new glue gun and I was trying to find an opportunity to use that. The glue gun I'm using is by Sizzix. It's a brand new product and I have unboxed it in a previous video but I like that there are those silicone finger caps available so you don't get any finger birds and I also love the tip of this glue gun because it's really fine. Now I have prepared all my flowers and all my leaves I'm working on a panel and I'm going to stamp my sentiment which is also from the new stamp set with sentiments that's called from me to you and I went with the sentiment that says from me to you on your birthday so this is going to be a quite dimensional card as you can see I'm sticking everything down with my glue gun and I'm not planning to mail this card since it's so thick. When I make such dimensional cards I always like to hand them out to close friends and family that live close by on their birthdays along with their present. So now I'm going to tack those leaves underneath the flowers I used white pearls for the center of my flowers and I mounted this white panel on top of a blue card base that match perfectly the color of my leaves. Now this is the fried fully sweet super adorable stamp set from the latest release and for my card I will be using the little bunny which is fully dressed up for Halloween I am using my Prisma color pencils to color everything and I'm working on Bristol paper I'm going to keep my bunny pretty much white but I am adding touches of oranges and purples to match the Halloween theme Once I have colored everything I will use the matching dies to cut out my bunny and as always I will have to cut off the part where I am coloring the images especially for videos where I am sharing 8 cards in one Otherwise the video is going to be super long Now my bunny is all colored and ready to cut out and I'm also going to cut out a window out of this orange panel So I have a pouch that fits inside that window and of course I'm going for a shaker card I always need to share at least one shaker card when I'm sharing a bunch of cards So now I am adding some double-sided tape all along this pouch I'm going to peel off the backing and then place my window on top and my pouch is ready in place Now as my card base I'm going to use this black cardstock and I'm going to place on top of it some Halloween mix sequence These are from Looses Little Things but I got this mix last year and I don't know if it is available still I'm sure there are more mixes for Halloween cards available in the market I will make sure to link some below Now I'm going to place my window on top At the back I used double-sided tape around the window as well as white glue So everything is nicely secured there Now I'm going to stick my little bunny and I'm combining white glue as well as foam squares So it is leveled with the window which is quite raised Now from the same stamp set I have already prepared my sentiment This is Hoppy Halloween which I have white embossed on a piece of purple cardstock and I'm going to place it underneath my bunny just to ground it somehow so it doesn't look as if it is floating and my card is ready Here's another new stamp set It's called Fluttering Friends and I will be using this for my next card This is one of my favorites another favorite from this release Now I have stamped two of the dragonflies as well as a bunch of other leaves and I'm going to use my Prisma colors to color everything since I already have them on my craft table from the previous card Now I went with blues and yellows for one dragonfly and with yellows and oranges for the other one and I used the matching dyes to cut out everything what I colored all the images Now I'm working on my background panel and I'm going to apply some Distress Oxide ink through this stencil This is from the new release and it is called Captivating Mandala It is a gorgeous stencil and I think it makes a perfect background I'm using one of the new Distress Oxide ink colors which is the Tumbled Glass Nice and Light and it's going to provide the perfect background for my dragonflies Now I'm going to go inside where everything is going to go and then stick everything down and as always I'm using Foam Squares for some of my images and for others I'm going to use white glue just to have some dimension I white and post my sentiment on a piece of black cardstock and this sentiment is from the same stamp set as the dragonflies To finish off my card I'm going to add a touch of sparkle on my card and here are some photos of the finished card For the next card I will be using the birds of a feather Dyset and I'm going to cut out two of the birds that are facing each other as well as I'm going to cut out some leaves from a new Dyset that I used in a previous card the one with the leaves I'm going for a card which will be suitable for weddings and I need lots of them So I'm going to cut out the leaves from the volume I cut out the birds from a silver cardstock and now I'm going to work on a white panel to stamp my sentiment I'm going to stamp it with VersaMarking and then emboss it with silver embossing powder So everything is going to be quite monochromatic and very elegant I picked a sentiment from the stamp set which is called from all of us which is packed with sentiments and I went with the one that says congratulations from us It's going to end up quite shiny and it's going to match perfectly the birds Now I'm going to put everything together So I'm working with white glue and I'm going to create a little greenery at the bottom where my birds can nest on top So at the moment I have a little bit of a gap at the center which I'm going to fill in later once the birds are in place I used foam scores at the back of my birds to add some dimension and now I'm going to add some white glue at those little cutouts which are actually the wings of my birds You can leave it as it is quite simple but I decided to go ahead and stick them down and since this is a wedding card I just have to add a little heart and now I'm going to finish off my card by adding some greenery where that gap is between those two birds just add one more leaf there I also created my card base out of silver cardstock which is going to add a lovely border around my panel I'm going to stick that down and my card is ready For my next card I'm going to use a captivating mandala but this time in a die form so from this release you get the same design into a rubber stamp which is quite big into a die which I'm going to use now and into a stencil which I used in a previous card I cut out the mandala twice from different colored cardstock and now I'm going to use some glue at the back and this is the large glue pen by Nouveau I'm going to stick down the yellow one and I will do the same thing with my blue one I think this is a gorgeous mandala and you can use it to create lovely backgrounds or focal points now I'm going to use my scissors to cut off the excess and you can always use the cut off parts to fill in the empty space that you have on your card I am not going to do that but this is an option I have cut out the word smile from a die that has been released previously I'm using some white glue at the back and I'm going to stick it down I used the same colored cardstock as the yellow one so it matches nicely with the elements on my background to add some sparkle and more interest on my card I am adding some big gems at the center of my mandala but smaller gems at the tips of the design now this panel is slightly smaller than a standard card so I chose to go with the yellow cardstock as my card base and I'm going to stick this panel on top this is going to give me a lovely border all around it's going to bring everything together and for the last card for today I will be using this stamp set which is called cut cuts I just cannot resist a cut stamp set but in any case in this release there is also a dog stamp set so it's worth checking it out if you are a dog lover now I'm going to stamp 3 of those cuts and I'm going to color them very quickly, very easily I'm just going to mainly keep them white I will add some pink on their cheeks and ears and then I'm going to use the matching dies to cut them out I have also used a circle die to cut out these 3 little windows and I'm going to cover them up at the back by using 3 different colored cardstock pieces now on each and every one of them I'm going to add that backing I like how nice and colorful it looks at the front and now I'm going to put everything together I'm going to tuck in those cut cuts on each window and I'm adding a tape runner at the bottom of the cuts they need to be nicely secured underneath and then at the top I have added foam squares so they are a little bit raised at the top I have also prepared the sentiment that says happy birthday which I think it is adorable I have white embossed it on a piece of black cardstock which I think it adds a lovely contrasting color and it is very readable and stands out and I'm going to finish it off with my NuvoDrops in 3 matching colors to the backgrounds of the cuts so here is the green one I'm going to add a few with my yellow one and I will finish it off with the blue I'm going to stick this panel on a standard card size that's 4.25x5.5 and my card is finished and these were all the cards for today I hope you had fun that you got inspired don't forget that I always link the products that I used down below in the description area as well as on my blog thank you all so much for watching today and I'll see you next time


The Adam Awasi chapter of the APC has reacted to the death of a former political advisor to former president Goodluck Jonathan Barrister Ahmed Gulak, saying the party has lost a great pillar. The party's chaotic publicity secretary, Mohammed Abdul-Lahi, said the party has been thrown into mourning as a result of the incident. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Let's discuss the kinds of errors that you can get in Python. The first type of error you can get is a parse error, also called a syntax error. This happens when you say something that's grammatically incorrect in Python. For example, if I were to type 3 plus times 5, the shell would tell me that's invalid, and you'll notice that it points out where the error is. Let's open up a program that has an error in it, and you'll notice that there's a gray background on some of these lines. Thani colorizes things, and when you see something in gray, that means that something is incomplete. But let's ignore that for the moment and try running the program and see what happens. And we have a syntax error, a parse error, in line number 3. Well, let's look at line number 3. It looks perfectly good. Parentheses are balanced. The division is proper. Why does it say line 3 when the error is really here on line 2, where we've forgotten the closing parenthesis? And the answer is, it's because of the way Python parses your programs. Have you ever buttoned your shirt and found out when you get to the bottom that you're out of buttons? Now, where did that error start? Did it start at the bottom, or was it somewhere up further on? The answer is usually it was up somewhere near the top, and you forgot a button or a buttonhole, and that's why you're out of buttons when you get to the bottom. Python works in somewhat the same way. It's toodling along here at line number 2. This looks good. Equal sign is cool. Input, I know what that is. Here's my opening parenthesis. Here's a sink double quote. And here's the closing double quote. Oh, there's no closing parenthesis here. Maybe it's on the next line. And so it goes to the next line, finds the word AVG here and says, I can't go any further. Throws up its hands, gives up, and says, that's where the error is. I'm out of buttons. Moral of the story. When you get a syntax error, Python will give you the line number where it gave up, where it could not go any further and make a valid program. That means that your error may be on that line, and it may be somewhere above where the error truly started to happen, just like buttoning the shirt. Those are parse errors. The next kind of error we want to consider is a type error, which happens when you try to do an operation that was not intended for a data type. Let's take a look at this program where we fixed the closing parenthesis so we no longer have a parse error. And let's run it. Our first number will be three, and the second number will be four. And in line three it says, unsupported operand types for division, string and float. The reason this happened is because we got num1 and num2 as input, and remember, input always gives us back a string. The num1 plus num2 worked out okay because by coincidence we can add strings together, but when you have that string, num1 plus num2, and try to divide it by a floating point number 2.0, Python says, time out, you can't do that. You cannot divide strings and floats by one another. A third type of error that you can get when you're programming is called a name error. In this version of the program we fixed the type error by putting in the call to float on lines one and two. But we've introduced a new error on line four by using the word average when in line three the variable name was really AVG. So let's see what happens when we run the program. The first number is three, our second number is four, and the program bombs out in line four because it says the name average is not defined. The fix would be to either change line three to be average or line four to be AVG, and let me take my caps lock off while I do that. And now if I run the program, when I have three and four, the average is 3.5. The fourth type of error that you'll encounter when you program in Python is the value error, and that happens when you give a function input that it wasn't designed to handle. I fixed the name error in this program by converting my inputs to floats in line one and two. But if I give the float function bad input, for example by typing the word three instead of the number three, I'll get a value error that says, no, I can't convert THRE to a valid floating point number. Later on in the course, we're going to learn how to catch these errors and respond to them in a good way. Those are the four main kinds of errors that you'll encounter when programming in Python. The first few times that you get an error, you're sort of going to freak out and you're going to just have no idea what's going on. Don't panic, take a deep breath, look carefully at the error message, read it completely, figure out which kind of error it is, and then look carefully at the line where the error occurred, and again because of our shirt buttoning problem, look a little bit above where the error was pointed out, if it's a syntax error, and after a while you'll get used to seeing some of these errors come up and when you see an error you won't need to freak out. You'll say, oh yeah, I remember that one and I remember how I fixed it and your programming will go ever so much faster.


Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Store Front podcast. Today's guest is Ross Mackay, co-founder of Daring, the plant-based chicken currently taking over your local grocery store. Maybe you're carnivore. Maybe you're vegan. Maybe you're even, as Ross would say, plant curious. No matter who you are, the three most important criteria you're likely to consider when buying food are taste, texture, and price. Ross has managed to create a plant-based chicken that emphatically checks all the boxes.  So listen in as we cover everything from why the Scottish government told him there's no market for his product, his not-so-secret recipe that he cooks for investors, and why the average consumer has a lack of trust in plant-based meat. Now back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Ross, CEO, founder of Daring. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. For those small, little amount of people who don't know what Daring is, tell them a little bit about what your company does. Yeah, I know. I mean, Daring Foods, our mission is pretty simple. It's to rethink and replace chicken from the food system. So pretty audacious, but we're the creators of Daring Chicken. So it's the first clean-label plant-based chicken on the market. For those people who love chicken, you can love Daring, so it's a solution for any chicken lovers out there. A lot to get into. You launched this company almost two years ago. Two years ago, effectively. So you've basically been alive since the pandemic, which is insane, and you've grown out this tremendous. What made you want to start the company? What was the thing that you were like, I want to solve this problem, and you saw some semblance of a solution? Yeah, the business was really born on a real need. It was definitely an itch that I had. I've been a plant-strong consumer. I call it plant-strong. I think veganism is just a terrible word. It's off-putting for a lot of people. It sounds like a political cry.  I think it's become very political. Yeah, it's more of a religion, and I think it comes with these negative connotations, but to take a step back, I've been a plant-based consumer for more than 10 years. I grew up playing a lot of sports. So I've always been obsessed with health, nutrition. This idea of you are what you eat, and I ate a lot of chicken. I first stopped playing tennis very seriously, and competitively. I took a look at my diet and was like, wow, I eat far too much meat, far too much chicken. We're told it's the healthiest protein in the world, but is there another solution? So I became obsessed with learning about this knowledge of reducing one's meat intake and the benefits of doing so on your body and your composition and your output, essentially. So I cut out all meat. I went completely cold turkey, forgive the pun, and it was cliche as it sounds. I felt better. I felt like higher energy levels, lost in body weight. I just started to perform better at sport as well. So I became a consumer in the category, like most people enjoying almond milks and oat milks and dairy-free ice creams. And as I stepped into the meat alternative space, I realized they were great. They delivered on taste and texture, some better than others. But what they lacked was this sort of intersection of health and taste. A lot of them had 40, 50 ingredients, didn't really fit within my personal belief of health, which we kind of, you know, we talked about there. And, you know, felt there was an opportunity really to deliver on something that, you know, could appeal to a wider audience of people that care what they eat, look for the ingredient profile, look for the macronutrients, and daring as five ingredients is like for like for chicken. So I really think it has more scale and more ability to reach a wider audience in this market. Were you in Scotland when you had the idea? And then did you know to come to America right away? You guys eat a lot of chicken here in America. Yeah, we do. So you said, OK, here's a macro level, birds-eye view. Let me go to the place that's got chicken. Everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. I think it kind of reflects a little bit about, you know, sort of very audacious and very ambitious, unapologetically so about where I want to take this company. And, you know, to look at the great product, but where's the biggest time, where's the biggest lane that I can really create impact? Sure. So USA became your highway? Yeah, I mean, it was also the catalyst was as we started to raise some capital, there was a lot of influx and opportunities in the US to meet alternative companies, creating massive waves in the industry, raising a ton of money, creating consumer awareness. And I moved over here, actually visited New York for the first time in, must have been September 2019, really to, you know, backpack, bag of my product, wasn't even vacuum sealed, cooking in an office like this and pitched to investors. Fast forward, January of 2020, I moved here on a nest of ESA. When you were pitching, what were you pitching? Like, did you have any sort of the proteins locked in? Did you have the lab you were going to work with? There's a lot of that, right? And they all want to be protective and they all want to make products, but are they going to execute well? Now, we had a minimal viable product. OK, we didn't have the scale we have today. Obviously, we've continued to invest in that. But, you know, the narrative, the vision, the story and the product were in place, but we definitely, you know, overcome a few obstacles since then it's crazy to think it's only two or so years ago. But, you know, that was our first opportunity to put our feet on the ground and the doors were open for us. But I remember just about that time I took a meeting with Sprout Supermarket, their CEO was actually from my hometown.  So we launched the company then and, you know, I literally haven't been back since. Just that's awesome because of the world. But yeah, it's been amazing. Do you consider yourself a good cook? Because when I hear I was cooking for investors, I better be damn sure that the recipe I'm making is at least palatable, if not very delicious. So like what kind of preparation did you have to do ahead of time? Like, did you practice that recipe over and over and over again before you got it? You know, it's an induction hob on the on the table, plug in pan oil and just the product. I think it's even better, right? Exactly. I'm not hiding it behind sauce or a bun or cheese or relish. What's so special about our product? And hopefully, you know, for people that get the opportunity to try it, it's just like chicken. And I think what's exciting is that it's the closest thing to home muscle is as there is on the market. So we we when we pitch what we love to do is do nothing to it other than just cook it in a pan. And it's like there is chicken on the plate. This one happens to be made from plants, has, you know, 90 calories per serving, 14 grams of protein, no fat, no carbohydrate. And that's the wow factor. Everything chicken. I just made the commercial for it. Yeah, exactly. And chicken is really just a vehicle for sauce. I told my wife would say my wife is a house sauce boss. Exactly. And you don't have your favorite chicken recipe, your favorite seasoning. You're we're so disassociated from from the animal part. We really just love the the texture, the taste and the flavor and the sauce it may have.  This is just a protein. And we know I'm going to get a pretty like, you know, good response. Do you have a good investor story? Like, who was your first investor or your favorite, your favorite, like favorite and maybe maybe favorite favorite meeting that maybe went either way. Yeah, no, one of our sort of what I love when I think about investors, I spend a lot of time fundraising over the last 12 months. We've gone through a significant amount of fundraising and a lot of time behind that kind of raising our series A, B and C in a year. The investors that believe in you before it's obvious are obviously the ones that I favor the most. The ones that come on later on the journey when this has been underwritten, bigger checks, whatever, of course, can add tremendous value. But our first investor, other than my father, was a company called Maveron, gentlemen, Dan Levitan. Oh, Dan, partner in the fund. Yeah, consumer investor. I think he has this sort of strategy of non-normal people and non-normal ideas. So I met him at his house in some valley. Same thing, kick for him, pitch to him. What's great about daring is like it's a physical product. You can try it and I think conviction in the people, conviction in the product, conviction in the category. You know, hopefully that idea. We don't have enough data to say this is going to work or it's not. You just have to believe in the vision and the product and hopefully the people behind the company. So he was our first investor. And then we were fortunate enough over the last kind of eight months to bring on some pretty exciting investors. D1, Big H1 out of New York led by a gentleman called Dan Sonheim and most recently Founders Fund. So Peter Thiel obviously being pretty prolific. When you go to these investors, do you find that they ever compare you to the other big names in the plant-based market and how they are currently doing? What are you going to do different? Yeah, like, you know, I think about Beyond Meat. Like a lot of people were like gung-ho on them and impossible foods. Like they've got an upcoming IPO, but Beyond Meat is currently like tanking in the market. Can I give you a pitch for you? This is how it works in my head. In my head, it goes one, you're tackling chicken, two, you're sticking to five ingredients. That's it. Next question. Is that it? Yeah, and that's exactly it. It's like, you know, no one's really looked at chicken. Chicken is a bigger market than beef, so the ceiling is higher. You look at consumer opinion towards plant-based meat. There's a lack of trust in the category. Why? Ingredient, what makes us special? Five ingredients and I think that shows a bigger time. More versatility, velocities are higher. How often do you really want to eat a burger? And that's just maybe that's a silly question. Maybe it's every day, but the reality is, is, you know, how often do you really want to eat a plant-based product between two pieces of bread? Not on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? How often could you potentially daring? And this isn't a sales pitch, but it reality is, every single day, twice a day if you want. So the velocities are higher, the market is bigger. But of course we get comped against the meat alternates of guys. When it comes against like the X and O's of the execution of it. So if it's 2020, I'm thinking like, okay, cool, there's an adoption. We know it. There's noise. We're good with it. But there's a velocity in terms of it's selling, right? And so in some way you're limited to maybe the airwands, the whole foods, the sprouts. And so the higher end market. And so as an investor, like that's the question, right? How do you get into the major market? How do you become like the Toyota? How do you do that? And so for you, I don't know if you're there yet, but like what was the, was it, was it just sampled or just like hitting the ground running again with like educating the market? Honestly, the market has evolved so much. Like this category is being built for us almost, you know, beyond or in, you know, I don't know how many stores and possible in tens of thousands of stores, restaurants also. We're in, we launched into Walmart in December, 4,000 stores. You know, we're close to 7,000 locations today in retail. So this is not an obscure idea anymore. Meal alternatives is not an air wand only or kind of hacky sack, sock wearing, like the category has evolved so much where even when you look at milk alternatives, everyone is selling them. I mean, out here, they don't even have, right? No dairy, no dairy here. I found them come. It's crazy. Yeah. West Hollywood is a very fitting. Exactly. And also it's 2022. We're in LA. I get that. But, you know, even Arkansas and Atlanta, wherever you go, now there's an opportunity where you can pick up a meat alternative on a menu or in a retailer. So we're very fortunate that there's been a ton of capital deployed into the space to create this awareness both from a grocery retail perspective. What makes us different as we look at the next wave and say, OK, the category has been built on taste and texture, but consumers care about health. You know, it's being COVID. Everyone's looked at what they're eating, what they're consuming. And for us, this next wave, what we call this 2.0 next gen is really about better for you as well as delivering on taste and texture. So, you know, very fortunate we have a team now executing on retail, but four skews and just about seven thousand doors right now. And what's the price point?  At the beginning, I assume it was expensive, volume helps, but 100 percent. I mean, our mission is to remove and replace chicken from the food system. The easier part is taste and texture. The hard part is price. We do have the vision of price part to chicken. That's how we create impact. That's how we get to a bigger audience. We average about six nine nine for an eight on serving. I suppose it's still premium compared to the category set. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's not bad. Yeah, compared to chicken, though, we're more expensive. Sure. But again, we're two years in, we have line of sight to continue to drive that down and pass that on to the consumer. So was COVID like jet fuel for you with everyone cooking at home and being like as conscious or I guess health conscious as anyone could have ever been? I think from a consumer demand perspective, yes, we sell frozen retail, but a large part of our business is fit service.  We're on the menu, Seoul House were on the menu. So none of these places were open. None of them wanted to add a new product on the menu. When you think about marketing to the plant curious customers, you said, you know, I've seen your billboards all over town, but is there a specific manner in which you are intending to bridge the gap between those who have been meat eaters all their life, aren't interested in going, you know, plant based full time or whatever.   That's who we talk to. That's who we love. That's where we even try and position ourselves in retailers, like beside chicken where possible. I think a lot of our copy, a lot of our advertising really tries to entice, you know, chicken lovers. And of course, that's the high hanging fruit. That's, you know, the North Star. But the reality is today, a lot of the customers who are buying our product, they're still, are still plant based, plant curious or flexitarian, which is kind of, that's the new term. I like that. Where in LA are you? Just people listening that are local. Where, what stores are you in? Mostly for me. I'm going to go buy some today. Whole Foods, Sprouts, Air One, as we talked about, Wegman, Sprouts, Ralph's, Vaughn's. OK, everywhere. Shameless plug, but store locator on the website thereing.com. But honestly, more than a few hundred, probably a thousand locations within, you know, a couple miles from here. All right. So people listening. So the kid from Scotland moves here 2020, raised over 150 million so far, short time. Where did it come from? And so we kind of talked about this before, right? And so as a kid, you were always an entrepreneur. Yeah. What was that like? Well, you know, where did you do you think it was nature, nurture a little bit of both? Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it's a few things. You know, I'm very inspired by my father. He built a business. I was watching him from a very young age, kind of one person, two people, 10 people, 100 people. And I think you learn a lot when you watch someone, I suppose, as a role model. And I was it was sort of ingrained from a family perspective and seeing my father build a business, hire people, what was important to him, the values in which he sort of had at his company. So he was our first investor and first believer in the company and me and the idea. But, you know, from a very young age, just given the sport background, competitiveness, and there's a lot of relationships between sport and mindset and entrepreneurialism, although entrepreneurialism is a very glorified term. But I was the kind of kid who would take his packed lunch that his mom made for him and sell it in the school. I was always hustling. I was always thinking of ideas and I had this idea, not idea. And it wasn't until I took a step back and said, what do I really have a true, true believe in? Being plant-based, plant-strong for more than 10 years. And I love business. I love building things. So really marrying passion and what I think is my true calling, although it sounds a little bit cliché on this passion of building things and building teams and executing seemed like the right marriage. When it comes to just the country of Scotland, is it? I know a lot about Norway's entrepreneurial culture, which for people listening is basically if you have an idea, you can go ahead and submit it and then the government has to give you a contract to a budding entrepreneurial, which I think is like, takes away the hustle and the grit that's required. And so I think you see some cool things come out of Norway, but nothing anyone could cite right now. Totally. But when it comes to Scotland, what is it? Were you one of many? Were you one of very few? I have a, if this wasn't live, I would say a few other things, and I'm joking, I think I posted on my LinkedIn a few months ago. I applied for a $20,000 grant in a competition in 2019, like bringing money like not that long ago. With the same product we sell today and a great pitch, I know the pitch was nailed and the letter we got back from what is the sort of the main sort of media, main company that give grants or investments into Scottish entrepreneurs was no market for this product. Oh, I love it. Do you still have it? They gave it to, you know, no disrespect, but they gave it to like, you know, some cupcake company. Yeah. Big market, big cupcake. Big market, world changing idea. And again, no disrespect. And I get it, listen, I'm not coming with a garage, like if, you know, if I had said yes, would I have gone, who knows? Like hindsight's a great thing, but it's not really a market that I would, you know, would I ever go back whenever I build a business? They're absolutely not, you know. So you knew to leave. So a lot of people in that would get down on themselves, maybe have to revisit their plan. And you just thought, you like, I have this too. I have this too. Like when I say something to somebody and they don't get it, I just go, oh, I'm talking to the wrong person. Totally. And then I just go, it's like a radio station. I'm like, oh, I don't like that. I'm gonna go. But I don't take it personally. It's super weird. Same, and I think, you know, high conviction in the market and the impact and the product and listen, you're just too early for a lot of people. And that's why I talked about people believing you before it's obvious. Now, like, you know, if I had a dollar every email from the Scottish government to say, come back, build a factory here, build a team here, like we wouldn't need to raise any money ever again. But these things just make you better and stronger. And, you know, thousands of no's. We've all heard the stories that, the Howard Schultz of the world and so on. But it's definitely not a place that I would say is flush with opportunity. Do you have it in you or desire to fix that? Like, will you ever have like your own? No. Go back and change. No. No, no, no. It's not, again, I don't want this to come across like I have a garage because I certainly don't. Your visa's good. Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not allowed back in. Listen, Scotland was built on export beef. And it's not built on that. But Scotch beef industry is a billion dollar business. Salmon, Scotch salmon, and whiskey. What I do is a little bit still obscure there. Could be the best export ever. Exactly. No, it's different. So the market is there. And my ambition, no, we've got a lot of work to do here in the US. Yeah. No time, no time to sit. I mean, leaving your home country for really a country that you'd never really known before. Yeah, it's never been, it's not easy. It's not easy to do. It's certainly, for a lot of people, their family might have some hesitation. But with your dad being an entrepreneur himself, did he have an inherent understanding of why you needed to leave Scotland?  Yeah. That's interesting. It's like he bought you the plane ticket and he's like, go.  They visited me a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a few years. I'm very fortunate. I think my mom was a nurse growing up, so. Caring. Yeah.  You know, I think my mom had seen my father, you know, build a business and gone through the ups and downs. So I think for her success was more, you know, a real job. My sister's our lawyer. My other sister works in, you know, marketing and HR. You know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Perfect Life. And this son who wants to make fake chicken and move to America with very little money, you know, is that really what I want for him? Who knows? But, you know, again, I understand, you know, your parents just wanted the best for you. My father was go get them, like come back, let's go. And I'm sure my mom probably wanted me to, you know, get in the seat and get a quote unquote real job, which we've all had the experience. I don't want to sound like I'm the only one. That's the family pressures. And this wasn't my first idea. So I had ideas. I'd not really executed on it.  But yeah, definitely felt some pressure to make sure that we build, you know, we build something real this time. At what moment of your journey did you have like a good night's sleep? Like you moved to America. I used to my eyes. Right, you got some investors. The early investors are coming in. And so you have belief that sort of fills the tank a little bit. But then it's also like at what point were the sales was like the indicator there that you're like, okay, we have runway. We are on the tarmac officially. I think just to answer that in a kind of roundabout manner, I think a lot of entrepreneurs mistake raising money and building a great business. Yeah, all the time. Most of them are just chasing the Forbes article, frankly. Exactly. I think, you know, there's so much money in the private markets now to raise a series is, it's not that hard if you have a great product. Right. Funds are going earlier and earlier. Spacks are coming in. Yeah, so like, the only thing that really matters, it's all noise unless you're building a great business. For me, when I started to attract great talent, I started to realize like this is real. People that we shouldn't have been able to attract to the company just given our size and where we were, like great, great heads of department from product and marketing and HR. I was like, okay, we're building something real. Raising money like fine, like we have some money. We have some runway. We can extend it. But when I'm able to hire a VP of finance from a company that like we just shouldn't be able to like, okay, like this is time, it's time. And then, you know, when you start to, of course, you know, a lot of our businesses selling into grocery retail, when the retailers start to recognize you and work with you, rather than just send your proposal, we'll take a meeting when it's the right time. Now, listen, a lot of this is macro, big companies going public, raising money. Employees want to be part of that. We have the ownership. Everyone in our company has ownership. So it's probably a little bit of both way, but definitely when we were able to track talent. That's such a good answer. This is how I actually view industries, like the marijuana industry. It's like once I see the right people moving into that industry, that's how we know it's poised for acquisitions or it's just the sophistication is gonna go off the charts. But some markets, like the marijuana weed industry, it took a long time. It took like 10 years for them to attract that talent. For obviously it was regulations and stuff like that and taboo. But that's such a good answer. Yeah, I think we're just being underwritten by great people who have seen greatness before, both from an investor perspective and from a personnel perspective. Like I want to go and take my excellence and put it towards a company that is still very obscure and isn't obvious or is still going through like phase one of growth and when I could be at any other company I want to. Was there a moment where you had so attractions good, stores are good, the velocity is good and then at some point it's like we hit this wall and we're like, crap, what's next? Was it like Walmart as an example? Like getting in, so that's a hurdle you had to clear at some point.  No, not yet. Not yet? No, I always say this, we're just getting started and a couple years in, how do you really build a business that is where we want to go, there's more product, there's more velocity and there's more distribution. Food service, restaurant, industry is really a big focus for us this year continuing to execute on probably 1,000 locations, there's, if you think about just LA alone or New York or Miami or Florida or Austin there's thousands of locations we should be in and national chains, so big rollouts and hotel groups and universities and non-commercial business. So the possibility is just for their current product there's enough to build up two, three, 400 million to all business. That's such a good answer for investors too because it's always like, what else are you gonna do? Like the testers always want to know like what are the products you're gonna bring and your argument is you don't need to. We're still early. No, we're a laser like, I mean our mission is what I said. It's chicken, the place chicken, yeah. And you know, 100 pounds per person per year in this country. Just chicken, not beef in total, wow. Eight billion chickens a year. So if you take a step back and you think about how do I execute on the mission you create great product that delivers the taste, the texture, the health of chicken in the categories where chicken is. Chicken is consumed in 65 billion of it in the fresh aisle and retailers and the rest in food service. Like that's our only focus. And I'm a, I think a big believer in doing something very, very, very well. Just doing a few things very well. Two channels, couple products and like get your head down and execute.  I don't know. Who knows. I think they're coming. I think they're coming.  Nice. We got a few phone calls. Yeah. Well, how do you view lab grown meat? Cause like with the way I see it, plant-based meat is already out. It's already in mass production and it's got a leg up on any kind of competition in terms of replacing meat consumption in the US. When I see lab grown meat, I see that is maybe more of a tangible product for like someone who's been a meat eater all their life to try. But I also see it as lagging way behind and also way more expensive right now and the technology just isn't there. Yeah, obviously being just a massive fan of all innovation in space. I think for me, I haven't been fortunate enough to try and lately I think what matters to consumers the most is taste, texture and price. And if it can deliver on taste and texture, the next most important variable will be price and we're seeing price sensitivity in the market. How expensive is it compared to chicken? You're always gonna get benchmarked against chicken. If you go out there and say, I wanna go after chicken, great. It tastes like chicken, I get it. But it's three, four times the price that's going to be hard to really break into mass impact. But again, anything other than real animal or real animal derived products is of course our mission too. So I'm excited to see evolve. I think we're a few years away for sure and there's a lot of capital and a lot of innovation happening. But I think customer trust is gonna be super important. We've all said, is plant-based really good for you? Our meat alternative is really good for you. It's gonna take a lot of education, a lot of capital to educate consumers into sale-based meat. What is it? How do you make it? And then of course building the infrastructure to have scale. That's gonna be the other most important factor. Those things seem linear though. All right, so 2022, the Super Bowls in LA, is there a Super Bowl commercial? Maybe featuring Kev Newton. No, I think we are doing a few things at the Super Bowl, no commercial this year. We're doing a party with Hwood and Drake. That should be super fun. I think there's gonna be a time and a place to really build a trigger and as we get money is really well spent when you have the distribution. Yeah, that's so true, the ROI is clearer. Exactly, clearer. When I see your investor list, and I see all these superstar athletes like Cam Newton and Naomi Osaka, I see it as a perfect pairing between athletic performance the way it is now. Everyone at a super high level is worried about nutrition and how to make their bodies as a perfect athletic machine. Whereas, I feel like in the past decades there hasn't been as much emphasis on nutrition but we've really turned the page nowadays.   No, I mean, I definitely don't have FOMO. If I had gone plant-based earlier, would I be Roger Federer? Probably not. Come on, man. No, I don't. Come on. But I think access to information, there's so much information right now and there's so much data to show that a plant-based diet or a plant-forward diet can have benefits, one's performance, recovery rates.  Lewis Hamilton, probably one of the best athletes in the world, a plant-based athlete. And all of these athletes performing at a high level, not just for marketing dollars, but because that's how they feel they can best create performance. So I think the market's kind of doing it for us. And as you look at, again, I want to be plant-forward or I want to eat Palm Beach products for my health, my weight or whatever, that 85% of consumers step into this category for health reasons. We still live in a very selfish world. And when you're faced with products that are 40, 50, 60 ingredients. That's always my problem. That's the problem. So our opportunity is pretty obvious. It's chicken, it's five ingredients, 90 calories for serving. So listen, I don't think so, but I am a massive advocate for a plant-forward diet. Clearly, it's the reason I wake up in the morning. But our job is to just allow more consumers to step into the category. There's a bit of a barrier right now and it needs to be broken with better, healthier products. When it comes to crypto, NFT, anything you guys are doing in that space? Not right now. You know, I'm a follower for it and we talked a little bit about it. Obviously, I think that market is, there's so much opportunity for sure. But who knows, maybe there's a collaboration one day and maybe there's opportunities for sure, but I'll need to get your advice on that. What would it look like? What would it look like? What would it look like? I don't know, I was just thinking like what do you, because the physical space isn't really something you guys have. It could be something maybe at your office. Maybe they get invited to exclusive parties, something like that, which would be pretty cool. It connects the brand to something unique in that way. Exclusive drops, products. Yeah, products, but mostly, it's a function of like what would the art be? You could almost make something like, for every NFT we create, we've saved a hundred thousand chickens or a million chickens this year and whatever. Yeah, I know. And so there's an interesting angle there and then partnering with like local artists or cool artists. Yeah, no, no, no. And stuff that'll do interesting things. It's more of, honestly, it's really just a community building platform. I think people that see the JPEG, they have it wrong. It's really just can these groups build communities through the art? And it's really like, the way I view it, it's like startups, except it happens in, it happens instantly. And so imagine if all of your investors had a Discord or a Slack channel to you and your whole team in real time and you would share your whole roadmap for 2022, 2023. And then every once a week, you would do like what they call an AMA, which is a live meeting about your updates. Imagine if you did that, right? In startup world, that happens quarterly basis, maybe annually, depends on how you set things up. But in the NFT world, it's happening daily and weekly. And so what I think people don't realize is a lot of the people that are investing in NFTs, a lot of the younger people, they're really becoming super savvy startup investors without even recognizing it. And I think for one of their NFTs that might take off and maybe they make $400,000, a million dollars, whatever it might be, they're gonna transition to moving that money into their own startup or investing in their friends that they saw create cool stuff because there's belief. 100%. It's pretty amazing and crazy because you also see people lose quickly, which is part of it. That's not- 100%. If you put your life savings into it, you're gonna have a bad day. But if you understand like you're gonna be wrong most of the time, then it's an education. And when you're right, it'll be fine. Yeah, it will be. You just got to start yourself with good people. There's a lot of information out there. Oh, tons of noise. Tons of noise. Tons of marketing, tons of crash grabs. Exactly, like who do you follow, who do you trust? And I think it will be interesting to you. But there's an idea for us for sure to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna need your advice. Well listen, tell everyone where they can find you. Obviously all your socials, I'm gonna go to the store after this and get some. My in-laws are vegan and Natalia and I are just always like, we basically try it, my wife and I, we try not to eat meat all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like four days a week, we won't do it. Flexitarian. Flexitarian, yeah. Big business if I can make you switch once a week. But even in that, it's like, I didn't even know it was five ingredients. Yeah. Which sounds crazy to me. And we started. And I did research. And so I'm like, how did I miss that five ingredient thing? No, we need to push style a little bit harder. I think we've been- 100%. We've been, it's the drop the mic moment, honestly. It is. It's in all of our sales materials. I'm convinced right there. That was it for me. Five ingredients, don't mind. Got my job. No, anywhere, pretty much every retailer now, that's the exciting part is I posted it the other day is like launching into 4,000 retailers, 5,000 retailers, 6,000. It's great, but it's unbelievable now that pretty much everyone in the country can buy our product via Instacart or GoPuff or any other platform that you may be able to get instant delivery or visit your local supermarket. Like how great is that for the mission? Right. Yeah, I mean, socials, Ross and Kai on LinkedIn, that's kind of my, other than that, I am Ross and Kai on Instagram, so. The king of Scotland. The king of Scotland, yeah. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for joining us, brother. Yeah. Pleasure having you on the show. The Star of the Storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexu Jameson, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is composed by DoubleTouch. I think it's safe to assume that if you've made it this far, you've enjoyed the show. So consider subscribing if you're not already, or better yet, leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's one of the best and easiest ways you can support us. Our handle for all of the social media platforms is at Star of the Storefront. You can always go back and listen to any of our other episodes available wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, starofthestorefront.com. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.


The Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs is reporting a continued decline in active cases associated with the fourth wave of the COVID pandemic in St. Lucia. Active cases at October 28, 2021 had dropped to 350 cases. The ministry is also noting a steady decline in the rate of transmission. Minister for Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, Hon. Jabatist says the improved outlook has led to the face-to-face opening of school. Hon. Jabatist, however, says St. Lucia is still at a critical stage in its fight against the fourth wave of COVID. As the festive season approaches, Hon. Jabatist is imporing the public not to let its guard down. We are not unmindful of the desire of all St. Lucians, especially our business persons, to get a little relief from the protocols. Every meeting of the COVID-19 Management Centre and the Cabinet is dominated by discussions about how we might do this. And every discussion ends with the painful conclusion that premature relief would lead to long-term damage to our society and our economy. There is consensus, however, that going forward, we should provide as much predictability in the protocols as is possible to allow our citizens and business persons to plan their affairs. In that regard, the COVID-19 Management Centre and the Cabinet of Ministers have decided on new protocols for the month of November rather than a two-week period. The protocols will commence on Monday, November 1, 2021 and end on Tuesday, November 30, 2021. The hours of confinement have been adjusted from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. weekdays to 10 p.m. ending at 4 a.m. Mondays to Fridays. Confinement on weekends will be as follows. On Saturday, November 6 and Saturday, November 13, 2021, confinement will start at 10 p.m. and end at 4 a.m. on the following Monday. On Sunday, November 21 and Sunday, November 28, 2021, confinement will start from 1 p.m. each day until 4 a.m. the following Monday. I repeat, on Sunday, November 21 and Sunday, November 28, 2021, confinement will start from 1 p.m. each day until 4 a.m. the following Monday. On Sunday, November 7 and Sunday, November 14, a person may attend a religious ceremony during confinement but must return to his or her residence by 1 p.m. on that day. Four, a person may host or attend a social event with 50 or less fully vaccinated persons. An application must be made. Two, an approval must be granted by the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs. Five, religious ceremonies are allowed based on the square footage of the organization in keeping with approved COVID-19 response plan. Special religious rites, including weddings, baptisms and funerals, are permitted with 100 or less persons. Six, an approved bar with a valid liquor license is permitted to operate from 10 a.m. until closure of business to fully vaccinated persons only. Dining services at approved restaurants and food establishments are allowed to fully vaccinated patrons only. Take away, grab and go and delivery services will be permitted at other establishments. All educational institutions may open for face-to-face engagement to facilitate structured supervision from November 8, 2021. The Ministry of Education's Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training will communicate the confirmed dates to the public. Minister Jabati says officials will continue to monitor the trends during this period and the protocols will be reviewed in relation to the festive season in December.


Hello and welcome to the session. My name is Mansi and I'm going to help you with the following question. The question says find the derivative of the following functions. The first one is sin x cos x. So let's start with the solution to this question. First of all in this question we use product rule that says that d by dx of fx into gx is equal to d by dx of fx into gx plus fx into d by dx of gx. So now we put fx to be equal to sin x and gx to be equal to cos x. By doing this we get d by dx of sin x cos x is equal to d by dx of sin x into cos x plus sin x into d by dx of cos x which is equal to now derivative with respect to x of sin x is cos x into cos x plus sin x into d by dx of cos x that is minus sin x. So we have cos square x minus sin square x and this is the identity for cos 2x because cos square x minus sin square x is cos 2x. So our answer to this question is cos 2x. I hope that you understood the question and enjoyed the session. Have a good day.


A very good evening to all our friends and welcome to the Hindu News Analysis of Shankar IAS Academy for the date 23rd October 2020. The list of the news articles along with the page numbers of five different editions is given here for your reference. Also the handwritten notes in the PDF format and timestampings for all the news articles taken up for today's discussion is given in the description box and also in the comment section for the best interest of the viewers. Let us now begin our news analysis. Let us take up this lead column from the editorial page which talks about the Indo-US relations in the backdrop of the US presidential elections. Here we will try to quickly grasp some important points in some point of view. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference, please go through it. See this article is written in the context of the upcoming visit of US Secretary of State Mike Pompo to India. This time Mr. Pompo is coming exactly a week before the election. And this is to ensure that India makes a strong public strategic commitment to the US on its plans in the Indo-Pacific region so that the current administration in the US will be benefited in the presidential election. If we go back to 2016, a similar incident happened then. In August 2016, just months before the US presidential elections, the then US Secretary of State John Kerry urged India to sign the Paris climate deal at the earliest. The US also committed to mobilise 100 billion US dollars per year by 2020 as part of the Green Climate Fund and know that the Green Climate Fund is to help developing countries such as India with climate adaptation methods and renewable technologies. And the ratification of the Paris Agreement was the then US President Barack Obama's legacy project. And Obama wanted India to join Paris climate deal before the election day in order to help Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton with her campaign against the Republican nominee Donald Trump. And Donald Trump was against the Paris deal. And consequently, India ratified the climate deal before the election. But to the surprise of India, Donald Trump became the President of the United States of America. And not just that, he announced that the US would exit the Paris Agreement and also revoke the US promises towards the Green Climate Fund. So India, which expected the support of US in implementing the Paris deal, got nothing with change in the government in the US. And in 2016, it was the Paris climate deal, and now it is about how to contain China. This year, the Indo-US discussions are mostly about the Chinese aggression at the line of actual control and the Indo-Pacific region. As of now, China poses a major challenge on each of India's three friends. And they are at the line of actual control and in the maritime sphere and also in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, i.e. Sark Region, surrounding India. On the maritime sphere, for the first time, Australia is going to participate in the Malabar exercise. And know that in the Malabar exercise, the entire Quad grouping will be participating next month in Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. See, Malabar exercise was started as a bilateral exercise between the navies of India and the United States in the year 1992. And Japan joined as a permanent partner in the Malabar exercise in 2007. So until last year, it was a trilateral naval exercise between India, US and Japan. Australia is not a part of Malabar exercise till now, and it is important to know that Australia has been wanting to join this group, but India has refused its admission due to Chinese concerns. But this year, Australia has been invited to Malabar exercise. And the United States is also pushing India to complete the last of the foundational agreements with the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation i.e. BECA. BECA allows India and the US to share geospatial and satellite data, such as the topographical, nautical and aeronautical data with each other. But India and the US have differences over the issue of reciprocity in exchange of geospatial information. It means there is an issue over mutual exchange of geospatial information. In the SARC region, Mr. Pompao is also visiting Maldives and Sri Lanka. In Maldives, the US has already announced a defence agreement that will pay with for strategic dialogue. Previously, India used to object US making a defence pact with Maldives. But this time, India has not objected to ceding space in its area of influence in the Indian Ocean region, because it will allow the US to counter Chinese influence there. And with Sri Lanka too, the US has a pending defence agreement. But more importantly, discussions will be on the grant of about 480 million US dollars. This is meant to offer alternatives to the Sri Lanka and not to depend on China. This also comes at a very important time as India is delaying Sri Lanka's request for debt relief given our own economic constraints. Finally, how the US and India can collaborate on dealing with India's most immediate continental challenge from China, that is in the line of actual control. Though many times India has maintained that India and China will resolve border tensions bilaterally, India may change its stand considering China's continued border provocations. While the Indian Army will defend its borders with China on its own, there is much that the US could promise apart from enhancing and expediting US defence sales to India. For example, US can pressurise on Pakistan on terrorism. A strong US statement in this regard may also disperse the pressure the Indian military faces in planning for a two-friend conflict with China. And not just that, India should also exert pressure on Pompeo to resolve trade issues and also to restore the generalised system of preferences status to India. The government could also press for more cooperation on 5G technology sharing or an assurance that S-400 missile system purchase from Russia will receive an exemption from the US countering America's adversary through sanctions act sanctions. That is, CATSA sanctions. See, CATSA stands for countering America's adversaries through sanctions act. Primarily, this act deals with countering three countries which are Iran, Russian Federation and North Korea. With respect to Russia, sanctions will be imposed on the foreign entity that engages into significant transactions with the Russian defence or intelligence sector. So India wants exemption from CATSA for its purchase of S-400 from Russia. So it seems that the arrival of Mr. Pompeo in the coming week may benefit India. But we should not forget what happened in 2016 election where the promises were not kept when Trump got elected. So this time the author cautions that India should bargain well and should secure proper promises from the US. And this time if Joe Biden wins the election, India had nothing to have a friendly attitude with this person. Not just that, our PM had made strong statements of solidarity with Trump policy. So a change in the government may affect all the promises made by the current government. So India should be cautious in making strong commitments to support Trump in the upcoming US presidential election. So this is all about this editorial. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now we have this news article which talks about a compensation which was awarded by the State Information Commission of Tamil Nadu to a woman whose petition under the Right to Information Act was rejected. So in this context, let us discuss some of the basic provisions of the Right to Information Act 2005. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. First of all, what is right to information? See, Justice P. N. Bhagavati, the former chief judges of India, once said, where a society has chosen to accept democracy as its cradle faith, it is elementary that the citizens ought to know what their government is doing. So right to information is an act of the parliament of India to provide for setting out the practical regime of the right to information for its citizens. It replaced the erstwhile freedom of information act of 2002. Now under this RTA Act, any citizen of India may request information from a public authority which is required to reply expeditiously or within 30 days. The act also requires every public authority to computerize its records for wide dissemination so that the citizens need minimum request to request for information formally. An estimate tells that every day over 4800 RTA applications are filed. Now this shows the importance of this act. Now let us see some of the important provisions of the act. See section 2f defines what an information is. It includes any material in any form such as records, documents, memos, emails, opinions, advice, then data held in electronic form and information related to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force. Now section 2h defines a public authority. It means any authority or body or institution of self-government established under the constitution or by any other law made by the parliament or the state legislature or under an order made by the appropriate government. Know that the public authority also includes a body including a non-governmental organization substantially financed by the government. Under this act all citizens shall have the right to information. And section 4 close to is very important. It says that every public authority shall constantly endeavour to provide information suomoto or by its own to the public authority at regular intervals through various means of communications including internet. This will ensure that the public have minimum resort to the use of this act to obtain information. Know that section 8 of the act deals with exemption from disclosure of the information. It gives a number of cases in which the authority may refuse to give information. For example, if the disclosure of such information would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, then security, strategic, scientific or economic interest of the state or its relation with the foreign state or if it leads to incitement of an offense. Another case is when the publication of such information is forbidden by the court. If the disclosure can cause a breach of privilege of parliament or the state legislature, then also the authorities may refuse. It is also to be noted that the act empowered the center to constitute a center information commission and each state to form state information commission. We will discuss about their composition powers etc in the coming days. Now finally, let us see section 19 of the RTI Act to understand today's article. See section 19 deals with appeal. It enables any person who has not received the sought information in time or is aggrieved by a decision of the central public information officer or the state public information officer to appeal a senior rant officer. In such case, the central information commission or the state information commission has the power to require the public authority to compensate the complainant for any loss or other detriment suffered or it can also impose penalties. So using this provision only, the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission awarded compensation to the woman. So in this discussion, we saw some of the important provisions relating to the Right to Information Act of 2005. With this, we will move on to the next news. Now this news article talks about the recent cyber attack that has happened in India's leading pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy's Laboratories which is based in Hyderabad. A few days back, this company received the approval of the Drug Controller General of India to conduct phase two and phase three human clinical trial for sputnik-5 vaccine which has been developed by Russia. If the trials are successful and if the vaccines are registered by the regulatory authorities, then the vaccines would be available by the end of the year. Hence, the cyber attack on this Indian pharmaceutical company is crucial from security perspective. But there is no source to know what kind of a cyber attack has actually happened to this company. So in the context of this news article, let us try to know about some common types of cyber attacks and the law in India that deals with cyber security. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. First, coming to the cyber threats, these are some types of cyber threats. It includes backdoors, formjacking, cryptojacking, distributed denial-of-service attacks, DNS poisoning attacks and malware. Here, backdoor is a type of cyber threat that allows remote access to computers or systems without the user's knowledge. Next, formjacking is a process of inserting malicious JavaScript code into online payment forms in order to harvest consumers or customers' card details. Next is cryptojacking which is a malicious installation of cryptocurrency mining or crypto mining software. This software illicitly uses the victim's processing power to mine for cryptocurrency. Next one is DDOS or Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. See, it is an attempt to disrupt normal web traffic. It takes the targeted websites offline by flooding systems, servers or networks with more requests than they can handle causing them to crash. Next one is DNS poisoning attacks that is domain name system attacks which compromises the DNS to redirect traffic to malicious sites. Here, know that the affected sites are not hacked themselves. Now, next, malware is a broad term used to describe any file or program that is intended to harm or disrupt a computer. This includes botnet software, ransomware attacks, trojans, remote access trojans, spywares, virus and also worms. So, these are some of the cyber threats. Some of the common cyber attacks include malware attacks such as the ransomware attack, trojan, virus, worms, phishing attacks etc. Here, a trojan is a type of malware that discusses itself as legitimate software but performs malicious activity when executed.  Viruses can replicate and spread to other computers by attaching themselves to other computer files. And know that worms are like viruses in that they are self-replicating. However, they do not need to attach themselves to another program to do so. Next, phishing is a method of social engineering which is used to trick people into divulging sensitive or confidential information often via email. They are not always easy to distinguish from genuine messages and such phishing scams can inflict enormous damage on organizations. So, these are some of the common cyber attacks. Now, let us see the legislation that deals with cyber security in India. And know that it is the Information Technology Act of 2000. As per the Act, cyber security means protecting information, equipment, devices, computer, computer resource, communication device and information stored therein from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction. Also, as per the Act, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or Indian CERT, serves as the national agency for performing the following functions in the area of cyber security. See, it includes collection analysis and dissemination of information on cyber incidents, forecast and alerts of cyber security incidents, emergency measures for handling cyber security incidents, coordination of cyber incident response activities. Then it also issues guidelines, advisories, vulnerability notes and white papers relating to information security practices, procedures, prevention, response and reporting of cyber incidents. And it also deals with such other functions relating to cyber security as may be prescribed. Also, certain cyber security threats such as tampering with the computer source documents, dishonestly receiving the stall and computer resource or communication device, cyber terrorism, have all been designated as offenses under this Act. Now, we will see the punishments under the Act which are related to cyber security offenses. See, tampering with computer source documents are punishable with imprisonment up to 3 years or with a fine which may extend up to 2 lakh rupees or with both imprisonment and fine. Now, dishonestly receiving stall and computer resource or communication device is punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 3 years or with a fine which may extend to 1 lakh rupees or with both.  So, these are some of the important information related to cyber security. In this discussion, we saw about some of the common types of cyber threats like backdoors, formjacking, cryptojacking, distributed denial of service attacks, DNS poisoning attacks, malware attacks, etc. And we also saw about the important provisions of India's cyber security legislation which is the Information Technology Act of 2000. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now, have a look at this question. It is framed based on this news article. The news is that the Labour and Employment Ministry revised the base year of the Consumer Price Index for industrial workers that is CPI-IW from 2001 to 2016. And this is to reflect the changing consumption pattern while giving more weightage to spending on health, education and recreation and also on other miscellaneous expenses while reducing the weightage of food and beverages. So, in this context, let us discuss about Consumer Price Index and particularly about the Consumer Price Index for industrial workers. See, CPI is a measure for retail inflation rate. It means it is the measure of increase of the prices experienced at retail shops. This gives the actual reflection of the price rise in the country. So, we can define CPI as a measure of change in retail prices of goods and services consumed by defined population group in a given area with reference to a base year. See, what is a base year? See, base year is the year in which an index is set to 100. While computing macroeconomic numbers such as inflation or economic growth rates, indices are used to monitor prices. The statistical agencies of the government will choose a basket of goods and set the value of this basket to 100 for a chosen base year. And each time the inflation is measured, the prices of the chosen goods are taken and the current index value is computed and compared with the base value. Assume that the price of a basket of goods was 1 lakh rupees in the base year and it was set to an index value of 100. The next year, if the basket cost is rupees 1 lakh 10000 or 1.1 lakh rupees, the index equivalent would be 110. The inflation rate will be computed by comparing 110 which is today's value to the base value that is 100 resulting in a 10% increase. So, this is how base year is used and as we know the choices of consumption and purchasing power is not the same for the entire Indian population. So, different CPIs are calculated for different population groups. They are the CPI for industrial workers then for agricultural labor and for the rural labor etc. And for this CPI IW that is for industrial workers, the base year has been revised to 2016. Now, let us discuss about the CPI for industrial workers. See, it measures the extent of change in the retail prices of goods and services concerned by the industrial workers. The dearness allowance of the government employees, wage contract between labor and employer and the revision of pay scale by pay commission are based on CPI industrial worker. And we should know that it is also used to revise minimum wages in the scheduled employment. CPI IW is compiled and released by the Labor Bureau which is an attached office in the Ministry of Labor. And as you can see here, more weightage has been given to spending on health, education, recreation and other miscellaneous expenses while reducing the weightage of food and beverages. See here we should know that the reduction in weightage to spending on food and beverages indicates an increase in disposable income. So, in this discussion we show about the consumer price index, in detail about consumer price index for industrial workers and how base year is used. So, this is all about the discussion of this news article. Now, see this question. See, it is a three statements base question. We have to choose the correct statement or statements from these given statements. Which of the following statements are correct with reference to the consumer price index for industrial workers? The first statement reads, food and beverages has the highest weightage among the items used to calculate CPI IW. Yes, this statement is correct. Now, the second statement reads, the base year to calculate CPI IW is 2011-12. Now, this statement is wrong. As we have discussed now, the CPI IW base year has been revised to 2016. Now, the third statement reads, it is compiled and released by the Labor Bureau, Ministry of Labor and Employment. Yes, this statement is also correct. So, here the correct answer is option C one and three only. With this, we will move on to the next news. Now, see this question. It is framed based on these two news articles which talk about some of the important developments in India's defense sector. The first article says that INS Kavarathi has been inducted into the Indian Navy. Know that INS Kavarathi is the last of the four indigenously designed and built anti-submarine warfare stealth corvette. It was built under the Project 28 Kamurtha class which was launched by the Indian Navy. Along with INS Kamurtha, INS Kadimath and INS Kiltan, INS Kavarathi will form a major part of the eastern fleet of the Indian Navy. See, all the four corvettes were indigenously designed by the Indian Navy's in-house organization that is the directorate of naval design and they are constructed by the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited based in Kolkata. See, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited is a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defense. Now, coming to INS Kavarathi, it is named after the capital of Lakshadhi violence. It has been constructed using high grade DMR 249 A steel produced in India. It spans 109 meters in length, 14 meters in breadth and has a displacement of 3,300 tons. So, it can be rightly regarded as one of the most potent anti-submarine warships to have been constructed in India. The ship's advanced stealth features make her less susceptible to any detection by the enemy. The unique feature of this ship is the high level of indigenization incorporated in the production accentuating our national objective of Atmanirbar Bharat. The ship has state-of-the-art equipments and systems to fight nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare conditions. It also boasts advanced automation systems such as total atmospheric control system, then integrated platform management system, integrated bridge system, then battle damage control system, and also personal locator system. Now, let us discuss about the second article which says that the defense research and development organization has carried out the final user trial of NAG missile and now it will enter into production phase. See, NAG is a fire and forget third-generation anti-tank guided missile. It is known for its attack capabilities and can effectively engage and destroy all non-enemy tanks during both day and night operations. See, NAG can be launched from land by using the NAG missile carrier or NAMICA and the helicopter-launched configuration is designated as helicopter-launched NAG or Helina and know that NAG has a minimum range of 500 meters and maximum range of 4 kilometers. And also know that NAG is one of the five strategic missiles planned to be developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program or IGMDP. The program was started in 1983 by the Missileman of India, that is Dr. A.P.J. Abdul-Kala and see integrated guided missile development program was sanctioned to develop Prathvi, Trishur, Akash, NAG, and Agni missiles. Now, see this question. The term Project-28 Kamurtha class, often seen in news is related to, here the correct answer is option D. It is the project under which four anti-submarine warships have to be built indigenously in India. So, with this we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles. Now, let us move on to the Practice Questions Discussion section. Now, see this first question. Consider the following statements. India and the US have recently signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation. See, this statement is wrong. In our discussion, we saw that India and US are having differences over the issue of reciprocity in the exchange of geospatial information. So, the first statement is wrong and the second statement reads, BECA allows India and US to share geospatial and satellite data, such as topographical, nautical, and aeronautical data with each other. Yes, this statement is correct. So, in this question, we have to identify the correct statement or statements from these given statements. Statement one is incorrect and statement two is correct. So, the correct answer is option B, two only. Now, the second question is with reference to Right to Information Act, 2005. Under the Right to Information Act of 2005, the public authority may refuse to give information. Here we have four options. The first option reads, if the disclosure of such information would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India. The second option reads, if the disclosure of information would cause a breach of privilege of parliament. And the third option reads, if the information includes commercial confidence and trade secrets when disclosed would harm the competitive position of a third party. Yes, all the three options are correct. See, as per the RTI Act, the conditions where a public authority may refuse to give information is given here for your reference, please go through it. So, the correct answer is D, all of their bow. Now, the third question is with reference to cyber attacks. Consider the following statements. A Trojan is a type of malware that disguises itself as legitimate software but performs malicious activity when executed. Yes, this statement is correct. The second statement reads, phishing is a method of social engineering used to trick people into divulging sensitive or confidential information often via email. Yes, this statement is also correct. Here both statements are correct and we have to identify the correct statement or statements. So, the correct answer is option C, both one and two. So, friends, with this, we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the discussion of practice questions. If you like this video, please press the like button, comment, share and do subscribe to Shankara IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service preparation. Thank you.