Let us know in the comments Mentor Talks is a virtual series that features exchange program alumni sharing their stories, mentorship, and advice This is your opportunity to connect with these leaders and mentors Like our guest today, Nina Jankowicz, of a Disinformation Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Nina studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe She's the author of How to Lose the Information War, Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict And her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others She's also a frequent television and radio commentator on disinformation And a prolific poster on social media about disinfo and other topics Before we get into conversation with our guest, we want to hear from you, our online viewers What would you like to ask Nina? Post your questions in the comments Now let's talk to our guest Nina, welcome and thank you for taking the time to join us on Mentor Talks Thanks for having me Asha You're welcome Before we get to questions from our audience, we'd like to know What led you to apply for a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellowship? And how did your experience impact your career? Well, I had been working at the National Democratic Institute for several years on Russia and Belarus programs in the Eurasia team And a short time into my time at NDI The Euromaidan Revolution happened in Ukraine It began the revolution of dignity, the change of government that came after that And Ukraine's increased commitment to democratization began And I really wanted to get out into the field I wanted to really make an impact as much as I could And the Fulbright Public Policy program really seemed like a great opportunity to do that I kind of applied on a whim, I found out about it just a couple of days before the application deadline And had to work really hard to bring my application together But it was truly one of the most important experiences of my life Being able to really understand the realities on the ground in Ukraine For such a long period of time to work as an embedded advisor In the foreign ministry of Ukraine And to understand the realities of disinformation And that experience led me not only to conceive the idea for my book But also has just really created such important connections between me and Ukraine And my colleagues there I think those are going to be connections that I have for the rest of my life Which of course is the point of the Fulbright program To build mutual understanding And at that point in Ukrainian and US relations As we were undergoing a change in the US administration As Ukraine was in a sort of precarious political situation I think we really learned a lot from each other That's great And I just want to follow up on something What are the realities of disinformation? Well, for instance, I worked with the spokesperson Who had a pretty robust presence on Twitter She did regular briefings for the Ukrainian language news media And was interfacing with international journalists on a regular basis And given that Ukraine is at war And is resource strapped compared to its adversary Russia Which of course illegally annexed Crimea And has been funding and fomenting conflict in Ukraine's Donbas region It was really an uneven playing field And my boss, Mariana Betza, the spokesperson On a daily basis was just dealing with the influx Of disinformation coming from Russia And attempting to set the record straight To proactively put out a narrative that was the truth It wasn't a story It was the realities of what were going on on the ground Out the front line of what the ministry was trying to achieve And she often dealt with a lot of abuse Coming from Russian trolls Coming from some folks who experts call useful idiots Who support the Russian narrative And we tried to get through that together And to use what limited resources the ministry had Again, to advance the truth And it was a difficult, difficult job But also I think we realized in that year working together Certainly it was a big revelation for me That we can't fact check our way out of a crisis of truth and trust There needs to be a compelling narrative put forward But it also depends on governance When people are vulnerable to these narratives There's a reason They might not be seeing the response that they need from their government They might not be feeling like their voices are heard So some of that was outside of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs purview And that really led to my belief that we need to invest Not only in teaching people how to navigate today's information environment But also investing in the things that our adversaries exploit These fissures in our society that leave us more vulnerable to disinformation It's not just about pushing back, fact checking About playing what I call whack-a-troll It's also about looking inward and repairing the fissures that our adversaries exploit Thank you, Nina And yes, speaking of looking inward You've testified several times before Congress on disinformation And its effect on democracy What do you think are a few ways we can win the war on information? Well, one of the things that I always repeat in my testimonies before Congress Is that we need to invest in our people So I've mentioned media and information literacy already I think we have wasted a lot of time In not starting these generational programs And really making a fulsome investment In teaching not only school-age students But adults, voting-age adults as well How to navigate today's information environment I'm not saying that we need to tell them what is true and false No one wants the government to be the arbiter of truth But to give them the skills to separate fact from fiction To evaluate a news source To have a healthy skepticism And return a little bit of democracy and civility to our discourse I think is extraordinarily important So I would love to see programs like that Funded through libraries or universities Or civil society organizations In states, in local communities Not just coming from the top down from the federal government That's one Another thing I talk about a lot is investing in public media The United States only spends a dollar and 35 cents per person per year On our corporation for public broadcasting Which funds NPR, our national public radio and PBS The public broadcasting station When you compare that to a lot of other developed democracies It's actually quite low But when you look at the trust in PBS and NPR Across people from all different political parties It's much higher than the corporate media The mainstream cable news and things like that That a lot of people are getting their news from And if you look at our allies Like the United Kingdom for instance Which of course has the BBC Britons really trust the BBC in a time of crisis Something like 68% of Brits trust the BBC So I would love to see a more A really robust investment in our public broadcasting So that people have an authoritative source of news to go to In order to understand the nuance of situations And then finally something I always tell members of Congress When I meet with them is that Democracy knows no or sorry Disinformation knows no political party It is a democratic issue And so when we see elected officials Really amplifying and spreading disinformation That might benefit them in the short term But in the long term what suffers is our democracy So we need some top down education And leading by example as well And I hope to see that in the next couple of years As we go forward in our counter disinformation efforts Here in the United States Yes that would be great So we have limited time So let's get to some questions from our viewers In February you made an open offer to mentor early career women How do you mentor people you meet online for the first time Yeah this was something that I really felt passionate about I've been so lucky to have a lot of wonderful women mentors throughout my career And I found myself having just completed a book And several other large research projects With a little bit more time on my hands Feeling a little bit lonely In this wintry weather in Washington here And so since we're all connecting via Zoom And other online platforms anyway I decided to put an hour of my time every week Out there to early career women And kind of give them a steer To talk them through some things That might be bothering them or worrying them And what we do basically is They sign up through a forum online And they send me their resume ahead of time So I get an idea of where they're coming from We have a very casual conversation about their goals The sort of things that they're seeking help with And if I hear something that sounds like imposter syndrome Or sounds like people don't exactly know what they want But they're still very early on in their career I just try to assure everyone that A, you are where you're exactly meant to be And that if you've been accepted to a graduate program Or just gotten a new job And you're not feeling like you have really The expertise to be where you are We need to dispense with that Especially because women tend to really undervalue Their expertise When they're applying to jobs We won't apply to a job If we don't meet all of the criteria for the job Whereas men applying to jobs Only need to meet half of the criteria To put their names forward So I remind them of that And then I also remind them that As much as we all like to plan And game out our careers If you asked me four years ago When I was still in Ukraine If I would have written a book Testified three times before Congress And regularly be appearing on the media Of all types right now I would have told you you're crazy Sometimes things just work out differently And if you identify the things That you're passionate about In each job that you have And try to follow them through your career And prioritize them Then you'll end up in a place Where you are doing really fulfilling work Even if it's not necessarily the path That you thought you were going to be on So saying yes to opportunities And really just making everyone understand That we can't plan everything out And it's okay to not know I don't know really what I'm going to be doing Next month but that's okay As long as we're following our passions In our careers I think having those guiding morals and values Really is what has pushed me forward And I try to make that accessible And a reminder to everyone that I speak to That's really great advice Yeah, even when I think back to my own career Yeah, I'm not where I thought I would be But it's good It's still good It's all good Okay, so now we have some more questions Said asks what are three indicators Of disinformation that an internet user Can look to avoid believing And spreading disinformation Yeah, that's a great question It's gotten a little bit more difficult Because we're seeing a lot fewer uses Of what we call inauthentic amplifiers Like trolls and bots And a lot more information laundering When the source of disinformation is concealed And it's reported in the mainstream media As if it is verified fact But if you are encountering something That makes you highly emotional Whether that's really upset or joyful Which seems to be in less supply these days I would say that that's a good indication That you're being manipulated for something Maybe it's for profit Maybe it is for power Maybe it's to get you to click on something But you might be being manipulated So in that case, I suggest that we practice What I call informational distancing When you feel your emotions getting heightened Close your laptop, put down your phone Go for a little bit of a walk And if after a couple of minutes You still think, okay There's something interesting there I want to investigate this further What you can do is investigate the source If you're on a website that seems dubious See if they have contact information See if the reporter or poster has a history online Just do a quick Google search And see if they've reported anything else If it's all similarly incendiary Then it's a good indication that Again, something weird is happening And then one thing that is a really great indication If we're looking at visual material images You can do what's called a reverse image search And just right click on the image If you're using the Chrome browser And it will bring up the history of that image online So the earliest instance of it Sometimes it brings up slightly edited versions And you can see if the image that's being attributed To whatever you're reading about Is actually what you're looking at What we see sometimes, for instance in Ukraine Is images from the Balkan conflict in the 1990s Attributed to the Donbas today in Ukraine Or if there's a hurricane here in the United States Sometimes there are misattributed images Or edited images that mislead the audience About the level of destruction in a particular place So that's a really useful skill It's not only on the Chrome browser There are a lot of other different sites That you can use like TinEye If you are comfortable using Yandex The Yandex reverse image search Which is the Russian search engine Is actually quite good So there are a lot of tools that you can use To really understand what images you're looking at And try to give yourself a little bit more context But in total, those things don't take very long It would probably take about 90 seconds Just to do that quick sweep Of the information that you've encountered Okay, that's good advice We have more disinformation questions for you I hope I'm pronouncing this right Volodymyr asks what are the most efficient approaches To tackle Russian disinformation campaigns Well, Volodymyr, I have sad news I don't think any of them are particularly efficient And if there's one thing that I've learned from Ukraine And other Central and Eastern European countries It's that these campaigns have been going on for a long time In my book, I go back all the way to 2007 In Estonia as the beginning of the modern Online Russian information war These are generational campaigns Russia has been out it for a long time And that means that unfortunately We can't just snap our fingers And hope that, you know, taking accounts offline Will reduce the broader impact of Russian disinformation And in fact, we just saw this week Or last week in the United States Our Director of National Intelligence of Real Haynes Released a report on foreign interference And influence campaigns in our 2020 election And what in the Russia section really stood out Was that no longer are we seeing, again As I mentioned before, bots and trolls And fake posts and ads Instead, we're seeing this information laundering So in this case, we saw some Russia-aligned figures Sharing false narratives with key influencers In the US media who reported on those allegations And brought them to many more years This means that, you know, Facebook or Twitter Or any other social media platform Can't just take accounts offline to stop disinformation It's about, again, a broader understanding Of information literacy And it also means that we perhaps need to look Here in the United States at our campaign media laws About, you know, what is allowed to be shared By active political campaigns Now that doesn't cover everyone who shared disinformation In the lead up to the 2020 election But it would have perhaps, you know, stemmed some of the impact And also looking at how that is advertised What campaigns are allowed to spend money on I think all of that is important And then more broadly, looking at the regulation of social media So here in the United States We are just starting to have a really fulsome conversation About that I know Ukraine has been considering some Some measures related to the countering of Russian disinformation And domestic disinformation Including most recently a ban of pro-Russian TV channels In Ukraine and sanctioning of their owners I think that, you know, in Ukraine's case Obviously Ukraine is at war There are different stipulations Different considerations to make In regard to those sorts of bans But I hope that those aren't going to be a forever thing I think we always need to have some sort of Sunset clause on measures like that Because otherwise they might be inherited By another government that will even, you know More broadly enact such bans In order to silence opponents And we've seen some disinformation And fake news legislation Including in places like Singapore Where that's been exactly the case So there's a delicate balance between preserving freedom of speech And countering disinformation And we need to make sure that there are guardrails On all of those actions that governments take in particular Yes, yeah Speaking of social media and its role in disinformation There was a study that just came out That said Facebook left it too late To prevent the blues of information And it meant 10 billion page views Of false narratives Narratives gained traction ahead of the US election So I mean because these Facebook and Twitter These are all privately owned companies How do we move forward on the conversation on regulating them? Well, I think the most important first step Is to depoliticize the conversation Which sounds easy to say It's a lot more difficult in practice And I think the key to that is transparency About what the platforms are actually doing Right now we have to take the platforms at their word Reporting on how much they took down Whether it was effective The measures that they're taking The way that their algorithms affect people When there's another narrative that exists in the media In certain political circles that Either there's censorship happening Or there's not enough happening And somewhere in the middle of all that Is the actual truth So I would like to see forced transparency For the platforms I want to know how much hate speech they're taking down How much targeted harassment How many reports they get from users And what their response is How different new mechanisms In the infrastructure of the platform Are affecting user behavior So that we know if these online harms That are starting to proliferate Are being amplified by the social media platforms Or if they're actually being tamped down Because they do create As we saw on January 6th Offline harm as well As we've seen during the coronavirus pandemic Disinformation has human consequences So I think we need to understand that A little bit better first But there's a lot of other measures That have been floated around Including algorithmic transparency Understanding how the algorithms That show us certain content work Maybe reining in the level of micro-targeting That the platforms can do So that they can target you If you're 35 and a woman Living in Washington DC But they can't target you based on race Or at a very minute level Like down to your street Perhaps just your zip code Those sorts of things are all on the table As is antitrust action President Biden just hired a fairly I would say aggressive antitrust lawyer To lead the FTC Who has been a big critic of big tech So I think all of this stuff is on the table It's not going to happen instantaneously But we do have a big responsibility As the United States Where these companies are headquartered To make sure that the legislation The regulation that we're putting into place Has our American values at heart That it's protecting freedom of speech Protecting the voices of the voiceless Because social media can be a really Powerful democratizing tool Unfortunately we've gone the other direction But the regulations that we put in place Are going to have repercussions And ripple effects around the world So we have a huge responsibility As we go forward We do, yes So we have some more questions from our viewers Kriti says Often there is more than one perspective To a certain piece of data How do you filter which version is true And would that filtering unintentionally Contribute towards censorship I guess in this case We're talking about fact checking on social media That's interesting And absolutely I think there is an inherent bias That comes with some of these operations And that's why I think the social media platforms Have moved more toward adding context To certain pieces of content Rather than removing them Based on perceived verity or falsity And so we saw this a lot on Twitter During the lead up to our 2020 election Facebook has introduced some similar things As well where you can click to read For more context about vaccines Or things like this And that's where I come down I think it's a In terms of protecting freedom of expression It is the better choice And it does seem to generate engagement People are less likely to share Different things if they're nudged Or have some friction into sharing them So if something pops up and it says This is potentially false People are less likely to share that And we are the ones that amplify A lot of the false information It's not just big influencers It's normal people sharing it with their friends So I would like to see more of that And I'd like to see data About the efficacy of such measures It's the very beginning Of adding that context And kind of attempting to nudge people Out of certain behaviors But I think it's a potentially impactful solution Without again Trying to court any censorship accusations Okay And I want to touch on what you said About normal people sharing information I believe you had mentioned that You have some relatives that you've tried to like You know, let them know what the What the truth is versus the disinformation And how do you do that On like a case by case basis Like you know with your family With friends others Yeah, it can be really touchy And I think everyone's first inclination Especially in the online environment that we're in Where we're not gathered around The Thanksgiving dinner table Or seeing our relatives and friends as frequently Is that we send them a link to a fact checking site Like Snopes or Politifact Or a debunking page on one of the mainstream outlets When we say, you know, hi Joe This isn't true That actually the research Psychological research and other like counter extremism Research shows that's more likely to make people Dig into their positions So what we have to do is approach this from a very human Angle and full disclosure I have not been fully successful with this yet Because it takes prolonged engagement And the relatives that I've tried this with Are on the other side of the country It's it's been a long process And it's difficult to do online But if you can pick up the phone Or see the friend or family member in person And try to understand what has drawn them To that particular piece of disinformation A lot of people are talking about QAnon right now Many people have been kind of enveloped by that narrative Because of caring about things like child trafficking For instance, which is at the core of the QAnon conspiracy theory It's it's the way that they bring people in in many cases So unpacking that and and perhaps nudging them Toward different resources that are more Authoritative, more trustworthy Is a great thing to do But you have to get to that why What is their why for seeking this out In some cases people are lonely They're searching for community And they find it in these narratives So that's extraordinarily important You have to tread really lightly And it can be frustrating When you feel like your relative or a loved one has You know, they're on the precipice And they're going to go over off a cliff soon But we have to be patient and empathetic in these situations That's good advice And I think that leads us to our next question from Asan Dislanting and angling a story to such an extent That it changes the meaning of the whole story Caused the story to become a piece of disinformation That is a hard question to answer So the definition of disinformation Is false or misleading information shared with malign intent It depends what the intent of the person Sharing the information is And that's why we see the social media platforms Often saying this is misinformation Not disinformation Because they don't want to ascribe intent To any of their users without knowing that for sure I think in many of the cases of the hyperpartisan media That we see in many countries I would ascribe the disinformation label to it Because it is either the intent of accruing more profit Or more power The two P's that I use very frequently Or supporting certain political movements That's what I mean by power And that's really dangerous Again, because the media as we know Is supposed to be the fourth estate in our society Meaning it is the fourth pillar of government In addition to the executive, the judiciary And the legislative branches of government So if we don't have a media that we can rely on That we can trust to give us the unvarnished truth Even if perhaps it goes against the political inclinations Of the editorial staff or the journalist in question Then we have a really, really difficult problem On our hands So absolutely, there are certain narratives In the media that I would call disinformation But it comes down to that intent And that can be a sticky thing to try to discern on your own Okay Yeah, it can be So it looks like we're just about out of time But before we go What would be your tips for fighting the war and information? I feel like I don't know if it's possible to do a quick roundup But yeah, I mean, I think the best thing The most important thing to remember is we Individuals are on the front line of the information war We can bemoan the inaction of social media platforms And our governments But it comes down to whether people are sharing the content that they see online Or whether they're being more discerning So if you want a little moniker to remember Just take care before you share We need to do our due diligence And understand our emotional responses to the content That we are being fed by the social media platforms And by disinformers And understand that we are being manipulated And really fight back against that unique response That's my biggest piece of advice Along with the other things that we talked about before Just checking your sources Reverse image searching These sorts of things Those heuristics can really lead to a better And more balanced online experience for everyone Great, thank you So take care before you share And check your sources Thank you very much, Nina, for being with us today And a big thank you to you, our online viewers, for participating Be sure to keep your calendar open for our next Mentor Talks When we chat with internationally renowned artist, entrepreneur, and arts envoy Carla Canales Carla joins us live on April 20th Don't miss out Interested in learning more about our awesome exchange alumni? Visit our website at alumni.state.gov And follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter Thanks for watching And see you all on April 20th for our next Mentor Talks


I'm Chris and I wanted to talk a bit about my experience at Park City Math Institute specifically with morning math and even more specifically with the problem sets and literature that's available and how I've used them in my own class. So this past school year there were three students in particular that exhausted our math curriculum. They finished multi-variable calculus as juniors and rather than having them take a college level course or an online course I came straight back to my Park City Math experience and thought hey let's have these students work on the problem sets. So I used two books of the five that have been released by AMS. One was about geometry, transformations and modeling and one was a lot of cool connections between statistics and some number theory. Within the first month the students were sort of uncertain about the experience because they in fact called an intervention with me and said we've never done math this way not only do we not know if our answer is correct we have no way of knowing if our strategy is correct. And they sat down with me and we're very honest and vocal about their past experiences and sort of their beliefs about math learning and I tried to ensure them that they're finally doing mathematics. They're in a place of ambiguity but the problem sets are so thoughtfully written that these themes would start intermerging and intertwining and of the three students one in particular who was the most concerned just totally changed her beliefs about what mathematics is and how one learns mathematics and she ended up writing a brilliant paper about not theory the second semester after we had sort of used this as a scaffold about thinking more deeply about what mathematics is. So I highly encourage you to think about how you can use these books from AMS in your own practice specifically with students or maybe you could use them in your own department where once a month you work on some problems or with math clubs there's many opportunities of how these books could be used because it really shapes when one's thinking about mathematics and learning mathematics.


The exploitation of natural resources is associated with many natural hazards. Currently, the copper or deposits exploited in Polish mines are located at a depth of approximately 1,200 meters below the surface. This depth creates a major source of heat flux to the mine air. Additionally, another important source of heat is the machine plant, which primarily consists of machines powered by diesel engines. To account for this heat, the temperature of the rocks in the exploited areas must reach 48 degrees Celsius, which represents a significant source of heat flux to the mine air. However, another important source of heat is the machine plant, which mainly consists of machines powered by diesel engines. Following the results of incentive measurements, boundary conditions for a simulation were determined and a geometric model of the cabin was created. Furthermore, an average human model was created whose radiative heat transfer was included in the analysis. Three cases were studied, the first covering the current state of thermal conditions based on the measurement results and two cases of forecasted conditions. In the second case, the temperature of the conditioned air was determined and in the third, the flow velocity required to ensure thermal comfort was found. The results of the simulation indicated that this article was authored by Adam Robluski, Arcadish Smasek, Aleksandra Banasiewicz and others. We're article.tv, links in the description below.


Good afternoon everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Arma with Stocks. What shouldn't be at a review CYH? This was a top one today. Why? Because it had a short in it and I didn't get the short entry in it and then I did short it and then I was up in it and I didn't get out with the profit. So I actually got stocked in this. Now let me go over it. But I was up in it. Oh gosh is that bothersome. Here. I have the stock opening, rallying up. I did not like this rally. I didn't like it for a lot of reasons. It kind of was a sign that it wasn't going to work right on the day. But when it fell hard here and I said okay fine let me take another look at this. And I did right at this morning it was a valid watch. But I didn't get this move which actually was the only move of the day that really was a short move that had any risk to reward in it. Okay because this is a good drop. Okay 80 plus cents or whatever. When this rally back in here and held I saw it. Right back in here I took half size, dropped, got stopped out. But I liked this before then. Wasn't crazy about this. This was kind of wild and whippy today. These health cares can be that way. Then I watched it, watched it, watched it. I reshortered it. It broke hard. Actually reshortered it here. It broke hard. I was up. This looked great to break the low. Came on down here. Literally eight cents from the low. I should have taken some off but I didn't. This, this, this was a move. But no I didn't get out of any of it. I told some people they were going to get out. Some people did get out of some of it. You could have gotten out of half. I didn't. I didn't because I really thought it was good and was gonna break the low. Loaked good in the five-minute chart two. Anyways, flipped. Boom. So I was up in this. You know, it was less than 30 cents but I still was up in it. I didn't get out of any of that. I don't think it was being, you know, overly aggressive in this either because at the time of the day when this dropped, where did this set the low? The market was red. Well, the market set the low the day at 10 and this was at 10-10. Yeah, so but at that time of the day you didn't know that was really the market low but here's what happened with the flip. But you see here this looked really good and then it flipped. But I will tell you this chart is still lower but I was up in this today and get out of it with profit. That's life. Charts still lower. In fact, this is a great watch for tomorrow. If this opens anywhere and holds $15 tomorrow, it's a short and it will eventually break this area here 1286, which if it had to date would have fallen off the planet but it didn't. So this I took a stop and did I take a loss and did it as I think I could do. I was up money in it too. That very often happens a lot of times I'm up money and stuff and I don't get out of it because I'm looking for more of a move. You know, I did tell the room they could take some out or half out. Sometimes I get out of half of something but I just felt like that was so close to the area. And at the time, like I said, the market was red but this didn't fall through. If tomorrow this opens holds $15. It's a good short for a flip around for a reversal. Okay. Because this is still a good short in the long term trend but today it had one short move which was difficult to get right out of the gate. Did the second one and then it just never broke below. So this is CYH. This is Melissa Armand with a stocks wash. This is a watch for a long term trade to be lower or tomorrow that holds $15. It could open neutral and fall and reverse and break. And you're waiting for it to break $13. $13 is really that area, that hard hard area that's got to get through. Have a great night everyone. Email me at melissathestockswish.com if you want more information on the Golden Gap course. Next class is May 14th and 15th. Have a good day everyone.


I got one thing, it's the clue running this very cool plotter demo that Lidia is working on.  Go for it. All right, Lidia, what is this? Hey, this is a demo of my plotter code that I wrote for Arduino on the clue board. It's a micro bit Monday, clue is micro bit shaped. So this is it plotting temperature, it's kind of boring. And then this is pressure, so as I move this up and down you can actually see the pressure changes. You know these little buggy, I got to figure that out. Light is interesting so you can see by shine a light, it plots the light and it actually does automatic ranging so as it does the plotting like the range changes, which is kind of cool. I also did color, so like I've got this green thing here, if I put it over it, you can see red, green and blue traces for the red, green and blue components. And proximity, so as I move closer and farther away, there you go, lots of cool plotting on the clue. And that's the top secret for this week back in the vault. Coming soon, for God near you. Oh, Gidoki.


My name is Andrew, I'm from Ukraine, I've been in Drupal for the last 7 years already. I started from a pretty big company, which was doing a lot of different sites and different platforms and Drupal was one of their technical approaches. I started from Drupal 6 and then 7 and now 8, so that's it. The biggest benefit is a huge performance gain, which Symphonico brought into Drupal 8. It's flexibility, it's extendability and also cashability. Drupal camp was built for this actually, it's like a way to get in touch with other developers, take part in code sprint with some guys from different countries. Well, some kind of Drupal rock stars coming sometimes and it's very interesting to have a talk with these people who brought a lot of to community. Interesting, social, developing maybe.


Rhondder unedd eto,  Spiel digits This evening we will begin the two week fire brake period Two weeks in which we all need to do everything we can To break the rapidly rising cycle of infections we are seeing right across Wales Two weeks in which the law requires everyone to stay at home, and to work from home wherever possible That is why all non-essential shops, leisure, hospitality and tourism businesses will shut. And it's why we have put in place new rules for this two-week period to prevent people from gathering indoors and outdoors. If we are going to be successful and slow the spread of infection, we have to reduce contact between people wherever possible. This, as we've said before, is a short, sharp shock to the virus to turn back the clock and to ensure that our NHS is not overrun in the coming weeks. It is a short, sharp shock that will save people's lives. Now, the first slide that you will see helps to explain the efforts that people have made in Wales already and why they give us a platform from which this two-week period can succeed. Here you see a slide provided to us from Torfaen Council. It shows how, at the end of September, the amount of coronavirus in circulation in Torfaen was identical to a town in the north west of England. Since then, the efforts made by people in Torfaen and in all parts of Wales have helped us to keep the virus from getting completely out of control. And you will see the difference there between what has been achieved in Torfaen and what has happened elsewhere. The local restrictions have worked to stem the virus, but not to turn it back. And the clear advice we have is that we need to act urgently now because the virus is moving too fast. Yesterday we passed a new milestone in the course of this pandemic as more than a million tests were carried out in Wales since March. A further 1,134 confirmed cases were added to the overall number of infections, bringing the running total to more than 39,000. And very sadly, the death rate continues to rise. Today's figures bring the number of deaths reported by Public Health Wales to 45 this week. I've come to this podium a number of times in the summer to report days when nobody died at all and 45 people have died in this week. And we pause as we do for a moment to reflect on the loss of those people's lives and what that means to their family and to their loved ones. Now, there are those who seek to persuade us that coronavirus is all just a hoax, that it's a mild disease and it does no harm. The people who say that to you do not face the families of people who have died this week, who will never see and never speak to their loved one again.  When I spoke to you last week, I said we faced a very real risk that the NHS in Wales could be overwhelmed in just a matter of weeks. And it's taken just six weeks for coronavirus to re-establish itself here in Wales. Every local authority area now, other than Ceredigion, has an incidence rate of more than 50 cases for every 100,000 people. And in many parts of Wales, and a growing number of parts of Wales, it's more than 100 cases for every 100,000. The impact on the NHS lags a few weeks behind the rise of cases in the community, but the rise is very real. This slide shows the number of people in hospital today with coronavirus symptoms. The top line, the grey line, shows the total number of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus. And it's made up of three different components. The bottom line, the yellow line, shows the growing number of people in hospital who are recovering from coronavirus. Long Covid, as it's sometimes called. The blue line are people in hospital with suspected coronavirus. They have to be treated in hospital identically as though they had confirmed coronavirus. And they are there in growing numbers too. And then the orange line, the people who have confirmed coronavirus. You can clearly see from this graph the steep rise from October onwards in the number of people with coronavirus symptoms being treated in Welsh hospitals. The numbers have almost doubled from around 500 at the start of this month to just under 900 yesterday. Now the NHS has started to open additional critical care capacity to ensure that it can manage all the demands on intensive care from emergency admissions, winter pressures and the pandemic. The latest figures from the NHS show that there are 47 people with coronavirus in critical care and that's more than doubled in just one week.  The virus has a huge toll on those people's health and they can need hospital care for weeks and even months as they recover from the virus. And that's how we end up with hundreds of beds occupied by people at various stages of the disease. This final slide shows what the impact on the NHS would be if we were not taking action to bring coronavirus under control. The black line you see through the middle of this slide is the number of people who were in a hospital bed in Wales back in April when the last peak of coronavirus was seen here in Wales. And that was a very challenging time for the NHS with all planned routine operations postponed and many people needing critical care. The orange line at the start of the graph is the actual number of current cases. If the rise were to continue at the lowest possible rate, we would breach that black line, go above where we were in April, just before Christmas of this year. If the rate continues as it has been this week, we would breach that number late in November. And if the acceleration were to continue to gather pace as it has been, then we would breach that April number within the next couple of weeks. That is the seriousness of the position that we face. That is why we have decided here in Wales that a fire break period is absolutely necessary to bring that picture back under control. This slide shows why we have to act and have to act now. Now, as the fire break period begins, we will be working hard on what happens from the 9th of November onwards. Here in the Welsh Government over the next few days, we will be meeting with all the people who help to keep us safe. Our local authorities, the police, the trade unions and employers, the NHS, health boards and so on. Throughout the crisis, we have tried to involve all of these organisations whenever we are making key decisions, not after we have already made up our minds. Of course, involving people while the decisions are being made can take time. But it is time well spent because it means we make better decisions that protect us all. And we will of course report the conclusions of all those discussions to you. This week, we have held a press briefing every day to explain the reasons why we are introducing a fire break period, what it will involve and the support that will be available. Thank you, thank all of you who take such time and trouble to watch and to listen to these briefings. We will carry on holding the briefings as we look to the future. And this afternoon, I will be answering your questions in an Ask FM Facebook Live session beginning at 3 o'clock. Diolch yn fawr. Diolch o galon i chi gyd. I'll take some questions now from colleagues who are joining us and will broadcast all the answers as ever live on our own social media channels. First, this afternoon to James Williams at BBC Wales. Diolch yn fawr, First Minister. Can I get the answers in English and in Welsh, please? Businesses have felt left in the dark towards the end of this week. The Federation of Small Businesses said yesterday there was far too late in the day to announce which premises would be allowed to stay open as of 6 o'clock tonight. And then last night following your announcement in the committee that supermarkets would not be allowed to sell essential goods. The Welsh Retail Consortium said that without being told clearly what is and what isn't permitted to be sold, it is ill-conceived and short-sighted. Probably this is one person's essential, isn't it? There's none essential. Well, I don't agree with that. James, I sat with the FSB in the Social Partnership Council yesterday. They made none of those contributions when there was the opportunity for them to do so. Instead they focused on the positive actions that we are taking and working with them to make sure that as much information is available as quickly as possible. As we respond to the position that I set out and showed people in the graphs that people will have seen today. And when it comes to supermarkets it is a simple matter of fair playing. We are requiring many hundreds of small businesses to close on the high street right across Wales. We cannot do that and then allow supermarkets to sell goods that those people are unable to sell. And we are looking to minimise the amount of time that people spend out of their homes during this two-week period. This is not a period to be browsing around supermarkets looking for non-essential goods. So dwi ddim yn cytuno ar beth dweud o chi, James, dwi ges i cyfle i siarad gyda'r FSB ar y CBA i ddweud yn a consul yn ni'n gael beodd pobl yn dod a degilliddol ni'n gael o'r bwyntio. Ar y pethau ni'n wedi neud o wybodaeth ni wedi rhoi mas a cymorth ni'n mynd i rhoi i busnesau ledled Cymru yn ystod y pethaufnos nesaf. A pan i'n siarad am arch a fach naiodd matur o tecoch i we. Mae lot fawr o busnesau fach yn cael dros y pethaufnos nesaf ledled Cymru. A dwi ddim yn deg a mae nhw ddim yn gallu werthu pethau i'r ach a fachnodd a'n gallu neud ar un peth. A dwi'n i isio bobl a aros gyntre dros y pethaufnos nesaf hefyd. Nawr i ddim yn amser i mynd mas i siopa am pethau sydd ddim yn angen y radio. A dyna pam ni wedi rhoi, a rheoliadau ni wedi rhoi yn aile yma yn Cymru. Can you tell us what's the latest with those people in Wales who won't be able to be furloughed, but also won't be able to take advantage of JSS until the start of November. Will there be any financial support for them for their wages? Can you give us more detail on what are you planning to do now over this two and a half weeks in terms of building up capacity, sorting out TTP, testing turnaround and stuff? Can you just put a bit more flesh on the bones of that, please? Thank you, James. I'm yet to see a reply to my second letter to the Chancellor in which I set out an alternative set of proposals to smooth the path of people in Wales who will have to rely on one form of government support between the 23rd of October, the 30th of October, and then switch to a different system from the 1st of November. I regret the fact that the Chancellor was unable to create a single system to help people through that. In the meantime, we are going to announce today a further set of measures which we will take ourselves to assist people who will be defined out of help by the rules that the UK scheme has in place in that first period of the firebreak here in Wales. I hope the UK Government will do more. I hope it will help us to help those people who will need that support, but as we don't have a reply and as we're already on the Friday before the system comes into place, we will put Welsh Government money in place to assist those people who otherwise would not be assisted. And as I said in my opening statement, we will be working as a Cabinet over the coming days with our partners here in Wales to design the system that we will need beyond the 9th of November. The Cabinet met yesterday. Papers are circulated to Cabinet colleagues with the first set of ideas that we want to explore. Those will be now worked on by my colleagues with their portfolio teams. We will resume after the weekend. We will have further discussions with local authorities, police service in Wales, our partners in business and the trade unions and so on. And the Cabinet will reassemble on Tuesday and on Thursday of this week as we work our way through some complicated decisions. But as I said in my opening remarks, while it may take a bit more time to involve others, when you get those perspectives, when you get those views, then you make better decisions. And I will want to make the best decisions for Wales, not the most rapid ones. Over to Adrian, Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you First Minister for picking up on exactly that point you said, or it certainly gave the impression on Monday that that detail would be forthcoming today in this press conference on Friday. You're asking people to take quite a lot on trust about what will happen after November the 9th. Aren't they right to worry that this firebreak could be extended, or if not extended, then something very similar and almost as strict put in its place? Well I don't think I could have been clearer that the firebreak period comes to an end on Monday the 9th of November. So I'm very happy to repeat that again. That is how long it is designed to last for and that's when it will come to an end. Of course there will be a regime beyond that. Coronavirus will not have disappeared because of the actions and the efforts we will make over the next 17 days. And what I said earlier in the week is that by this time in the week we will be focusing on that and we met yesterday to plan how that can best be discharged. As I said we met in the social partnership council as well. It was another opportunity to involve our partners in all the thinking and all the planning that needs to be done. To get the best decisions you need to test these ideas with people who will be responsible for implementing them. You need to learn from them as to how we can act together in the best way beyond the firebreak to go on protecting people's lives. We will be working very hard like into next week and with our partners to make sure that we have a regime beyond the 9th of November that we share it with people in very good time for people to know what that will be. And it is better to take that bit of time and to get the best decisions that we can make rather than simply trying to beat a news cycle by rushing to announce things before they have been properly tested and thought through. Thank you. And on the issue of supermarkets and non-essential goods some of your critics have said that, more than said, accused you of making that decision because of your political beliefs that your form of politics is all about micromanaging, you favour restrictions and regulations. What do you say to them? I will say that I was plainly nonsensical. The decision is simply based on the need for fair play. I'm not prepared to treat small businesses in Wales in one way, requiring them to close. They are not able to earn a living during these two weeks as part of our national effort. And then simply because another sector in society are more powerful, are bigger, that they think that they can be treated differently. It is a straightforward matter of fairness. We are in this together here in Wales. No individual and no organisation is above the effort that we are all required to make. That includes people who may believe that they themselves are beyond the law and it includes those organisations that are large and powerful. We treat everybody the same. The obligations on every one of us are the same. That's the way we will be doing it in Wales. Thank you. Adrian, thank you. I look forward to Stephen Busch at the new statesman. First Minister, thank you. For many people around Wales, these restrictions will not feel that different to the restrictions that have been under for the last few weeks. As your chart shows, cases have fallen, but they have not fallen outside of the danger zone for the health service. While there is notionally a border separating at-risk areas from at-risk areas, there is a temporary self-enforcement which surveys consistently show is not happening at present. Why do you think that the lockdown measures that have been taken thus far have been insufficient, and do you think that's a problem that can be solved in Wales alone, or do you think it is a problem of England and Liverpool and Cheshire? Well, Stephen, thank you for that. I agree with a number of the points you've made. In Wales have helped a great deal to prevent the rapidity with which we see the virus rising in some other parts of the United Kingdom, and those efforts have been real. I want to make sure people know how much they have been appreciated. Actually, I don't think I would agree with your first proposition that people will not see a great deal of difference because the next two weeks are going to be very tough in Wales. We really are returning to the sort of lockdown that people saw back in March and April, and it will feel qualitatively different even to the restrictions that have been in place so far, and that's why a firebreak is recommended to us by SAGE, by our own chief medical officer and technical advisory group because it is a different form of intervention. It is a sharp, deep form of restriction that creates that break in the transmission of the virus. We think it will work in Wales to this extent. Not that it will magic the virus away. Not that we will emerge on the 9th of November not needing to worry about it, but that it will reset the clock and allow us to get through to Christmas without needing to see a period of such significant restraint again. Other governments are trying to deal with the situations they face in different ways. I was very taken by the fact that we were unanimously presented with advice in the Welsh government from our chief medical officer, our chief scientist, our chief team of advisers, that a firebreak was the best course of action for us in Wales to adopt, and that's why we have gone about it in that way. Thank you. Christmas. Gwyn Gething said yesterday that none of these efforts were partly about saving Christmas, but for many people who live across the border, who have family on the other side of it, they face a very different view. Do you envisage a situation in which Christmas happens as normal if you are in Wales, but if you are from Wales, you still face the inability to cross back to see your family? Well, as I think Vaughan said yesterday, these measures are about saving lives, not saving Christmas. That's the seriousness of the position we are in. Our ambition is that we will not need to have this level of restriction again in Wales before Christmas. I want shops to be able to trade. I want people to be able to prepare. I want to offer people some hope, provided we all do the right thing. Then we will still be able to enjoy a version of the holiday that we would have otherwise all enjoyed. Nobody should... Well, at least here in Wales, we will never approach the whole business of the pandemic on the basis that we can say to people, it will all be over by Christmas. It won't all be over by Christmas. But there are things that we can do and we can do together to make sure that Christmas of a coronavirus sort can still be celebrated here in Wales. How that will mesh in with the difficulties that are being faced elsewhere in the United Kingdom is just impossible to predict. Let us hope that. The measures that are being put in place elsewhere succeed as well, and then we will all be able to meet with family, with friends, have some sort of Christmas in which there is still something for us all to celebrate. Thank you very much, Stephen. Over to Will Hayward at Wales Online. Thank you, First Minister. Regarding shops only being allowed to sell essential items, Astor have said that they are deeply concerned for the implications for customers accessing products they genuinely need. How can you possibly define what the criteria for an essential item is? Most people would not consider a candle essential, but what if you have a power cut, and books are not considered essential, but what about books offering guidance on health or mental health? If my child rips their school trousers, is it not essential that I buy more? How do you go about defining the criteria for an essential item is? Well, it is just the wrong way to approach this whole business. We're back to the how do we get around the rules approach to coronavirus. If we start going about it in that way, we will simply not succeed. But the question I want people in Wales to ask themselves is not what can I do and what can't I do, but what should I do and what shouldn't I do. What you shouldn't do is to use the next two weeks to do things that you don't need to do. And there will be remote contingencies of the sort, no doubt, that you have described and people will in inventive way they have find ways of solving them without undermining the effort that we are asking people to make. There is a bigger prize at stake here than whether you need to buy a candle or not. OK, it is just about providing information to people because some people will be desperate to stay within the rules and might actually are on the side that they do need in order to obey these rules to help save lives. If I could just ask you about the comparison you made between Oldham and Torfaen, given you've indicated recently that Welsh Government will only publish data that is useful and not potentially misleading. Oldham has 237,000 people, the vast bulk of whom effectively live in densely populated packed terraced streets on the edge of Greater Manchester. How is that comparable to 93,000 people living in a disparate community spread across 126 square kilometres in the South Wales Valleys? Are they comparable situations? Well, let's be clear what the graph does is to look at rates, not numbers. So it's rates per 100,000, not raw numbers. So the fact that Oldham is bigger than Torfaen is not misrepresented at all in the graph. I think there's an important point you make that the circumstances of Oldham will not be identical to Torfaen, but Torfaen is a South East Wales Valleys authority. It has lots of densely populated housing in it, people living close by, one another. The comparison will not be exact in a number of dimensions, but the difference between the graph, nevertheless illustrates something very important, that the efforts that have been made in that part of Wales have helped to keep the virus from spiralling out of control and being at the levels that we see in some other parts of the United Kingdom, where those level 3 restrictions that people are facing are not for two weeks, as people in Wales are being asked to observe them, but will go on potentially for many months and I just wanted to say to people in Wales don't think that what you have done has not been worthwhile. It has been important, it will go on being important and you could see that illustrated in that graph. Will, thank you. Over to Adam, Adam Hale at PA. I'm glad he believed me like you guys sell businesses complaining they've been giving just hours to prevent non-essential items being assault in their stalls. Again, got a situation where it appears details of a major decision appears to be getting worked out or announced at least at the last minute and could be another example of your government announcing a major decision and then working out the details later on, which is something like you previously said you wouldn't do. Do you think on reflection that this could have been handled better? Look, we are making decisions under huge pressure of events and making them as quickly as we are able. When I stood here on Monday at quarter past 12 the Cabinet had finished meeting at 11.30 taking the final decisions. It is then a rush to try and make sure that we are able to communicate that as fast as we can and as accurately as we can and you can be sure that right through the week we have every day hundreds of questions being put to us of detail. We are still wanting to make sure as Will Haywood said that they know the rules and they do the right thing. It is inevitable that not every decision can be made on the first day and it's why we gave a whole week a working week from the day we announced the decision to the point at which it comes into practice so that we could answer those questions and we could try to provide the very best information that we can. We said from the very beginning that non-essential retail would close in Wales. All we are doing is clarifying that and remaining consistent with that initial decision. We've heard suggestions this week from people working in intensive care in Wales that insufficient capacity and under-revetiment in intensive care services before this pandemic struck is the reason or perhaps in part why you haven't introduced this tough lockdown now. Do you have any regrets or do you agree with that assessment and if you do, do you have any regrets about the funding that intensive care units have been given in Wales over recent years, including when you were health minister? The health service in Wales has suffered from a decade of austerity alongside every other public service that we face and right across the United Kingdom I think it can be argued that we have been less well prepared for coronavirus than we would have been had we not seen that ten long years of under-investment in our public services by a UK Government determined to tell us that that money couldn't be found. Well we know now that that wasn't the case because when we needed to find money during this pandemic we've been able to find it and we could have found it then as well and our public services would have been all the better for it. Here in Wales we did invest in our critical care capacity when I was the health minister and when von Gethin has been health minister because we had to do it alongside our organ donation bill. We had to provide extra critical care capacity to be able to respond to the fact that we would have more people willing to provide organs in the Welsh NHS. That's not to say that more could not have been done. But with our fantastic workers in the health service we have more critical care capacity today than we otherwise would have done and we've got plans that allow us to create even more capacity over the weeks and months ahead if that becomes necessary. Adam Dicholfawr over to Mike Hughes at LBC. Thank you very much indeed first minister. I'm going to come back to the topic of the exit strategy from this firebreak lockdown if I may. You are asking people to go into a set of restrictions here with very little or to no information about how the world or how Wales is going to look at the back end of this on the 9th of November. Can you at least share some of the detail as to what some of the options on the table are. I think business would be very keen to know how Wales could look on the other side of this. People just the general public would like to know how they can go about their lives at the back end of this and of course can you talk about potentially if something like the three tier system which has been adopted in England being discussed in Scotland is something that you're discussing within the Welsh Government. Thank you very much Mike. Well I'm not able of course to anticipate the results of all the discussions that I set out to when I made my opening statement but I can tell people the sorts of things that we will be looking at. I don't think any of them will be a surprise to anybody so here are just three things. Of course we will be looking at the reopening of businesses and trying to make sure that we reopen businesses in the way that is safe for people who work in them and for people who use them. We will be looking at travel. We've had travel restrictions as part of our local lockdown arrangements. What travel arrangements will we be able to offer to people after the 9th of November? And we'll be looking most importantly of all at how households operate. Just repeat what I've said a number of times and other colleagues have from this platform. Coronavirus spreads inside households. Coronavirus loves it when people get together and we've got to find ways in which we can allow people to meet with those who are closest to them while not going back to situations where the virus has been able to spread and run away from us in the way we've seen in the last six weeks. There are three other things that we will be looking at and working on together to find answers for people and we'll give people those answers well before the 9th of November and there will be answers created alongside those people implementing them and dealing with the consequences of them. There was a second part to what you asked me and I've temporarily mislead it. The three-tier system was that some rules to consider? Thank you. We have only 22 local authorities here in Wales where a much smaller place than England and smaller even than Scotland. So we need to be sure that three tiers are necessary to distinguish between the rate of the virus in different parts of Wales. In recent weeks what has been happening is is that those parts of Wales where the virus was effectively suppressed have sadly been catching up with those parts of Wales where we'd seen earlier difficulty. So what we will look at is a system that works for us rather than a system that we have copied because other people are using it. It will need to be one that is suitable both to our size or geography and to the state of play in the virus as we come out of the firebreak period. Mike, thank you to Steve Bagnell of the Daily Post. Thank you Minister. At what point could the rainbow hospitals be brought into use given the rising cases? How close are we to that and is there enough staff to man them if they are needed? Steve, thank you. We are ready using Aspatisaren which is a field hospital here in the Cwmtaf Morgannog area which has been open now for nearly a week and was receiving patients before the weekend. Of course we have plans to staff them. It is a stretch and sometimes ask questions about money and resources we've had one this afternoon. If you've got the money you can turn the tap on. So when we are staffing our field hospitals we will be having to redeploy staff we've got to ask more of the people we have in our health service and when I stood here on Monday I tried to make the point to that. One of the many reasons why we are so determined to act to prevent our health service from being overwhelmed is that when we have that huge demand it falls on the shoulders of those people who we've relied on already in our health service and who have been under such pressure during this calendar year. So all health boards have plans we will use the fortnight to draw some of those plans forward to make sure that they are absolutely ready should we need to open more field hospital capacity and then the staffing model for those places has been worked out in agreement with the people who have to deliver health services at the front line. Thank you. You have touched on this. Confirmed daily cases now appear to be around double what we had at the peak of the pandemic in the first wave in April. Is the rise predominantly down to community transmission or is there more of a mix of factors which are causing the rise? There's still a mix of factors as there has been throughout. Those figures, the number of cases each day now includes a significant number of students in higher education which we wouldn't have seen earlier in the year. We still have some workplace outbreaks but the predominant one the one that is driving these numbers is the way we all behave. The way we behave as human beings the natural way we behave it's not to criticise the way people behave but the unfortunate thing is is that when we behave in that way when we go in and out of each other's houses where we act in the way that we would expect to have acted in a house coronavirus thrives and we've somehow got to find ways in which we all persuade ourselves as I said earlier the question for now and for the other side of the firebreak is not what can I do but what should I do and if we all ask ourselves that am I doing the right thing if we do that then I think we will make a significant impact on the problems that we have faced. Steve, thank you very much. I go to Thomas Moody in the South Wales Argus. Thank you First Minister. So here in Gwent the Anarang Bevan University Health Board has currently got the highest number of hospital onset coronavirus cases in Wales with the Grange due to open in mid November with how much notice can that opening be brought forward should there be that demand? Well the Grange Hospital opening has been brought forward to mid November Thomas as you know it was scheduled for next year I don't anticipate that it will be able to open very much earlier than the date we've already given and anarang bevan health board is not planning on it being available to it ahead of the current handover date but it's coming very soon and it's coming a lot faster than we had originally anticipated and those beds will now be available in that part of Wales for this winter. Okay, thank you and we've touched on this a little already but given that you've said a large number of cases are due to community transmission and people going around and visiting each other at each other's home given that much of Wales has been under local restrictions where meeting at home hasn't been allowed but still has been going on. What makes this lockdown any different? Well it is an attempt to send a message to people who may not have been acting as carefully as they need to of the seriousness of the consequences of that. Showing those figures to people today 900 people in our hospital beds already up from 500 at the start of this month. The number of people in critical care doubling in a week. The 40 and more people who have died this week. The two week period is an attempt to concentrate all our minds on the things we all need to do and the consequences of what follows if we don't. So by putting a fire break period in we can all reset. We can reset the way that we ourselves behave. We can reset the way in which the virus is circulating and together we can make that difference. I think that over the summer and it's completely understandable as the weather was good and the numbers were going down some people took the message from that that somehow this was all over and that if they took a few more risks themselves it really wouldn't matter. So what I notice is that those risks all add up and cumulatively they have led us to the position we are facing today. And as I say we have to reset that we have to reset it in people's minds we have to reset it in the way that people behave provided we can do that we have a reset in the demands that we are seeing on our health service and the impact in people's lives. Thomas thank you very much for that you say the essential good rule that mainly affects supermarkets being brought in to ensure fair play to protect small retailers is this a straightforward principle of fairness if you are not taking action against internet retailers and if it is protecting closed businesses and we are alling it together will supermarket alcohol sales also be stopped to ensure fair play for the hospitality trade? Well alcohol sales in supermarkets are already restricted and we have introduced rules there that apply in Wales that don't apply anywhere else when the supermarket sector is a very mature very responsible sector it will want to do the right thing it's demonstrated that in the way that it implements our alcohol rules here in Wales and I have every confidence that it will do the right thing in relation to the sale of non-essential goods the Welsh Government doesn't have the powers to do things about internet sales that is a UK wide responsibility that only the UK Government can discharge and I've had many conversations with the retail consortium here in Wales before the pandemic about the unfairness of the system in which internet businesses are treated in one way and high street businesses are treated in another and we previously made the case to the church to change the rules for online businesses so that they contribute their fair share to the national effort in terms of taxation in terms of the way they trade alongside other businesses but those are not decisions that lie in the hands of the Welsh Government Thank you in the latest TTP update there's a distinction drawn between Wales wide data in terms of positive cases reached and subsequent tracing of contacts can you explain what's happened recently in Cardiff and what's been done to make sure the issue is not repeated there and also across Wales? Well I can't assure you on the second point because what's happened in Cardiff I think is possibly a lesson for what we might be able to do elsewhere which is that the university in Cardiff has taken responsibility itself for the contact tracing of its student body and they are in some ways better placed to do it than the TTP system because they are already in touch with their students they know exactly where they live and by taking the responsibility for the tracing of contacts of its own population our TTP system has been able to concentrate on non-student populations here in Cardiff so that's why we've reported them differently because they're being followed up in two different ways now we will learn from that we will see how that works and it may be something that we would be able to do elsewhere so it's not a mistake or something that we need to correct it is a deliberate decision arrived at with our university here in Cardiff which we think is a more effective way of reaching those young people and as I say freeze up the capacity of the TTP system to trace people who are not living in student accommodation and not under the broad care of the university authorities Rob, thank you to Andrew Nuttall of the leader Thank you Minister not to get away from people trying to get around the rules but simply for clarity what does the Welsh Government following these discussions as an essential item in supermarkets can people find this information to save them like you said which is against the rules to travel in from place to place trying to find these things if they are not going to be available but having these things out in the open just prevent people from making non-essential visits so the way people will find out is that those parts of supermarkets will not be open for trading so individuals do not need to go searching for the information because it will be immediately apparent to them when they make a visit this is a period of two weeks that we are asking people to make this effort and if there are genuine cases of people who cannot find something that is essential to them in a supermarket there will be other ways in which that problem can be solved as I said people are very inventive they have friends, they have neighbours who are in a Welsh context we know are very often very willing to help there are online ways that people can purchase goods as we were just hearing in Rob's question it is not a problem without a solution on the issue of borders here in north Wales we will absolutely be very close to neighbouring areas in England we obviously won't have this fire break in place and you've said in the past that the police and these rules for Welsh people will be crucial to make sure that is a success how can that message be spread to England and potentially stop people from coming this side of the border with the virus well I do think that the whole experience of the pandemic has made people far more aware of where different decisions are made for different populations and I think that is true for people in England as well as here we have a lot of interest from people who live on the other side of the border making sure that they know what the rules are here in Wales the decisions the Welsh Government is taking we are making an effort here in the Welsh Government to place articles in local newspapers right across right along the border to make sure that we provide information to local radio stations and others to inform their local populations obviously everything we put up on the website in terms of frequently asked questions and so on is available to people right on the world not just simply in Wales or even along the border so I'm not at all arguing that the border doesn't bring some complexity it clearly does and especially to people who move across the border every day but I think people are more used to that being before they're more willing to go and look for the information they need and as a Welsh Government we are doing more than we've ever done before to make sure that that information is directly made available to media outlets who serve those populations just across or border and into England Andrew thank you very much and finally to Tom Magner of Carers World Thank you First Minister can I just explore a couple of issues on test, trace and protect according to care forum Wales nearly 30% of care homes over a two week period that's one to two testing cycles had positive results from lighthouse labs shown on retest by public health Wales to be false positives your technical advisory group puts a maximum acceptable limit of just 0.9% on false positives based on the reported prevalence of COVID-19 among care homes staff being just under 1% with a confirmed false positive there's clearly COVID-19 viral DNA detected but not from the person tested so the odds seem to favour laboratory contamination as each false positive has serious consequences for home care home residents and staff what action are you taking and what pressure are you exerting on the laboratories to eliminate contamination and bring false positives down below the maximum accepted by your expert group Tom, I'm not sure that I understand the complexities of all of this well enough to be sure that it is laboratory contamination because the test themselves are not 100% accurate they are very accurate but they are not 100% accurate and as you know the lower the percentage of people who test positive is the more false positives the test throws up so there may well be some elements of laboratory contamination in all of this but it may well not be the whole of the explanation laboratories are under huge pressure you can imagine they're doing volumes that they've never done before they understand the need for speed so they're under pressure to turn tests around very quickly we have that safeguard in the well system of a retest to make sure that if it wasn't accurate the first time you get a second goal to make sure that we get the right answer and in some ways that is the major safeguard we have in place Thank you for that we'll perhaps explore the complexities another time and I understand and correct me if I'm wrong that the Welsh Government has bought 45 quick antigen testing machines presumably validated and as I understand it and do please correct me if I'm wrong these are being used in A&E departments Care for and Wales tells us that basing these machines in care homes instead would give much needed one hour point of care results would offer spare capacity for local community testing and as well on the science give contact traces 47 hours for all the person's contact to be traced before they become contagious and pass on the virus wouldn't adopting this quick test approach would they bring the virus under control having to rely on what are seen as broad brush lockdown Well of course Tom we are very keen to have tests that can be done with very quick turnaround times and the machines that you've mentioned are one of the experiments that are being mounted in Wales there are others which operate in different ways the place we'd like to be if we had a litmus test of the sort that pregnancy testing kits use and there are tests of that sort in development and we hope to have them piloted here in Wales as part of that development soon the 40 machines are a down payment on a far larger number of machines that we have ordered and provided the money for here we are using them in A&E departments to begin with because that is the safest place to use an experimental technology because you've got everything else you need in a hospital setting if you need a different sort of test or to respond to somebody in a different way we are optimistic that they are going to be more widely useful and we are very happy of course to talk to Care Forum Wales as to whether or not if we were able to deploy that sort of test like it that gives you a much faster turnaround time that that would allow us to reopen care homes for visitors being acutely conscious was asked questions about this yesterday when I was in front of a Senedd committee acutely conscious of the impact which restricting visits has on people who are being looked after in our care sector here in Wales Thank you very much indeed. Diolch yn fawr


Okay, here's this week's watercolor Wednesday. I'm not sure quite sure I caught all of this on the tape I'll have to review it as I'm editing. So if I didn't catch all of it. I'm not sure what happened I must have hit the button by mistake. I think I caught most of it though.  I did it on both the watercolor journal page and on the accompanying ATC card which I didn't film. I did do an ATC card that matches and it will be in my Etsy shop for sale. Hopefully by the time you see this it will be posted. It's just a white crayola crayon. Maybe it's not crayola let's see. It just says white crayon. I don't even know that it's crayola. It's just a white crayon. But the wax in the crayon resists the watercolor paint and it'll keep the paper white. So that's a tip and a trick of something you can try with your watercolor paints. Anyway, I really like the way this owl turned out. I liked it when I did it on the Rolodex card for the 30 and 30 challenge and I definitely like it in the journal too. So there you go. Another piece inspired by Jean Haynes. I'm really loving reading her books and learning from her. She's got a really great process. Anyway, I hope you got some ideas of what you can do and what you can try. Think about getting one of her books or borrowing it from the library. I think you'd really enjoy it. Don't forget to go out and have a great day everybody and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later.


Hello, and welcome to this session. This is Professor Farhad. In this session, we would look at the liquidity preference theory in explaining the yield curve. This topic is covered on the CPA, BEC section, as well as the CFA exam, and in essentials or principles of investment course. As always, I'm gonna remind you to connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven't done so. YouTube is where you would need to subscribe. I have 1,800 plus accounting, auditing, tax, finance, as well as Excel tutorial. If you like my lectures, please like them and share them. If they benefit you, it means they might benefit other people. Check out my website, farhadlectures.com, for additional resources for this course as well as your other courses. So let's take a look first at the yield curve. What is the yield curve? It's a graphical relationship between the yield to maturity on the government bonds and the term to maturity and time. This is called the yield curve. And the yield curve could take many forms. The most common form is the rising yield curve right here. But there are other forms to the yield curve, such as an inverted yield curve. What does it mean rising yield curve versus an inverted yield curve? Because in a sense, they're the opposite of each other. Rising yield curve means short-term borrowing. Notice here, we have one month, three month, six month, then this is one year. So notice the rate here, the rate is on the y-axis and the time is on the x-axis. For less than a year, the rate is very low. It's not 0%, but it's close to 0%, less than 1%. Then when it comes one year, two year, three years, notice the rate will start to rise. So this is basically called a rising yield curve. It means short-term borrowing will cost the government more than long-term borrowing. And basically in this session, we will explain one theory why that's the case. Then we have the inverted yield curve. The inverted yield curve basically state that short-term borrowing for three months is higher than long-term borrowing for 30 years. Now, when this happens, when the government, when they need to borrow money and short-term borrowing went up versus long-term borrowing, usually from an economical perspective, that this signal will proceed six months before a recession when that happened. Again, those yield curves, they have to be interpreted in their economic, historical economic environment. We're not gonna get into this topic here. Just wanna let you know that the yield curve could take many forms. Here, the yield curve is humped. It goes started up and it goes down. Here, it's almost straight. Notice this is January 206. This is October 4th, 1989. But most of the time, the yield curve is arising. Most of the time, it's arising yield curve. Or this is what you would expect to, this is what you should expect from the yield curve. Now, in the prior session, we looked at the expectation theory to kind of predict the yield curve. It starts with the assertion that bonds are priced. So buy and hold investment in the long-term bonds provide the same results as rolling over a series of short-term bonds. This is what we covered in the prior session and we said if you have a bond, a two-year bond and the two-year bond is paying 8% year one, 8% year two and another three-year bond paying 8% year one, 9% year two and 10% year three. So if these are two separate investments, this is bond A and this is bond B. If we know bond B, which is the third year, we can predict bond A, third year rate. We can predict this by finding out how much it will cost us if we roll over this investments at 8% than at 8%. And what should we earn the third year that will equal to the bond B? And this is basically called the expectation theory. So we can basically predict the future rate based on the expectation theory. What are similar bonds for the long-term R trading? Now, although we don't assume that long-term and short-term have the same risk, but we can do this prediction. In this session, we're gonna look at another interpretation and if you want to look at the expectation theory, please look at the prior session. So according to the liquidity preference theory, forward rates, now how do we predict forward rates? Forward rates, this is what we're gonna say, will exceed the market expectation of future interest rate. Whatever you think about the future interest rate, the forward rate should exceed it. Exceed it means should be higher. Remember, exceed it means it should be higher. Now, even if the rates are expected to stay the same, we always assume the future rate will be higher. Even the rates are expected to remain the same. Let's assume in your expectation, the rate will stay 8%, 8%, 8%, 8%. Guess what? Because we are going into the future, we have to add something, we have to add something to the rate, therefore the slope would be upward, upward sloping. Now why? Now why do we say this? Why do we say this? Because Borrowers, if you think about it, and let's talk about it, not think about it too, Borrowers will prefer to issue long-term bonds. Think about it, if you are a company or if you are the government, that doesn't matter, the company or the government, if you borrow money, if you can lock your rate for a longer period of time, you will prefer to do so. This would allow you to lock an interest rate for a long period of time. Therefore, if you want to lock your interest rate for a long period of time, you may want to pay a premium, you'll be willing to pay more for those bonds. If you want to lock your bond for five or seven years, if you're borrowing, and you want to borrow for 10 years, you have to pay a premium because you're getting that advantage, because you don't have to worry about interest rate for the next 10 years, so you pay premium for that. Now the bond buyers, the people who are buying your bond, the lenders, they're gonna demand a higher rate on longer term bonds because the bond issuers are willing to pay higher rates for those bonds. Why are they willing to pay higher rate? Because they want to lock, they want that peace of mind. Well, if they want that peace of mind, if I'm the lender, I'm gonna make them pay premium for that. And this is the idea behind the liquidity preference premium. If you want to borrow for a long term, I'm okay with that. Pay me a premium and I will give you that peace of mind. So as a result, that extra premium yield a curve that to generally upward slope. So the curve will slope upward like this one, like this one. So simply put, the liquidity preference theory state that investors demand risk premium on long term bond. Why? Because if the borrower wants a peace of mind, they're gonna have to pay for that liquidity, okay? So we can think of the liquidity premium as a result from extra compensation investors demand for holding longer term bond with a greater risk. You want the peace of mind, compensate me for that, okay? So we measure it, we measure this risk as the spread between the forward rate of interest rate and the expected short term rate. Whatever that expected short term rate is, you're gonna add to it a liquidity premium, whether it's gonna go up or down in the short term, add to it liquidity premium. Therefore it should be higher to whatever you are expecting. So the forward rate will be higher than your expected rate because you are demanding that extra premium. So suppose that short term rate interest is currently at 8% and that investors expected to remain at 8% next year. So it's 8% this year, 8% next year. In the absence of a liquidity premium and no expectation of change in the yield, the yield to maturity on the two year bond would also be 8%. So if it's this year 8% and next year it's gonna be 8% on a two year bond, well, next year it means whether I buy this investment B which is for two years, if it's gonna be 8% two years or I buy investment A at 8%, then next year I would reinvest my money and it's gonna be 8%. It doesn't matter whether I take this investments or this investments, overall I'm gonna be earning per year 8%. If that's the case, the investor who wants to buy B, let me go back and put B in. This is investment B, 8%, 8% and we said A is 8%. Under the expectation theory, under the expectation theory, the other theory this will be 8%. So the missing interest rate based on the expectation it will be 8% which is investment A. Now under the liquidity preference theory, investors will demand risk premium to invest in B. They will not accept B to be 8% for two years. Why?  So if the liquidity premium is 1%, let's assume the liquidity premium is 1%, then the forward rate will be 8 plus one equal to nine. Simply put, it means for investment B you will not accept 8% and 8% because investment A will give you 8% for year one, then you will have that money to reinvest again. If you're gonna lock your money for two periods, you want to earn something above 8% and here we said risk premium is 1%. So how do we compute exactly the rate? Well, if the risk premium is 9%, it means year two should be around nine. So what should be the overall rate around 8.5? But let's see how we compute this. So we're gonna take one plus year two, which is we don't know the rate raised to the second power, which is equal 1.08 times, which is the rate for year one times 1.09, because remember it's one plus eight plus one, which is 9%, will give us 1.172. Well, we find the rate if you square root it, then we subtract one. So overall year two should be 8.5. Again, this tells you that you have to pay extra premium because you are buying the two year bond. Why are you paying 8.5? Well, again, the 8% bond, you will not pay 8%.  For A, you're locking the money for one year, you're okay with eight, you are okay with 8%.  And this is how you compute that extra rate. So year two should be 8.5. And if it's 8.5, if it's eight for year one, 8.5 for year two, notice here, if we graph it, it's gonna be eight, then 8.5. So it's gonna be, so if this is, sorry, this is year one, and this is year two, this is eight, and this is 8.5. So it's gonna be an upward sloping. And if you want to invest your money for a third year, then obviously you're gonna need the premium, you're gonna need to be compensated for an extra return. And this is basically, in a nutshell, the liquidity preference theory and how it explains the yield curve. If you like this recording, please like it and share it. And don't forget to visit my website for additional resources, farhatlectures.com. Good luck and study hard.