So now I'd like to open the floor to questions from the audience. Yes, one here. Another economist question. They're all very nasty. I understand that it takes a long time to see outcomes, but do you have even an anecdotal sense of whether a lot of people who have title or communities who have received title have been able to get credit from banks for investments or land improvements and so on. Would you like to? Or actually there was another question also. So perhaps we can go here. I'm just curious if particularly in the Mozambique case have you observed any correlation at all between property rights and control of wildlife crime poaching? I'm sorry, John Wall from Integra. Yeah, question on the case in Tanzania. So I'm Daniel. We're coming called Ben-Ben. We're working in Ghana with a few of the banks to help access lending to those doing land documentation. So I was curious to see that you said one of the challenges was that many banks do not lend. Who is currently doing the lending that you were talking about? Are these rural banks who are already lending on these temporary titles or the occupancy certificates? And then what is the challenge for the other banks of why they're not lending? Okay, so maybe we'll let the speakers answer those questions. The first was about the outcomes and then it's related to the lending and then the other one was about property rights and poaching. Go ahead. Well, thank you. Mozambique land belongs to the state. So it's impossible to use it as a collateral. That would be the straight answer to that. There is a lot of discussion on privatization. There is an attempt to do an amendment in the law that will allow transference of rights, but you cannot use it as a collateral. With regards to poaching and the crime, the consciousness of communities has demonstrated that in some cases they have control. They do police and protect their resources. In a recent visit to Cabo Delgado, for instance, there was a group of people who were arrested by the community first because they monitor the illegal use of their resources. Consciousness is key in these situations. Maybe also to go back to the economist's point, for Tanzania, the ultimate goal of establishing this particular program is really capital formation. We do all things, but at the end of the day, we want these people to participate in the economy which is governed by the rule of the law. That's why we undertake puzzling, giving them titles on individual basis so that they can use them to get loaned. I can join this with a question asked by my brother there. There are some banks which do not accept this from the experience, and I agree. There are some banks which do not accept this at all because they say it's customer right. It's not a right, it's customer right. The challenge is, why some banks who are not accepting these Ciceroos is what it contains in the law. In the law, they said in case of default, in case of default, bankers are not allowed to sell the property which someone has used it as collateral. It's conflicting that you accept it, that you want people to make capital out of it, and if someone defaults, you cannot sell its property. So, bankers were refraining. They said, no, it does not make any sense. But since Kurabita has started this particular program, they kept informing the bankers that we need to sit down together and see what can we do so that these citizens can take advantage of building the economy at the same time they are not defaulting. And in some cases, we go and make a tripartite arrangement. We say, here is the bank, the financial institution. Here is Kurabita. Here is someone who want to get a loan from the bank.  No, how much have we paid so far? How much have we done so far? Did you use the loan according to the requirement? So, we have proved that this has made the bankers now say, okay, we are confident that the people who are receiving Ciceroos, they can pay back the loans. And in fact, these banks, not only the community banks, because we have the community banks, we have other big banks. We have SierraDB Bank. It's a very big bank. We have National Microfinance Bank. It's a very big bank. And now we have established a Ciceroo Development Bank so that it goes straight to the farmers giving these particular loans. But yet there are still some people, some banks which do not accept it because of this point in the law. Other questions? I think David Mason had a question and then Susanna. Thanks, yeah. Two questions really. In Tanzania, are there chiefs? And if so, how do they, how are they involved in land administration and how have they been incorporated in this titling process? And secondly, again in Tanzania, are there communal areas where there may be overlapping rights? And if so, how have you dealt with that in this titling process? If it's communal areas, it's communal piece of land, maybe it's a certain part of the year one group might be using that land, in another part of the year another group might be using that land. How does that get incorporated into the titling process? Susanna? Yes, I have a question about, I guess, transparency and avoiding any capture during these processes at the village level, at the local level. For example, is it the village adjudication committees in Tanzania, is that what they're called? Yes. How are those committees selected? And what attempts are made to make sure that all sectors of the village, like minorities and women, are represented in those committees to avoid that type of any capture or land grabbing, whatever you want to call it. Can we take one more question from the gentleman over here? Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I'm Paul Masick with the World Cocoa Foundation. I was wondering if you could answer two questions. One is a very practical question regarding the costs of registering land and documenting it. How were those costs shared and to what extent did the farmers actively participate in that cost sharing and perhaps at what level, happy to be referred to more detailed documentation if that's too granular for this discussion. Secondly, I'd also be interested in knowing to what extent you have evidence that farmers who've actually registered their land are changing their practices and behaviors with regard to that land. Are they actually changing anything or is it just taking what was a traditional customary right now, translating it into sort of more codified, registered right? Okay. Starting from the last, if there are changes after titling, in the perspective of our program, our project, we work with communities, so it's collective rights, and even when it is titling, it is for associations. What I can share for the most positive experiences is that the title for an association or a cooperative is very, very important to get support either technical or financial. So the best example I have is a community, an association that we helped to register 58 actors by a river, but they had no means to invest. A government program dedicated, actually funded by the World Bank, dedicated to support irrigation, provided them with equipment to irrigate their land. Another program that promotes commercial agriculture provided technical assistance to produce sugarcane. The harmonization of these three the title, the water and the sugarcane technique upgraded their capacity and the sugar company nearby just buys their products, so the chain is closed. This is one of the most positive examples. Yeah. I can also add something on this last point you talked about whether registration assists in changing behavior. Yeah, we can say yes and in fact in terms of Tanzania it has changed people's mindset so much because they linked the entire process with getting money, with the capital formation. So since everyone is saying, okay, I'm registering my land because I get collateral to get loan and if I get loan I will do so and so businesses. So from there people started to think capital formation all the time so it has really changed their mindset so much not only registration. With regards to the cost sharing you ask, you somewhat ask if there is cost sharing or how do they share this cost. I can say that in the areas where Mkrabita undertake this capacity building so the government is like investing at the beginning it's giving capital it's giving a seed for the formulation to start taking place and thereafter the village council decides how much someone has to contribute because this money is supposed to be assisting the land register at the village level so it is the village council decide how much this people has to contribute but if you are doing the formalization using private firms then that is another thing because they come up with business oriented decisions. Another point was whether we have chiefdom in the country we don't have everything which is related to land issues they are not about chiefs it's about the law. So village number 5 of 1999 is governing all transactions regarding land formalization in the country with the representation at the village level the first register is the village chairman executive officer so the representation is again according to the law because the law says that education officer should be this and this the committee should involve this we have 4 women in the committee of 10 so all these things are being done according to the law. So I am now getting the sign to stop so we are going to wrap up this session for now thank you everyone. Thank you.


לבדתי הרבה. ואני שמחשב הרבה מאוד. הרבה. כל מי שמקשיב לכם, כל מי שמקשיב לכם, כל מי שמקשיב לכם. באני כפרי שרוני נ toxicity קשור יסודי, קשור יסודי. הוא שהגבור עוד העלומי הוא שהגבור עוד העלומי cylinder עוד ריבי הגבר. ה Ganze התק ‑‑ ישראלי פלאגס היו been removed, PLO פלאגס היו been raised and there is no picture that expresses this better than these young women in Jerusalem that remove Israeli flags from cars in front of PLO flags in the background, the cost of living hits the pockets of each and every one of us, the gas, is the electricity, the milk, all those prices are rising, prices are breaking records every day and there is no cure, there is no government in schools and kindergartens, endless strikes, public transportation is paralyzed. The ports are suffering, the airport is breaking down, the national feeling is, and I'm hearing this from many Israeli civilians, the general feeling is that we're losing this country and during this time when all of this is taking place, the officials of the government that also has collapsed are trying to wrap everything with shiny wraps when they're still in the country and say this is managed, this is well organized, this is executed, this is self-glorification that has nothing behind it, falsifying the government that has no ambition and no ability to execute. שקט, החווי הכנסת הבוטבול, אתה לא צריך להגיב על כל דבר, אני מסתכלת על זה. Yep, they promise to change, they spoke about healing, they made an experiment, and the experiment has failed, this is what happens when you take a fake right with extreme left, mix it with the Muslim brotherhood and the joint list and this is what you're getting, this is what these elections are about. תסיכ לעזור לי אני הוציא אותך אני לא רוצה את האזרה שלך תראו, תראה דו אתם רק מוסיפים במקרים אני מתנראה לי חברת הקריסת עמי מצטידר לא רואה הרבה הכנסת בן ביר קריאה ראשונה הרבה הכנסת בן ביר ראשונה היה דו לי איזו הזדנות לחזור This is an opportunity to repeat the essence of what I'm saying They promised a change, they spoke about healing, they experimented היא כן בין ש drives השלטי השלטי שירה לפיד כהם בל היא פעם שביה את המסלמברדבר ו worldly ובלי די יגישו להם והם נדער לצגל ובלדane ובלי די לא Anyways ובלי די We are the only alternative. וההיית החסר לפחות רגע, בבקשה. מהו ישר? THERE IS NO STAKES EVERY ONE HAS NOT ETRING IT IS A LOOSE AMAZON LEGENDARY A GOVERNMENT THAT WILL BRING BACK THE NON-PRIMATIVE PRIDE TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL We are determined to bring ISRAL BACK TO THE PATH OF SUCCESS ובקרובים, ואני אשתקה כל מה שקרובים, מה שאנחנו אשתקה, everything that's happening now is based on the Abraham Accords that we brought and that some of you have objected to both publicly and unpublicly. We brought the gas out of the water and we brought billions of shekels into the pockets of Israeli civilians, we'll bring more. We got Israel for the first time, for the first in the world out of the coronavirus we turned Israel into a cyber superpower. We strength the pride in the Jewish identity in the Bible despite the international pressures we doubled the number of settlers in West Bank. We have a support, there's a major public behind us that is expecting. We have support, we have a vision, we have power, we have a way and I tell you what else we have. We have values. These are terms that disappeared over the past year over with this opportunist government. A shameless government without barriers. We have a vision of Israel as a world power and will fulfill this vision for all citizens of Israel when we'll win the elections, we'll get to work and I'll tell you what will be our first task. Our first task is to lower the prices and return stability and growth for all people of Israel. Jews, Arabs, Druze, Circassian, ultra-orthodox, secular, all of them. This is how we acted. We do not speak for nothing. We are talking with a record, with proof. This is how we did when we got Israel out of the major financial crisis. We did not say that there's nothing to do. We did not say this is a world phenomena. We acted. We got Israel out of crisis. We brought the economy into new heights. We passed the UK and Japan and Canada. We passed France. We probably passed Germany as well. Unlike the current government, unlike the alternate יא ילפיד in the interim government who admitted to know nothing about the economy, this is what he said on television and when he was the most failed finance minister in the history of the state of Israel, we know how to do this. They contributed to the inflation with their taxes. And with the many billions they delivered to one another from Re'anana to Rome. We will take the first task where we will reduce the cost of living. We will step Israel to the top of the technology, the world technology. I met three days ago with a person I spoke to many times over the phone. I met with Albert Bruhla, the CEO of Pfizer. And we spoke about extending the base of knowledge that we have in cooperation with Pfizer and other companies with the state of Israel in order to turn Israel into the greatest biomedical information system. But we want to extend this. We will do this together with many other initiatives. The second thing we will do is we will bring back the national pride. We will take care of the national symbols. We will raise the Israeli flags. Israel is the state of the Jewish people, the only state of the Jewish people. We will establish a government that will take care of everyone for Jews and non-Jews. All are equal citizens. But we will not allow to hurt the Jewish pride, the national pride. Terror on the streets. And above all, unlike יילה פיד, we will not establish a government that is based on the Muslim Brotherhood and terror supporters. Ask to take their seats and remain quiet. And are asked to remain silent. Mr. Chairman, respect this house. This is not how you round a meeting. Take them out of this plenum. This is not how you round a meeting. Are asked to remain silent. A third thing, first thing is to reduce prices, then to bring back national pride. Third thing is Iran. If Iran develops a nuclear arsenal, it will threaten our existence. Therefore, me and my friends will do everything so that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. We will fight Iranian aggression and its proxies, both on the international level and in the operational level. These are the three destinations reducing the cost of living, the national pride and the Iranian threats. Together with them, many other initiatives. But in order to do all of this and many other things, Israel needs a strong government, experienced and stable government. We cannot. We just cannot execute these things and continue to bring Israel on the fantastic path that we have over the past decade. We cannot do this when the government is led by rookies without experience, with no vision. All they have is hollow words and support of the media from which they came from. But we have other things. We have all the power, all the values, all the hope and I would like to thank my friends who worked hard who told us this coalition will break apart. We said that they will break apart and they have because they have no fuel for the future. We do. We have the love for the state of Israel, a belief in the future of the state of Israel and with God's help within four months we will fulfill this for the benefit of all citizens of Israel. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.


Good day, fellow investors. Nikola Snass and Tel Aviv just made an interview with Bloomberg discussing the hottest topics in finance and it's always nice to see his view on things. They discuss the biggest risks from monetary policy-free, budget deficits, the market risk, how to invest and trade wars. So as they just talk and they don't explain and they don't go into the details of what's going on, what are the risks and where they accumulate, in this video I want to go more in depth, at least try, on Tel Aviv's thoughts and really give you the picture behind his words. At the end of the video we'll even discuss his investment strategy and what he advises to the population. Let's start. The biggest risk for Tel Aviv is deficits and no skin in the game. So if we look at just a headline from the Wall Street Journal, US budget deficit grew 15% in the first half of fiscal 2019. So in an environment with full employment, very low unemployment, thus with the economy doing great, budget deficits are increasing. So unemployment rate is very, very low, 3.6%, so historically extremely low. With a strong economy the logical thing should be to have budget surpluses so that when a recession or slowdown eventually comes, the government has the room to increase government spending, increase payments to unemployment and things like that in order to stabilize the economy. However, if we check the following chart from the Fed, the federal surplus or deficits as a percent of gross domestic product, we can see that after 2015 the government deficits in the US in this case increased, have started increasing even if the economy is doing that great. So politicians think now that that will be managed by printing money that we will discuss later as another big risk and simply everybody is focused on the now and there is no accountability, there is no skin in the game. Let's say that just not nothing against Trump, but let's say that Trump increases the deficits now and the United States have to pay that burden 10 years down the line. What is the accountability for politicians like Trump? Zero. Trump will be retired for a long, long time, whatever happens he has no skin in the game, he is backed by other things. And this is one of Trump's main concepts that politicians make decisions to get elected on the present situation and forget about the long-term consequences of what they are doing in this case the debt piling. If we just check the accumulating deficits, what they mean for the government and long-term in this case US citizens, but the things aren't different around the world, the total public debt in the US has doubled in the last 10 years and this doesn't even hold account of the future debt levels that will come from Medicare and all those things. So doubled has the debt. Higher debt leads to higher interest payments and despite historically low interest rates on government lending, if we look at interest payments on the debt that we have mentioned earlier, so the debt currently is above 21 trillion for the government, it was just 9.5 trillion in 2008, the cost of debt per year is now at $550 billion. When you compare the $550 billion with the low interest rates and with the budget deficit we can see that almost three quarters of the budget deficit go for interest payments not for the economy, not for improvements, not for education, just for interest payments. When you borrow to pay interest it resembles a Ponzi scheme and even the projections are that if the government continues doing like they are doing now, the projections are that the deficits will soon hit $1 trillion, which will create a spiral of even more borrowing even higher interest rates and this is an unsustainable situation. So you have very low interest rates and you have a strong economy, usually the Fed would increase interest rates to trim a little bit the economy and in the next recession to be able to lower interest rates. However, if you look at the $550 billion that the government is paying on the currently extremely low government interest rate, it's logical that the Fed cannot increase interest rates, that would be extremely detrimental for the government, for future budget deficits and that would create a spiral of doom and gloom. If we look at the five-year treasury, the yield on the five-year treasury, the average borrowing cost, the average maturity for the US government is somewhere between 5-6 years, so the interest rate on that debt on the $21 trillion is just 2.33% and we see the cost of $550 million. If this interest rate goes back to 5% as it was in 2006, 2008 then this would double just the interest cost would double to more than $1 trillion and that would be doom and gloom. However, nobody thinks about that. The media is focused on trade wars, everything short term, but the debts are piling, piling and piling and Taleb says we don't know whether this will break out in a crisis in a moment or in a few years. But the key message from Taleb is the risks are piling and that's something we have to keep in mind as investors, as normal citizens of the world. This debt issue is a big problem and politicians think that they will easily solve this debt issue by printing more money. We have discussed Ray Dalio's theory, he doesn't agree with that, he just says that it's very likely that governments and monetary politicians will simply print money to ease the debt burdens, which leads to another big huge risks for the economy and everything else. The issue is that inflation is low, everybody thinks they can print as much money as they want to solve all the issues they want, keep interest rates low, subsidize the economy and everything will be well. Taleb says that inflation, yes, has been low, but inflation works in a non-linear way, so it can be very, very low and then you can have huge spikes and at some point inflation will ramp up, that will make things not manageable and then you have to think of countries like Venezuela, Argentina, Zimbabwe, etc. So Taleb really agrees with Charlie Munger on these issues. On where to invest? He says that explicitly avoid long-term bonds. So pension funds love long-term bonds but those are terrible, terrible investments, especially as the risk of inflation is that high. So everybody's talking about low risk, low interest rates forever, low inflation forever, so it might be really time to start thinking about, oh my god, something big is going to happen because the environment is too complacent with what's going on and if monetary policies lose control, which eventually will happen, it doesn't matter for us if it happens tomorrow or in 10 years, the problem is that the consequences will be catastrophic whenever it happens. Taleb also says don't invest in equities if you don't know how to hedge against long tail risks. I always look at ways how to hedge myself, but I always look at those put options, long term this and that and then I always see okay, this is expensive, this is expensive, this is expensive, especially going against so much stimulation in the market from fiscal stimulation from lower taxes. So I have to say I don't know how to hedge myself, so I always hedge myself with the cash position that I manage around my portfolio and positions. So as long as I have cash, if there is a crash and Taleb says that if there is a crash he'll be the first to buy, not now, so I have the cash and I have assets of value that give me some protection. I'm not completely hedged like Taleb is, but I'm going to look into this tail risk hedging to see how it's done probably and if I find something interesting I'll share it with you. If not, we'll leave it to Taleb and we'll try to focus on value investing and hedging with balancing our cash and hedging by no wing and I'll make another video how I prepare and prepared if a crash comes. So please subscribe to this channel to learn more about this kind of mindset investing because it's crucial when it comes to potential crisis in the future and we see the risk spiling. On how to invest if you look at Taleb's books, it's always for him about the barbell and it is about being safe, not investing to make money like most people chase income, chase yield, chase profits. For him investing is about protection, just keeping it safe, protecting your wealth and not doing crazy things and then not being in the middle with I don't know dividend yielding stocks or blue chips or something like that but really one of 10% of your portfolio putting it to high risk investments of course smartly probably he will do it smartly that give you high risk but also exponential rewards. He is such an investor so not really what we value investors do but a very, very interesting message. He mentions how unfortunately pension funds are in a terrible situation especially the defined benefit pension funds because they chase those yields of 7-8% that they have promised if there is a crash they have to double those yields to 15% take too much risk and there goes the pension in smoke. He owns gold what he says from previous interviews I know he owns some land and he says he is in financial instruments and derivatives that give him protection so we don't know what that is that's complicated because he is one of the most complex investors out there so that's something we'll have to live for him but what we can take out from his message is there are huge risks those risks are piling and one should be really, really fair to himself look at the risk reward out there especially these long-term risks that Taleb is discussing and he see what is he exposed to what not and then focus his life make his investment decisions to be happy you never know when Taleb's risks will materialize but if they do and when they do things will be ugly. The moral of the story is the debts are piling it is unsustainable currencies will probably be debased so stay away from bonds there might be hyperinflation if people around the world lose control of monetary policies and money printing and we have to be prepared for that in one way or another. On trade wars to finish on trade wars the hot topic now he says that he usually talks about things that takes him 20 years to think first and then have something to say about trade wars he just made a laugh that next year they will be talking about something else if in 20 years they still talk about trade wars then he'll have something to tell you about that so on that terrible disappointment I'll finish this video I'm looking forward to your comments please subscribe will dig deeper into this macro policies because I'm looking at okay how much should I have portfolio exposure for me it's simple okay I have if I see value I have to buy it and if I can protect myself by buying value real assets below book value profitable things that will always be used things that will benefit of hyperinflation then I'll be relatively protected and who knows perhaps even make some money in between thank you for watching looking forward to your comments and I'll see you in the next video


Russia successfully launched a Proton-M rocket carrying the country's fourth electro-well meteorological satellite February 5. The launch took place at 912 Greenwich meantime from the Russian-leased Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. Upon reaching the low-Earth orbit, the upper stage of the Proton-M launch vehicle is due to deliver the satellite to an orbit with an altitude of 35,400 kilometers. This is Russia's first space launch in 2023, with another three scheduled for the coming months. According to the Russian space agency Roscosmos it intends to send its Soyuz MS-23 mission and the Soyuz 2.1A carrier rocket to the International Space Station in February, as well as launch another Proton rocket in March.


Well at this time, I'd like to invite James Durbin to perform a song in honor of Butch and Beth. So far this afternoon we've heard from friends, family members, co-workers of Butch and Beth, but James knew Butch in a different circumstance. Butch used to chaperone dances at James' school. And this is how James first knew Butch. And while James gets set up, let me just say thank you to all those who've shared their testimony of the honor, the sense of fairness, the steadfast pursuit of the truth exemplified by Butch and Beth. And I'm sure you feel, as I do, inspired to show those qualities in my own life in greater ways, inspired especially to love my family, my friends, and perhaps even defense attorneys. And now here's James Durbin. I just said


Hello everybody, welcome back another Dolby Photoshop tutorial. In this one, I am going to show you how to create a knockout effect. In fact, it's a knockout text effect that as you see here, as I pull around the rectangle or this group here, the knockout effect follows me. So how did I do this? It's very easy to do, but there's a couple of steps, including one or two that don't make a lot of sense. So let's go through this step by step. All right. So I'm going to delete all of this stuff here, and then we're just going to start with our background layer. The first step is you go to the left side here, grab your shape tool. In this case, I'm going to use a rectangle, but if you want to do a circle or anything else like that, go nuts. I'm going to draw this big, I don't know, we're going to go with this big shape here, big rectangle, and then instead of a black fill, I'm going to turn it into some sort of dark red, wine red color. And I just did that by clicking on fill up here in the top left and then selecting a color. Okay. The next step is I'm going to go to the left side here, and now I'm going to grab my text tool and you'll see here, I'm going to grab the horizontal type tool. I've got a very large font. So I'm going to make this a little smaller, at least to start, and then I'm just going to click and I'm going to type. So I'm going to write in Paris. Beautiful. I'm going to select it. And then at the top here, I'm just going to go ahead and drag it. So it's a little bigger. So it's easier for you and everybody to see. So I'm going to go up to something like 250 point. Yeah, let's go to 250. There we go. There we go. Cool. All right. Good stuff. Now I'm going to move it. I was going to move it down here and then presto. Now let's go and get to the next step. Okay. So the next step is I'm going to double click on the text layer, but you'll see here. This is the thumbnail here. And then there's the Paris and then to the right of it, I'm going to double click on the right side of it. And when I do that, we get a few options under advanced blending. This is where we can go ahead and start working on knockout. You'll see here under channels that says knockout none. I'm going to switch that from none to shallow. Also, I'm going to go ahead and change the fill opacity from 100% to 0%. And you'll see here that it's knocked it out, but it's knocked it out to transparent. So this could be an effect that you're going for, but in most cases not.  And now the final step and this one is a little counter intuitive in my opinion, but what you need to do is you got to grab the top layer, grab the second layer, and we're just going to go ahead and group them. So I'm just going to grab the two layers. I'm going to right click outside of it. Here we go group from layers presto. And when we do that, it's going to say new group from layers group one pass through all that's correct. Click okay. And look at that. It is now knocked out and there we go. We've got our group and if I hold down shift key and I just start moving it, you'll see here that it is perfectly knocked out. That's the whole effect in one quick video. Thanks for watching.


It was once quoted by Brigadier Dick Easton that communications is the lifeblood of operations and that statement rings true today. Whether we're talking internally, whether we're talking with our partner agencies, having communication networks and systems that allow us to connect with those agencies, so important. So there's over 18,000 of these units coming on board and that's a mixture of base radios, mobile radios and also portable radios. There's a few features on these new radios. So the first one is is that the ability to go across various frequencies. The other thing is that we'll have the ability to talk to other agencies through various channels to make sure that we're actually in touch with them as well. So just a real enhancement technology step forward.


There are three broad theories about evolution and food. One is that humans have become adapted to the products of the agricultural revolution over the last 10,000 years. Two is the paleo view, that 10,000 years is a blink of an evolutionary eye, and that humans have adapted to paleolithic diets with lots of lean meat. But why stop there? The last 200,000 years as mostly stone age humans represents just the last 1% of 20 or so million years we've been evolving since our common great-ape ancestor. During our truly formative years, the first 90% of our existence, one might say, our nutritional requirements reflect an ancestral past in which we ate mostly leaves, flowers, and fruits, with some bugs thrown in thanks to wormy apples to get our vitamin B12. For this reason, another approach that might improve our understanding of the best dietary practices for modern humans is to focus attention not on the past, but rather on the here and now. That is on the study of the foods eaten by our closest living relatives, given the bulk of our ancestral diets and the lack of evidence supporting any notable diet-related changes in human nutrient requirements, metabolism, or physiology compared to our fellow great-apes. This could explain why fruits and vegetables are not only just so good for us, but vital to our survival. We're actually one of the few species so adapted to a plant-based diet that we could actually die from not eating fruits and vegetables from the vitamin C deficiency disease, scurvy. Most other animals just make their own vitamin C. But why would our body waste all that effort making vitamin C when we evolved hanging out in the trees just eating fruits and veggies all day long? It's presumably not a coincidence that the few other mammals unable to synthesize their own vitamin C like guinea pigs and bunny rabbits and fruit bats are all, like us great-apes, strongly herbivorous. Even during the Stone Age, we may have been getting up to 10 times more vitamin C than we get today, and 10 times more dietary fiber, based on essentially rehydrated human fossilized feces. The question is, are these incredibly high nutrient intake simply an unavoidable byproduct of eating whole plant foods all the time, or might they actually be serving some important function like antioxidant defense? Plants create antioxidants to defend their own structures against free radicals. The human body must defend itself against the same types of pro-oxidants, and so we have also evolved an array of amazing antioxidant enzymes, which is effective but not infallible. Free radicals can breach our defenses, cause damage that accumulates with age, leading to a variety of disease causing, and ultimately, fatal changes. That's where plants may come in. Plant-based antioxidant-rich foods traditionally form the major part of our diet, and so we didn't have to evolve that great of an antioxidant system. We could just let the plants in our diet pull some of the weight, like the not bothering to make vitamin C thing, let the fruit do it. Using plants as a crutch may well have relieved the pressure for further evolutionary development of our own defenses, meaning we'd become dependent on getting lots of plant foods in our diet, and when we don't, we may suffer adverse health consequences. Even during the Stone Age, this may not have been a problem. Only in recent history did we start giving up on whole plant foods. Even modern-day paleo and low-carb advocates may be eating more vegetables than those on standard Western diets. There's this perception that low carbers are chowing down on the three B's, beef, butter, and bacon, but that's just a small minority. And what they are eating more of is salad. The number one thing an internet low carb community said they were eating more of was vegetables. Great! If people want to cut their carb intake by swapping junk food for vegetables, that's not the problem. The concern is the shift to animal-sourced foods. Greater adherence to a low carb diet high in animal sources of fat and protein was associated with higher mortality, for example after a heart attack, meaning they cut their lives short. If there's one takeaway from our studies of ancestral diets, perhaps it's that diets based largely on plant foods promote health and longevity.


Good morning from Omaha, Texas.  So it was very nice, slept pretty well. Today we're going to go hunt some diamonds I believe. Are you excited? I'm excited. You want to play in the dirt? Yeah. Alright, let's go find some diamonds. Let's go. We're here at Diamonds State Park over here in Arkansas. By the way, it's 37 acres of diamonds and what's your discovery today? The same thing we found yesterday. Let me get out of the thing. Yes, this is what we saw floating in the river and it stinks, you said? Yeah. Well, that means it definitely was alive. Let me break off a piece. It looks like rotten fruit or something. There's like seeds inside. Don't smell it? It's super stinky. Oh.  We're about to get dirty. I'm just going to put the GoPro on time lapse and if we see something, I'll turn it back on. My hopes are not very high though, not to be pessimistic, but you know, optimist realist here. After a couple of minutes of playing in the water, the runoff, we got nada. We're going to start filling this thing up and bring it over to the wash station. Alright, so this is tired. Tired. This is one of the wash pavilions. Looks like we got some muddy old water. People shaking away. Trying to strike it rich. What they didn't know is that we got all the diamonds right here in this plastic bucket. Claire's got the perfect technique here. It's a grab and clump. I think there's even in your rocks, it's just mud.  Hey, that's enough? Yeah, let's try that. We think unsuccessful. We'll see. We got a couple of like little clear looking things. I wouldn't bet on it being a diamond. So if you think you need more than one bucket, you are mistaken, especially on a chunky muddy day like this. We're going to try and get the middle part over here where we started because we learned that trying to break up muddy chunks, not a productive way to hunt for diamonds. It's going to be a lot heavier than it was the first time, but you're carrying it. Yep, this is our new technique here. We're just going to take the saw stuff and when I say we, I mean Claire, good work Claire. Well, you like digging into dirt anyways. Yeah. That's what you want to do for a living. Yeah. Super cool. Obviously, there's no strategy or, I mean, it's just chance. I mean, your odds are better in Vegas, honestly. So that's where you rent and return the equipment over here. That is a diamond field. And next we're going to bring our diamond bag, which is a very high tech system here. What is your name? Glenn. It's a Glenn. Mr. Glenn is going to help us identify this cliff bar bag full of diamonds. That's a mother load. Okay. Yeah. We found the purple one. We know that's not a purple diamond. Yeah. Actually, that is amethyst. Amethyst? Yeah. Purple. Amethyst. Is there anything else in there? These two right here are agate. All right. Okay. Now agate actually has quartz crystal in the middle of it. So these are actually quartz crystals. Okay. Then you have your share of calcite. Now calcite is a really soft mineral and it's going to scratch my table and it's coming to come up chalky. Oh yeah. Okay. Now did you hear that? It scratched the table really hard. Yeah. Okay. So this is actually a quartz crystal. Wow. Okay. And that's how we tell the difference between the two where your... Quartz and quartz crystal.  Okay. So it's going to leave a chalky residue whereas your quartz crystals are a lot harder like a diamond. Okay. And they're going to scratch the table and you're going to hear it. And that's how we tell the difference. Uh huh. Oh yeah. I see that. Yeah. Right. Interesting. See there? Anything that leaves a chalky residue is going to be your calcite. And I'm afraid the rest of this is just going to be that calcite. The same kind of stuff. See how it all looks chalky? Yep. You know? Very opaque. Yeah.   Yeah. So we have, the field is capable of producing this color amethyst out there. Wow. And it's about three to four feet deep out there on Canary Hill. Okay. Yeah. And that's where that, is that the blue? That's where this, that's where this was found here. Interesting. Uh, yeah. Is that where the blue dirt is? Uh, the green. Oh, the green, yeah. The green dirt on Canary Hill. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, volcanic tuff actually. Okay. And this lady right here, Ms. Janet, she is only one of two people, excuse me, that knows where that vein is. Oh, interesting. Interesting. So there's a special spot for it. Right. Oh, right. Well, after a fun afternoon of digging in the dirt, playing in the sand, we're going to stop into a little cafe in town here, a cute little town, by the way. And apparently they've got some interesting things on the menu. Oh, this has Southern written all over it, french fries, catfish, husk puppies, you know, beans, coleslaw, and a happy girl. All right. So we finished up dinner and met a viewer named Lane. Hi. You live in town here? Yes, sir. Yeah. That's cool. We didn't find any diamonds, but we found Lane. Lane. So good to meet you, man. Good to meet you. All right. Thanks for coming by. We'll see you later. See you. Thank you. All right. Thanks. You're welcome. Patrick of Storytelling of Filmmaking, we have now arrived very close to the next mine, close to tomorrow's mine, tomorrow's spot where we're going to be playing in the dirt. Again, tomorrow hopefully we're going to score. We're going to find something interesting, something to take home, nice little souvenir. Thanks for watching. I will see you guys on the road tomorrow.


Welcome back to plus CV Africa the breakfast and there was still here to bring you up to speed with what happened and the first of November 2012 I mean some time ago in Pakistan now and it's really really sad because Parents actually killed their daughter with acid the reason being that she was seen talking to a man or young man and So the parent decided to pour acid over this 15 year old girl. It's really sad But you need to also understand that in Pakistan Women are not really treated right women are not treated properly a mother and father in Pakistan administered That particular act and they killed your daughter By dousing her with acid after seeing her talking to a young man now the local police at the time decided to investigate the case and However, and that's because there was a report by a relative talking about the suspicion of What's actually going on but whether or not, you know, those who perpetrated this evil where? Arrested and justice was served is another thing entirely But how do you explain all of that? She was badly burnt and they did not take her to the hospital until the next morning Now the girl was brought to the hospital in a very critical position According to the reports. She was almost 70 percent with you know, the bonds the police also Still investigated the East End like I mentioned earlier on whether or not they were arrested or they were prosecuted Is what we do not know But it's really sad because sometimes you have different cultures and different practices and different beliefs now I still like I mentioned earlier on apart from Pakistan You still also have some other countries where the laws are not very favorable They don't treat women well women and not treated probably and you find out that the fundamental human right Is abuse we're hoping that we get to a point where some of these barbaric Practices and laws would actually be abolished and everyone will be treated fair and right as a human being Because we're first a human being before we're a male or a female All right, what's up on the brakes right now when we return we get straight to the conversation Well, we'll be looking at this threat and the weaknesses of the various candidates That will be contesting in the elections come the 6th of November in an amber state. Good morning


Group Good, the first item of businesses dayf pleasure is portfolio questions.ボナIR Erbyd's result Thank you Presiding Officer. I very rarely make a point of order, but I felt it was important, on this occasion, to make a point of order to ensure that the answers provided by ministers to parliament are accurate and reflect reality. Yesterday, during the topical question in response to my supplementary question, the Minister for GreenScales, for green skills, circular economy and by diversity stated, I also remind the member that barcodes are not part of the regulations passed by the Scottish Parliament and are therefore not part of the legislation that we can consider here. However, the deposit and return scheme for Scotland regulations 2020, passed by this Parliament, required European article numbers or barcodes to be included in any application for producer registration as set out in schedule 1 of the regulations. I would be grateful if the Presiding Officer could confirm whether there has been any attempt by the minister to correct the official record on this point. I think that, as members have been reminded on numerous occasions, they are approved mechanisms for amending the record that is up to members, whether they choose to avail themselves of those mechanisms. On that basis, we will proceed with portfolio questions. The first portfolio is constitution, external affairs and culture. As ever, any member wishing to ask a supplementary question should press the request-and-speak buttons during the relevant question. I call question number one, Sarah Boyack. To ask the Scottish Government what supports— Apologies, Ms Boyack. I think that we need to move the business motion first, so I am going to call on the minister to move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thought that I would come down here for no reason. Moves, Presiding Officer. I think that you will find constitution portfolio questions as well, worth the trip down from the ministerial office. Is that the question that the motion be agreed to? Are we all agreed? Yes. We are agreed, and we can now move on to the long-anticipated portfolio questions on constitution, external affairs and culture, question number one, Sarah Boyack. Many thanks, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to Pakistan following the severe flooding that the country experienced in 2022. The Scottish Government has provided £1.5 million in support for the people of Pakistan following the devastating floods in 2022. We have awarded £1 million in humanitarian support to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal and members of our humanitarian emergency fund panel helping to deliver relief on the ground in Pakistan. We have also provided an additional £500,000 for the existing British Council, Pakistan Women and Girls Scholarships programme, to double the number of school and university scholarships available to women and girls in the worst-affected areas, ensuring that they can continue their education with minimum disruption. Can I thank the minister for that answer? I also want to put on record my support for all those who are still involved in the aftermath, supporting communities to recover, such as the Disasters Emergency Committee. The minister mentioned direct funding to Pakistan, and the Government is also committed to increasing its international development fund to £15 million each year, but stakeholders have told me that they are unsure how the money will actually be utilised by the Scottish Government. Could the minister outline what work the Scottish Government is doing with the international development sector in Scotland to ensure that the increase in the fund will be used in country, in community, and could she also outline how that increase will help communities in Pakistan to recover from the extreme weather disruption and, indeed, other countries, which will only increase due to the climate emergency, not just to get them back to where they were but to build on resilience against future climate disasters? I will make the usual reminder that questions will need to be brief and ministerial responses as brief as possible to allow everybody to get in. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It is a really important question, including the issues that we have seen across Malawi with the flood and the impact of climate change. We have been discussing with officials over the past few weeks the work that we need to undertake, and I have met members of the HEF and other organisations over the past few weeks. I would be keen to come back to Sarah Boyack with an update on what we are doing with the fund and the criteria for utilising that fund and the questions that she has asked about how it will be utilised so that I can come back and let her know. To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting community-based facilities in the west of Scotland region to preserve Scottish culture and heritage. The Scottish Government supports a range of organisations that help to preserve our culture and heritage in communities across Scotland. We provide targeted support for culture and heritage facilities through our funding to local authorities, organisations and public bodies, including Creative Scotland and Historic Environment Scotland. In 2022-23, Creative Scotland invested £85.4 million in the west of Scotland region. Our culture collective programme brings together creative practitioners, organisations and communities, and, importantly, communities across Scotland to work together to shape the future cultural life of their community. West of Scotland culture collective supports programmes, including Inverclyde culture collective, Evolve and the Air Gateway. I thank the minister for that response. As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a vital role in our society. However, under the SNP Government, they are sadly declining. In 2009-2010, there were 65 full-time staff employed in libraries in East Dunbartonshire. However, in 2022-23, there were just 38. Local councils are having to plug budget gaps created by the SNP Government cuts. I ask the minister what more will the Scottish Government do to keep our libraries open and to ensure that knowledge and cultural heritage is preserved? Pam Gruslaw makes an excellent point about how important libraries are, and it is so important that the responsibility for them is devolved to local authorities. It is a local authority's responsibility to take that forward. Of course, we know about the wellbeing and the health and education impact of local libraries, and we have been working closely with the sector in order to ensure that we can maintain libraries too. The minister will be well aware of many community organisations that are trying to save Scotland's built heritage at risk. A good example is an organisation called the Springbow Winter Garden Trust, which I am the chair. It is trying to save Scotland's largest Victorian glass house, which is an increasingly perilous state of dereliction, and has been abandoned since 1983. We have been really struggling to try to achieve the necessary capital funds to initiate works to save this building, which should be willing to meet with me and the trustees to see if we can find a viable way forward to save this historic building, one of Scotland's poorest communities. I know the Winter Gardens well, having spent a lot of time in that park with my cousins growing up, so I am very well aware of it. A historic environment Scotland's heritage and place programme is an area-based funding programme that aims to contribute to developing vibrant and sustainable places in Scotland through community-led regeneration, exactly what Paul Sweeney is speaking about there. I would be happy to meet with Paul Sweeney and the organisation, because we have a number of ways that we can support communities in order to ensure that they maintain and sustain and keep for the future that heritage. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the reported comments by Scottish Opera regarding the disbanding of an orchestra due to the lack of young people in the industry. We know that participating in cultural activity from a young age boosts our well-being and helps us to develop valuable life skills. The Scottish Government provides significant funding to support access to music and the arts for young people across Scotland. That includes £9.5 million this financial year, announced just recently by my colleague Angus Robertson for the Youth Music Initiative. I understand that the orchestra, which formed part of Scottish Opera Young Company, was disbanded about five years ago, but the Scottish Opera Young Company is still going strong and is supported by Scottish Opera's main orchestra. Despite the SNP commitment in 2021-22 to remove fees from all pupils learning a musical instrument, data now shows that 92 per cent of pupils are missing out. Specifically, in my constituency and in Dumfries and Galloway, the number of pupils taking a musical instrument is declined by almost 500. At least one school in the constituency music is no longer being offered as an in-school subject despite pupil demands. Can the minister explain how the SNP intends to keep their manifesto promise of removing barriers to music education and ensuring that all Scottish pupils have access to that? I am very happy to work across the board with any organisers, including our local authorities, to look at more ways in which we can ensure that our young people get the access to music tuition and all that comes with it. That is why that investment in the Youth Music Initiative is incredibly important. It is delivering on our commitment to expand this into other art forms and it is also ensuring that the Youth Music Initiative is used very well in local authorities. It also covers other art forms beyond music and we need to ensure that that is targeted in a way that supports children and young people's health, wellbeing and personal development through the arts and their creative activity. As I am happy to work across the board with any local authority or organisation who is working on that, I have just recently met the chair of the COSLA wellbeing board to re-institute the work of the culture chairs committee and we will be meeting soon, so I will raise it there. I am briefly voice of children. Instrumental music tuition is an area that has been drastically reduced by some councils to keep up with the budget cuts. This means that thousands of children in Scotland may not have the opportunity to learn how to play the musical instrument at school. What assessment have the Scottish Government made about the impact of this on the ability of the industry to continue to recruit young musicians? The organisations that recruit young musicians into all the different aspects of this are working very hard in order to keep doing that. That is why that Youth Music Initiative investment is so important. I would be happy to work with anyone across the chamber, but that does not need to be a political issue. It needs to be an issue about how we ensure that our children get the best out of their education, but that investment is really important and it would be great if the opposition would welcome it. Question 4 is withdrawn. Question 5, Paul O'Kane. To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting local theatres. Minister Christina McKelvie. The Scottish Government values the importance of the arts and local theatres for the many benefits they can bring, such as nurturing creativity and improving health and wellbeing. The Scottish Government provides support to local theatres through funding to Creative Scotland for their regularly funded organisations, which include world-class theatre. Independent local theatres in Scotland are also eligible to apply to Creative Scotland's open fund for specific projects or productions, and I would urge them to do so. This year, the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock celebrates its 10th birthday, a significant achievement, reflecting its status as a much-loved cultural institution, the continuation of the arts guild in Greenock that was founded in 1946, and much-loved by people in Inverclydon across west Scotland. Unfortunately, it is the case that the Beacon is often seen as an exception, rather than the rule, with too many community theatres struggling for survival due to the inadequate financial support. Indeed, the decision of the former finance secretary to reverse the proposed £6.6 million cut to the culture sector back in February was a welcome step. However, Creative Scotland should not have been threatened with such a significant financial cut in the first instance. Therefore, I would ask the minister, does she agree with me that cultural institutions like the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock are invaluable local assets, and will she agree to meet with me to discuss funding for various theatres in west Scotland that are in real peril? It is a quick answer, Presiding Officer, yes and yes. The minister may be aware of Westlothian leisure's proposals to close the Howden Park Centre and Theatre in Livingston in Westlothian. After the Labour-led Conservatives supported, Westlothian Council has proposed to withdraw all management fee funding from the trust in future years. What more can the Scottish Government do to ensure that local authorities are meeting their statutory responsibilities under the local government and planning Scotland Act 1982 to provide cultural facilities, simply owning buildings that surely is not enough, communities need a local cultural strategy and at least some financial contribution to the running of cultural services? I understand the concerns raised about the future of the Howden Park Centre, although local authority provision is entirely a matter for each local authority. I understand that Creative Scotland is initiating discussions with Westlothian Council about the potential closure in view of the redevelopment grant previously given to the centre. The Scottish Government's Covid-related additional funding for Westlothian Council included £4.2 million in recognition of the loss of income during the pandemic in respect of leisure centres such as the Howden Park Centre. More broadly, we continue to work in partnership with COSLA and the culture conveners group, a forum that was originally instigated by Fiona Hyslop at both local and national level to identify ways to strengthen services around the principle of cultural recovery and renewal. To ask the Scottish Government what percentage of Creative Scotland's total awards funding was allocated to the Highlands and Islands in the last financial year. Creative Scotland provides a range of support for cultural activities and organisations across all regions of Scotland through their network of regularly funded organisations, the open fund or their various other funding streams. In the financial year 2022 to 2023, 8.7 per cent of Creative Scotland's total funding awards were allocated to projects in the Highlands and Islands. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, given the size of the area involved. I would have hoped for more, but I anticipate he expected that answer. Edencourt Theatre is a very valuable asset to the community of the Highlands. The venue has supported residents through the global cost of living crisis with its warm welcome and the introduction of low-income tickets. Like many other Scottish theatre venues, Edencourt continues to face significant funding challenges. Will he agree to look at what further funds could be made available to them in these difficult times? The Edencourt in Inverness is the largest arts venue in the Highlands. It includes two theatres, it includes two multipurpose studios, two cinemas and three art galleries. It underscores the importance that Edward Mountain rightly raises in the chamber. The Edencourt receives regularly funded regular funding from Creative Scotland of £0.5 million a year. It also receives supporters as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, including £242,000 for recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Something else that is worthy of mention is that the Edencourt Youth Theatre provides dance and theatre classes to young children aged five to eight years and holds theatre workshops inviting schools across Scotland and are well known for their work right across the Highlands and Islands and not just in Inverness. I totally agree with Edward Mountain how important the Edencourt Theatre is and the support that the Scottish Government and, through it, Creative Scotland gives. I hope that that continues long into the future. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its progress in establishing a peace institute by the end of 2022 as set out in its 2021-22 programme for Government. The Scottish Government commissioned an independent report last year to advise on the establishment of a peace institute. Scottish ministers have endorsed the report's proposed path to establishing a full-fledged peace institute, and the Scottish Government remains committed to that ambition. However, since the report's release in June 2022, the financial situation facing Scotland and the Scottish Government has deteriorated and is the most challenging since devolution. In difficult economic times, difficult decisions are required to be made and ministers have reluctantly agreed to delay further work on the peace institute until later this parliamentary term. The Scottish Government's commitment to establishing the peace institute was that it would have a focus on human rights, yet Scotland's own police force Police Scotland signed a training agreement with Columbia in 2020. Columbia Police subsequently killed over 40 people during protests in 2021 and detained hundreds of young people on spurious charges, many of whom remain in prison. Can the minister confirm what discussions he has had with Scottish Government ministers to ensure that the peace institute's focus on human rights is not undermined by Police Scotland's international development unit working with police forces with a record of human rights abuses? I think that I'm right in saying that this is not the first time the question has been raised by the member in the chamber. I think that it's absolutely right and proper that we look at the highest possible maintenance of human rights standards where any Scottish public institution is involved. I think that it's also right to say that it's important where practicable that efforts are made to help and support the changing of cultures in other parts of the world which do not maintain the high standards of human rights that we enjoy in this country, but I'll reflect on what the member says and undertake to write back to her. Thank you. Can the cabinet secretary reflect on the success of the Scottish Council of Global Affairs which has fulfilled the programme for government pledge to coordinate Scottish expertise and research on global issues and their impact on Scotland? Since the launch last year, the Scottish Council on Global Affairs has made excellent progress in establishing itself as a crucial, as an impartial Scotland-based research institute providing a hub for informed, non-partisan debate on a wide range of global issues. The three founding universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews have made significant progress in harnessing the breadth of expertise that Scotland-based researchers have to offer. I'm glad to see that the institute benefits from the support not only from the Scottish Government but also from the UK Government and from across the political spectrum. Through their research programme and suite of regular events, they have begun to help to foster vital public discussion around key global issues of relevance to Scotland. I'm excited to see the plans that they have for the future. I've previously asked about the location, cost and remit of the proposed peace institute on three separate occasions, but no answers have been provided regarding those specific points. Can the cabinet secretary use this opportunity to share how much money has been spent so far, the projected cost and the number of civil servants involved? I'm surprised that this manifesto commitment has been dispensed with. We've got wars in Ukraine, we've got the conflict in Sudan, we've got the conflict in Yemen. If Scotland is going to make a big impact on the world in resolving conflicts, why doesn't the Government prioritise that? This is a priority for the Government during this parliamentary term, but I'm happy to share the commitment that I've given to write to the member from the Conservative benches on this subject. I think that he understands the financial constraints that the Scottish Government is working under. I think that he also knows the commitment that the Government has to supporting peace and reconciliation efforts around the world. I'm confident that we'll make progress on that during this parliamentary term. I look forward to the support of all parties for this initiative, as it has been for the Scottish Council for Global Affairs. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to accelerate the reopening of sites currently closed due to inspections by Historic Environment Scotland. We are providing Historic Environment Scotland with £72.7 million this year, a record high level to help maintain Scotland's heritage and historic environment. That is an 82.6 per cent increase on pre-pandemic funding. With their commercial income, Historic Environment Scotland's operating budget this financial year is £114.5 million, which is 22.4 per cent higher than pre-pandemic. Historic Environment Scotland has completed the first group of inspections in its prioritised inspection programme on schedule and is making progress on the next group of prioritised sites, which will be completed by the end of this year. They continue to put the health and safety of individuals first, reopening sites only when it's safe to do so. I thank the minister for the answer. In 2022, El Torcastle closed due to Historic Environment Scotland inspections, with no known date of being reopened. It's considered one of Scotland's best preserved tower houses from the 1500s and a favourite spot for family day trips. Can the minister assure me that the reopening of El Torcastle will be a priority so that families can enjoy it during the summer months and that the local economy is no longer adversely affected? Yes. I can give Ross McCall the assurance that I will have Historic Environment Scotland look into the particular site that she mentions and come back to her with the most up-to-date position on that. I think that those inspections and the repairs on all the work that's being done are moving on at pace and it changes almost in a daily basis. Getting Ross McCall that most up-to-date position from Historic Environment Scotland is probably the best answer at this time. The minister concludes portfolio questions on constitution, extended affairs and culture. We'll have a brief pause before we move on to the next portfolio to allow front benches to change. The next portfolio is justice and home affairs. As ever, if a colleague wishes to ask a supplementary question, I'd invite them to press the request and speak buttons during the relevant questions. There is quite a lot of interest for supplementaries in this section, so I would invite members to be as brief in their questions and to be brief in their answers as possible. I call question number one, Jeremy Balfour. Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government when the next regular review of the sentence in young people guidelines is due to take place. Presiding Officer, the timing and form of reviews of sentence and guidelines are, of course, matters for the independent Scottish Sentencing Council. Their review process for offence and offender-specific guidelines is that, after one year, they will consider data on relevant cases and engage with sentences to assess whether the guideline has had the intended effect and identify any unintended consequences or emergent trends as a result of the guideline. After three years, they will review the data on relevant cases over this period and engage with sentences on their experience of using the guidelines and publish a review of the guidelines' operations detailing the impact of the guideline over the medium term. Jeremy Balfour. Thank you, cabinet secretary, for her answer. The SNP's sentence in Quango introduced the sentence to young people guidelines in January last year, which applied to all criminals under the age of 25 and allowed them to get off with lighter sentences. That is despite widespread opposition from the public, 71 per cent of whom said that the guidelines should not apply to such a high age limit. We have now seen those guidelines used so that rapers avoid jail murders to get much reduced sentences in time. Cabinet secretary, why did the First Minister, who was just a secretary at the time, support those guidelines and when will they be developed? If the member does not mind, I would like to correct him. This is not the SNP's sentence in guidelines. This is the Scottish Sentencing Council's guidelines, a matter in which Parliament as a whole had a voice on in 2010 in the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act, where the form and functional role and responsibilities of the Sentencing Council were set out and agreed by this Parliament. I have set out to the member the processes in which the Sentencing Council keep under review their guidelines. They take very seriously their responsibilities in engaging with the public and informing the public in terms of the role and purpose of sentencing, which of course includes rehabilitation, but it also includes punishment. I understand that Sentencing guidelines are clear that a prison sentence remains an option for the court when it comes to heinous crimes such as rape and murder. Can the cabinet secretary provide figures for the number of rape convictions that resulted in a custodial penalty since 2018? The latest public statistics that covered the period up to 31 March 2021, between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2021, 327 people have been convicted of rape and of those 322, which is 98 per cent, received a custodial sentence. Of course, rape trials are dealt with in the High Court. The High Court has unlimited sentences and powers, including up to life sentencing. Members might be interested to know that the average sentence for rape is six years, eight months and that prison sentences have on average, across all offences, increased by 14 per cent. There have now been a number of cases where there has been huge public concern about the sentences given to offenders convicted of rape, where the judges said that the sentence was significantly reduced due to young persons' sentencing guidelines. Given that those guidelines were introduced and have created a significant change without the involvement of Parliament, will the cabinet secretary do what she can to ensure that there is a debate on the impact of those regulations in Government time? As I stated to Mr Balfour, that Parliament did have its voice when it passed legislation on the powers of the Sentencing Council. In Parliament at that time, I sat in the Justice Committee and I can assure members that there was certainly a fulsome debate on those matters. There was not necessarily consensus on all matters of detail. However, in terms of the Sentencing Council's functions in terms of reviewing, it will have, as I have outlined, an interim review looking at initial decisions that have been made, where the guidance has been applied, but, in those cases, the guidance has not been applied. Of course, it is up to judicial discretion whether it chooses to apply the guidance, but it would, of course, have to provide written reasons for that. Over the three-year period, once perhaps the appeal court processes have been fulfilled in relevant cases, you will see much more robust and thorough data that will be published by the Sentencing Council. To ask the Scottish Government how forthcoming legislation will advance the rights of child victims of crime. The Scottish Government is committed to advancing the rights of child victims through legislative and non-legislative measures. Both the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform Bill and the Children's Care and Justice Bill contain provisions to increase protection for the privacy and dignity of child victims. We recognise that children find aspects of the system particularly traumatising, so we will benefit from the trauma-informed and person-centred approaches that underpin the legislation. We have also published our vision for the Ben's Hoose, a transformational whole-system approach to delivering child protection, justice and health support in services to child victims. I thank the minister for that answer and welcome the measures that she outlined. Does the minister agree with me that advancing and balancing the rights of all children who come into contact with our justice system, where their child victims of criminal harm, witnesses or children who cause harm to others, is of the utmost importance and that any legislation made in this place must get it right for every child? Yes, I do agree and this is to be a finely balanced area. CEM must be taken to ensure the kill brand and ethos of the children's hearing systems, which has the needs and welfare of the child, is a subject to the referral at its centre and it is not compromised. The rights of the child victim must therefore be carefully balanced against the right of the referred child whose privacy and welfare needs are being considered by the children's hearing. Crucially, children's hearings are not criminal justice settings and are welfare based rather than being an impunity system. Bruce Supplementary is first from Russell Findlay. Thank you. One in four cases sent to children's reports are for alleged crimes often serious yet. Victim support Scotland describes an information vacuum with victims not being entitled to details of their cases. Will the minister ensure that victims are no longer kept in the dark and that their rights are central to this new bill? Thank you. If the child is placed in a secure care via the hearing system, the provisions which govern information sharing in the children's hearing system allow for information about whether compulsory supervision order has been made or how the children's hearing was otherwise changed. There is no provision within the bill to share information beyond this because it is not an offence or behavioural loan that determines where a child is placed and for how long. The system takes a holistic approach and considers how the child's welfare in is as well as offence and behaviour agree, engage with a secure care criteria. The independent strategic review of funding and commissioning of violence against women and girls services was published yesterday. It recommended that children and young people experiencing domestic abuse are identified as victims in their own right in law. How does the Scottish Government intend to respond to this recommendation? The review was just launched yesterday and we are considering the review that was launched. The bill is a part of a wider strategic programme of work, including the Children's Care and Justice Scotland Bill and the Bairns Hoos with on-going engagement taking place, with officials leading on this area to ensure a joined-up approach across Government. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the introduction of whole-life sentences as an option for judges in relation to the most serious offences. Judges in Scotland set the punishment parts of life sentences. The punishment part of a life sentence is a period that must be served in custody. Under this long-standing law, judges have the power to set a punishment part that exceeds the remainder of a prisoner's natural life. That can result in a whole-life sentence in individual cases. The Scottish Government supports the courts having those powers available for the most serious offences. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. The horrific case of Joe Bartley, who was murdered in a medieval way according to the judge who presided over the case, was required under Scott's law to impose a punishment that resulted in the sentence being 24 years reduced from 29 due to the murderer being under the age of 25. The sentence means that it is feasible that in this well case the murderer could be released in his forties. Does the cabinet secretary not agree that judges should be at the very least have the opportunity to impose whole-life sentences for such barbaric cases? Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by the brutal murder of Ms Bartley. With respect to Mr Stewart, I have just made very clear to this Parliament what the law currently is that punishment parts can exceed a prisoner's natural life. He will also be aware that life sentence prisoners have no automatic release. He might be interested to look at the information provided by the Parole Board for Scotland. He will get a sense of the seriousness in which the Parole Board takes its duties. For example, in 2021, the only released a small proportion of people who came up for release on parole licence. I believe that we should be leaving that in the hands of the judges and the experts. They will, through their own sentencing statements, make clear what guidance they have and have not taken into consideration. I repeat that, since the early 2000s, the punishment part of a prisoner's sentence can exceed their natural life, where a judge decides that that is appropriate. I would contend, Mr Stewart, that that is an appropriate decision for a judge and not a politician. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that prisoners can already be kept in prison by an order for lifelong restriction when there is a concern of public safety and that it was the SNP in government that ended the previous system of early release for serious offenders introduced by the Conservatives? I can confirm that prisoners serving orders for lifelong restriction remain in custody if there is a concern about public safety. In 2021-22, the Parole Board considered for parole 90 prisoners serving those sentences and not one was released. That shows how seriously the Parole Board takes their responsibilities. It is a matter of record that it was this Government that ended automatic early release for the most dangerous offenders in 2015. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether the protection of workers' retail and age-restricted goods and services Scotland Act 2021 has assisted the police in responding to reports of assault, threat or abuse of retail workers. Information provided by Place Scotland indicates that, in the period since the act came into force in August 2021 to February 2023, more than 5,000 reports of assaults or threatening abusive behaviour against retail workers have been received. It is clear that this number of reported incidents is very concerning and unacceptable, but I do hope that it also shows that retail employees are aware of the legislation and are using it. Last November, Police Scotland launched the national partnership Assault Pledge, which is not part of the job, and has established a retailer's forum, where retailers can discuss issues and concerns and share best practice. I thank the minister for that answer. I have recently been contacted by representatives of the GMB trade union who have informed me that the Asda Blantyre store in my constituency has been the target of anti-social behaviour. That has seen staff threatened and feeling intimidated. Now clearly no one should have to put up with violence threats or abuse in their workplace. Can the minister outline the work of the Scottish Government and the police are doing to promote awareness of the law to ensure retail staff know their rights and, most importantly, to deter such behaviours from occurring in the first place? I very much agree that no one should have to put up with violence or threats in their workplace. We fully support law enforcement agencies having extensive powers to deal with such incidents. When the law came into force in 2021, the Scottish Government worked with crime stoppers, Fearless and the Scottish Grocer's Federation to run an awareness raising campaign. I agree that it is important that workers and retailers know that this new law can help to protect them. In addition, the member may be interested to know that a business crime prevention team within Police Scotland carries out business engagement days throughout Scotland to support the retail sector. They have implemented that your safety matters external partners group, which consists of 14 members, including representatives from the retail centre. Can I assure the member that the Scottish Government takes this matter very seriously? I am coincidently meeting Dr Peter Schema from the Scottish Grocer's Federation this afternoon on this particular issue. Of the 5,000 reports of abuse mentioned by the minister, what was lacking in the answer was how many were actually prosecuted, grateful for that information. Of those that were prosecuted, did anyone receive a custodial sentence given that this bill carries a maximum of 12-month penalty, which under the presumption against short sentences means no-one will actually go to prison for such an offence? For that question, I do not have the figures at hand, but I am happy to write to you with those figures. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that police officers are fully resourced. We are fully committed to using the resources that are available to us to support the vital work of the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland. We are investing £1.45 billion in policing this year. Policing is and will continue to be a priority for this Government. As well as having more police officers per capita in Scotland and England and Wales, our police officers are also the best paid, supported by more than £11.6 billion of funding since 2013. The investment is delivering benefits. Police-recorded crime has fallen by 42 per cent since 2006-07 and is currently at one of the lowest levels that it has seen since 1974. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. In a recent meeting with the chief superintendent, he informed me of the 15,000 call-outs that the police had in April. Only 19 per cent of them were for criminal activity, with the majority of the remaining call-outs being for mental health related against a backdrop of the reducing police numbers, the drop of 600 since 2017, the hollowing out of backroom staff and increasing mental health issues in reality. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that the pressures are increasing on her police force and that the role that they are there to do is becoming under threat? I very much recognise that police Scotland is under pressure in terms of the amount of time and the calls that they get to help and support very vulnerable people, quite often people with mental health problems. That is a matter that I have discussed with the chief constable, SPA and staff associations. I have given them my commitment that we need to find better ways of working. I think that the chief constable is absolutely right to say that we won't be following practice in the Met, for example, that recently Scotland does have a responsibility on broader safety and broader wellbeing, but I do think that it is not beyond our work to find better ways of working to ensure that both the justice system and the health system works better together to actually provide a better service to some of our most vulnerable citizenships. That is in everybody's interests, not least the police officers. Can the cabinet secretary provide any details about the starting salaries for police officers in Scotland compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the UK? Police officers, as we know, play a vital role in keeping Scotland safe. I am pleased that our officers are the best paid in the UK. That recognises the hard work and dedication provided by Police Scotland. Officers in Scotland, at the maximum pay for each and every rank, will earn more than their counterparts in England and Wales, with the basic starting salary for a constable in Scotland around £5,000 more than in England and Wales. 6. Pam Duncan-Glancy To ask the Scottish Government what measures it will put in place to support women in the immediate days and weeks after they leave a coercive and abusive relationship. Domestic abuse is abhorrent, and I encourage anyone experiencing it to seek help and to report incidents to the police. Our Victim Surcharge Fund and Victim Support Scotland's Emergency Assistance Fund are already in place, providing immediate expenses for women fleeing abusive relationships. Through delivering equally safe, we will provide approximately £12.5 million in 2023-24 to domestic abuse support services, including women's aid organisations, who provide specialist support and access to temporary accommodation. Additionally, our Victim Centre Approach Fund provides £18.5 million from 2022-25 for specialist advocacy support, and we support the Scottish Women's Rights Centre, which offers free legal advice to women who experience gender-based violence. Pam Duncan-Glancy I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Last week, a woman came to my surgery to highlight the financial vulnerabilities and insecurity of many women leaving domestic violence situations. Many of such situations are left, as we have heard, financially insecure, and because of the coercion experience, we are isolated with few opportunities to build connections and get work. What support is available to women in the immediate days after leaving a relationship, and specifically to help them to re-access employment and training when the time is right, and would the Government consider a mentorship or peer support scheme to be put in place at this point to help women to rebuild the connections that they need? I will not repeat the various funds that I outlined in my original answer, but Ms Glancy Smith makes an important point. We are also, in addition to what I outlined, working with Scottish Women's Aid and other organisations to understand what more can be done in and around establishing a fund for survivors, particularly those survivors with children and who are at risk of homelessness. There is also important work being led by colleagues who are working in homelessness to bear in mind that domestic abuse is one of the leading causes of homelessness for women. Her point about mentorship and enabling women to get back into the workplace or training is well made. Of course, there are various employability programmes that are funded by the Scottish Government, and I will give her an undertaking that I will make sure that we have joined all the dots in that regard. A couple of supplementaries will need to be brief, as will the responses to Emma Harper. According to research published earlier this year, Scotland's domestic abuse legislation better reflects victims' experiences. Can the cabinet secretary outline how the Scottish Government is building on this work to ensure that victims are at the heart of Scotland's justice system? The domestic abuse offence has given more powers to police and courts to punish perpetrators of abuse and protect people at risk. However, as the report highlights, as mentioned by Ms Harper, there is still more that needs to be done. I, for one, acknowledge a very clear message that improvements could be made, for example, to how domestic abuse cases are handled to provide victims with a greater voice in proceedings and to support them through the process. The UK Government is providing lifeline payments to help victims, leave abusive relationships and rebuild their lives. Although I welcome that the domestic abuse 2021 act will allow domestic abusers to be removed from the homes of their victims, more than two years have passed since its introduction, and it has still not been enforced. Can I ask the cabinet secretary for an update on the parts of the 2021 legislation not being enforced and whether she will match the life-saving fund here in Scotland so that we can change and potentially save the lives of hundreds of women? I share Ms Gossill's point, and it is a fair point. Let me reassure her that the implementation board was established to work with all partners. In this regard, there is also an operational working group that has been established comprising of vital partners. We have done some detailed walk-through work to really understand what some of the issues at a very practical level are, that are standing the way to implementation. In short, this is around the higher and anticipated volume of cases, the challenging tight timescales for operational justice partners, and the challenges in how the views of children can be gathered in the way that does not cause them additional harm. However, let me say to her, I share her frustration and we are absolutely on this. A couple more questions. I am going to get through those, but no supplementaries. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether there are any gaps in Scots law in relation to tackling image-based sexual abuse.  That includes legislation concerning and indecent images of children and the offence of coercing a person to view a sexual image. Since 2016, it has been an offence for a person to share an intimate image of another person, where they either intend to cause that person to suffer fear, alarm or distress, or are reckless as to whether the sharing of the image would be likely to cause fear, alarm or distress. However, we keep the criminal law under review and will always consider if further legislation is needed. Pauli McNeill. Research shows that the swapping, collating and posting of new images of women without their consent is on the rise, but unlike revenge porn as it is quoted, it is not a crime. Scots law currently provides proof that the perpetrator intended or was reckless as to causing fear or alarm or distress, as the cabinet secretary has outlined. The offence, however, is limited in the requires proof of specific motivations, which means that many cases of cyberflashing are therefore excluded. However, there is some international best practice around this, such as in New South Wales or in many US states, which criminalises the non-consensual distribution of intimate images without the requirement to show any specific motivation. It is where I think there possibly might be a gap in the law. Will the cabinet secretary take a view on whether or not adopting a consent-based cyberflashing law might be beneficial here, or at the very least, we should be prepared to discuss it with me? In short, I am aware of Ms McNeill's concerns that were expressed at the committee. I have seen a read-out of that. At face value, I am not convinced that there is a gap. However, we will look at the experience in New South Wales, and if she wishes to discuss the detail with me personally, I would be more than happy to do so. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports that the second appliance at Metho fire station will be withdrawn from service by 4 September this year. In common with all public bodies in Scotland, it is right that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service reviews as operations to modernise and ensure that they are meeting needs and delivering value for money. As part of the review, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service plans to temporarily withdraw 10 fire appliances for service from 2 September 2023. I have been assured by Scottish Fire and Rescue Service that those removals will not compromise community safety. There is utter astonishment in Levenmouth area that this fire appliance has been withdrawn. There has been a spate of fires in nightclubs, in shops, in hotels and, in fact, this week in Springfield, in a little village in Springfield, there was a fire there too. Is the Government sure that this is the right time to cut the fire service budget and to allow this cut at Metho to go ahead? The Scottish Government has provided Scottish Fire and Rescue Service with an additional budget of £4.4 million on top of the £10 million uplift set out in the 23 to 24 budget announcement. Scottish Fire and Rescue has advised me that these locations have been identified through risk modelling using historic incident data and have been assessed as being the least impactful in terms of response times for the first and second appliances attending incidents. Scottish Fire and Rescue currently has in the region of 635 operational fire appliances across Scotland, and this modest reduction will allow Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to ensure that the more of the remaining 625 operational appliances are always available for deployment. They have extended an invitation to any member who wishes to raise concerns with the local service officers to discuss this issue. Thank you. That concludes portfolio questions. There will be a brief pause before we move on to the next item of business. The next item of business is a statement by Lorna Slater on deposit return scheme. The minister will take questions at the end of her statement, and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Lorna Slater. Presiding Officer, in 2020, this Parliament voted for a deposit return scheme for single use drinks containers, where the onus for dealing with the disposal and reuse of these containers is placed on the companies which produce them. The polluter pays principle. Parliament did so because it looked around the world and saw that deposit return schemes worked with more than 50 schemes worldwide. It did so because it recognised the benefits of dramatically reduced litter, a step change in recycling rates, and having yet another tool in the fight against climate change, and that those benefits increase the larger the scope of the scheme. It did so because the case is strongest, both economically and environmentally, where schemes are all inclusive. It did so because it took in good faith a UK-wide agreement on the introduction of a deposit return scheme, which includes glass. After all, only a few months before the UK Government had been elected on just such a promise, Rishi Sunak, Alistair Jack and Douglas Ross all elected on the promise of a full deposit return scheme. The Scottish Parliament voted for the