Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. We are talking about this loading screen and this upcoming promotion in FIFA Ultimate Team this Wednesday. We're gonna talk about it today because it was just released. The loading screen came out today. I wanna talk about all the colors that's going on here, talk about all of the potential things we could see with this promo. Again, right now, we are ending Team of the Season. Team of the Season is done, all right? It is done for. No more Tots cards, impacts. Ultimate Tots are in rewards, still for this week. But that's it for Team of the Season, as far as we know it. We're gonna talk about the Ultimate Tots Guaranteed SBC because we got jubated with that code on Friday when Foot Watch released the code and then the SBC never came. But that caused some market movements and then we're also gonna talk about a start of the Weekend League sell-off and other stuff going on in FIFA as well. But the main thing I wanna talk about today and the main thing everybody wants to know about right now is what is this promo? What is this promo? Summer Heat, this is a brand new promo to FIFA Ultimate Team. I did some research trying to find some other stuff. It looks like there was a promo in Summer Showdown or called Summer Showdown that was a part of FIFA Mobile. But that promo had nothing to do with... It was actually like an extension of Team of the Season and I don't think that's what's going on with this just because of the colors that is going on here. But Summer Heat, a lot of people have been talking about what they see in this loading screen and it makes sense that this could be basically footies from last year with the re-released cards. Now is this footies? I don't think this is actually footies because I feel like EA was gonna try to milk their game over the summer as much as they can that this might be the part of the summer where we have the cards that are released back into packs like a, you know, headliners, FFS cards, maybe some like Team of the Group stage, Team of the Season cards. Because if you look at this loading screen, you got a lot of colors going on here and it's kind of like splash, right? You've got a pink color, kind of like the FFS cards had that pink glow to it. Of course, you've got some yellow in here, which there's a lot of cards that have yellow and gold in this game. Again, you've got orange as well, which could be attributed to the headliners or man of the match cards, those are orange. And then you have some blue. You've got some blue in here as well, which is kind of like this, this color scheme down here looks very similar to like a Team of the Season-esque card design with the blue and with the gold and with the yellow. And then, you know, I don't see any green in here, which is quite interesting because there's no like foot birthday, I guess, kind of stuff. I think there's a little bit of green right here around the R and the H, but I would assume that the way that this loading screen looks, this kind of to me looks like we're getting a re-release special card promo in FIFA. A lot of people have been asking me, are we gonna get new special cards during this promo? Like, are we gonna get new items? To be honest with you, EA knows this. A lot of the hype for new special cards that come after Team of the Season, it's really kind of dead because you've already set the bar so high with all of these toss cards. Like, look at these stats and these ratings that we've been used to seeing come out in the past five, six weeks on FIFA. 90s in multiple stat categories, you know, they're even doing week foot boosts. I mean, club 90s, like the stats they've been putting on these cards, you're not gonna see other cards higher rated for these players. Like, there's probably not gonna be a summer heat promo where you get like a 98 obamiant. Like that's not really a thing. What I think this summer heat is gonna be is going to be a re-release promo where they're gonna be putting old cards that were in packs before back into packs, which makes opening packs kind of fun, but it's also kind of dead content, I guess you could say because if you think about it, we just had all these Tots cards that are in packs and they're like, bro, if you pack a Tots card, like, you're getting a really, really good card and it's a dub most of the time. But you know, like, let's say you packed FFS Latoro Martinez instead of the Tots card. How hyped are you gonna be for this card instead of the Tots? You know, you might be kinda hyped for it, but to be honest, there's a better card than this version that you're just packed and you're kinda like eh, right? So that's kind of the issue with this stuff throwing back into packs. It's not fresh, it's not new, but it's a way that EA can kind of drag out the summer and try to get the most interaction and the most content with their game as possible. So again, is this gonna be a new promo with new special cards? Maybe some objectives, I don't know. We'll see if Foot Watch tweets out or if the code puts out any other special card, like if there's a new card type added to the game. If there is a new card type added, I would expect that to be SBC related or objective related mostly is what I would expect for a lot of these. Now, of course, these objectives are still in here, like this Grelish is here for another seven days, Raphinha is still here, Evander is still here as well, so those objectives are not going away anytime soon. But another interesting thing is we got David Silva's. This is a premium squad building challenge, David Silva. So it's not a flashback, it's a premium squad building challenge. And again, the color of the loading screen kind of has some similarities to this card, but I don't think the whole promo is just gonna be based around like premium squad building challenge cards. I don't think they would do that. And there's only, we've only had a very select few of these cards this year. So again, I really feel like what this promo is, is a re-release of special cards on the market. What is that gonna do to those cards' prices? Well, we saw it last year, right? Let's take a look at some examples from FIFA 19 team of the weeks that were re-released. I think that they called it like best of, or like during footies, they just started releasing all of these cards back into packs, right? Like let's look at foot birthdays from last year. They released these cards in segments back into packs, and you can tell when that happened that these cards dropped a ton because there's less hype at the end of the year, and it just kind of happened like this, right? So after team this season, this bail card just kind of going down, it's July, not a lot's going on. And then, bang, he goes back into packs again, and he absolutely panks in price. There's probably some better examples that were more a quicker sell-off from them being, still being kind of usable, like here again, man, right at the end of July, the foot birthdays kind of went back into packs, at least some of them did, and you saw a big time drop in price. This happened with a lot of special cards last year. Like look at this, man, look at this June, the end of June, bang, 380, boom. Look at that drop, crazy. So, you know, that's the type of drops you're gonna expect on these cards if they do re-release past special cards. It's gonna be bad because think about, think about how cheap cards have become since Todd's cards have been released, right?  This guy's 200,000 coins, right? Some of these moments icons, this Rio, moments Rio, right? There's like 1.1, 1.2 million coins after being like 2 million coins and like 1.5, 1.6 for most part of the year. Some of these icons, like Prime Blanc was a million coins, like during, you know, almost during foot birthday, right before foot birthday, this guy was like a million coins, I think. You know, Rycard was a million points coins at some time this year, he's now 180K. So, a lot of the market has died already just because of FIFA 20 being the year of supply, right? The year of supply on the market. Cards have so much supply this year. They're gonna get even more supply with the release of this promo in my opinion if it does go the way that we are planning it. So that's kind of the way that I think this promo is gonna act, it's gonna go. I don't wanna spend too much time talking about it because what else is there to talk about?  But again, this is the silver lining around the whole thing. The EA is trying to keep their audience engaged with FIFA because they know Tots is ending. And they gotta keep people involved somehow because they gotta try to still make some money on their game. This is like the dead time for their game. They tweeted out a few things that are gonna be happening this summer which was kind of interesting to see the stuff that they are planning this summer. Of course, they tweeted out that the 17th of June stuff was gonna be happening. But check this out as well. And this is where I think the ultimate team of the season guaranteed PAC code comes in. Because if you did not realize we do have the ultimate Tots SF player. So a player from Ultimate Tots, the guys that were in Tacks last week and the guys that are in reward picks again this week. We got this SBC added to the code today. And EA kind of gypped us with it right? EA kind of gypped us and they didn't put out the SBC today. So we'll talk about that in a second. But I think this event, FIFA eSports pros playing FIFA with the best FIFA streamers. Starting June 15th, which I believe is Monday. June 15th, which is a Monday. The 15th and 16th on Twitch rivals. Twitch page is gonna be something that's gonna happen with FIFA and Twitch. And I think this PAC right here might end up being a viewership reward for that event. They did that earlier this year with the guaranteeing any foot birthday player, I think is what it was. They had a pro event and they had a guarantees any foot birthday player PAC, right? And we're like, man, we're gonna get this SBC and then boom, they put it in the code, they jubated us and then it came out as a reward from that event. That could be the exact same scenario that we see here with this. If not, then maybe this does come out as an SBC but getting to the market side of this, high rates today went for a wild, wild ride. Take a look at this, the index 86. I wish there was like an index 87 through index 90 on foot bin because look at this, man, the PAC code came out yesterday, right? This is when the PAC code came out. We go from 149 all the way up to 176 points on the index 86. Now we're back down to 157 because people knew this SBC did not come out and they sold some of those high-rated. Now I would expect the normal rise from like 148 to 157 because of the SBC that we got today, which was the David Silva premium and David Silva regular, I guess you would call it, the David Silva premium SBC version. So this is the premium premium for the 97 David Silva, which I think a lot of people would still go out and do. That card right there, 300K SBC, not terrible value, three star weak foot, hampers it a little bit, but if you're a city fan or if you're just a fan of Premier League football, David Silva has been a mainstay for so long that I think a lot of people are gonna just maybe do this SBC. People have untradables in the club, right? So this is another way that EA can take some of those untradables out of the club and make people interested in doing an SBC like that. But anyways, regardless, people bought a lot of the high-rated today if you sold into the hype, GGs, because a lot of it started going down because again, the SBC did not come out and EA kind of fooled us with that one right there, which is interesting that they decided to do that today. So other market movements that we saw today, besides the big summer heat news and we're gonna get another promo, which again, I keep thinking, it's weird that it starts on a Wednesday, right? Weird that it starts on a Wednesday. Not sure why they're doing that. I don't think it has anything to do with Team of the Weeks because Team of the Weeks are supposed to come out on the 24th of June. So that would be one week after what this new promo is gonna start as. So yeah, I'm not sure what's going on with that, but one thing I can tell you guys is a lot of cards are inflated and very high on the market, especially from where they were at earlier in the week this week. One I think of specifically, Hyunmin Sun's Tots card. This guy was 865,000 coins on Sunday and Monday and my dude is now over one mil and a lot of these cards are gonna hit their highest price point tonight into Saturday, right? I'm recording this Friday night. Friday night into Saturday is gonna be the highest price point for a lot of these cards. They rose up even more today. I sold some OWRs yesterday and I sold them too early to be honest. I sold them at like 280,000 coins and he is now almost 300K. He's almost 300K. He basically is 300,000 coins at the moment. So if you held onto your Thursday flips or if you have anything in your club that you wanna sell, I think I would take the cash on that if you don't need it for Weekend League or if you can get by without it for Weekend League, I might take the cash because this would be your optimal time to sell that stuff before we head into the promo week. Now some people have asked me is there gonna be a Weekend League sell-off? I still think there's gonna be a Weekend League sell-off across the board because people are gonna be knowing that their yes is a promo coming and even if they re-release special cards back into packs, you're gonna have people that sell Team of the Season cards, that sell cards on this game in order to take part in whatever the new content is. You best believe that there's going to be SBC content. There's gonna be some sort of probably objective content as well because EA has been doing what I think a good job with that stuff this year. So I do expect a Weekend League sell-off. Some people have told me they don't think that it's gonna happen because they think people bought their end-game teams which there is some validity to that. People did buy their end-game teams but I also think that people in this game of FIFA they live for menu content and you could just see that every day with the market movements, the amount of coins that some of the higher rated card prices go up just for an SBC and even just for a code being tweeted out about a potential SBC. You see cards going up, a crazy percentage. I think people just are living for the menu content in this game because it's what brings them the most fun. The Weekend League playing this game does not bring them fun or enjoyment. So they have that fun on the menus which I think is gonna cause some Weekend League sell-off again just because people need to get their coins and because you have to have coins to do stuff in this game. Now, if you are broke and you're like, man, I'm broke, I don't have any coins for this summer heat promo, whatever's gonna happen for footies, I gotta trade a little bit. The good news is, trading is gonna be OP because there's still gonna be people on this game. People are engaged because TOTS happened at a time where a lot of people were at home because of quarantine, some people are still at home, stuff has not opened up regardless of where you're at in the world. Everything is different based on what's going on with the opening back up and restrictions and quarantine and stuff like that. So that's all different for everybody, but there's still people that are interacted and still people playing this game. Even after the TOTS rewards go out from Weekend League, people are just in a FIFA mojo right now. They're in the FIFA mood, right? For the past month and a half, they've been grinding this game, right? You could have started an RTG with nothing on it and you probably could have grinded to a team with multiple TOTS cards in it just because of the SBCs and just the grind ability at this point of the year and how easy it is to make coins as well. It's very, very easy to make coins during team of the season because of all the content that does come out. So that being said, if you do need to trade this week, I mean, there's gonna be plenty of options we can sell off and stuff. There's probably gonna be a little bit of panic on out of pack special cards, maybe some FFS cards from this year's teams that will be panic sold a slight amount just because of people thinking, hey, if this is a re-release promo where cards are gonna be re-released, then you might see some panic on some of those. If we look at some FFS cards that are still very popular at this stage of the game, you know, Renan Lodi is still very popular. Valverde still got some popularity to him. Ikone, you know, some of these guys just, they fit a position and they fit a nationality or a league where that position is kind of rare, right? So this is the best version of Jal Felix that we have in this game. Could Jal Felix get a footies card? Yeah, sure, he could get a 95 rated footies and that'd be sweet. But for now, this is not footies as far as we know. This guy was 580K last week. He's now 627, you know, maybe he drops down to like 550 on Sunday night, goes back up to 585.90. You make a little bit of profit just from a quick flip on some of that kind of stuff. Fluctuation trading is still absolutely gonna work with a lot of cards that are out of stock. Although I would be a bit careful with these until we figure out what's gonna happen with the promo on Wednesday, you might wanna lay low. And honestly, trading with team of the season cards is gonna be fantastic as well because these cards are so cheap, they're so affordable and viable for most people on this game, right? Look at all the cards. Look the type of card that you can get for 100K, right? A lot of these cards are gonna fluctuate up and down in price from the main leagues especially. I mean, again, Halan, this guy was 485 before Weekend League, he's now, he was 580 earlier, Royce is up a bunch, Havertz is up 60,000 coins. He was 200,000 coins flat. These cards are continuing to bounce up and down and that's gonna continue happening for the rest of the year because they're getting more rare as people leave the game and they have these cards in their clubs and these guys are not in packs anymore yet. So these cards are gonna fluctuate because that's what people are using right now, that's what's hype. They'll just kind of remember that if you're trying to trade. And then check out the other trading videos on the channel. You can still chemistry style trade with shadows, with hunters. Shadows especially work well at this stage of the game and you can still trade with silvers for league SBCs, especially if they re-release a bunch of cards back into packs. Trading with league SBCs is gonna continue to work because people love grinding SBCs this year whether they're doing, you know, like a league SBC or they're doing like the, these two, the suit America and Libertatories, the libsuit method I think is what it's called. People grind these all the time.   If you remember back last year too when they have the best of it, when they re-release cards, it's kind of fun cause you can open a pack, you might get like an 86 rated inform as the player on the front of the pack, but you might have two or three other special cards behind it and that those quicksail for 10K, right? So there is some value for coin to be said for that end of the year timeframe just because of the potential to pack special cards which is fun. But again, they gotta put good cards back into packs and, you know, build some good content around it to make an interesting promo. At least that is how I feel. So again, WeekendlyCell-Off is gonna start happening today. Yes, I do think you're gonna see a sell-off. Good luck with your Weekendly games if you are playing. Do I expect any other content today? I really don't. I really do not expect any other content coming today from FIFA Ultimate Team. I was kind of surprised that we got this David Silva SBC anyway. This is a GG, but I'm kind of surprised that we did get it. Something to kind of keep us involved until Wednesday, I guess, is something EA wanted to do for us today. So be on the lookout for SBCs or something related to that Twitch rivals thing. If you wanna check out Twitch, my Twitch link is down below. I do live stream there multiple times per week. It's just like me talking to you right now but I'm doing it live and you can actually talk to me in the chat. So it's really fun. Check that link in the description. And yeah, boys, if you enjoyed this video, smash the thumbs up on it. Comment down below if you have any questions or thoughts about the summer heat upcoming promo. And of course, subscribe to the channel if you are new. It's been Nate, The Foot Accountant. I'll catch you guys later. Peace out.


Now to celebrate Salah every year, states in Nigeria's northmost are well-known for the exhibition Of course there's a popular call at Darba Festival Thousands gather at the Kano Amia's palace to witness the powerful discipline of culture And celebration of this just-competed Muslim festival Kano Darba is a fantastic spectacle So much colour, so much pomp, so much pageantry Kano Darba's barely made a lot of good old dudes say So this is exciting and I'm very, very happy to be here


When you go to the eye doctor to check your vision, they sit you down in front of what's called the faux raptor, and they flip through a series of lenses to determine the best one for your eyes. Is this better? Or is this better? When you get the wrong lens combination, the world blurs, and you have trouble reading letters. When you get the right combination, those letters sharpen, and you can read. Reading a poem's meter aloud is a similar way to test your ears. Consider this line of poetry, the opening to William Shakespeare's famous Sonnet No. 18. Which of the following readings sounds better? This one? Shall I compare thee to a somersday? Or this one? Shall I compare thee to a somersday? First one, right? What about this opening line to Edgar Allan Poe's poem, The Raven? This one? Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. Or this one? Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. The first one again, right? In both cases, the reason the first example works is because my pronunciation matches the poetic meter of the words in each line. The other readings I've read in the opposite meter, and they sound funny and unnatural. So how do we describe this difference? The most common way to do so in English is to follow the stresses in each phrase of the line. As you probably know, words in the English language are composed of a set of stressed and unstressed syllables. In poetry, these syllables are often arranged to create repeating, sonic units, what literary critics call feet, that compose the meter of a given poem. Shakespeare's Sonnet, Shall I Compare thee to a Somersday, has the following metrical pattern. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. The repeating unit here is one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable. This type of metrical foot is called an ayam, and there are five of them here. Since penta is the prefix for five, we call this metrical form ayambic pentameter, the most common meter in English poetry. In Poe's line, Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, While I Pondered Weak and Weary, you'll notice the opposite pattern. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. The repeating unit in this pattern is one stressed and one unstressed syllable. This metrical foot is called a troche, and there are eight of them in this line. Since octo, or octah, are the prefixes for eight, we call Poe's metrical form trochaic octameter. Ayams and trochees are two of the most common types of metrical feet, so you'll definitely want to look for them when reading poetry. But poems can also use metrical units of three syllables. Here are the following opening lines from Clement Clark Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas. It was the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Here, the meter pattern is unstressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed. It was the night before Christmas. This unit is called an anapest, and there are four of them in each line here. The prefix for four is tetra, so the meter is anapestic tetrameter. The final common metrical foot is the opposite of an anapest, a dactyl, which is a three syllable unit that starts with a stress and ends with two unstressed syllables. The Greek poet Homer adopts this form in his great epic poems The Iliad and the Odyssey, and poems in English that adopt the dactylic form often allude to this legacy. For example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses dactylic hexameter in his epic poem Evangeline, which begins, this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. Dactyls may seem rare, but rap artists have recently adopted this triplet form to great effect. Consider the following lyrics from Migos' song Versace. Drowning in compliments pool in the back air that look like metropolis. I think I'm selling a million first week man, I guess I'm an optimist. Born in Toronto, but sometimes I feel like Atlanta adopted us. While the subjects are obviously very different, the meter here is identical to Longfellow's and by extension Homer's epic poetry. Because there are six dactyls in each line, the meter of this song is also dactylic hexameter. I am trochey, anapest, dactyl. If you can recognize these four kinds of metrical feet, you'll be well in your way to reading poetry in a clearer and more natural sounding way. The next step of course is to determine why that matters, how meter can be used not only to read a poem or song, but also to interpret it. While there are many ways to answer this question, let me give you one simple suggestion that I have found useful in my teaching. Once you've identified the dominant metrical form in a given poem, look for moments where the meter breaks from that form. These moments are often good places to build out an interpretation, because when we spot them we can ask why the meter breaks at that place and what that sonic dissonance might be conveying. Consider the start of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, which tells the story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. While the poem is written in iambic pentameter, see if you can spot the moment where that meter breaks in these opening lines.  If you can spot the metrical pattern, you can now ask why Milton might have chosen to break the meter at that specific moment. If you have any ideas, I hope you'll share them with me in the comments section below. In the meantime, good luck, stay healthy, and happy reading.


Hi, I'm Taffas. Here you can see how this new mask covers a much smaller area of the face than the usual ones. That leaves the face cooler and makes it easier to see facial expressions like cute dimples when you're smiling.


First, I want to thank you. We're joined by none other than the great Carl Sagan. It's like looking at this, this fantastic 173. We are off to Jupiter in size. It really is the most beautiful thing observable or gravitational well of Saturn. I just wanted to shout out Rye Sparkus, a crescent Saturn. Here in the picture, it's large. Over the desolate, icy, low ales of rail, 17 or more moons. And I think it does have more than. So you must remember, there is nearly, wow, 40 in observation since of our moon, Saturn's magnificent ring system, as only a thin line on Saturn. We can see here the dark patch that links just above the thin ring Leo studied. Saturn with his telescope in 1610, he saw the rings as two knob like all them years. Saturn's moon, Tethys, about two thirds the size of rail is seen in the crescent phase left of the terminator. The moon Dione, our solar system. Saturn is a gas giant like its neighbor, Larder, Jupiter. But because Saturn's clouds of ammonia snow are not so stormy, it's sometimes called the quiet. A simple curve like this sickle represents the planet. On Saturn, it rotates at an axis tilt. I suppose ours is 23 degrees. So 26.7 here is actually not that different than ours. But the length of the day certainly is. It appears to be rotating quite fast at about 10 hours and 40. The length of its year is 30. Its day is half. And its year is 30 times. It's going per second in its orbit. Average distance, about 1.429, our first billion. Yes, I would agree. So imagine going all the way from Mercury to Mars through the asteroid belt and on to Jupiter. You would have to travel almost as far again to reach Saturn. Here you see the sixth planet from high over its north pole. A few impossible from Earth. Since we are indeed pretty much in its plane, scientists know that at least 17 moons orbit Saturn, Titan, the biggest, holds a thick. To Phoebe, the moon seems here to be partway around the sun. Because the sun is shown closer and larger if it were. I see particles moving to this panel above Saturn's clouds. Frigid at the top, the atmosphere grows thicker and hotter without ever reaching solid and radiates excessive energy. Maybe because heavier helium separates from hydrogen in the interior to drops and sinks. The friction releases heat. Saturn's mass is equal to about 95 Earths. But it takes about 760 that makes it at least 70% as dense as water. Because of Saturn's fast spin and flat shape, gravity varies from the poles to the equator. So we see of course because Saturn does take 30 years to orbit the sun as we go once a year. Saturn's just making a slow progression. So for every one of our spins, it completes one-thirtieth of a circle. Here we can see the relative perspectives from Earth, predicted 1995. Here we have the layers. Clear atmosphere. When you hydro sulfide, icy clouds, waterized clouds, surface, liquid hydrogen is the red you see here. Orange is liquid metallic hydrogen. So more densely compressed, represents water and ammonia. And then perhaps the very center is not solid, but molten, extremely pressurized rock. And the ring thickness for all these measurements of these numbers, billions of kilometers, and these less than one-tenth of a kilometer reach out to about 73,000 kilometers on each side from Saturn, whose diameter alone is 120,000, yet uniform debris field. So Saturn's parallel jet streams in brilliant halo of rings shimmer against in this enhanced Voyager portrait. Saturn's rings are gigantic if you could take the spacecraft. So over here a broken moon. Members do not yet know how Saturn's rings actually, I see, part of it is so thick and is orbiting at 17. So Saturn now which misty yellow globe. Just imagine the, I think, Arthur C. Clark, they're a brilliant job of portraying the just the the magnitude in the all in the loo the sheer size. Saturn just looks like this looks like a something meant for us to explore. We've been obsessed with shapes, all geometrical shapes, rings, spheres, cubes and triangles and pyramids, and more sighted shapes as well, but no doubt Saturn with its seemingly symmetric configuration in its stark contrast with the velvet black night sky behind it as we approach it looms large and it just must seem so to approach in the first astronauts intercepted with a spacecraft. I listened to this audiobook and in fact all four books in 2001 I went on a binge a few years ago science fiction binge and I had Apex and it was so beautiful it just added so much depth to the experience and when objects coalesce these random atoms of our universe coalesce into intrinsically beautiful objects and majestic and grand and magnificently large objects and oasis actually probably said something to our nature in our mind positive and perhaps the last would make us better and it's certainly one of the sorry to digress on an artistic perspective I just find so much meaning and and I appreciate that you guys do too so second only to Saturn only can Jupiter and Saturn as a radiation bounce charged with solar particles trapped by the planet's magnetic field if we entered these belts and radiation would sizzle give the upper clouds the yellow is hydrogen in the healing of Saturn's atmosphere is much colder than the top of jupiter's we expected this considering Saturn's much greater distance from the Sun but farther down the temperatures rise more than we would expect from solar heating so it seems that much as the Voyager unexpectedly uh as it uh probed its upper clouds the shortage of helium less than expected in the upper atmosphere the Saturn radiates nearly twice as much heat as it receives from the Sun in a little history lesson is that Galileo was probably the first centered them as um identified them as years 46 years later only 46 years later the Dutch and then in 1675 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini spotted a gap in the ring the outer half is called the a-ring t-50 c-ring Saturn's rings story seems endless really 66 and 69 observatory photographs showed an e-ring in a close-in d-ring timber 1979 pioneer 11 spotted an f and g-rings and the rings were named so they started about 3000 kilometers above the atmosphere these rings are made up of thousands of such ringlets mostly of water and ice some of rock probably ranging in size from dust specks rings with moonlets the cassini division between the a they make it see a better idea of the black traditional body you would expect but yes if we took a cleans up type of uh to have the small moons do a strange orbital dance in the solar system as moons yeah i've seen some depictions and depictions of it and so that is why doesn't the big moons gravity throw off in the late 17th of this then they were just 60 degree interval gravity well and two others were later found sharing the old 60 degrees atmosphere denser and visitors to tight seeps through the layers of fogging that thing dim reddened the dark side may be covered with the fevey maze somebody was also an advocate of using that broad perspective that it gives you about our place and it's in our best interest it's in the most meaningful way we can affect ourselves into a brighter they're more fruitful more meaningful


I'm Layla Halal, director of the Middle East program at New America and we have with us today Alex Polak. He is director of the microfinance and microcredit department at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and he's currently based in Jerusalem. He is a seasoned and very successful microfinance practitioner with 22 years experience in the Middle East. He turned UNRWA's microfinance program into a self-sufficient and profitable multinational microfinance entity operating through its Jerusalem headquarters and four regional offices in Palestine, Jordan and Syria and through a network of 23 branch offices spread across the region. Under his leadership in the finance and microcredit department, UNRWA became the second largest and first fully financially sustainable financial operation in Syria. That's quite a success and for the past few years Alex has worked to adapt UNRWA's microfinance work in Syria admits the armed conflict and part of this work has included producing quarterly socioeconomic updates on the situation in Syria given the armed conflict and he's done this work in collaboration with the Syrian Center for Policy Research and the UNDP in in Syria. He regularly visits Syria amongst other areas of operation where UNRWA works and he is here today to discuss the latest report put out with the Syrian Center for Policy Research and the UNDP. Syria wore on development socioeconomic monitoring report. It covers April to June 2013 and we have copies available outside for you as you exit today. So with that Alex I'm going to turn it over to you and ask you to summarize the report and some of the key findings. Okay before I do that I would just like to explain a little bit about who the Syria Center for Policy Research are who are working with and Syria. They're a group of young academics. They're very concerned to remain independent from any side in the war and also they're very concerned about who finances the research. So they're working with the UN on this but they're very concerned not to be seen as party to any side. So one of the things they want to do is to make sure that we keep their independence as very clear and so they're not supporting government supporting opposition but they're highly dependent on data from government services. So their port is based on taking government service data and then modeling it to show the range of impacts of the armed conflict on the economy. Now methodologically I'll just very briefly say how they're developing the methodology. This is based on a counterfactual methodology where they're taking the economy up to the period of 2010 and then projecting growth and other factors as up to the current period. So that would be what the economy would look like as if there had been normal progression in the conflict had not emerged and then they're taking the current trends within the economy and then projecting them out and then the gap between the continuing trend and the actual trend is the band on which they're basing their economic analysis. So it's all projection but projection based on based on economic modeling and financial modeling. So if I could just go directly to the economy. The center developed a report in 2010 that covered 2012 that covered the whole of 2012 and we have contracted them to do quarterly studies so that we can see the changes within the economy and how that's affecting the lives of people and the main focus of the report is not on either party in the conflict but on looking at what the economic and social conditions of the population as a whole look like. Now that means so if I just give you some of the key data I think the in this second half of 2013 there was a major there's been a restructuring of the economy as the GDP has diminished quite dramatically and the major change that has occurred that with massive deindustrialization of the economy the agricultural sector has assumed a leading role in GDP. So in the second half of this year agriculture accounted for 54% of GDP and the previous in 2010 accounted for 27%. So you've had a big turnaround on the economy with agriculture and now account for a huge part of it but as agriculture is accounted for a larger share of the economy it's actually shrinking so the value of the agricultural economy in 2012 is less than it was in 2010 so that gives you some idea of the impact of what's going on in the economy. Now deindustrialization has taken place through a number of factors first of all you've had a significant flight of capital as people move businesses and resources outside the country some have moved to Turkey a few have moved to Egypt and but the most in the most dramatic effect on that period is since the beginning of conflict the economy has lost 103 billion dollars it's lost 50 billion dollars from its GDP and the most the most the most dramatic impacts the future it's lost just over 50 million dollars well it's lost 88 million dollars sorry 88 billion dollars excuse me 88 billion dollars on its capital stock its capital stock has been diminished dramatically and in any future reflation of the economy a reconstruction of the economy all those and those investments will have to be to be restored. Now the capital stock has been been lost through capital flight but also through looting and destruction of existing businesses so much of the damage to the economy has been through looting and destruction so that and that includes agriculture it includes housing stock includes an industrial stock. So the GDP has contracted in the first quarter of 2000 2013 by a third it contracted by 40% in the second half so there's a massive downswing in the economy that's having major impact throughout the structured economy so in that context we've lost the Syrian economy has lost 2.3 million jobs which means almost 10 million people are dependent on on their livelihood support for those 2.3 million jobs so half of the people in Syria almost half have lost have lost any any support for employment currently in the first half of the year the unemployment rate was it was just over 48% that had been down by 2% from the previous quarter which was over 50% and the reason was second half of the year is it is a peak time for agriculture so agriculture short-term agriculture employment reduced the unemployment rate but that's that will come back up to over 50% in the next quarter. So private investment also has contracted massively it contracted by 23% it's already down by 70% from between 2011-2012 but it contracted by 23% in the first quarter of 2013 and therefore that 12.8% in the second quarter and the total investment in the economy is just 10.3% in GDP which is actually less than the depreciation of capital stock in general so that also shows that any new investments in the economy are not keeping up with the depreciation rate so again a shrinking economy an economy that's no longer to sustain the livelihoods of people so the economy is in as in a state of ruination. Let me just turn to some of the other factors. Private consumption is also contracting contracted by 40% in the first quarter of 2003 and 47% in the second quarter now what does that mean in terms of people's lives and livelihoods it means that people are no longer purchasing what they were in the past and the reason for that is people do not have incomes poverty is increasing by the second the second half of this year between the beginning of the conflict and that 27-month period we had the 7.9 million people were sorry 7.9 million people became unemployed these are poor these were the new poor 4.4 million of them left below the they were in deep poverty and were not able to to to finance their basic needs so you have a massive destruction in the economy that's been led by a number of by many many factors government resources in terms of unemployment government no longer has the that no longer has a tax base that used to have so it's lost 2.3 million incomes which means income tax VAT so the government government fiscal policy is also facing major reduction because it cannot meet many of the basic needs at the same time there's been deflation in the car there's been the cost of living has risen by over 200% is projected to rise by 300% by the end of the year now what that means that people on fixed income public sector workers and others are being are being pitched into poverty because their income is only buying half what it was two years ago and at the same time there's been massive rise and the cost of food stops partially because of all of the international sanctions but also also because of the reduction and production of goods and services inside Syria which is actually pushing up the prices of goods and services for the whole people so if I turn to some of the socioeconomic indicators rather rather than the economic indicators and we can see that Syria now has a fastest growing refugee population of any country in the world and by the end of the year it's likely to be the largest population refugee population and worldwide overtaken Afghanistan with with 22.4 million people so really you're going to see most of those people are moving to largely to Lebanon and and Jordan and that's putting huge pressures on on the domestic economies of those countries who are trying to cope with that and a lot a lot of the international aid as me as a strong focus on Jordan and Jordan and Lebanon at the moment within that context of the movement of people about the population has been hauled out by over 8% so you have you have what when we when we produced the report we were was 1.73 million refugees within the region but another 1.3 million persons who'd actually who'd actually migrated voluntarily so there's a mixture of refugee and migration going on but also you have massive internal displacement often multiple times almost 5 million people have been internally displaced within Syria from different parts of Syria large part in Damascus Aleppo Idlib homes Hamad has been massive displacement and there are also so large scale displacement often multiple times as people move to seek shelter and safe havens and other places those places then become themselves become unsafe and people have to move and more many times one of the factors in internal displacement are people are moving from nuclear family households into extended family household so for example people who live in a household of mother and father and three or four children are now moved into households where you've got grandparents brothers and sisters and their families and children so up to in the central Damascus area where many people have moved into you have households extended households of up to 30 people living in a house for six people so that has been putting huge pressures on people but what it's meaning is that there's a because of the because of the loss to the economy because of loss of income households have had to come together to support each other with less resources in their hand a few years ago in terms of what would happen just put the context of of the economic losses and a broader context if the economy was began to reflect today at a sort of at 5% a year I would take the Syrian economy 30 years to get back to where it was in 2010 so you can see from that that the economic losses have been have been massive now one of the 30 years to recover to the same level of GDP that city had in 2010 with a current growth level of 5% per year so compounding year by year to take 30 years to get back to where it was now a lot of those losses are they're not going to be it's not I mean clearly it's not any reconstruction is not going to take place like that would be a huge investment in the beginning period which will reflate will refloat the economy but it won't take it up to the next level because it's been a massive outflow within the within the refugee population and the migrant population there's been a massive outflow of human capital so if you just take some of the basic statistics from the from the health sector the number of doctors per number of not the sort of doctor population ratio has gone from one doctor for 700 people to one doctor to 4,000 for just over 4,000 people so that shows a large-scale outflow of healthcare professionals from the sector either moving on into the refugee population or be part of this place people or actually migrating to the Gulf and other countries looking for employment in the health care sector as well we also have massive loss to infrastructure but 30% of the public hospitals are no longer operating effectively 50% of the primary health care services are dysfunctional one of the issues one of the key issues there are most chronically sick and long-term people require long-term medicines and long-term services they get most of the services through the primary health care primary health care sector primary health care sector is no longer able to service many of those people but at the same time even when they even when they're open many of the health care centers don't have access to the drugs and dialysis then they need to provide so many many chronically old people are now becoming falling into serious serious health conditions that may lead to the deaths the other factor on that as we the estimation is that that over over hundred five over a hundred thousand people have been killed during the war it's also estimated that on a ratio one to four about two percent of the Syrian population have been killed maimed or injured in the war so we're talking about a very large about two percent of the population now looking at the education side there's a major crisis going on in the education sphere only half of all school children are currently in school there's also been large-scale damage to to many schools three thousand schools are no longer operating over six hundred are now displacement centers for displaced people so they're they're not functioning now that is different across different different areas in the country so if you take somewhere like Lataki and Tartus school attendance rate is around 90 percent if you look at somewhere like Aleppo it's close to zero so that the long-term implications of that that the current divisions within Syrian society are being reinforced by will be reinforced in the future because of the loss of school term and because of the number of school years lost so that will be actually very difficult to make up for school term the same as the same is also happening in me and this in higher education there's been many many students are deferring their higher education of current time and because of the instability and and lack of well they don't know where there be many of them are having to travel long distance to be university so their families are not wishing them to travel this is particularly true for for women students who whose families want them and hand they don't want them far from the family so education is now being deferred to many areas and also you have you have the same problem as you have in the healthcare sector you have you have the you have the the flight of many professors and teachers from the educational system again as refugees as migrants and as Intel is placed so they have no longer access to their employment one of the big factors that's that's happening is the education the education system the public health care and public health care system and public and public the public sector generally the population that the employees are all on fixed incomes and their incomes are not going basically the incomes only stretch half as far as they used to so that's also creating a crisis for the government because government government support depends very much on people having employment and so that their lives are not being completely ruined by the situation so the government has been pushing up pushed up salaries in the past paid that will but that's going to impact negatively on on the debt ratio of the government because that's been rising quite dramatically as well so the national debt is 174% currently of GDP that's being financed both internally from local sources and from and from international loans mainly from mainly from Iran and so even but primarily Iran so that is a factor that's going to affect the government in the future so the sustainability of the economy is really in is in some serious doubt and I think that is really the one of the main the main the main factors that will affect the future now what we have been one of the reasons why we are looking why we are doing these reports is a lot there's a lot of international assistance going in at the moment to support the United Nations situation so mainly in food aid health health care cash assistance for the poor and most duty but one of the problems we are seeing is that people are losing any sort of ability to maintain livelihoods I mean we are now talking about millions of people without any source of income what you we also see on the ground is a massive rise in informality so there's been a huge rise in the informal sector where people are trading fruits and vegetables so many people have opened up these micro entrepreneurship activities which are creating a basic income for the families but it's not sufficient to sustain the families at a at a reasonable level so really these are just coping strategies to living in poverty the other big factor in the economy there has been a significant rise in economies of violence so there's a lot there's significant amount of economic violence and politics of economic violence mainly through extortion racketeering kidnapping and various other elements which are extremely which are pushing out in many areas making it very difficult for regular business people to survive and in that context there's been in certain areas has been the contract law has been dissolving very rapidly so it's very difficult to operate in an economy where where there's violence and extortion going on and trying to run a regular business so business networks are also collapsing if I don't know if I should go into the sector or not but there's some key I mean industry is is really reduced by about 70% the the transport sector is also down mainly because of the danger of transportation so transport people don't travel travel very much throughout within the country so people have reduced their travel needs as much as possible because the possibility of all being of being kidnapped are held at checkpoints also there's been a lot of a lot of hijacking of vehicles transporting goods and services and the agricultural sector there's been a large loss of livestock as livestock has been has been looted and the agriculture sector although it's become the biggest sector of the economy it is also facing a huge increase in price and prices for for for inputs for fertilizers and scepticides and and suits and water system water management system so that the whole economy is really the only thing word we can use to describe it as we can say it's in recession but really it's more in state of a ruination than recession okay thanks Alex this is um obviously very depressing picture hard for many of us to hear but good to to understand the this this side of the picture because we frequently are just hearing the side of of the fighting and the future of Syria obviously is a big question and I'd like to get your perspective a little bit if you could step away from sort of your particular role and reporting as in the context of this effort looking looking forward to what perhaps could be you mentioned some coping strategies but but what could we do to to help mitigate mitigate the the economic down slide in the scenario of continued protracted conflict well I mean there's many things I think there's many things that can be done but they're all very they're not going to generate huge income they're not going to generate growth they're basically be coping instruments that would help communities build livelihoods maintain livelihoods and that can be small-scale that can be small public small-scale public work activities community based public work activities within communities that can hold together and work together and so that can generate I can generate income it can also generate local purchasing power it can help small businesses within the community to get together so for example if you're working to repair destroyed buildings you can you can either do that through through self-help projects within the community by providing materials and support for community members and households to rebuild and we and replenish windows waterworks and various other things or you can actually you can scale it up a little bit and employ small-scale jobbing builders to do repair and maintenance that puts money into the economy locally it also means you buy materials for from local companies local businesses local shops which generates a sort of an internal economy but these issues are these are extremely limited because I mean they're not refloring the economy they're just keeping certain communities with a basic means of sustaining livelihoods but humanitarians have not have not really and all of the matter in situations around the globe they've never really been able to find this mixture of been able to work with humanitarian assistance at the same time livelihood support and maintain a focus on human development and that's one of the things we want this report to do is to keep a focus on human development issues so they don't get lost when governments and others are looking at the situation because often we only see what's going on through the prism of the two warring parties and the people supporting the two warring parties what we try showing this report is the impact of the the armed conflict on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Syrians and I think when you see the data and you see the extent of the data it's it's it's it's extremely it's extremely disturbing for the future and the future livelihoods of people and particularly young people who are most at risk in this situation okay we have about 25 minutes left so I'll open it up to the audience to ask questions we have one here in the front row thank you thank you dr. Abbas coming from the Embassy of Iraq what you say here first thanks for the excellent presentation what you really say here brings flashbacks from my home country back in the 2005-200 maybe even four five six seven my question is this there is a lot of focus as you mentioned both on the on on the fight and the outcome of the fight and the political aspect of it but from an economic perspective what comes to mind is what does this the current situation economically leave for whoever is going to be following Assad or for Assad himself if he survives in terms of maintaining a solvent government or regime economically speaking given what you said that it would take 30 years to bring Syria back at the right growth rate of 5% to to the kind of the situation that was before the conflict bearing in mind that the situation before the conflict was not that great as well meaning Iraq we have the oil and 100 billion dollar income but Syria doesn't have that luxury so if you want to reflect on that for us that would appreciate it yeah I mean look at any reconstruction period it's not going to be five I mean in a period of immediate reconstruction you might actually have a hundred and a hundred hundred percent growth on the current level because there'll be one would assume that would be vast sums of money coming in that there'd be a mobilization of expatriate capital the money coming in for the business community that businesses would be encouraged to to to invest particularly from the expatriate community who's not loved in Syria so I mean similar to I mean if I use the example of Palestine at the beginning of the peace process in Palestine you had a large inflow of both foreign capital and expatriate Palestinian capital that that boosted the economy for a number of years so so you had quite significant growth 20 30 percent growth over a very short period of time but again it's not just in Syria you're looking at you're looking at investments of hundreds billions of dollars to refloat the economy and again that depends on the type of political settlement you have first the institutional structure is in some disarray the bath party for example is still a strong institutional structure within Syria but it is it's a whole shell of what it used to be and so the main thing going forward is how do you how do you re-energize the institutional structure in Syria to make them capable of being part of the of the refloat the flotation of the of the economy and I think I mean again that depends on the type of political settlement that's arrived at in the future well and it also seems that the country if you look at the country now I mean there are different conditions prevailing in different parts of the country and there's been more destruction in certain areas or different cities than others and so the industrial base may be more in a better position to be revived in in one part of the country rather than others you know so it seems to me that there also would need to be some thinking about where interventions may best be sustainable do you have a sense right now where what parts of Syria are doing better than others well I mean it's very clear the parts are doing better Latakia, Tautus and Sweden have been largely immune from the conflict and I know just say we have and Syria we had five microfinance branch offices four in Damascus one in Aleppo our branch office in Aleppo was closed it was on the front line so we had to close it and move the staff somewhere else and Duma our office is closed and Zainab our office is closed and Yarmouk our office is closed so we had one up until a few months ago we had in Damascus yeah we had one operating office in Damascus and we then we opened three new branch offices and Tautus, Sweden and Latakia and those have grown very significantly within a very short period of time so there are pockets of the where there's still contract law is still an operation policing systems are operation so you can continue regular contract you've also had a large outflow of business people from Aleppo to Latakia but they're not operating in any way close to the nature they were when they were in Aleppo and if you take Aleppo Aleppo was one of the main industrial centers of the country and I had very strong economic links to Turkey those links have all been severed many of the business people have particularly the Armenian business community have left have left Aleppo many have gone some have gone to Latakia many have gone to Armenia so we it's not just a case of putting money in you have to build the previous marketing networks that were there in the past and it's not clear that those can be reestablished very easily because when one market link breaks up the dominant partners tend to create new market links and they just don't go back to the old marketing links so I think it's going to be a very difficult process to to put together so that again and that depends again depends very much on the nature of the political settlement because these things tend to be trade links tend to have very strong political dimensions to them can you introduce say your name my name is Bessambar Abendi I'm a Syrian how does the regime can sponsor or support or finance the army taking consideration or the figures that you mentioned it seems there's no income there is still I mean there's not no income there's but I mean about five billion has been I mean from all the data we have we recognize but five billion been moved from public good for example social services health care education has been moved to military practices so I mean by the very nature of of a country being in a war situation it's the government's going to put as much money into it's going to prioritize putting money into into military expenditures to achieve what it's trying to achieve and so I mean they're looking they're looking very much at the short term issues on that they're not really they don't currently have a focus on the long-term development issues I mean it's mostly about wanting the war and surviving from an economic perspective but at some point they're going to have to look at this because because the economy is becoming increasingly unsustainable that's going to have significant impact on the government because the government depends on maintaining a workforce who depend on it for for their living and if they can't sustain that that will create critical challenges for them in the future and that requires that basically requires continuing subvention either direct aid from from allies or from or foreign credits from their allies. Third row back from the back. From the front sorry. My sense isn't correct me if I'm wrong that of the funds going in you know in support of those you know who have who have left their homes whether migrating refugees or internally displaced that a large portion of those funds are going you know to support the refugees in Jordan and Lebanon for understandable reasons it must be very difficult you know to do but on the other hand the internally displaced population is quite huge I mean is that correct and do we have any sense of how the internal if it is correct you know then how the internally displaced populations are faring and how they're coping. Yeah I mean look the entire displaced the displaced both in the areas where which are under the opposition control and the displaced in areas under under government control for the UN we don't we don't have the authorization to do cross-border support so we we have we have very little impact and the in the in the opposition areas because we're basically in order for us to operate we have to we have to work through currently still have to work through through through government permission to serve areas which they allow us to work in and that is mainly in areas controlled by them and in general there's the substantial aid going into all areas now of course the level of need and and the amount of money available there's no match between them the significant gap so people are not getting what they need to survive but they're getting a minimum that's helping them mitigate the poverty they're living in but it's certainly not providing for the full range of needs now in the opposition areas there are also NGOs and other work others working there although I don't have any idea of the volume and volume and the actual how widespread it is but on both sides there's people in great need with insufficient support going to them I just to point out as you mentioned I mean there's some six billion internally displaced and some of those people are in camps and you know very particular areas locations and many of them are just living with families and are internally displaced within cities you know some people moving continuously so they so some I imagine are still part of whatever economic activity is still left whereas others are probably very much dependent on on humanitarian aid whether they're in the opposition area or on the border camp well I think there's two things with the internal displaced that you have to look at you have internally displaced people who have no source of income whatsoever so they've lost their jobs and lost the livelihoods you have other internally displaced people who have lost their homes and have had to move from from their communities but they still have employment so the the difference in the quality of life between the two groups is very dramatic so I mean I just came back from Damascus last week and when I was in Damascus you see big family households but also you see in most of the parks in Damascus there are displaced people sleeping in the parks so every night there's hundreds and some of the parks thousands of people just living there without any other means of livelihood or support now they're getting they're getting food some food and blanket distribution and things like that from NGOs and others but the difference within the within the internally displaced communities the difference between the people themselves are very diverse based on if they have income sources or not do you have any sense of what percentage of the population is are still collecting state salaries I think a large segment and a large segment the state sector is still collecting salaries many what we know I don't have a figure but what I know from many many people have sent their families outside the country and they continue to work in the government so if they're if they're they send their families to Lebanon they go down to Lebanon every every other weekend to see their families so people are staying working just to create income so that keeping their families outside the country we had a question here and then over there Hugh McElrath retired intelligence officer irrespective of political or patriotic or religious motivation to what extent is it a rational economic decision for a military age man to join armed or paramilitary forces on either side in order say to support a family well I mean if you're I think it's fairly rational choice I mean you've seen militias all over the world and places of violent conflict they're often the only way you can actually support and sustain your family so I mean there's an economic not just ideological sort of determinant and why people would fight on if they're getting money to fight and there's no other source of income then it happens we've seen it for years in Palestinian camps in Lebanon people would join different militias at different time because they would get income from from being part of a militia and I think that's the same thing and as I say what the economy is of violence often there's there are groups who actually live off what they can take from communities to survive and again that gives legitimacy to how they survive okay we had the question and my far right middle Chris, Chris Straub from the Amar Foundation those state salaries and I presume military salaries on the regime side as well are being paid in the Syrian pounds yeah so what's what's the trajectory of the Syrian pound if the if this current economic slide continues and when does it become completely valueless okay well the set just give you some of the data on it when the conflict started the the equivalent value the Syrian pound was around 50 Syrian pounds to one US dollar it's currently 170 169 Syrian pound to one US dollar so you've had massive devaluation in terms of the value of the currency a few got up to 300 about a few months ago but the the central bank has managed to get it back to 170 179 now it's been like that for about three months so what was three months and so there's some stability in the currency because it was it was really shooting up for quite a while but now the the management of it has been brought it down to to a stable situation whether it can sustain that stable situation remains to be seen but but that's an indication also that that the government has some sort of stability within its fiscal processes it's operating it's been controlling I mean there's a number of parallel markets and in the country so the the gap between the parallel mark the black market and the and the official exchange rate has come down dramatically so in fact for a few last last week when I was in Syria the official exchange rate was actually higher in the black market rate for the first time ever so there is some they're bringing some control into the currency and exchange exchange rates at the moment but there's no guarantee that that can be sustained over the long term and over the long term you would think it wouldn't be one would expect to see in that context to see some form of dollarization of the currency ongoing but so far it's not really happening and the the central bank has been very has put a lot of pressure on merchants and others not to stop pegging their pegging trading into two dollar rates but yeah it's a factor but I at the moment it's not it's not a destabilizing factor but I think and over the long term it will be but as I said before it's the big factor is the cost of living the cost of living has risen by 200% it's likely rise to 300% and if you're on a fixed income as most state state employees that means you're you just can't live the way you used to before now fuel prices are doubling food prices are doubling basic commodity prices are are inflating so it's a it's a it's that as a destabilizing factor for the government the government is giving food subs it's still giving food subsidies for basic commodities it's still procuring goods from farmers at fixed prices so so they've still got some they've still got some elements of fiscal control on the general economy but the general economy is not generating generating the well the the income that can actually float the tax base so the tax basis is declining quite dramatically which means the ability to the government to invest is is going down now the government expenditure has growing there's three elements of growth in the GDP which have continued over the speed one is public sector expenditures the other is service expenditures and the other growth sector NGOs so NGO the NGO share of GDP has grown it's still it's still a small share of GDP but it shows that most of the service sector today which is still the growth poll still a growth poll in the economy it's all focused on providing humanitarian assistance to millions of people but that again is not a it's not it's not a positive economic trade it's actually a negative economic trade because that money has to come from somewhere to serve non-productive purposes we just have a couple minutes left so I'll take how many questions do we have left just one okay a little bit about the impact of the informal market locally I was wondering if you could talk some about whether the team had any estimates about what its impact has been sort of as a broader network both black market trade smuggling and sort of how much of the economy has been made up in that market well first of all the the informal economy and I'm not talking about the economy within the major cities that is mean it's mainly it's mainly trading so it's mainly trade so there's not it's not creating it's not creating additional value it's just it's just sharing a value between an increasing number of people so you're just chopping the cake into small on smaller pieces and people are getting a part of that which is allowing them to survive but there's very little within the within the informal economy that can be seen as productive in nature I mean there's some some home based manufacturing and crafts food processing things like that but all on a very very small scale you have household production going on small animal husbandry raising basically to supplement nutritional requirements but it's so far it's not very much of its entering the market for sale I've heard that the oil production which used to compromise 25 percent of the GDP has also become informalized can you comment on that yeah I mean the the government I mean well the state oil industries that was meant source of hard currency that has gone completely because most most of the oil wells are in areas controlled by the opposition now there's been a lot of smuggling of oil across borders and it's been controlled by by different groups not nestly controlled in a unified way but very divided among each other the oil petroleum level has just it's gone down I think to around 14,000 miles of there so it's shrunk by about 75% also the oil wells have been have also been destroyed and the petroleum producing plants have been destroyed so there's been large-scale destruction of the ability to produce petroleum and and other products from so mostly it's the export of raw and processed materials now thank you Alex for coming here today and for sharing your expertise again the report the latest report is available outside I suspect that some people may wish to receive future copies because you're doing these reports on a quarterly basis and might you tell us how we can find them yeah well the reports are the reports are released on the on the website on our website yeah and yeah but also these Syria Center for Policy Research will be producing a report in Arabic and so it will be available in Arabic on its website yeah yeah the Palestinian I mean very small part of Syrian population right we're talking about just under half a million people but where they are located geographically means that proportionately they've suffered more than people in general so I mean they're mainly in places like Daraa, Homs, Hama and most particularly the place where they've been hardest has been in Yermouk where half the Palestinian refugee population in Syria live I mean I could just give you some because we've just done a survey of the clients we have microfinance clients so if I take the the case of Yermouk 88.8 percent of our clients in Yermouk were displaced 45 percent of them had their homes and houses damaged or destroyed 45 percent of them had their businesses looted and robbed and cut only 14 percent still had an operating business so I mean most of them have lost their sources of income the majority of the Palestinian population from Yermouk are living outside Yermouk 43,000 and 43,000 registered in Lebanon just about 10% of the population another 8,000 in Jordan so quite proportionally high share of Palestinians have been had but as I say in terms of the in terms of the overall situation they're in a better condition than many people because they do have direct support in Lebanon and Jordan if they can reach those places but we're still operating our operations are still going on and homes and Hama and Aleppo so we still have operations taking place and all of the areas where Palestinian refugees are located so they're still getting food aid cash assistance medical help mostly skills are still functioning some areas not but but so they've still got the right access to services but the most the most difficult place was Yermouk where it's estimated that only a very small percentage of Palestinian refugees remain in remain in remain in Yermouk okay okay we have consensus to take one more question if you can be brief please yes thank you Molly Williamson Middle East Institute what kind of cooperation or scrutiny do you have for your operations from the Syrian government we I mean we work with UNRWA we work our direct partner in Syrian government as GAPAR which is the General Association for Palestinian Refugees and Syria so everything we do we coordinate with GAPAR and our coordination has gone on has been going on essentially since the 50s and so we have a very I think I'd say in terms of coordination to deliver services we have very good cooperation with with that government agency thank you again Alec


with some big news from TAT entering in the UK market with significant competitive advantages. TAT is entering the UK market, folks. Let that sink in. This is huge news. In the United Kingdom, tobacco cigarettes are sold in standard plain packaging, which limits the ability of brands to visually distinguish their products from those of competitors. TAT will be sold in the United Kingdom in colorful packaging, similar to the current design found in markets in the United States. And the company anticipates it will realize a competitive advantage based on the unique appearance of its red, blue, and green packs compared to the drab dark brown packs of leading tobacco cigarettes as specifically mandated under UK law. Moreover, after menthol tobacco cigarettes were officially banned in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2020, a market opportunity has emerged among legal age smokers in this market who prefer menthol, which could represent an opportunity for the company to gain market share. Huge, huge, huge, huge news. Huge news for TAT lifestyle and wellness. Put them on your radar. Put them on your watch list. Would not be surprised to see them have a big day today after this big news. Miro says, can't wait to see them here in the UK, not smoking though. Yeah, we're not telling you guys to smoke. That's not why we're doing this. We want you to be aware of the business. We want you to be aware of the stock. We want you to be aware of the opportunity.  So TAT in Canada is symbol TAT. In America on the OTCQX, hopefully soon to be on the NASDAQ symbol is TOBAF. And in Frankfurt, Germany, the symbol is 2TP. Recently received in a press release dated April 30th, 2021 that it had received a purchase order for 100,000 euros, approximately 149,000 Canadian from a wholesaler in London, England, who will be the exclusive distributor of TAT in the United Kingdom and Ireland. That's right. The exclusive exclusive distributor of TAT in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Cindy says, TAT is just getting started. I agree with you 100% and TAT is a beauty. And it's already trading almost 1000% higher than when we first brought it to you guys first. So as the company prepares for its shipment to fulfill this order, it has developed the pack designs for each of TAT original, smooth and menthol for sale at retail in the United Kingdom, where the company believes TAT packs will visually stand out when displayed alongside tobacco cigarettes, which can only be sold in a uniform, plain packaging style. Hey, you know what? TAT has been right so far about everything. So I wouldn't be surprised for them to be right about this as well. Let's continue with the news. Packaging for all tobacco cigarettes in the United States, in the United Kingdom, including leading brands such as Sterling and Mayfair, both made a subsidiary of Japan Tobacco International. So both of them were made by a subsidiary called Japan Tobacco International and they must adhere to requirements, including a designated principal color, a Paton 448C, a drab dark brown, that's pretty brutal for marketing, a smooth surface with no texture or embossing, and the absence of promotional images or logos as a result packs of a given tobacco cigarette brand or variant are generally indistinguishable from one another with the brand invariant names, each allowed to appear only once on the front, top and bottom of the pack in Helvitica font with only the first letter capitalized and a maximum font size of 10 and 14 points for the brand and variant names respectively. The proprietary tobacco free and nicotine free formulation of TAT and its beyond tobacco trademark based material allow the company to position TAT as a non-tobacco product under different packaging regulations. The bright colors of the TAT original red smooth blue and menthol green varieties are expected to stand out among the dark brown packs of tobacco cigarettes from incumbent brands in shops across the United Kingdom as well as in the representation below. What do you guys think of this news? What do you think about TAT entering the UK? This looks very promising. The distinctive packaging of TAT products stands to provide the Kingdom, the United Kingdom and the company yet another advantage in the United Kingdom as it seeks to introduce TAT to the United Kingdom. Huge. In addition to its ability to sell at a much lower price which is price is everything guys let's be honest like people want to spend less money especially in a pandemic so you got to assume that price is a key reason why people are going to buy something then it's branding marketing people need to know your name and then people have to like your product so at the end of the day those are the key reasons why people are going to buy a product but pricing is always one of the key elements on everybody's mind whenever they buy anything any consumer is always looking at pricing always so so in addition to its ability to sell at a much lower price point compared to the average tobacco cigarette in this market one pack of the most sold brand costs 13.58 in international dollars purchasing purchasing power parity adjusted furthermore almost exactly one year ago on May 20 2020 a ban on menthol cigarettes was put into effect in the United Kingdom including on capsule click on click and roll crush ball and dual menthol cigarettes this ban will not affect tat products that's right let me say that again this ban will not affect tat products so tat doesn't fall under the menthol cigarettes ban huge for tat with the assistance of its european wholesale partner the company is confident in its ability to build market share for tat in the united kingdom where 14.1 percent of the legal age population use tobacco in 2020 the tobacco market in the united kingdom was valued at approximately 18 billion or 30 billion annually canadian sam asks what more a good news can be before a long weekend thanks rich for bringing it first hey my pleasure sam it's what we do here at rich tv live we bring in the winners we bring them to you first we break down the news so that everybody knows what is going on what is trending before the market opens the market is opening up in a minute everyone has a great trading day we're going to finish off this news and let everybody get to work in the markets so we are very excited about our impending entrance into the uk market and this is seti coscarella chief executive officer of tat so seti says we are very excited about our impending entrance into the uk market and our advantageous and our advantageous product distinction on the shelf remember this is directly from rich tv live don't panic there's absolutely no need to panic folks don't panic so seti is very excited about this news chief executive officer of tat says anytime your product is visually outstanding from its competition that's right visually outstanding from its competition a lot of work is already done for you as we continue to explore opportunities outside of the uk we recognize that the european union presents a complicated regulatory network with each member country implementing its own rules with respect to importation packaging tariffs and other factors interest in our product from legal age smokers in europe has been overwhelming and we will navigate the regulations on a country by country basis there it is there's the big news there's the breaking news for tat lifestyle and wellness what do you guys think love to know your guys opinion they'll tell you a little quickly about tat global alternatives ink before we say goodbye and let everybody enjoy their long weekend wanted to make sure i brought you guys this news pre-market and now the market is open and live i know it's a green day today everybody wins big in this green day and remember if you guys would like to learn how to trade you can join the trading club at rich picks daily calm and you too can learn how to trade stocks and cryptocurrencies okay we love to educate the world and help you win and win big and right now the stock market and cryptocurrencies are the two best places to make money in 2021 from home and we're doing it and we're helping you do it too hey phil phil says tat morning tat is one of my main holdings mike says good morning mike mike says just keep making money on tat yeah and you know what that's just getting started they're just getting started so let's just read a little bit about tat global alternatives ink jeffrey says good morning tat as a winner rich brought it first hey thank you jeff i appreciate you brother good to see you i hope you have a great weekend about tat global alternatives ink the company's developed tat which is trademarked which is a tobacco free and nicotine free alternative to traditional cigarettes offered in original smooth and menthol varieties tat's base material is beyond tobacco a proprietary blend which undergoes a patent pending refinement technique causing its scent and taste to resemble tobacco under executive leadership with big tobacco pedigree tat was launched first in the united states in q4 2020 as a company seeks to position itself in the 814 billion global tobacco industry love to know what you guys think about this big news from tat lifestyle and wellness the headline is tat entering the uk market with significant competitive advantages left to know what you guys think is your boy rich from rich to be live if you're not winning you're not watching we bring in the winners we bring in the news and we bring it to you first thank you guys for watching is your boy rich from rich to be live and rich picks daily and i'm out peace