Okay. Hello. My name is Reinhard Bündgen. I'm the first one of the three. I have to get, give some credits to my colleagues, Holger and Ingo, who did the actual development behind what I'm talking to you today. Not sure. Just a show of hand. Who understands the title? Actually, few. Great. Because it's a completely, complete shift of gears. We are now going more in the field of cryptography and protocols. And, well, it's a mix of technologies that not everybody probably knows about. I make sure that you will understand if you didn't show your hands during the presentation. So, what's the challenge that we want to work on, that we want to resolve? It's the challenge of identity theft in a network connection. In particular, TLS, and in more particular, TLS implemented with OpenSSL3.0. And what can happen? Well, a TLS server typically signs his data, his keys, and so on, in order to prove who he is. But that signing, well, is done with a key. And that key is now very valuable. If someone happens to steal that key, he can steal the identity and pretend he is a right server. That would be really nasty if the server is serving a bank account, for example. So that is what we are talking about. And stealing keys, there's a technology to defend against this. This technology is typically called HSMs, hardware security modules. And those hardware security modules, or most of them, can be programmed against using a standard. And that standard is called PKC11. Okay. Again, the picture here is the client he wants to connect to a server. The server identifies itself with a private key. And if that private key gets stolen and the traffic gets rerouted, you might talk to the wrong server. Clearly, if you're doing something like MTLS, mutually, with mutual authentication, same problem exists for the client. Okay. What is the hardware security module? The hardware security module is a device who doesn't have a processor hardware security module? I'm surprised. No credit card whatsoever. It's a device that does cryptographical operations on protected secrets in a way, sorry, my voice is fading, in a way that protects the keys. So it's typically cards, crypto cards, but also small devices like smart cards. There are good HSMs who would even rather destroy themselves or all data hidden in the HSM rather than letting this data extract. And they are very often certified using the FIPS 140 standard according to levels greater than two. Software is typically only certified against using level one. And how does this work? These hardware contain secrets. That secret can be a single master key that is used to encrypt other keys. And then with the encrypted, the wrapped key that is available to the operating system, the software has to send both the encrypted key and all the data to be worked on to the HSM. Or the operational keys could be stored in themselves in the HSM. Then you have, of course, only limited space for such operational space and the software only sends a handle to that key, an index or whatever, to the HSM together with the data to be operated on. A little bit of PKC is 11 technology. That is the most popular standard to work with HSMs. Clearly HSM vendors also have their proprietary interfaces very often, but it looks like a nice common denominator for many vendors. And if you do have something, you might even have a rapper, the PKC is 11 rapper to talk to your HSM. So in HSM, all key objects come with attributes. The most important ones are the sensitive attribute and the extractable attribute. Sensitive means you cannot look into the value if sensitive is true. Extractable means there is no way to get that value out of the HSM. This is not exportable. But getting the value out of the HSM doesn't mean to get it in the clear, but to wrap it with some keys in order to exchange it, for example, for letting two HSMs communicate among each other. Okay. Operational operation, those are the operational functions are typically of course encrypt and decrypt, wrap and unwrap and derive and of course sign and verify. Encrypt and encrypt is meant to do encrypt operation on data. Wrap and unwrap are encrypt operations on keys. And they are meant as an export operation. So wrap exports a key and unwraps imports a wrapped key into the HSM. This is the idea of these two operations. Derive is of course something like ECDH or KDF function. Even so, the standard allows many combinations. There is something about the derive function that HSM implementers typically do. They constrain that if the input keys to be derived from which another key shall be derived, if those keys are sensitive, then the output key is sensitive. If they would allow both, it would make the goal of the HSM just go away. And even so, the standard would allow to derive a non-sensitive key from a sensitive private and public, well, public keys are always a non-sensitive, sensitive private key. HSM vendors wouldn't allow this in the hardware. They wouldn't get it certified. Okay. Just to be on the safe side, a short overview on a protocol like TLS, it starts up with a handshake where the keys to be used in the future communication, which are typically symmetric keys for bulk encryption are exchanged. And the server signs its key material with its signing key. And if you have a mutual authentication, it does the same. But most connections are not mutual TLS connections. So what's happening is that in the upper part, in the handshake part of the protocol, public, private, asymmetric cryptography is involved. Two types of asymmetric cryptography typically. The signing type of cryptography and key derivation, be it RSA, key exchange, or an ECDH key exchange. Okay. Now, let's look at the different key types that are involved in such a key exchange. First of all, we have the private signing keys. There are long lift keys. The location in memory can be, if that location where these keys reside can be extracted. Just remember Heart Lead, which was one of such vulnerability. Such a key could be extracted and stolen. And, well, this key also must be stored on media somewhere because, well, after rebooting your server, you want to not get all the sudden, completely new identity. So there must be a way to store this key safely, securely. Then we have private keys for key exchange. If you're using an RSA key exchange, that key is typically also long lift. I think most TLS implementation uses the same RSA key for signing and for the wrapping. For ECDH, well, typically TLS, in particular TLS 1.3, doesn't use proper TLS, ECDH, or Diffie-Hellman, but it uses, if you marry a variant of it and it's strongly recommended to use that, these are short lift keys. They're only generated at the beginning of a connection and a new one at the end of a connection. Why so? Well, generating ECDH keys is fast, easy. It's just a random number plus a multiplication. And for RSA key generation is very heavy time consuming. Therefore, there's no, if you marry RSA, even so one could consider this. And last but not least, we have the symmetric keys involved. These are the ones that have been derived. So they are as, if they marry as the ECDH keys. And on the other hand, for those keys performance matters, because we might encrypt a lot of data. The handshake is only done once. So if you have lots of, lots of connections, then performance of the handshake may matter if the connections are short. But typically the performance of the symmetrical keys really matter. Why is performance an issue? Well, asymmetric keys are slow, and if you go to an HSM, an HSM is slow. If you want to back down your communication, run everything, each AES computation on an HSM. Because it involves an IO to an external device. And therefore we have more or less two groups of keys, keys that I call high-risk keys, where I strongly recommend HSM protections and keys that I consider low key because the damage, if those keys get lost, keys are always valuable. But some are more valuable, others less valuable. They have a limited risk and limited impact. And I think it's perfectly fine to use them as context keys and have them in your memory while your connection is open. Okay. A little bit now we want to combine OpenSSL and PKC is 11. And we have to look a little bit how things match. With OpenSSL, asymmetric keys are represented by byte strings that are as long as a key is strong. So if I have an AES 128 key, it's 128 bits long. It's as long as a minimal mathematical representation of this key. For asymmetric keys, it's a little bit different. There we have something like an opaque object that represents the key which is typically structured and must be something more complex anyway. And there is a way to represent those asymmetric keys in a key store. As for PKC is 11, both symmetric keys and asymmetric keys are represented as objects because they not only contain the key material but also the attributes. Some of which we have looked at like the sensitive or extractable attribute. But there are others that restrict what the key may be used for. So there are keys. You can define a key that is only used for wrapping or key is only used for signing. Stuff like that. Okay. OpenSSL is not meant to use HSM. It's a normal plain text key library. It's a good one. I'm not, that's no criticism at all. It's the defective standard, I guess, of crypto if you so want. It's the most popular crypto library there is currently but it was always prepared for plugins. Before openSSL version 3.0 was released, the plugin mechanism was called engine. It's such an engine that it could provide a replacement of a function implementation. Since openSSL 3.0, that plugin format has changed. The name has also changed. We now have a provider and the provider has a different goal. It implements more or less an abstract data type or an object and it has comes with various requirements that for this key data type, it must implement export and import method and these are not HSM export and import methods but methods that allow to exchange objects between different provider types. And it must implement all functions and methods that this key can be used for in openSSL. And we will see these constraints cause some problems in implementing a good pksc11 provider. Another concept that we need is a so-called openSSL key store. It contains key objects that depend on the external storage format. For example, there is an RFC that defines a URI to refer to a pksc11 key and so you can have a key store that contains keys that are represented by such an URI. And the keys in such a key store can be interpreted in a provider specific manner. For example, the URIs for pksc11 can be transformed by the provider into an according pksc11 key handle. The application must know, the application using openSSL must know where to load the key from and then insert it into the key store. Well, for symmetric keys as I say they must fit in bit strings of their key lengths, that works best for plain text keys. It may work for encrypted keys depending on the padding. So, encrypting an AS192 key might be a challenge because, well, it's a multiple of block size and padding will have a required thing. So, such a key will be at least 256 bits long. OpenSSL variables for symmetric key therefore cannot refer to pksc11 secure keys. Now, let's look at the different key types and how we can handle them. So, for RSA keys they can be referred to by the URI format that I mentioned. The key generation is not needed in the TLS protocol. That's good. The provider export, well, export of private pksc11 keys must be disallowed because, well, a private key is an HSM key and I cannot somehow transform its value and provide it, for example, to a FIPS provider for OpenSSL. So, that wouldn't be a good thing. But the good news is it's not needed in the TLS protocol. The crypto function that the provider must support is signing. That's okay. And it's key exchange, but this key exchange must be implemented using the pksc11 encrypt and decrypt functions not with the web function. And it tells you that you need to exchange plain text keys, not HSM keys. What you do exchange in the TLS protocols are symmetric keys and as you saw before, these symmetric keys are in a class that are considered lower risk, less valuable if you so want. So, with RSA we more or less have, RSA seems to be a good key type that a provider can handle. The EC keys cause a problem and the problem is actually the way OpenSSL handles EC key types. It doesn't distinguish between EC signing keys, ECDSA keys if you so want, and key derivation keys, ECDH keys. Just EC keys and a provider that handles the EC key must, according to the specification of providers, provide all the functions. Again, although these keys can be defined using an URI or can be referred to using an URI, key generation is not needed for signing keys. Key generation is needed for the ECDH keys. So somehow our provider would have to generate an ECDH key. Provider export of private keys must be disallowed. Luckily it's not needed, hopefully. The crypto functions that we require would be signing and again key exchange is, well, in particular in TLS 1.3, ECDH is the only key exchange that is supported by the latest protocol. We cannot use the HSMC derived function because that function, when given a sensitive key, would generate a sensitive key, a sensitive key would be an HSM object which couldn't be used by OpenSSL. Okay. Here we have a problem that we have to work on. That is the dilemma. EC key generation must be implemented by the provider because it's used by the TLS protocol. We cannot just say we don't use it and then if you have an EC key, it should go and we want to use the provider, it should go there. The derivation should be implemented by the provider and it may not be, on the other hand, it may not be computed on the HSM due to the reason I mentioned before. Now we could think that we can export it and give it to another provider. That doesn't work either because the ECDH key, if it were generated on the HSM, then it's a protected key that we cannot just export because that would make the HSM protection fail. There are ways to export them if you set the attributes accordingly, but there are hacks and, again, these things just tear down all the HSM protection. You shouldn't do that. So we cannot export it. So we must not use it. So what do we do? The solution to the dilemma is to work with two different key spaces. One key space for the signing keys and another key space for the other, for ephemeral keys, I must say, because with RSA the tolerance is a little bit different. Key generation always generates keys of the second key space of the ephemeral keys. Keys of the key space number one must be there as a given. There must be generated outside of the protocol out of that of the system.  You don't do it inside your open SSL, inside your program using the open SSL interface. You can do it inside your application talking to PKCS11 directly. So the signing operations are implemented in the provider for key space one. The derivation operations, key derivation operations are implemented for ephemeral keys by forwarding by a plain text implementation. So you may kind of forward the implementation to another provider, for example. Same for the key space two. These are generated but not generated on an HSM. If you generate a key from key spaces but you generate a plain text key for those. So application, so we have a few restrictions with that. The application must not generate keys of key space one using the provider but outside of the provider. The application must not use signing keys for Diffie-Hellman operations because the signing keys, as we know, they come from the one key space and keys using Diffie-Hellman must be in the second key space. And keys that are used in Diffie-Hellman-like key derivations, they must be ephemeral. And these ephemeral keys must not be HSM protected. Not all applications fulfill these restrictions but a typical security protocol does, in particular TLS. There are a few things that make working with PKC is 11 hard. So typically what I haven't introduced the term token yet, a token is the representation of an HSM in the HSM in the PKC is 11 standard. And in order to use with a token, you typically need a pin. And so the application must be configured to learn which token is used or which slot is used. Tokens are associated with slots. The slot would be a small number. And the token and the pin is some pin. You have to provide the pin to use a token. So somehow you have to provide the pin to the program. We choose for our provider that the pin is included in the URI. The RFC, the standard allows this. So the pin representation includes the URI or the pass to a file that includes the URI. Clearly you do not want to store, have your application expect to store the URI somewhere with a pin included. So maybe your application has to kind of edit the URI that you load from your file system and includes a pin somehow after it has been provided interactively or however, by some secure means. Then PKC is 11, keys are represented by handles. And handles are specific to sessions. So there is, and a session is a computation context in PKC is 11 for a cryptographic operation that goes over multiple steps or hash over multiple steps. So each new session, according to the standard, not according to all implementations, but according to the standard, if you want to use a key, you have to find the key anew and get a new handle for the key. Sessions may not be shared between processes. And whenever you start a new process, you have to call C initialize in order to initialize your PKC is 11 system. That is a little obstacle when your application is doing lots of forks, for example. So we have implemented exactly a provider that follows the constraints that we have. We called it a sign provider because it does only the signing part of PKC is 11. And it does everything else, the key space key. So it works on key space one with the HSM. And it works on key space two with another means. Since we didn't want to duplicate code, we used some, if you want tags to actually call code from other providers of OpenSSL from the default providers. That it works for with RSA and ECDH. It has been tested. Well, some in the audience know that we maintain OpenSource PKC is 11 implementation. So we have tested this with OpenCorp Toki and different tokens. Some of which are real HSMs. Others are software tokens. We use OpenSSL as server and as client to prove that things work. And we also made Apache work. However, we had to do a little bit with a few, Apache needs a few patches. It doesn't yet know to deal with the URI scheme that we use. So we have to add this. And we ran it in debug mode minus X because currently our provider has a restriction that it doesn't do the C initialize write if the application that calls OpenSSL is forked. We know what to do, but due to resource constraints, we didn't have yet the time to do it. So in order to run Apache in a mode that doesn't fork, we use the minus X option of Apache. By the way, we even have a little movie of what you have to do to configure the provider correctly. Okay. That is actually what I just said. We forward the Diffie-Hellman requests to the other default providers. And that way an application, if using signature operation, it's going to the PKC11 token and if the application is using derive or verify operations, it's going to the forwarding provider. By the way, we did all the, we didn't send the verify operations or the encrypt operations to the HSM. They're not security relevant. They're using public keys and we decided to also forward them. It's good for performance reasons because then you can use your local implementation rather than doing the IOS. Pin handling, I said we allow in the URI to either include the pin directly or to include a pass to the pin. The piping option for that pin is not supported. There are a few more HSM PKC11 providers or approaches. One of my colleague who uses it in a tool that allows HSM protected keys to be used with DM encrypt and when communicating to a key management server, but that provider talks a native HSM language, not PKC11. And then there's another project currently, I think it's led by SimuSauce from Red Hat. They're working on a generic PKC11 provider. They are not going with the restriction. Well, we are satisfied if we can at least do the signing part with the HSM. And they are running, of course, in a few challenges. Actually, that provider in some tests seems to work even so that hasn't really solved the ECDH problem in the way we did. And we think it's due to some luck in the provider selection for the keys that is presented. If you do not fix the provider priority, currently all crypto is done in providers, by default in the default provider, of course, then you're not sure which provider is used. And then it seems like if you're just using default settings, the ECDH somehow is, at least in our experiment, was routed to the default provider, which is just fine, but doesn't really follow the provider documentation. Okay, so as I mentioned, there are a few differences, seemingly, between the provider specification and the provider framework. It looks like missing crypto functions are possibly automatically forwarded to the default provider. That is something that at least wasn't the case when we started out with our provider work, so that might have changed during the lifetime of OpenSSL 3.0. And, well, each implementation, even if the spec says it's not defined what's happened, the implementation, of course, must be deterministic. There are a few suggestions to the OpenSSL provider work from our team, in particular to bind the provider to a key store, so that only if keys are taken from the key store, the provider is used and all the other keys are handed by the default provider. And another requirement would be not to require to implement all functions that a key can be used with inside the provider, so that it's just a partial data type, if you so want. Okay, now, I mentioned the project from CMOSauce. There may be reasons why you want to have a generic PKCS11 provider, but you should very well think of what that reason could be. I even have a reason in mind why I would want to have one, but I think one thing is not a reason to have a generic PKCS11 provider. If you just like the OpenSSL API better than PKCS11, that's a bad reason. Because, well, then use OpenSSL, if you want to have an HSM, and you're not bound by other reasons to use OpenSSL, then please use PKCS11. It's tailored to tell the HSM what it wants to do. The OpenSSL API is just not as of today. So a good reason to use a PKCS11 provider is if you have an application and you have certain aspects of your application, an application that uses OpenSSL works fine with clear keys, and you want to just configure it or modestly modify it in order to use an HSM. That is, for me, a valid reason to use a PKCS11 provider, not because I like one interface better than the other because both APIs, both interfaces, have their merit and they're made that way to do what they are meant to do. Okay. What's really missing is support for symmetric keys and what is needed in order to let OpenSSL support symmetric keys is some opaque object concept for symmetric keys. There was a proposal some years ago from Nicolas Tuveri who actually worked with us on that project, and only recently I was pointed to a discussion where this is being worked on, and I think that is great news. It looks like the community is understanding the problems now and hopefully in the far future we have a solution.  I think it's, and conclude, it's possible to implement a PKCS11 provider that at least protects your most valuable TLS keys. The provider framework is nice, but it has some weird aspects that we might want to work on in order to do this in a more natural way. I think the hook of just forwarding things, even Holger who implemented it thinks it's ugly, he doesn't like it, but he liked it more than duplicating code at least. That's why I did it, and yes there are a few reasons why generic PKCS11 provider makes sense and some things need to change in OpenSSL to make this happen. Under that I'm open to questions. No, we didn't pass it with you, but I think the presentation contains the link. Feel free to do it, and we would be very interested in learning about your experience. If you find facts, please report them. Let's try this one's working. Hello. Maybe you would need to repeat the question for the virtual audience. This one's not working, I guess. Actually I have two questions. The first one is about the usage of the engine in the pre OpenSSL3 area. What was their difference in terms of PKCS11 that was supported? That you could have just used it in the whole TLS communication where you can have URIs and then you just pass it over into the OpenSSL and then create the server. And the second question would be what is the problem with wrapping and unwrapping when we talk about the PKCS11? You just briefly touched this, but it's in the operating room. First topic, what was there before? There were providers, there were engines, and actually there was a PKCS11 engine from the OpenSSL project. I do not know all... Should I go here? I do not know all the features of this engine, but it worked at least as a signing provider. That worked fine, we tested this. And I think it had the same problem that the engine didn't see initialize on fork. And the second question was about encrypt-decrypt versus wrap-unwrap. Okay, these are now PKCS11 terms. So encrypt-encrypt-stata and decrypt-decrypt-stata. So that is easy. You can consider a key as being data and then encrypt and decrypt the key material. That is what our signed provider does when using RSA as a key exchange mechanism. It takes the value of a plain text key, encrypts it, or well, actually the provider would decrypt it on the HSM because the encryption operation is done with the public key. Now, PKCS11 has an operation that is called wrap-unwrap. Let's consider the wrap function is an export function. So you have a key handle of a key that is protected by the HSM. You provide that key handle together with an unwrapping key and the HSM will return the plain text value of the key to be unwrapped encrypted with the wrapping key. The idea is that another HSM also has access to the wrapping key either to the according private wrapping key or before the wrapping key was a symmetric wrapping key that was negotiated between the two HSMs and it can now use an unwrap operation to import the key. So you give it this encrypted string and the unwrap key, the key handle to the unwrap key and the HSM does the unwrapping. Now, you can of course generate your RSA wrap unwrap key pair using SSL and export an HSM protected key into a clear key. That is the trick I mentioned. Because you know the private key, you can do it in the clear but that is just what you shouldn't do with an HSM. If your HSM key is flagged as non-extractable so ckextractable equals c underscore false then the wrapping operation isn't possible. There's also a flag that you can only wrap with trusted and you must somehow have your operator flag your keys as trusted to restrict that attack. So your HSM might be configured to not allow it and if you do it you just work against the spirit of an HSM. Did I answer your question? You said at one point that you have ways to extract private keys or secrets from the HSM but it's very slow. It sounds like you have some information leak there. How would you do that? It's slightly off topic I suppose but do you have a back door? Can you repeat your question? I only have half of it. So you said at some slide you said that you have ways to extract the private key from the HSM but you don't want to do that. I just mentioned with this RSA key from OpenSSL if that is this operation. You shouldn't do that and if you're careful you configure your HSM and your keys to not allow it. Any other questions? I think we are ready for lunch. Yes lunch is next. We'll reconvene at 2.10.


I ask the members of the public in the gallery who are leaving the chamber to please do so quickly and quietly as we are going to resume our business. The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 8, 7, 2, 1, in the name of Rona Mackay, on supporting foster carers in the workplace with fostering friendly employers scheme. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons. I call on Rona Mackay to open the debate around 7 minutes, please miss Mackay. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Nothing is more important than giving a child the best start in life and a loving, stable home. Nothing is more important than ensuring that the thousands of children who, through no fault of their own, get that best start. The Scottish Government is passionate about fulfilling the promise, ensuring that care experience children are protected and loved, and I am very proud of our continuing commitment to them. The theme of today's debate, taking place during foster care fortnight, which runs from now until May 28, is fostering communities. Delivered by the leading fostering charity, the Fostering Network, it focuses on how employers can support employees going through the fostering process. The fostering friendly employer scheme would ensure that foster carers have the opportunity for paid leave for training, respite meetings and other requirements to fulfil their vital role. I also hope that the theme will help to boost awareness of the need for more foster carers and make employers think how they could help employees who feel further wished to help children. Thousands of new foster families are needed every year to care for children, with the greatest need being for foster carers for older children, sibling groups, disabled children and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. There are currently 4,623 children in foster care in Scotland and 3,716 fostering families, and we need to thank them for their hard work and the love that they give to the children in their care. However, 500 more fostering families are needed and I will go on to outline how employers can support them at no cost to their business other than giving them time. The Fostering Network set up the Fostering Friendly Employer Scheme in 2014 in response to the findings that foster carers need more flexibility and understanding from their employers in order to work alongside fostering. There are over 120 fostering friendly employers in the UK and the number is growing. They collectively employ over half a million staff. The recent news that John Lewis has joined the scheme is great news and I expect other large companies to follow. The Fostering Network found that 41 per cent of foster carers combine their role with other employment in Scotland, while 60 per cent of foster carers said that a fostering friendly HR policy would help them to work while fostering, because flexibility is the key to helping employees through the process of fostering. I can speak from personal experience as an employer. My head of office, Paul, has adopted his siblings and went through a thorough and detailed process beginning with fostering. Obviously, it involves getting time for meetings, phone calls and social work appointments. When I see happy, thriving children, I know that every absence from the office was worth it. Nothing could be more important than the selfless act of offering your home to children, and in Paul and his husband Mark's case, nurturing them for life. Having signed up to the Fostering Network's Fostering Friendly Employer Scheme, I am proud to say that I am the first MSP to do that. I have no doubt that many more colleagues from across the chamber will follow suit. A foster carer who works within a fostering friendly employer said, being employed, being a Malwan foster carer is hard to get to grips with it first. You have your own commitments by fantastic managers. I was honest with them at the beginning and said, look, this is what we are going through. When emergency placements came up, I sent my manager a text in the middle of the night to say, we have just taken a placement, so I am going to be late in the morning. He would reply, it's not a problem, don't worry about it. One business said that the impact for us as a company is relatively small, but the impact for any potential child being fostered could be significant. Presiding Officer, I was privileged to host the reception here in Parliament in February of this year for the Fostering Network, and it was a wonderful evening hearing inspirational stories from foster parents who are meeting some of the happy children who were an absolute delight. What does being a fostering friendly employer entail, and how do you become one? Will the Fostering Network have a template on the fostering friendly HR policy, which is available by inquiry, and the scheme is free to join? Signing up to the scheme means supporting staff by providing five days paid leave per year for fostering-related activity. The policy applies to staff who have three months or more employment servers with the company, and if they are applying to become a foster carer or an approved foster carer and have a child in placement or an approved kinship carer, they are eligible. As an employer, we are committed to supporting any staff member who is a foster carer or an approved kinship carer by creating a fostering friendly office that offers flexible working arrangements that respond to the needs of all staff who are foster carers or approved kinship carers. Those needs could include assessment and training prior to approval as a foster carer, attendance at panel for approval, child review meetings, annual foster care review meetings and training. In short, it prepares people to become foster carers and allows them to take time off work without losing holidays or some money, and it has a very little impact to the business. In conclusion, together we could transform and support and recognise foster carers in the workplace, which would in turn encourage more people to foster. Employers can play a critical part in creating fostering communities by supporting foster carers to give children a loving home, and surely that is the greatest gift of all. I now call Ruth McGuire to be followed by Rose McCall around four minutes. I thank Rona Mackay for securing this debate on supporting foster carers in the workplace. I would like to recognise and applaud her personal commitment in that regard. Foster care provides care for children in a family setting who can't live with their own families, and there are many reasons why children come into care. Foster care can last weeks, months or for the rest of a childhood, depending on the child's circumstances. We are... Foster care fortnight is happening right now, May 15 to 28. I know that in my local area, the council's families for children team are keen to attract new carers and to support that they are hosting an information event in Irvine's volunteer rooms from 10 to 3 on Monday, June 5. For people who are interested in becoming a foster carer, it is going to be a relaxed drop-in session that will provide information on fostering and adoption opportunities to people who would like to know more. Some of North Ayrshire's foster carers will be there on the day and share their experience. I understand that the team are particularly keen to hear from those who feel that they could offer a home to children who have disabilities and those who could take a small family group so that siblings can remain together. There is no such thing as a typical foster carer. You can be single, cohabiting or married. There are flexible options to foster care with different arrangements possible. It can include providing short breaks, interim fostering and longer term support for young people. I was struck by some of the personal testimony of North Ayrshire foster carers who shared their experience ahead of the event. I would like to share some of that with the chamber of Amae. Suzanne has been a foster carer in North Ayrshire for six years, mainly providing short breaks for young people. She said, I became a foster carer because one of my friends was a foster carer and I witnessed how she had made such a difference to the wee boy that she was looking after. She had made such a difference to his life and I thought that would be something that I would like to give another child. I enjoy seeing the progress that the children in my carer are making. It is really good to see them thrive and be part of the community and just see them progressing. She says that she feels that there is a good network with carers at the council and that there are training facilities, they meet up for training and socially for a coffee. She urges folk, if they are thinking of becoming a foster carer, then to pick up the phone and contact the health and social care partnership. She says that getting more information speaking to carers and having a chat on a more informal basis can be helpful. Sonja is another foster carer in North Ayrshire. She is experienced and has been looking after children for almost 20 years and is currently caring for young people on long-term, short-term and respite basis and is also an adoptive parent. She shared, at the moment I have three children and one young person on a continuing care basis, which is when you look after a child who reaches the age of 18 and they can stay with you for as long as you wish. They go on to be supported by through-care services, which offer support up to the age of 26. Sonja decided to investigate fostering after seeing an advert in her local newspaper and she initially cared for two young boys who came into her family when they were aged just two and fifteen months old. They have now moved on to live with a family member. She describes them as being the light of her life adding, they came in and they made our whole family's life great. That is the only way to describe it. Now they visit me every year. The bond that me and the boys have is second to none. It is like having your own birth child. There is no difference there. For me that is what fostering is about. If you can take a child on, they do not need to be your birth child to love them and give them the security that they need. Figures from the fostering network reports state that nearly 40 per cent of foster carers combine fostering with other work. Those who do say that a supportive employer can make all the difference, enabling them to balance employment with looking after children. I will be following Rona Mackay's lead in exploring how an employer I can sign up and would encourage employers of all sizes in my constituency to have a look at the scheme. It is a real opportunity to make a difference for families and children in our local community and to provide improved support for your employees. I will win for everyone. I now call Rose McCall to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would also like to thank Rona Mackay for bringing this to the chamber today and for her detailed explanation of the scheme. I think that it is well known by now that I relish the opportunity to speak on this topic, and I hope that you do not mind, but I will take a slightly wider view. I make no apologies for stating that we must do more for the vulnerable in our society. In most cases, we are talking about children and young people who have lived through multiple traumatic events, heightened uncertainties and delayed brain development. In many cases, those children are in their infancy and the shocking statistics that a quarter of child protection orders are for children under 20 days old just highlights the urgency in this matter. I appreciate charity groups such as Waves Trust and NSPCC to highlight the plight for vulnerable children, and I applaud their efforts in successfully drawing attention to Scotland's maybe blind spot initiatives such as the 7030, which works towards 70% reduction in the levels of children who meet maltreatment by 2030, and that is a target that we must meet. Right now, we have 3,716 families who have stepped forward to provide that sense of stability and safety for our most vulnerable children and are fostering in Scotland. 3,716 fostering families are trying to repair the psychological effects of trauma and to ensure a secure environment with care and love for the 4,623 children that currently need to be fostered. That is 3,716 fostering families that should be valued in more ways than just words of support spoken within those chamber walls. Foster parents and kinship carers in Scotland live in the only area of the United Kingdom not to have a minimum care allowance, and it would be remiss of me not to mention this again as time keeps marching on and nothing seems to change on that count. I'm glad we're taking the time today to focus on the fostering friendly employer scheme and I fully back anything that will help foster carers and adoption families to support the child in their care, but I do have a cautionary note because it is imperative that businesses, regardless of size, can buy into the scheme as easily as it states. Over the years, businesses have managed to adapt to changes in working practices and when I started working, and yeah, that wasn't yesterday, in fact it was so long ago, Flexi-Stine was still new. Most people used it to swing a work either side of their working day, start an hour earlier and leave it for or come in slightly later and work till six, which was excellent for working parents and easy for many large businesses to accommodate. Smaller businesses could not. The process simply needed the economies of scale to make variable working work and small independently owned businesses couldn't and still don't operate that way. We have come a long way from the nine to five working days in the office and I am encouraged by working flexibility and work from home practices that are accepted now, especially as we know this helps working carers. Small businesses still find it difficult to embrace those processes, so continued work efficiencies and that has to be recognised, and I think that it also has to be recognised in this case. To make it work for fostering families, we have to ensure that small businesses in all communities can buy into the scheme. I would also like to draw attention to kinship carers and adopted parents. As we all too often forget that the same issues apply directly from fosterer to adopter to kinship carer. All children who live with a family member or an adopter or a foster family have experienced the same levels of trauma and uncertainties in their early life, so it goes without saying that all those families would benefit from a more understanding workplace. We must ensure that, regardless of the care provider, the benefits are accessible if we truly want a system that puts the welfare of the child at its heart. These children are the most vulnerable in our society, it's time we raise the profile and truly start to value the people who care for them. It's a privilege to speak on behalf of Scottish Labour today, and I want to thank Rona Mackay for securing this debate. Fostercare Fortnite provides us with a welcome opportunity to reflect on the importance of fostering, but it also is a chance to highlight that there is much more to do to support those who foster. Currently, 41 per cent of foster carers in Scotland juggle fostering duties with other employment, which demonstrates the remarkable commitment and dedication. We must do more to help them by creating an environment where foster carers can balance their fostering roles with their professional ones. According to research carried out by the Fostering Network, 60 per cent of foster carers believe that a fostering-friendly HR policy would help them to do that. Making workplaces that accommodate the unique demands placed on foster carers by being both supportive and flexible is crucial. By becoming foster-friendly employers, workplaces not only provide additional support to foster carers, but also raise awareness of the invaluable role that they play, as we have already heard from contributions today. In Scotland, there are currently 4,623 children in foster care, and I would like to thank the 3,716 fostering families across Scotland who care for them. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to one particular foster carer in Ruthergwyn, Margaret Cowie. Margaret has dedicated over 30 years to fostering, providing unwavering love and a stabling, nurturing environment for children in her care, enabling them to grow and to thrive. Her hard work and dedication and that of the thousands of others across the country who do the same is truly remarkable. If you will indulge me a moment more in wishing Margaret a happy 60th birthday this week, I know that she is looking forward to celebrating with her foster children this weekend. However, while there are absolute gems like Margaret right across the country, there are simply not enough foster carers here. There is a shortfall of around 500 fostering families in Scotland, and this shortage emphasises the urgency to create an environment that attracts more people and families to become foster carers. By participating in foster friendly employer schemes, foster carers can access crucial benefits such as paid leave for training, respite meetings and other essential requirements, and those provisions support foster carers to fulfil that vital role effectively. This year, foster care fortnight, of course, as we have heard, focuses on the theme of fostering communities. Becoming a foster friendly employer is a prime example of how the wider fostering community can come together and provide support, understanding and respite for foster carers. By embracing the initiative, we demonstrate our commitment to the promise and reaffirm our dedication to nurturing looked after children. Fostering is not just the responsibility of foster carers alone. There is a well known saying that it takes a village to raise a child. We need entire communities to come together to support those families in their selfless commitment to the children that they care for. It is our collective duty to create a network of support that extends beyond foster carers and their families themselves to schools, employers, healthcare providers, social workers and local organisations who all must work hand in hand to provide a holistic support to foster carers. We must develop a culture of understanding, compassion and respect for those families who open their hearts and their homes. As we celebrate foster care fortnight 2023, let us recommit ourselves to the principles of the promise, ensuring that every child in foster care receives the love, care and opportunities that they deserve. Together, let us build a future where no child feels alone or neglected and where every child knows the warmth of a nurturing family. I now call on Minister Natalie Donne to respond to the debate. I would like to thank Volnam Kye for initiating today's debate and thank members for your contributions this afternoon. That is a really important issue and I am completely supportive of ensuring that workplaces are more flexible for foster carers. This debate, my first in government, has provided us collectively as a Parliament an opportunity to recognise the fostering networks annual foster care fortnight. It is also an excellent opportunity for us all to recognise foster carers and acknowledge the vital difference they make to the lives of our children and young people. Today, I published a letter to all foster carers thanking them for all that they do, but I would also like to put on the record just now my sincere and heartfelt thanks to all foster carers and practitioners working in the sector. We absolutely recognise the key role that you play in providing secure, nurturing and supportive homes for children and young people across Scotland. What you do day in and day out positively transforms lives. I would also like to take this opportunity to add my thanks to the Fostering Network Scotland, who are here with us today and who I met with prior to this debate, for all the work that they do organising foster care fortnight and in raising the profile and awareness of fostering more generally. As Rona Mackay highlighted in her motion and others have raised in their contributions to today's debate, there are challenges, including the retention and recruitment of foster carers. However, there are also opportunities for everyone across the chamber, national and local government, the third sector, local communities and, importantly, employers in supporting our foster carers. There is absolutely no doubt that the pressure within the foster care system is an area that we need to address collectively in order to fully deliver on the promise. I am absolutely clear that it is vital that the Scottish Government leads from the front if we are to ensure that all care-experienced children and young people are supported to grow up loved, safe and respected. We set out our commitment to do that in the promise implementation plan, which was published last year. Within the plan, we outlined our vision for delivering a good childhood to ensure that every child lives in a safe and loving home and where families are given support to overcome difficulties and stay together. We were also clear that investing in a programme of comprehensive and on-going support for caregivers is key to ensuring that they have the skills, knowledge and confidence to continue to nurture the children in their care and build stable and loving relationships. Work has begun on delivering that vision. We have committed to an investment of £500 million over the course of the Parliament to our whole family wellbeing programme of activity. That will transform services to ensure families, including foster families, can access the support that they need, where and when they need it. We also allocated £50 million in this year's budget, including £32 million, provided directly to children's service planning partnerships to enable work at a local level. We provide funding to the third sector to support foster carers. That includes more than £150,000 to the Fostering Network Scotland this year to support the Foster Line Scotland service training for foster carers and encouraging the recruitment of new carers. The Scottish Government is also working with a small group of partners, including the Fostering Network, the Promised Scotland, local authorities and others, to look at how we attract and retain foster carers and what action we can take collectively to make this happen. This group is expected to conclude its work over the coming months, but I know that it is considering a package of support for foster carers, which includes both financial and practical elements, so that caregivers feel better valued and better supported. On the financial side, I want to reassure Parliament that it remains a priority of this Government to deliver Scottish-recommended allowance for foster and kinship carers to meet the needs of children in their care as soon as possible. It has taken far longer than originally anticipated, and I recognise the frustrations of caregivers and stakeholders, but positive progress is being made with COSLA and we are working at pace to make that happen. Allowances are important, of course, but that is not the whole picture. Foster carers need to be supported so that they can, in turn, support children who have often had a very difficult start in life to grow and develop in a stable and nurturing family home. We have already committed, in our promise implementation plan, to publishing what we will do to provide trauma training and support for adoptive parents, kinship and foster carers, and the group that I mentioned earlier is also considering wider learning and development, including peer support. As Pam Duncan-Glancy highlighted, foster carers are often juggling looking after children with other employment, and I am well aware of how hard that can be. The group is actively considering how employers and the wider community can support foster carers. The fostering-friendly employers scheme is a positive example of how supportive and flexible employers can help foster carers combine employment with the vital role that they play in looking after some of our most vulnerable children and young people. I am absolutely committed to ensuring the voices of those with lived experience are at the heart of everything that we do, and I am committed to working with foster carers in Scotland and stakeholders who represent fostering as we develop any changes to policy and practice on our journey to keep the promise. That is why today, in recognition of the positive benefits that the fostering-friendly employer scheme brings, I will commit to the Scottish Government considering how it can become a more flexible workplace for foster carers, as well as exploring take-up of the scheme in order to support and promote it further. I thank Rona Mackay on being the first MSP to sign her office up to the scheme, and I encourage others to do so. Finally, I thank Rona Mackay for today's debate, as it has given us the opportunity to debate foster carers and everything that they do and consider how they can be further supported. I want to thank Scotland's foster carers once again for their service and commitment. There is absolutely no doubt that they have improved the lives of children and young people in their care and made our collective vision for children in Scotland to grow up safe and loved a reality.


In this study, the use of recycled concrete aggregate as a replacement for natural aggregate was evaluated. The recycled aggregate was mixed with various mineral additives and nanosilica to improve its physical and mechanical properties. The results showed that the recycled aggregate concrete mixes had higher compressive strength than the control mix made from natural aggregate. Additionally, the addition of nanosilica and mineral additives resulted in denser and more compact microstructures. This article was authored by Amal Fawzi, Ahmed El-Shami, and Salim Amad.


What's up everybody, Jason here for Jasper's Case Breaks.com, 2015 Immaculate Collegiate Multisport just sold out. This is a one box break, random number block number 34, and again guys, the way this works is a serial number break. Everybody gets a random number from zero through nine, and we go by the first number on the left side of the serial number dash, so everybody has an opportunity to get all the hits out of this box. There's your examples there. As long as three is the first number on the left side of the dash. Any and all redemption cards go to spot zero. If there is any numbered cards, we'll distribute those out to the customers either in one lot or customer to customer bases right there. But here we go, zero, one, two, three, five, six, ninety, nine, there's the customer names. Let's roll the dice. We got ourselves a two and two four times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, boom, four times, nester, down to Barry, so we got four, and then we have four times here, one, two, three, four, eight, down to six, so next we have eight, Barry with zero, any and all redemptions for you, Barry with four, nine, Ryan with seven, Chase with three, Barry with five, two, Joshua with one, and Barry with six. So again, you people don't usually trade for numbers, so we'll just quickly start the break now. I do have three boxes, let's try to generate a box number, or let's use a little quick diorogue here, one, two for the top, three, four for the middle, five, six for the bottom, and it's five, so five, six, bottom, that's what we'll do here. Nice, Kobe, thank you man, good luck, so one, two, three, four, five, six, good luck guys. All right, here we go, good luck. We have a Joe Namath, 71 out of 99, spot one going to Joshua, we have a Nick Ahmed, that's another one for spot one, Allah is at one of ten. We have a rookie Darren Waller, look at that, two of 99, spot two going to Barry, that's a nice one there, you don't want to see too many Darren Waller rookies. We have an Onkar Clyde, the Clyde Drexler, 24 out of 25, spot four going to Barry, yes, number four has already sold out Kobe, Max Williams, we have 46 out of 99, no the Bengals were available like ten minutes ago, but somebody bought them. We have a Clyde Walford, that's one, 11 out of 99, spot one. We have a Devin Smith, remember him, Spears here out of Ohio State, five of 99, spot five going to Barry, last but not least, we have a Matt Jones, nine of 99, spot nine going to Barry, so there you go, a lot of more football in this one here, right, feels like there's more football, we need to get some basketball, a couple baseball right there, so there you go guys, quick little break there, like the next box is in the store, Jossby'scasebrakes.com.


Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. The coronavirus pandemic has made many of us very aware of the importance of maintaining and improving our health. Make that your silver lining, because the more positive change we can make to our diet and lifestyle, the better. Today, we experience the glory of cabbage, a multi-talented vegetable that's good for much more than coleslaw. In fact, it's packed with nutrients and may also be useful applied topically. It's just one of the most healthy and cost-effective ways to improve your diet. A few years ago, in an analysis of antioxidants per unit cost, I concluded that red cabbage, purple cabbage, was the most nutrition you could get for your money. Yes, there are healthier foods out there, but not healthier foods for the same amount of money. I encouraged everyone to always make sure they have a purple cabbage in their crisper, to slice off shreds to put in whatever they could, last for weeks, cheap, convenient, and one of the healthiest things on the planet. All still absolutely true. My new calculations, though, suggest they just got one up by DIY broccoli sprouts. Do it yourself. You can buy them online or at your local health food store in bulk for about 20 bucks a pound, but that makes about 75 cups of sprouts. So it comes out to be about 25 cents per cup. And as we saw before in terms of sulforaphane content, that's equivalent to eating about 27 cups of broccoli. So that's like going to the store and buying broccoli for a penny a cup. Start out with a maize and jar with some kind of screen top, a tablespoon of seeds, soak them overnight, drain in the morning, and then rinse twice daily. So day two, day three, day four, and then you can enjoy the bounty. One tablespoon of seeds makes about two cups of sprouts. Since it takes four or five days though, sometimes I'll have five jars in constant rotation. Can be in the middle of the winter, and I'm growing my own salad. Every day you get cups of fresh produce for pennies without ever having to go to the store. In our next story, dinosaur kale and red cabbage are put to the test. LDL bad cholesterol is bad, but oxidized LDL may be worse. What role might our diet play? Increased fruit and vegetable consumption is reported to reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and strokes. Well, maybe it's in part because of all the anti-oxidants in healthy plant foods preventing the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. And indeed the LDL oxidation resistance was found to be greatest among those eating more plant-based. So that would be in addition to the decreased blood pressure and lower LDL overall in terms of beneficial effects. But you don't know if it's cause and effect until you put it to the test. Put people on a whole food plant-based diet for just three weeks, and rates and extent of LDL oxidation drop. The effects of kale on LDL oxidation was put to the test. Kale is a best of all worlds food. Low in calories, packed to the health with nutrition, vitamins, minerals, anti-inflammatory compounds, anti-oxidant, phytonutrients, you name it. No surprise then, given its high antioxidant capacity, kale showed a protective effect on the oxidation of LDL, even at low concentrations. But this was in vitro, in a test tube. Kale was also put to the test in mice, but what about people? I did a video on this study on how kale juice improves coronary artery disease. Risk factors in men with high cholesterol. Extraordinary results, a 20% drop in LDL among the non-smokers, but they were drinking the equivalent of about 10 cups of kale a day. Still, the fact that they were able to see an improvement, even though nearly all the fiber was removed, because it was just juice, shows that does seem to be something special in the plant, but can you get the benefit just eating the stuff? Let's find out. The effects of black and red cabbage on oxidized LDL. And by black cabbage, they mean Lossonato kale, also known as dinosaur Tuscan kale. They had people eat a bag of frozen kale and cabbage a day for just two weeks, which is great, because you just keep it in the freezer, pre-washed, pre-chopped, just throw into any meal you're making.  Would it have been better to take that red cabbage and ferment it into sauerkraut? Red or purple cabbage, one of my favorite vegetables, packed with antibiotics, since yet dirt sheeting seems to last forever in the fridge, and it's pretty juicy, tasty. I try to slice shreds off in any meal I'm making, but when you ferment it, not only do you add way too much salt, but you end up wiping out some of the nutrition. Here's the big spike in antioxidant capacity of your bloodstream in the hours after eating fresh red cabbage, cut down by almost 30% if you ate the same amount in fermented form. Does cabbage have to be raw, though? No, some cooking techniques may improve the antioxidant activity in kale and red cabbage. The effects of the cooking process can be positive, since cooking softens the vegetable tissues, helping your body extract the active compounds. However, cooking can also be negative, because heat treatment can degrade some of the compounds. They looked at a variety of different cooking methods and concluded steaming may be considered the best home cooking technique to prepare kale and red cabbage, but with foods that healthy, the truly best way to prepare them is whatever way we'll get you to eat the most of them. Next up, we discover some of the topical benefits of cabbage leaves. In response to a photo showing a woman taping a cabbage leaf onto her knee to help with her osteoarthritis, doctors wrote in asserting that cabbage leaves can help inflammation of any body part. You may even find that there's a cache of cabbage in the fridge of your local maternity unit. Why? Well, not only is cabbage cheaper than gel packs, but knees are not the only anatomical shapes that the leaves can form well to. Breast engorgement, when the breasts become overfilled with milk during breastfeeding, and becoming hard, tight, and painful, can negatively impact both mother and infant alike. So why not put cabbage leaves on them? A lactation consultant in a breastfeeding journal suggests wearing cabbage leaves. Evidently works like a charm, and once the swelling goes down, frequent breastfeeding should help them from refilling up too much. Where did she even get the idea for this? Well, her son got in a car accident, she wrapped his leg in cabbage, and the rest is history. The only adverse side effect identified was a complaint from the son who felt like a vegetable. Based on the information she collected, she concluded that cool green cabbage compresses have anti-inflammatory, anti-edema, anti-swelling, and anti-infectious properties, but you don't really know until you put it to the test. Yeah, but who's going to do a randomized controlled study of cabbage leaves? Scientists, that's who. Do cabbage leaves prevent breast engorgement? Let's find out. 120 women are randomized to apply cabbage leaves to their breasts or not, and though the cabbage group tended to report less breast engorgement, the trend was not statistically significant, though one of the big things you care about is premature weaning, and the cabbage group did seem to be able to extend the time they were exclusively breastfeeding. So while they couldn't rule out the possibility that cabbage leaves had a direct effect on breast engorgement that may have contributed to the increased breastfeeding success in the experimental group, they consider the positive effect to be more likely due to psychological mechanisms. In other words, the placebo effect. They did weed out some of the true believers, though, as some women refused to join the study. Out of fury, they might end up in the control group and not be able to use them. A similar study, performed recently, found that while adding cabbage leaves to early breast care didn't significantly reduce pain, it did seem to significantly reduce breast hardness. Since it probably can't hurt, some women might want to just give it a try, but it would be nice to get some more concrete answers. Like, how about a treatment trial instead of just prevention? You could try hot cabbage leaves versus cold cabbage leaves. To control for the placebo effect, you could use placebo cabbage, like iceberg lettuce leaves or something. In fact, since both breasts are affected, women could act as their own controls, cabbage on one breast and turning over a new leaf on the other. How about a comparison of chilled cabbage leaves versus chilled gel packs? Just cold alone decreases blood flow, might therefore decrease engorgement. On the other hand, maybe cabbage leaves contain some component that the mother's skin absorbs that somehow helps. You don't know until you put it to the test. 34 lactating women with breast engorgement, one breast got the cabbage, one breast got the gel pack. The pain levels were established before and after, and there was no difference. They both appeared to work not just as well, with two thirds reporting relief within hours, either way. Though interestingly, the majority of mothers preferred the cabbage leaves. The similarity in the effect may have been caused by the fact that both applied cold, although you'd think the effects of the cold of the cabbage leaves would have been transitory. So, hey, maybe there is something special in cabbage leaves after all.  One breast gets the chilled cabbage leaf, and the other gets a room temperature cabbage leaf, and there was no difference between the two. They both seemed to work, suggesting that it's not the cold itself that's doing it, but we still don't know what the role the placebo effect is playing. If you were going to design a study to determine if there was some special compound in cabbage that could decrease breast engorgement, what would you do? I mean, you could try the iceberg lettuce, but if women heard about the cabbage effect, they might have an expectation bias in favor of the cabbage. How about using a cabbage leaf extract? Then you can finally do a double blind experiment where women don't know which breasts are exposed to the cabbage by asking them to rub on a cream containing a cabbage leaf extract versus a placebo cream. They added rose water to both creams to try to camouflage any residual cabbage odor, and no difference in relief. Now, the decrease in discomfort produced by the cream was not as strong as that produced by the real cabbage leaves in the previous studies. The superiority of the whole leaves might be explained by a failure of the extract to contain the potentially active chemical, or maybe the chemical broke down, or maybe it wasn't concentrated enough, or maybe there was just a powerful placebo effect of wearing cabbage leaves. The bottom line is that even though no active pharmacological substances in cabbage leaves have been identified, the convenient shape of cabbage leaves, their low cost, wide availability, and purported soothing effect make it a sought-after treat. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a vital, timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audio book, or now hard copy of my latest book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, pre-order my How Not to Diet cookbook out this December. It's beautifully designed, with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. And all proceeds I receive from the sales of my books go to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a non-profit, science-based public service, where you can sign up for free daily updates and the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship. It's strictly non-commercial, not sign anything. I just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.


Check it out folks, I got you covered.  Listen, we doing red velvet waffles and fried chicken. Let's get it. Okay, so listen, I'm not gonna talk about the ingredients you guys can see, obviously that's an A, but the full ingredient list will be on my website that's smokingandgrillingwithab.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com. Now, if you look right here, look, we gotta go ahead and get that chicken going, right? This is my seasoned flour. Don't forget, I just made this. I'll put a link above me so you guys can click on that and see the full video. Okay, so you see this right here? Listen, this is my meat thermometer. You can see my signature right there. You don't have to have this one, but this is a great one to have. Listen, you gotta be able to check your oil, all right?  My grandma didn't have it, all of that. I'm at 373 degrees right now. I'm good with that. Now I'm gonna take my wing, I'm just getting ready to drop it. I'll drop it away from me, folks. I don't overcrowd. Don't forget it's gonna drop in temp, but all of that is in the link above me. I just made this so you guys can follow that video. All right, now look, you guys gonna see a few clips. This is it right here, right? Gotta have that fried chicken. Now, when it comes to making this waffle, obviously we gotta have a waffle maker, right? Super simple. Don't forget the food ingredient list is on my website, smokingthegrillingwithab.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com. Okay, so look, when you look at these ingredients right here, I'm pretty sure that you guys probably have these ingredients in your pantry, cupboard, in a box or something, some kind of way you got these on hand, right? Now, you gotta have a waffle maker. Now I'm gonna turn this this way.   I'm kind of like parcel to that, to that pan. Now, with this already in the bowl, now we finna come with, you know our dry, which is the cocoa and the brown sugar, right? I'm gonna take my whisk and incorporate this.  It may lump up. I don't wanna see no lumps. So I'm gonna go ahead and just keep going, you know, back and forth till I get everything incorporated. Then when I see pieces like this, I just take my finger and just break them. Okay, so once I got this incorporated and I like what I see right here, you can see the color. And while you're using your whisk, you can see what needs to be churned and you know, mixed together, right? Now we just take everything else. This right here, we're gonna go with, this is that red dye, right? This is how we're gonna get that color. What we're gonna do is, we're gonna put in about 30 drops. Bring my whole milk and notice that I'm just, I'm constantly just mixing. It almost looked like a little bit on the chocolatey side, right? All right, but we'll just keep going. If you had any more lumps, as you mix it, as it's wet, they just break up, right? So now vanilla extract, oh man, I love. Whenever you hit it with vanilla extract, it's ripe. All right, egg, all right. And now we go to the fun part, this right here. Remember, I said earlier, 30 drops. So let's go ahead and start counting. So it's that easy, folks. I want you guys to let me know down in the comment section below, did you know we're making red velvet? You know waffles was just easy and the cake is just as easy as this. You know what I mean? Just a couple of little bit more steps. Couple of different utensils, baking utensils and that's it. Right, so what I'm gonna do now is I wanna get my spatula because I wanna run this across the edge right here. Right, we wanna run it around the bottom. Right? That's why I like to use glass. You know why? Cause I can look at the glass and see what needs to be done. You know, what do I need to add to it? You know, do I need to like scrape here? Where did it not get mixed all the way? Now just give it a little bit more. And guess what, folks? Red velvet waffle mix ready. Okay, once it's ready, right? I'll just give it a little spray. Right? I put my batter inside of a, I put my batter inside of this Pyrex. You know, make it easy to pour, right? So I start in the middle like this and what you wanna do is you wanna make sure you get it all over, right? So what I do is I take my spatula, kinda like just bring this around this way. Then if you wanna add some more to it, you can, but you just wanna make sure you can get it to, you know, like completely flow, right? And it looked like it could take just a little bit more. So we just add it like that. We just wanna get maximum coverage. Close this lid like that. Right? I take it, I bend this and turn it over and we wait till we see green. Okay, so now that it's ready, ah, yeah, look at that right there. Now let me just go ahead and put that on there. You guys can figure it out from here. This on a plate, chicken on top, maybe a little greenery and bam. Okay, so you can see the color and the rest of it is just really like a plate type job, right?  You guys wanna like put something together. That right there is fire, folks.   Come on, folks, talk to me. Okay, so you guys seen it, right? Listen, we just got red velvet waffles. That's like a level up, you know, just to appearance alone and don't forget, I got that link up there, right?  Now, what I'm getting ready to do is I'm finna just go ahead and eat one of these because I have not ate one as of yet, but I'm gonna take it like this. Go ahead and break this off here like that. And I'm finna enjoy, folks. Cheers. You know, I gotta take a bite of this. Wow, come on, y'all. For those of you that know, I don't know who really don't know, but you know this combination right here, that sweet and that savory. I ain't even hit it with no serve, no whip, butter or nothing like that because that's how I do mine. But all I can tell you is this right here is fire. Super simple to make. Don't forget, this is a great brunch idea. You know what, this is just a great breakfast idea period. And don't forget, we got Valentine's Day coming up. I would probably make this for whoever, whether it's the male or the female, and vice versa, however you guys do it. Make this, let me know, come back and talk to me in the comment section below. Now, with that being said, you know what to do, because if you're new to my channel, and if you don't, let me tell you, don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out here, there's a channel out here to simplify these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. Let me tell you what I'm about to do right now, folks. I'm about to grab this and this. I already got my syrup over there and everything set up on the TV tray and I'm out.


Origin of US weaponry used by Hamas must be investigated. Congresswoman Washington must work with Israel to investigate the origins of US-made weaponry used by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. In its ongoing attack against the country, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said. The Congresswoman claimed that some of the weapons used by Hamas may have originated from Ukraine or Afghanistan, and these must be tracked to determine their source. We need to work with Israel to track serial numbers on any US weapon used by Hamas against Israel. Did they come from Afghanistan? Did they come from Ukraine? Highly likely the answer is both. The Congresswoman wrote on the social media platform X. Thus far, no solid evidence has emerged to support these claims. However, at least one unverified video circulating online showed a Hamas militant thanking Ukrainians for weaponry while showcasing assorted US-made pieces, including a standard issue M-136 anti-tank grenade launcher. The US has been pouring military aid into Ukraine for over a year and a half, propping up Kiev in its fight against Moscow. Ukraine has faced repeated allegations of misusing and selling off weaponry, with items ranging from firearms to mines, and guided anti-tank missiles repeatedly surfacing for sale on the dark net. In Afghanistan, the entire arsenal of its now defunct army created with the direct and years-long involvement of the Pentagon fell into the hands of the Taliban after the Islamist group took over the country in August 2021.


Boston University's College Bar, Tee's Pub, is making its final debut this spring before leaving 973 Commonwealth Avenue. It's home since 1971. I feel like a place that my friends and I have been coming for years and it's been so fun and like I think the best part about it is that everyone comes here and we just like have a great time. The karaoke is great on Tuesdays so it's been a big part of my college experience. Over the years Tee's Pub has become a meeting spot for college students in the greater Boston area, Boston University athletic fans, and concert goers awaiting a show at Paradise Rock Club located next to Tee's Pub.  Tee's Pub's end to its legacy is largely due to issues with its liquor license. On February 5th, the pub had a meeting to transfer the license. The establishment replacing the bar has yet to be officially revealed. I was about to make a joke that it's going to become a Korean restaurant because apparently like all of Olsen has become a Korean restaurant. As of now, Tee's Pub is expected to remain open until May. According to an employee, owners promised to provide a confirmed date of closure by mid-March. I'm Colby Lucas reporting for BUTV News at Tee's Pub in Boston.