I'd like to welcome everybody to the Hearing Laws Association of America, the Diablo Valley chapter monthly hybrid meeting. So we have people in the room here. We also have people all over the United States joining us via Zoom. Jim had an inquiry from someone who was thinking about coming to this meeting today, and they were worried that we might be trying to sell something. I want to assure everybody that we don't sell anything except maybe our membership. And of course, we'd like everybody to join the chapter. The purpose of our being is to provide information, education, advocacy to people with hearing laws. If our hearing health care providers and other people within the community were providing these services, there would probably be no reason for us to exist, but they aren't. So we go to our hearing health care providers to adjust our hearing instruments and things like that. But for whatever reason, they don't think that they have enough time to be able to teach us all of the things that those of us with hearing laws who belong to HLAA think are valuable. My name is Ann Thomas. I'm the president of this chapter. Our vice president is here, Zoher Chiba. He's in the back there waving. Alan Kasura here is our secretary and also our ACE A number one tech support person. And we're keeping our fingers crossed. Hosting hybrid meetings is not for the faint of heart. And every single meeting that we've had, I think this is our fourth one, we've had a glitch one way or another. Last meeting we thought that, oh, everything was going to be perfect. And then when it came time for questions and answers, the people in Zoom, we couldn't hear them in the room. So we hope that we've resolved that today and everything is going to go perfectly. We want to let you know that there is, we receive captions from California RCC captioning, which is remote captioning. And they provide captions for any group of hard of hearing people in California. If they're over three people in the meeting and you apply to have them caption your meeting. In the past, we used to have a much larger window size for the captions. But recently with some Zoom changes and some other things, it's currently going to be this size that you're seeing appear at least for a while. I prefer it wider so we can see more of the words. And Allen and I were in conversation with the company who is contracted by the state this past week about that. And in the short term, this is it. But I haven't, I have not donned my full advocacy hat. And I'm going to bat for us about this. I'm really happy everybody's here today. Before we get going, I want to make sure that everybody knows that this room and 10 other rooms in Rossmore have hearing loops. Hearing loops are the premier assistive listening system for people with hearing loss. The reason they're the premier system is because anybody who has a telecoil in their hearing instrument, and if you don't know what that is, I'll talk about it at the end and ask in Q&A. Just presses the button on their instrument or opens up their remote control and finds the telecoil program and you automatically connect to the sound in the room. If you do not have a telecoil, it's very difficult for you to use assistive listening systems because you have to use headphones with receivers. And it is a royal pain in the, you know what, I mean, all of us want to be able to walk into an event, know that we're going to be able to hear independently take care of ourselves and not announce to every single person there that we have the disability of hearing loss. And that's what a hearing loop provides for us. So this room has that. And if you see on the front of the podium here, there's a sign. And that's the international sign for hearing access. And when it has a T, that means that the room has a hearing loop. All of the rooms that have assistive listening systems are required to have signage. In this room, the signage is in the most bizarre place. It's on that wall over there.  So I want to make sure that everybody is really in sync with thinking, oh, I need to always keep looking around to find this sign everywhere. The ADA was passed in 1990. And a requirement of the ADA is public venues that have a public address system are required to have an assistive listening system. That does not mean every place has one. And that's part of our advocacy work. But lots of hard of hearing people don't know that those systems exist and that they're there for them. And that's why I'm pointing that out to you. Now, before we get going, I would like to ask some questions of all of you because there are many people here that I don't know. So how many of you in this room wear a hearing instrument? Just raise your hand so I can see all of you. And on Zoom, all of the people just raise their hand and I can see them. Alan can see them. OK, so almost everybody in this room has a hearing instrument. How many people in this room or in Zoom use accessories with their hearing instrument? OK, so wait a minute. So someone in the room here is saying, oh, what's an accessory? What's an accessory? So the chances are great. If you don't know what an accessory is, you probably aren't using them.  OK, so how many people are using accessories? Some, OK. And how many people in this room frequently ask for communication access when they go out? They go to the doctor. Do you ask for communication access? You go to your bank. Do you ask for communication access? You go to the Leisure Center for the Arts. Do you ask for communication access? OK, so for all of the rest of you who are not asking for communication access, this is a huge opportunity for you today to learn how you can start living your best life with hearing loss. There's a huge myth about hearing aids. Oh, excuse me. Just yeah, what is it? It's in the chat. So people are chatting questions in the in the chat and Alan's monitoring that. We had that. We tested this and we were getting some feedback from Alan's laptop. OK. Oh, oh, it's from Harry. Harry asked a question so you all can see what people in the zoom because I clicked on the chat since Alan's having a hard time accessing. He wanted to know how do I change my name? So, Harry, if you take your cursor over your thumbnail and your thumbnail is the picture of you in the right hand corner, some dots should show up.  OK, so Harry asked another question. Harry, that's later. OK, so Alan, I don't see that. So, Terry, is it from Terry? Jerry, Jerry, can you ask your question to the room? I didn't have a question. Yeah, I'm thinking over here. This Jerry didn't have a question. I don't see myself in the grid. So I was just wondering where I went. Yeah, well, you control that. We don't control that. OK, I'm going to get back to the presentation. So something that is shocking to almost everyone with hearing loss is purchased hearing aids. Even some people have cochlear implants or bone conductive devices. Is that your instruments aren't like glasses. They really help you in one to one situations and they really help you in a close proximity to another person. But you don't get 20, 20 hearing. So when you have a mild to moderate hearing loss, you might not notice that so much because you have enough residual hearing. But as your hearing loss progresses and you are more dependent on the hearing instrument, then you are. Encompassed with the limitations of the hearing instrument. Oops, what happened there? Hello. So just because you're wearing hearing instruments. Doesn't mean you can understand what somebody says. They're not enough. That's even with cochlear implants. Bone conductive devices and a bone conductive device would be for a person for those of you in the room who are wondering what that is. Some people have what's called a conductive instrument. A conductive hearing loss, which is your middle ear. And there's something that's that's obstructing the sound in your middle ear from getting into your cochlea, which would be the inner ear. The majority of people who have age related hearing loss have what's called sensual neural hearing loss and that's damaged to your cochlea. So if your cochlea is relatively intact, there's another implant and it's called a bone conductive device and it's like a screw that's mounted in your skull and it connects to an internal component. And what it does is it bypasses the middle ear to the cochlea. So what are some of those obstacles to speech comprehension? The first one is the distance from the sound source. Basically, the range of understandability with hearing instruments is about six feet. That's not very big. So if you take your hand and put your arm out like this and someone puts their arm out like that, that's about six feet. If you're at a table, like our information table right here, and I'm standing a little bit back from the table and you're standing a little bit back from the table, people could be further away than six feet. They could be struggling in this area. If you're in a room that has a public address system, people might say to you, oh, we have a PA, you'll be fine. But where are the loudspeakers? The loudspeakers are more than six feet away from you. So that doesn't do you any good. That's why you need an assistive listening system. Reverb or echo. So if we have difficulty understanding speech, when we add any kind of distortion to that, it can really negatively impact us. Also, everybody here knows about this, right? Competing background noise. It could be somebody's kids. It could be the holidays and your family comes over and somebody wants to watch the football game. As soon as somebody wants to watch the football game, you can't understand anything. It could be you have a boisterous family. You're sitting at the dining room table and the volume of the table conversation keeps getting higher and higher and higher as everybody has a couple of drinks and is having a good time. And of course, face masks. The pandemic was there was a kind of a silver lining about it with face masks because many people who didn't think they had any difficulty with their hearing, all of a sudden found out how difficult it was to understand with a face mask. And so if they were having problems, all of a sudden, the problems we were having were magnified and it was some way that they could bring it home to themselves and understand it. So Harry on Zoom asked a question and his is about Bluetooth and there's a version of Bluetooth coming, which is called Oracast. But in this sense, we need Bluetooth and telequills. I'm not referring to that kind of future Bluetooth. I'm referring to Bluetooth that we may all be familiar with at this time that you may use it to connect to your cell phone. You may have an instrument and use it to connect to your laptop. You may connect to a landline telephone. You may connect to a laptop. So we all need that. We know how wonderful it is when we have that. But we don't need that at the exclusion of telecoils. And the reason is that Bluetooth is one to one. Telecoils are one to many. So at this moment in time, there is no facility in the United States or possibly globally that has a meeting space that has a technology with a Bluetooth that could send the sound to more than one person. So right now, this hearing loop is going to every single person in this room. So that's why we need both this new Bluetooth, this future Bluetooth that's coming. It's anticipated that it's going to be a major infrastructure change, but it's going to take more than 10 years. You can imagine globally what that's like. All of you who are in this room knew what it was like when we got Bluetooth to begin with. It's going to be at least as big as that. I'm predicting bigger, and it's going to take a long time. So in the meantime, all of the places that have assistive listening systems in place, we want to continue to be able to use those. And in order to do that easily, we have to have telecoils. There are personal situations where you may want to use hearing assistive technology, and the acronym is called HAT, that could be personal situations, your own home with friends with things like that. And I'm not going to encourage you to use your personal hearing assistive technology in places that are required by law to provide it for you.  So the current hearing assistive technology I'm going to talk about today is technology that's made by hearing aid manufacturers, which is called proprietary. And most but not all of the proprietary hearing assistive technology is only works with one device. The exception to that is the Phonak Roger system. So there are six major manufacturers of hearing aids in the world. And I'm going to put a caveat on that. I'm not including the brand new hearing aids that are available for mild and moderate hearing loss that are called over the counter hearing aids, because some new entities have come on to the scene to engage in that market. But the primary hearing aid manufacturers are Phonak, Otacon, Resound, Cygna, Starkey, and Widex. The major cochlear implant manufacturers are advanced Bionics, Cochlear, Cochlear America, and Medell. And the companies that make bone conductive devices are Cochlear, Otacon, and Medell. So all of those companies have their own assistive technology. And I have some here today to show you and it's also part of the rest of the presentation that work with your specific device. Now in all the years that I have been a member of this chapter and been an advocate and I even do house calls. I'll come to your house and help you set up or teach you how to use your accessories. I can't tell you the number of people who had accessories bundled into the price of their hearing instrument and they had no idea what they were for or how to use them. So if you happen to be in that situation, don't feel bad about it. Just reach out. We're here to help you. And then there's third party technology. And we have examples of third party technology here today. Third party technology usually is less expensive, but it doesn't necessarily work as well. So one of the devices that is a primary device for everybody with hearing loss is a personal amplifier called a pocket talker. Well, a pocket talker is wonderful, but my proprietary microphone that's more complex and works in a lot more situations and is a lot more expensive by my cochlear implant manufacturers. And oh, for those of you who don't know me, I got two very successful cochlear implants during the pandemic and I'm just like over the moon happy. I'm experiencing things that I never thought I would experience for the rest of my life. But the accessories with my cochlear implant are exorbitantly expensive.  Now, fortunately when you get your cochlear implant, they have a limited number of accessories that they make available to you get as part of your package. But anyway, I prefer all of my proprietary accessories over third party accessories. But when I had hearing aids, I use both. So when I was one of my one of the hearing aids I had, it was one of the first hearing aids that had any kind of Bluetooth. And at that time, Bluetooth wasn't developed enough so that they could put it in our instrument. So it was always in another device and you had a neck loop. Well, the Bluetooth at that time would use up the memory for the neck loop for the streamer that you had for the Bluetooth and then you couldn't use it for anything else. And so if you were in that kind of situation, there was a third party Bluetooth connector and you could have that as a spare hanging around and that wasn't that expensive. There are situations here on this table that I'll talk about later that the instrument manufacturers haven't directed any attention to those solutions at all. So the third party hearing assistive technology, some of the things that you'll see is the first one up in the, let's see if I can get my new pointer to work here. There, ah! Okay, so this right here is a pocket talker. The pocket talker can come with a neck loop, which is what you would use to connect to that if you had a telecoil and if you didn't, you would use headphones. Now there's a tremendous amount of volume control on that and in an emergency situation, if you didn't have profound hearing loss, you might very easily be able to use a pocket talker even without your telecoil, without your hearing aids. In emergency situations for us, which can be fires, earthquakes, I mean we're all at risk, what do you think is going to happen when you have to talk to emergency personnel? So if you're lucky, they're going to have a pocket talker and I encourage everybody to have a pocket talker as part of their emergency kit. The next device here is this microphone and this microphone is a common accessory for hearing aid manufacturers and I have one here I can show you in the room and so if you've had hearing loss for a while, you've been around to see the evolution of accessories. When I'm thinking this must have been 2012, 2013, something like that, they came out with these microphones. For everybody who could afford them, they were a godsend.  Of course you hope that you don't lose it, you hope that it has the capability of pinning it on somebody, that you don't forget that they have your microphone on and they leave and then you have to figure out where it is. If you like to walk with your spouse, your partner, they could wear the microphone and you could be able to hear them walking side by side over six feet. So that microphone was really a boon to our existence. Now this system down here on the bottom, that's an FM system. It's a personal FM system. We have one on the table up here and it was really a precursor to the mini mics and it still is very valuable today depending on what the situation is. So there is a transmitter and a receiver. So you could theoretically have an exercise class and you can't understand the person in the exercise class. So they could use that FM transmitter and you could use the receiver with a neck loop or headphones and that place would be providing auxiliary aids and services, communication access to you. So if somebody, if you said, oh, I'm harder hearing. I'd like to take your class. What do you have? And they said, oh, we have this FM system right here. You had an idea about how to use that. It would be, you'd probably be much more comfortable. Now the gold standard today for accessories is a system for pride. It's a proprietary system manufactured by Phonak and they made it so that you can use it with almost all the major manufacturers hearing instruments. And it's right here and it's called Roger. Roger is very expensive. It has all kinds of different accessories and they keep improving it and changing it and making it better. So this one right here, which is the round one at the top. When they came out with that one, there are five microphones on it and it was supposed to be able to, if you wherever you were sitting, it activated the microphone where that person was. So the ideal was if you were on a table and was relatively quiet, right? I mean, not a lot of background noise that you could put that on the table and hear people around you. I have one of those. Then they came up with the, it's called the Roger On and the Roger On allows you to be able to point. You can either point it at somebody that you're talking to, you can lay it down on a table and it adjusts what and how it works based on what position it's in. This Roger system, they have receivers that you can add to your current device. It might be, you might have a streamer, some kind of a streamer and you could add the adapter. It's called a universal adapter to your streamer to be able to use one of these products. So in the Roger system, you can also pair microphones. So one of the precursors to this that a lot of people had was called a Roger pen. It was the first, the first rendition and you could pair like five Roger pens together. So if you went to lunch or dinner with friends, you could give everybody a Roger pen. So telephones. That was the first foray, the first step I took on my hearing loss journey. I found out I was losing my hearing at 47. As a core and a cork, I had my hearing tested because I wanted my mother to get hers tested and found out I had hearing loss, which I absolutely didn't know anything about. And for a couple of years, I was okay. But on the telephone, I had problems. So I found out that we live in this wonderful progressive state called California. And we have a telephone access program that provides telephone communication to a wide variety of people with disabilities. And I got my amplified the phone through the state and we have applications here for people. We'll talk about that at the end. And everybody in this room should be registered with the state because in addition to the telephone, even if you choose not to get a telephone, you're entitled to a couple of accessories and the accessories could be beneficial to. So the first telephone I used as an amplified telephone, then I progressed to a captioned telephone. And you can see in this image here that you can see the captions going across that screen there. So this particular telephone is made by caption call. And they sell more than one kind of phones. So our California connect telecommunications program doesn't sell anything that, excuse me, doesn't distribute anything that requires you to have something else like the internet. So it connects to things that normal people have. Well, it turns out that caption call, makes one that is completely internet based. That I imagine, is there anybody in this room who doesn't have a caption call telephone that's an internet based?  Booned all of our existence. Now when these phones first came on the market, we were all not very grateful that technology had moved forward and we thought that the captions were terrible. We thought that they didn't go fast enough, but through time and as AI has increased, the captions are really quite good today for sure the caption call telephone. Yes, there's a question here. And when we have a hearing loop, when you have an assistive listening system, everybody has to speak through the microphone so we have runners in the room. Oh, it's not a question. It's when I got my caption phone, you don't have to be certified as deaf, you just have to say that you've got a hearing loss. So different companies, they're like four or five companies that make those phones and they keep changing and evolving. At first you had to be certified and your physician had to sign a form. Then it went to something else that you had to sign. Now I think it's what you're saying that they just require you to say that you acknowledge that you have a hearing loss. Right. So the key to living your best life with hearing loss when you're dependent on captions on your phone is you have to tell people upfront when you're starting to talk to them, oh, I have a hearing loss and there may be a slight delay in the conversation because you're reading, you're augmenting what you're hearing with reading and that impacts the normal cadence of a conversation. I've never had anybody berate me or say any negative comment to me when I've told them that. Generally people say, oh, and I say, oh, there may be a little bit of delay because I'm reading what you're saying. And they say, oh, thanks. There's no way that they could have known that if you didn't tell them and it makes the conversation go much better. So I know that I used to always have problems with numbers. They were the bane to my existence. And so depending on how articulate the person was at the other end of the line, sometimes even the captions didn't get the right number. And so since they already knew I had hearing loss, I could easily say, oh, the captioner didn't get that right. What was that? Was that number one, two, the next number three? So to learn how to move and be comfortable in the skin of your hearing loss because it requires you to make adjustments and make changes. And the life that you knew before isn't coming back. So you might as well do your best to have the life that you can have. The next thing that I moved to was the television. I didn't understand the television. So about the time I couldn't understand the television was when I realized I needed to get hearing aids. And I got hearing aids and they helped. But I still needed a little help with the TV. And at that time, my hearing instrument happened to have a TV connector that was proprietary that came with my hearing aids and I connected that to the TV and it was helpful. The picture of the one here is the one I currently use. And with my cochlear implants, I can actually really understand the TV, but with the TV connector, it's changed a little bit clearer. And I don't think I should have to work more than I need to when I have something that can help me. And so I have it connected with my cochlear implants. We turned the volume of the TV TV down 20, whatever those marks are. I used to listen to the TV at 50 and today we listened to it at 20, 25, 28, like that. So that gives you an idea of this vast change in my life. Okay. So there are TV connectors like this image. All of us, of course, know about captions. Is there anybody in this room who didn't know that your TV has captions? It's mandated that all televisions have captions. Oh, I'm thrilled. And everybody on Zoom, I hope there's nobody who's sitting there who didn't know that. And I hope everybody has them turned on, even if people in their family or their friends complain. I mean, you just have to appeal to people's higher better self. Don't you want me to be able to enjoy this with you? And in my family, I have a very easygoing husband. And captions were just something different. Okay, so we turned them on. But today, he really likes them as much as I do because we like to watch Netflix. And in Netflix, even if you don't have a hearing loss, lots of times the music in the program makes it difficult to understand the conversation. And my husband doesn't have to do anything because he's benefiting from my captions. And another technology is that some people have, some people have hearing loops in their own home. So this one is a huge system. That's this whole room and the driver, the amplifier for the hearing loop is like this size. Well, I didn't bring one. I could have, but bringing all of these things, you know, it's a lot of work. So a hearing loop driver is maybe only about this big. You connect it to the back of your television. There are two options that are available to you.  But the problem with that is then you've got this cord running across your room. The other thing that you need to do if you don't use a chair pad for the hearing loop is you need to run a wire around your room. Now the advantage of having your living room looped is that more than one person can hear the sound at the same time. So with my, with most TV connectors, it's one hearing instrument, one connector. So if you, I mean, for all of a certain age, the chances are really great that you're not the only person with hearing loss, all of your friends have hearing loss too. And if you wanted to watch a program together, they would benefit from the augmented sound from a hearing loop. And you could do that in one that you created for your living room. So alerting devices. This is something I'm sure you of you have really thought about. We need them for safety. We need them just to be able to function. And so some of the ways that we are alerted when we can't hear what a normal alerting sound is, you know, it's that really shrill, high-pitched sound. And it's really hard to imagine that you couldn't ever hear those sounds to be able to benefit from the devices. But those are the very frequencies that affect most people with sensor neural hearing loss. It's the high-pitched frequencies. So there are some devices which emit a low-pitch frequency. So you could potentially have a device with a low-pitch sound. Another way that you can be identified is by vibration. So this is not, I didn't bring one, but it looks similar to this, like a high-pitched frequency. Some of them are wireless. Some of them are not. They plug into another device, which we have on the table. And what happens is they vibrate and they can vibrate very strongly to wake you up. And the last way that we're alerted is by a strobe light. So this light, this on the table at the top there, you see the dome. That has the cable. And these are called bed shakers and a strobe light.  So where might you use these devices? They would vibrate and strobe to wake you up. So where might you use these devices? You can have one for the telephone. Let's say you have a hard time hearing the telephone when it rings. You can have an alerting device connected to your telephone that would then flash.  You can have the same thing with your cell phone. So I'm running into a situation where I don't really care whether I hear my cell phone at night, but I've had to need to be alerted by something that happens on my cell phone. So I'm going to have to connect my cell phone. And there is an option to do that to this device so that if I'm alerted, which I can't hear that it'll wake me up. So I'll know that I need to take some action. Most of us in this room don't need for our own personal living situation to hear about a baby cry. But you may have your grandkids. You may know some of your children might have hearing loss. So they have accessory items that go with. And this one right here where you see that the people on the top is by Bellman and Zoom phone has definitely has a very good baby cry alerter. And so it goes in the baby's bedroom and it connects to your alerting system that flashes and vibrates for you. So if you needed that, you would know that you needed to take action. This is an alarm clock. It's my very favorite of all time. And it's a travel alarm, but I've used it for every single thing.  And then the area that we're all really, really deficient in is taking care of ourselves for smoke and carbon monoxide. You know, there's a reason that the state of California mandates that we have to all have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. But all of those smoke and carbon monoxide detectors won't do anything for those of us with hearing loss because we can't hear them. So this system in front there, the Sonic aware has an accessory item and it's on the table next to it and it's a box. And the box hears any single thing that happens. And when it hears this sound out of the norm, it sends a signal to the main hub and it says alert alert. It tells me smoke. It says whatever it is. And to the best of my knowledge, this device is the only one that will do smoke and carbon monoxide. So I can rest assured every single person in this room needs that. If you're going, oh, no, no, my husband, my spouse, my friend, my children, somebody's here. They'll wake me up. What happens when it's the middle of the day and you take a nap and nobody else is there but you. So, you know, we all tend to think that we don't need to take action on these things, but we really do. Another option for all of us are apps on your smartphone. Is there anybody in this room who doesn't have a smartphone? Just raise your hand. Is there anybody on zoom who doesn't have a smartphone? Ellen, does anybody on did anybody raise their hand? Okay. So that means, and I think we have 30 some people maybe today here. Everybody has a smartphone now. You know, even five years ago, someone might have said, oh, well, you know, don't tell me about that. You know, I don't have a smartphone can't do that, but that's not true today. Smartphone apps are a godsend. My very favorite one, of course, is my hearing instrument, my cochlear implant, the remote control for my device is now on my smartphone. So before we had this capability with our smartphones, I had to carry around a whole another remote control. And not only did I carry around a whole another remote control, but it really didn't control all that much. I was able to change the programs. I was able to change the volume and that was probably it with our remote control apps on our smartphones today. And a lot of you may have it and you may not ever have downloaded it. You can change the program. Not only can you change the program in most of them, you can, if your devices are linked to each other, you can separate them. You can change the volume on one side and leave the other side alone. With your T coil setting in the past, you couldn't change what you had. So either you had telecoil only or telecoil plus mic, or one that could have been adjusted to the telephone. But you couldn't do anything with them. So today in the telecoil mic app setting, I can adjust with a slider. How much of the sound do I want to come from the hearing loop or the neck loop that I'm using with something else? And how much do I want to hear from the microphone? Now you may be wondering, well, what difference does that make? Well, the difference is in background noise. And this became very clear to all of us when we advocated for hearing loops for BART. So I think it was 2014, 15, 16, something like that. And we had it, we initiated those of us in the hearing loss community approached BART, the part of the accessibility task force and said, Hey, listen, we can't understand. So we piloted hearing loops at the Colm of BART station. And when we did that, I think that there must have been maybe 40 of us from all over the Bay Area, all the HLA chapters in Northern California. And I happened to have two telecoil programs in my hearing aid at that time. One that was telecoil and mic. And the advantage of that is if I'm sitting in an event and maybe I wanted to understand my husband next to me because the microphone was left on, I could understand him. In telecoil only program, all you hear is what comes through the microphone. Well, at the BART station, everybody who had only had telecoil plus microphone thought it was terrible because see, of course, they picked up all of the sound of the BART station. But because I had telecoil only, it worked great. And I could switch back and forth. So I knew what they were experiencing and I knew what the possibility was. And the majority of people who had telecoil and mic, they weren't aware of the fact that their audiologist programmed that for them and didn't give them an option and they didn't know that they could have more than one. So that's really wonderful to be able to have the new remote app. My next most favorite thing is my speech to text app. I absolutely could not have survived the pandemic without it. So there are a variety of them. My favorite and the one I use is Ava. And it's because it's the most robust of all of the speech to text apps. It's not necessarily the simplest, but it's the most robust app is Ava. Some people use Otter. Some people are starting to use Apple finally created a started creating a speech to text app on the phones. But no, I want to tell all of you. Apple may catch up sometime, but no way in God's green earth is the Apple captioning capability at this time built into your cell phone as accurate as any of the other speech to text apps that have been here for quite a while. Now, if you happen to have an Android telephone, there's one that's called live transcribe that's very accurate. And some people I know even purchased a cheap Android telephone to be able to use live transcribe. You're also beginning to be able with the new iPhones to be able to use a microphone feature on your phone. To be able to pick up sound in the room to augment your understanding. And you can be alerted. There's an alerting capability into apps that you can teach it what your doorbell sounds like. And it'll notify you on your phone. I personally find the doorbell and I'll show you in a minute. I'm going to hold these things up so you can see them to be much easier to use and manipulate. So you can download things on the app store or in Google play. So everybody wants to be able to function well in your public life. And in order to do that, you have to use assistive listening systems because you have reverberation in rooms. You're more than six feet away from the sound source and they're going to be background noise. And there are three assistive listening systems that the access board has authorized to provide communication access for us. The first one is the hearing loop, which we have in this room here, which is the gold standard for those of us with hearing loss. And so that all of you know, I sit on a national committee for the hearing loss of association of America called the get in the hearing loop committee. So I'm a died in the wool advocate for hearing loops. The advantage is we have clean, clear sound. We don't need to self identify as having hearing loss, relinquish your driver's license or whatever they're asking you for. Hope that you remember to get your driver's license when you leave and rely on the venue to make sure that the batteries are charged in the devices. It's all on us. Walk in. It's a done deal. The second most common system is an FM. Now these are installed in lots of places because they're less expensive than hearing loops, but nobody uses them. Nobody wants to have to go identify or even figure out where you have to self identify, give up your driver's license, have to use a neck loop. So there's some people here today who have hearing instruments without telecoils and they tried using our receiver with a neck loop. Well, nowhere near as it is wonderful as just being able to press your button and infrared. So each system has a negative component of it. So an infrared system is line of sight. So that means if you were in a venue and somebody stood up in front of you right during the when the punch line of whatever you were there was happening, you wouldn't be able to understand that because you interrupted the line of sight.  Now the access board and the 88 standards in 2010 refine the language and they mandated that to be hearing prior to that time they didn't have to provide neck loops. So starting in 2010 to be hearing aid compatible and FM system and an infrared that venue has to provide neck loops. So there was a question earlier and I also wanted to show you some devices and I'm going to pick them up on the table and show them here so that people on zoom can see them too. And so let's hope it works right right. Is that great. These come in different you can buy as many pucks as you want you can also change the color. So the only negative I have about this personally is I'm a sucker for aesthetics and I think that none of these exterior buttons this would go where your normal doorbell button is are particularly attractive. So I think this would be much more attractive if I spray painted it bronze. And the only reason I haven't done that is because I want you to see how it actually comes. I also think that there's a market here for somebody to manufacture metal covers for this that would just slip over there. Then it would just look like a very attractive bronze something box where your doorbell would be would be very unobtrusive. I love this because I actually have more than one of these. I can take it around the house with me so I'm in my office working. I'm thinking somebody is going to drop off a package either FedEx or something like that even though you know they're supposed to ring your doorbell and half the time they don't. At least I know that it wasn't because I missed it. So I'm working away and this is strong enough you can see. And that really alerts you and it has an on off button here. So that's an example of a doorbell alerting device. This is a pocket talker. And this particular pocket talker is their latest version. It's two O and it's the first one that stereo has a much cleaner sound much better sound and it also has a telecoil built into it. So if you didn't have if you went someplace and they didn't have a receiver which they're required to have you could still access the telecoil in the room with a hearing loop with this device. Now it comes with a microphone like this and that microphone is OK if you're in a close proximity to the person talking. But if you're not it's problematic because there's nothing to do about it. They sell extenders which are long extenders. Then you have to have the extender with you right. So I happen to really particularly like this microphone and with this microphone it also is helping visually the person who you're talking to relate to the fact that they need to talk into the microphone to understand. So over and over again the situation we have is people don't understand that for people with hearing loss you absolutely have to talk into the microphone for the assistive listening systems to work. OK having our presenter for next month Claudia who's written this wonderful biographical book. We're talking about her presentation and we were talking about lavalier microphones and a lavalier microphone is one that you pin to yourself. And since we were having this conversation I'm going to share part of what we were discussing about it. So on the surface of things a lavalier microphone seems wonderful right you pin it on yourself and no problem. And if you're lucky it's one that wasn't designed by a guy who never thought about women and it only has a pin or a clip. Some of the new ones now have magnets so that you can put a magnet on one side and it's the other side they click together so women's it works better with women's clothing.  And all the sound doesn't go into the microphone. So see this is a headset microphone and it's not my favorite one. I like one that's less obtrusive than this but see when I turn my head the microphone goes with me. So this is your pocket talker. This is an FM. When did they did they just stop. Hang on a minute. Did she get bumped out of the meeting. Okay so hang on. Let's stop this and see if they're captions. We have do you have captions now. Okay well at least we this has been problematic. I'm sorry. But see I told you it wasn't for the faint of heart.  So I figure the more we do it the better we're going to get. Okay so we have captions again. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. There they are. Okay so this is an FM FM receiver both sides. Now the other pieces that we have on the table here are California connect used to distribute this hub. It's called home aware. And recently they've discontinued it. I think they may have a few left. And the reason they would distribute this was because it had the capability of learning you to your telephone. Home aware makes all kinds of accessories. So I got the hub from the state. And then I purchased the smoke and carbon monoxide accessory from DiGlo Diglo. And you can get them on all kinds of probably Amazon has them too. And so this is my main hub you could have more than one hub in your house. So let's say you would want but I only have one in my bedroom. But potentially you could have one at your other end of the house in a family room in a kitchen something like that. This company which is Bellman and soon phone. Yes. Yeah. Thank you Alan. In the room Alan can't turn on his microphone on the laptop that he's on because we get feedback. So he made a comment to me and I'm repeating it. So those of you on zoom will hear it. He wanted me to make sure that everybody knew that the home aware has not been discontinued by the manufacturer. It's still being made California connect just discontinued it from its lineup of devices that it's providing. Now California connect is going to provide the Bellman and soon phone. And this is a Swedish company. And I happen to love the design of this product. I've loved it for years. It's fun. It's playful. There's nothing doltie and dorky about it. This is their hub. I mean you see how streamlined it is. It's a little bit harder to identify here which things are connected. And these light up here but this flash is really very pronounced. And this is their doorbell component. Now it's a whole another thing. See it's big. So it would be something that you'd have to decide aesthetically are you okay with that. The only problem I have with this system is that there's no carbon monoxide detector. So for those of us with hearing loss we'd still need to figure out how to handle that. So if we have these brochures here please help yourself to all of the information that's here on the table. I have a couple of other things here for you. So at the beginning of the. Oh no that's before that. So in maybe 20 June was that 2017 we took lip reading. At Dakara. Something about that. So there's okay I have to really think about this. Deaf advocacy counseling and referral. And it's called DC ARA. So they receive the money from the state. Or deaf and hard of hearing community. But they only do anything for the deaf. So in order to. Sort of include people with hearing loss. Because that's really their agenda right. They offered lip reading classes. And so I think oh gosh there must have been at least 10 of us from this chapter. Who went to that was in Hayward or San Leandro. Yeah went to San Leandro for six weeks and took lip reading classes. And around that time was when Eva the speech to text app was developed enough that we could start reading. Really playing with it. And these are local. Founders.   And another person has been deaf since childhood. And so they really wanted to be able to have it be easier for people who are deaf to be able to communicate in the world. So anyway so I hadn't been able to understand anybody in a restaurant in years. I mean I was. I really feel like we went to a restaurant. It's more than just my husband I you know was checked out. So with Eva. If we connected. So the first time I went out to restaurant there were a group of us who took that lip reading class. And everybody had a cell phone. And I took microphones for everybody. Because at that time it was more important than today. It's gotten much better. So the closer you were to the microphone the greater the accuracy was for the captions. So everybody got a little microphone. It was plugged into their phone. We could talk. The phones are on the table. We could look at them. And the piece that makes Eva so robust. Is that. It's not just a running stream of a single conversation. Each person is uniquely connected to the conversation. So at the top of the window there would be a bubble head for me. There could be a bubble head for Jim. There could be a bubble head for Alan. And each one of us. Were connected through our own cell phones to that speech to text conversation. And so by having this. Hey it was doable. I have a niece who lives in Southern California. We go to visit periodically. And I couldn't I hadn't understood my husband in the car. And I couldn't even tell you. And the reason was no matter what device I used. I mean we have FM's. The road noise was picked up by the microphones and. I couldn't differentiate what was being said from the road noise. So my husband's driving. I gave him the lavalier microphone. It was connected to my cell phone. I have a. I purchased a cell phone holder. That fits into the air vents of your car. My phone was right here. My husband and I talked all the way to Southern California. And I get to read every single thing he said. Was really wonderful. So this particular app also has been. If you start using them. Which I hope. But maybe you play with them after this. That. The. Speakers for most cell phones is at the bottom. And. We're inclined to hold our cell phones so that. We could easily cover the speakers. So Ava and others allow you to rotate your phone. And the text will rotate. So that the speakers are at the top. You're facing your screen. And. During the pandemic when we were all masked. I put my arm out like this in the grocery store. And I said to the checker. I'm hard of hearing and I can't understand anybody in a mask. And I have a speech to text app. And it's. Writing everything that you're saying. Well they were all intrigued right. So they're going because I'm showing them like this and they're talking and. I've never had a problem with that. And so by reaching my arm out. I was extending. I was decreasing the distance to the microphones on your cell phone. So I'm just wanting to raise your awareness that the closer you are to the microphones. So if you try it and you say. Oh it's not accurate. You can't put it in the middle of a table. And be. You know halfway across the room and think it's going to be accurate. And then I'm just going to go back to my phone. And I'm just going to go back to my phone. I can either put my iPad. I can put my cell phone in. I can have it running when I'm doing something else. Other people are there so my hands are free. And it captions. So it's really wonderful. So. Let's see. I think that's all we have here. Oh. I know what we have. So here's the brochure for the California Connect. If you have not already subscribed. And for the California program, there's a variety of people who need to certify that you have hearing loss. Your primary care physician, your healthcare provider, your doctor, any of those people can do that. And you can do it online. So theoretically you could have your. Hearing healthcare provider. You could fill out the form. Have them sign it. Have them send it back to you as a PDF. And then you could submit it that way. Somebody has a problem with that. I'll be happy to help you. We also have information here about. A speech to text. On your phone. And be your cell phone. It's called Eno caption. There are other ones. This was one of the first ones. And even though with my Bluetooth. In my instrument. Most of the time. We can do that. We can do that. And we can do that every day. But seeing people with hearing loss. We live uncertain lives. We never know when we're going to be able to understand and when we don't. And if you're not prepared. And you need additional assistance. Then it's too late. So I make all my phone calls with Eno caption. And on the rare occasion. When I can't understand somebody. Or numbers can still be a problem. It's really wonderful. You only need one telephone number today. So every each one of these captioning phone services that go to your cell phone. They give you a new telephone number. Well, none of us want to give anybody else. Another number, right? We want to continue using the number we've always done. So the way you work around that is. You have your usual cell phone number. And you. Have that number forwarded to your Eno caption or whichever captioning. The Sorenson also has one caption call. I mean, they're all kinds of them. To that number. And it's seamlessly behind the scenes. Nobody knows that the numbers being forwarded. It rings to your normal number. It's very slick deal. Please take a look at all of the brochures. Take things with you. Extra HLA magazines. Take them. I want to get rid of them. They're here for the community. Are there any questions? Yes. Claudia. That was a fabulous presentation. And I'm blown away by the depth of your knowledge of all of these things. Just a quick question on the Roger select in. I have the circular device. Which I use a lot. Is that an FM system? How does that sound get transmitted into the hearing? Roger is a form of FM. It is a form of FM. Okay. Thank you. Two questions. One. I looked up Eva on my. On my apps. And I got something totally different. And when I put in Eva 24 seven. Or Eva captions. Well, I'm I'm looking at speech to text. But so what are you saying to. Yeah. The name is Eva. No. 24 seven. Or Eva captions. And it should bring it up. Well, she's saying something else. So if you general Eva brings up a. A. No, that doesn't. Yeah, egg for women. When you're fertile. Or seven. Four slash seven. Did you find it? Did somebody else find it? No, I'm not finding it. Okay. Maybe someone can help me out here. I'm the other. Somebody will help in the audience. Okay. So there's a there's a comment in the chat. And it's about a portable hearing loop. And. I personally find it very cumbersome. To use it has this person is suggesting. I know them because I've been communicating with them. Humbersome to use it as their choosing to use it. I think it's wonderful to use it as a, an example of how a hearing loop works. So. William sound distributes a portable hearing loop. It's about this size. And my dream is that. Every information in America. Has that hearing loop. With a microphone. Connected to an iPad. Then we could read the text. We could hear what's happening with the telecoil. Now the problem with the situation for being. It accessible to everybody is that. They have to have a receiver and headphones as well. But so this particular person that they've been advocating. They live in Nebraska. And they've been advocating. With their headphones. They live in Nebraska. And they've been advocating. With their healthcare for to get the needed. Communication access. And has not been successful. And so he's taking his. Personal portable hearing loop. With him to his appointments and things. So Harry, are you okay with that? So Harry wrote in the chat. Say this was his, his comment in the chat. Yeah. This has been all very. Informative and fascinating. I didn't know all that. Existed. But I'm more in the beginning of my journey. And I need to talk to someone here. Who might be able to help me figure out. Where to look for. My first hearing device. Because there's this whole variety out there. With a huge range of prices. Okay. So the question in the room was, I don't know if all of you in zoom could hear that. The person said they're beginning their hearing loss journey. And they were wondering. They were looking for some advice about how to pick. So. The first. Question that hearing healthcare. That skilled competent hearing healthcare providers are going to ask you. Is. What do you do in your life? So there are. Simpler and more complex more advanced devices. If. You're not going to the theater. If you're not going to movies. If you were a. Fairly sedentary person at home. You don't need the. Additional features that are available on more premium aids. If you were 50 years old at the top of your career. And losing your hearing. You would want everything. So this is part of the evaluation process and part of the dialogue. With whoever you go to. And I encourage you. To interview. More than one. Company more than one person. One of the most important criteria. Is. Of your success with your hearing instrument. Is that you feel totally comfortable communicating with the person. Who is programming them. You are. Trying to communicate. Things that aren't. Like this is a phone you're trying to communicate sounds. And we don't have words to describe those sounds. And so when you're feeding back to them when they're fine tuning. The programming. They're trying to understand what you're saying. So that they can adjust the correct thing. To give you an example. I have been a question. Asker my whole life. I probably came out of the womb asking a question. There is no way in God's green earth I ever could have had. Or can ever have. Any kind of health care providers. That aren't comfortable with my asking questions. It just would never work. So that was a primary. Consideration for me. Each one of us is unique. And what's important for you. And how you put your life together and how you present yourself in the world. So. The place that you're at. When you're interviewing. Make appointments to go see different people. See if any couple of people recommend the same thing. The different hearing aid manufacturers have different algorithms. Or how the sound comes through their devices. People have different preferences. For the algorithms. So some people swear by Otacon. Some people swear by Starkey. It's all about you. And of course, phonakis at the top there. It's all about you and what you prefer for the sound. So don't feel bad. Trying somebody says try this one. You don't love it. I'd like to try something else. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, it sounds like you're not recommending going to CVS and buying what they have. You're talking about going to a hearing center. So you're not.  You're inquiring about what is now this very new field called over the counter hearing aids.  Certified for people who have mild to moderate hearing loss. It's recommended that you get your hearing tested by a professional to start with for sure. To make sure that you fit into that category. Now I've also given a presentation here in Rossmore for the Rossmore fund about over the counter hearing aids. And some of the companies are having hearing tests on their site. And you could take those, but I think it could be worth your while to have a professional hearing test done once. Okay. So then if you're looking at over the counter, then you have to figure out. Okay. There's the low end.  So the better ones are more expensive. Now there is a company, a very credible company. We have the link on our website. It's called hearing tracker. And they evaluate both the normal hearing aids that you get from hearing healthcare provider. They have evaluated over the counter aids, use that as a resource. There's another person. He hasn't done the, the as much research on the actual devices, but he still has done some and his name is Dr. Cliff. So both of those are wonderful resources. And if you can't remember just text me and I'll send you the links. Alan. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. Someone's asking about before you go to an audiologist, do you want to go to an ENT? It's been my experience. I don't know if it's true for everybody. When I had my hearing tested, they required that I see an ENT just to make sure that there was nothing else going on with my hearing. And it's a good practice. So the reminder there is you probably want to do both. I was fascinated by a number of those devices, see how they work. Is there a way to get demonstrations on each of those? I mean, you can't see how this works. Well, I don't know. That was the good. That was the one you demonstrated. And I do get that. But, you know, like even the speech to text on the phone or the microphone is a microphone project like this microphone just to everybody in the room. So if, if I put that in front of my wife is everybody in the room going to hear her. In other words, I just, I just didn't quite understand how a number of those work. Okay. What's your name? John. Yeah, John. So if we'll talk about this speech to text app, all of them, I won't say all, most of them have a free basic program. Just download it to your phone. And just hold it in front. Sure. Let me turn mine on and let's see if it works in here. I've been, since I've had technical problems today, right? So she's quite far from you. And I didn't think it was going to pick you up, but it's working really well. Well, it's catching. My Ava here is catching your voice from over there and it was accurate. And I didn't even do this. Yeah. Okay. That's simple. And what about some of the other device? Yes. Yes. So we didn't set them all up to work because we had a presentation of information. Okay. You can go on everybody's on each of their websites. Everybody has all these wonderful YouTubes about how everything works. Okay. And if you watch the YouTubes and then you really wanted to see something, email me and we'll figure out how we can have you maybe play with one. Okay. Yes, thank you. My name is Roxanne and I'm visually impaired severely, but I also wear hearing aids. I would like to go to the Rossmore movies, the theater, and be able to hear the, I don't know what it's called, the additional language that supports the visual part of it. Movie theater is supposed to have a device that you can get from them to where and hear, when there's a pause in the dialogue of the theater, it will fill in what's going on and give a descriptive information. We can do it on TV with Netflix, I believe, but I need to know what the name of this device is for the movie theaters because I've called Rossmore the technology people and they say they'll look into it, but they never do. They never get back to me on it. You know about it. Contact me after this meeting and I'll discuss this further with you. You're the first person who has ever commented about this in any of our meetings. And so there are systems that Rossmore could use to augment there. One of them is called Gala Pro, but I don't know that but what we really have to figure out is how to make sure that you got the augmented language. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions on Zoom? So Judy, I have that too. Judy is asking when she's connected to her cell phone and she uses Ava. Ava has the capability now of connecting as well and then she can't hear her cell phone. Put in a request to Ava about that. I've been talking to them about that as well. Okay, thanks. Okay, so Harry now see we're reading the chats to find out what people on Zoom said. He said he was okay with that. He gave us a thumbs up. Oh. So somebody was saying derogatory comments about hearing health care providers so that they don't spend the time when you're talking to them. Judy, I don't know. I'm not exactly sure I understand your question. So if I could use Ava and Roger or new ALDs for her CIs. So I have so I have two CIs and so they give you points. So the first CI I got I got the most expensive accessories. The second CI I got I got all the other ones. Because even if I didn't need them, I figured there would be people in the chapter, people I meet who might not love technology as much as I do and might benefit from like the little microphone that I had here. I don't ever use my microphone with my CI. So I have all of the accessories. So Judy, does that answer your question? No, I think you answered my question previously. I don't know. I think you answered my question previously about contacting Ava to find out why I can't use my Roger with the Ava captioning. Well, what the what the issue is is that there's first of all with Ava you don't need to use your Roger Ava to hear your voice. Yes. But then if I use Ava, I can't use my Roger. No, you just need to switch the microphone. So when you turn it's both at the same time. No, you can't use more than one microphone at the same time. I can with the Apple beta voice to text. Yeah, well, and it's not accurate. Well, this point between the Roger and the text, I'm thinking I'll be able to grasp more. I don't know. I'm still experimenting. Yeah, so and my cell phones not new enough. I need a new one to use the speech to text on my phone from Apple. I can use it on my iPad and I haven't even played with it because I just use Ava. So I'll take a look at it and I know how to get a hold of you. And I'm going to practice. I'm going to contact Ava anyway and just see what they say. Yeah. Well, so Judy, do you know that they have a a place where you can put suggestions in and then every week the suggestions that came in or posted and you can vote whether you like that or don't like that or did you know that? I didn't know. Yeah, I'll send it to you. My name is Tina and I have one comment and question. The Walnut Creek Theater has augmented audio on their screens. You have to be able to read it though. And so you might want to ask them. It's pretty exciting. The question I have is I tried lip reading and I found it very difficult after you took your class. Have you given that up? Well, lip reading only provides 20 percent additional information. So lip reading isn't 100 percent. Only 20 percent of sounds and with your throat are noticeable with lip reading, but it's better than nothing. And when you say Walnut Creek Theater, what do you mean? The movie theater. So we have had many of our chapter members have had problems with that theater and the theater in Pleasant Hill. They... Oh, do you mean in Rossmore? No, you mean in downtown Walnut Creek? The movie theater. They have different devices. They have two. The one that just for hearing is not great, but they have an accessory one that you can actually see things printed and it gives you, you know, galloping horses or whatever. It gives you the effect. And it fits in your cup holder.  What's happening, I think, is a lot of people now are posting a lot of that stuff on eBay because they get it and they decide they don't need it. And so they try to pick up a few extra bucks and I've bought like that and it's worked out really well. For example, the telephone streamer, which is, I don't know how much they cost from, but I got one for about 100 bucks and that's quite a deal. Yeah, I think like it might be $350, $400 or something. And I'm thinking about getting an extra TV connect to, to just connect to my computer, even though I have external speakers. Yes, please. You talked too much about your the app on your phone to listen to, not to see, but to listen to bring up the volume on your on your devices. You mean the proprietary apps from manufacturers? I did. I spent a whole lot of time talking about that. It's called a remote control. Okay. So you probably didn't connect that when I was talking about it. So when I was talking about apps and I said the remote there, all of the remote controls have moved to apps on your phone now. Oh, which Alan said I misunderstood. So hang on a minute. What?  I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think the steal is really terribly successful when I use it. What we don't know is particularly when you use what is successful. Pardon. When you use what is successful the app on my phone that controls the sound in my ear. I did. Talk to me later.  Maybe you're, you know, you're not going to be able to hear the sound of the phone. So you can ask the six foot range and your hearing aids aren't going to help you auditorily unless you have something that has range. So like these FM systems, the FM piece that I was showing you the little microphone. See that it's close to the person's mouth and it can probably, somebody could probably be 30 feet away from you and have that work. But on your phone, there's actually the television. When I'm watching television, I try to, you know, up the sound. I don't find that. Yeah. So you're trying to use your phone to do the wrong thing. So the, there are accessory devices that you connect directly to your telephone. I mean to your TV and then they stream to your device. No, I saw that. Okay. So if you're putting your cell phone close to the TV, right? I don't think that's ever going to work for you. Okay. Thank you. So we have to go. We extended our meeting. We got a message from RCC caption saying, we go over every time. See, I talk too much. What can I say? So we have a story about her new book. We have the walk for hearing coming up. Everybody received a flyer. Please donate to our chapter and come join us. The walk is just beautiful. The park is on the beach. It has the best view of San Francisco I've ever seen. Thank you for coming. I hope you come again.


you are still watching way single working women's day was created by Barbara Payne with the intent of recognizing the importance of these women and raising awareness of these facts in the public eye their role has grown ever more important as being a single woman is no longer stigma in many countries and instead is often encouraged or respected as these individuals walk their way through life on their own I like that last part on their own thankfully we are all single ladies here so happy single women's working day to you all we already said that she has to work three times as hard because those bills not going to pay itself sometimes, you know I was just stating yes, we are just having a conversation but it's not easy it's not it doesn't make it any easier when you now have when you are single mother you have yourself to take care of right people that depend on you but yeah, the Lord is our strength okay, what do you find for us in the news? so mine is about crude oil theft sometime ago on the show when I was anchoring the show we talked about the impact of crude oil theft on the Indian economy and someone very prominent came out to say the Nigerian army and navy were responsible so I think this news just goes out to confirm that so it reads a vessel empty crude oil suspected to have been stolen has been intercepted in the cocoa area of delta state by Tanita security services the point reports on Friday that the empty presale was intercepted on Wednesday while the 1117 tons vessel carrying about 8100 barrels of crude oil was being escorted by some naval officers operatives of a private security company owned by government eqpoo sorry eqpemu polo popularly called Tom Polo Tanita security said the vessel was flying it's a gliss flag was being escorted by a navy boat led by a senior naval officer the Tanita operatives said they were met with resistance from the navy boat escorted the vessel under the naval commander the naval commander threatened to deal decisively with them but the private operatives said anyway the whole story said upon entrance into the ship the security company said it noticed that the vessel was authorized was authorized to carry produce by navy but did not have approvals from the Nigerian mainstream and downstream petroleum regulatory authority let's see how this goes so a lot of people have been seeing a lot of comments saying that it means what the story I took the last time about Asari Lainakins so it means he had the truth in what he is talking about I mean crude oil is not something that can happen without setting bodies knowing about it it's not possible, it's not a pencil they're just going to steal right there's a process in the first place what's it called load the vessel the vessel even moving so I'm sure that the naval, the army whatever it is today they are inside us someone will have that information well and Jane what did you find for us well in the news today well going out of Nigeria so in Malawi the police at Lunzu in Bature Malawi rescued a newborn baby girl who was buried alive by her 21 year old mother so the police relations officer Sergeant Jonathan Pipilio who confirmed the incident on Thursday identified the suspect as Olivia Jonas so the story behind it is that she was 8 months pregnant and at some particular night she went home she had the baby I don't know how she had the baby so she had the baby and then took out the baby and went to bury the baby in the shallow grave somewhere in the nearby bush and then definitely there are complications that come with having a child so her husband arrived home definitely you'll see the site and you'll understand because she'll be totally unwell and weak and then they took her to the hospital and at the hospital they started to question definitely nurses see signs and they know when so they start to question her and then she revealed at first that she had a dead baby and then she buried the baby and they're like okay you had a dead baby okay so where did you bury the baby and then they took the police and then they went all the way there and then so that she had buried the baby in the nearby bush in the shallow grave and then they discovered that the baby was still alive so at this point definitely there's going to be some investigation as to how that whole scenario came about and what led to her making that decision without the knowledge of her husband and family members and who exactly was there when the baby was delivered so I'm sure there's some investigation going on and at some point there will be some charges flying around because I think she knew that she had a baby and for some reason she didn't want that baby to live and well knowing fully whether the baby was alive is already a crime in itself so but I'm sure that the law would take its course I don't know why you would even wait that long only to carry out such an act but you know guys postpartum depression is something that's real actually when you're young and you have a child there's so many things we don't even know the relationship between herself and her partner and she didn't want the child to grow up to face that hardship or whatever that's going up with them on time it doesn't just fight the fact that she actually did that but she might need to be checked mentally she might be interested in knowing who was around or if she did it herself it's not impossible okay so my story the story I was making around in the news today Sinibu removed Shethi for Kayamo and Mygari or the ministerial nominees they had a conversation about the ministerial as soon as I saw this today I had so many questions but I think what hurts me the most was this woman had prepared you saw the video right you saw the video she did in the car and she cut down and to then find out that your name has been taken off without informing her I really don't know how she must have talked about thank you you know that's what I said okay that's the video I'm like okay so this happens I'm breaking and you know feeling all fly and all of that and then she gets there and then hears that her name has been taken off the list without no prior information and then you replace her with Mygari and Festus Kayamo then I saw Festus Kayamo's Twitter as well what was that song he was singing I said we didn't go though something I don't remember place that we came of Festus and Dr. Mygari Mamood announced Wednesday and 37 God's will a letter by the president at Friday's plenary session this addition planted the total number of ministries on the minister's 48 the reason or the cause for taking out Dr. Maryam Shetty is not known yet but we deserve an explanation we want to know why this happened I'm sure we're going to get and also the way it did why she wasn't informed right so is it like he just woke up and just said you know move down man's things for the list and put this person i really uh i'm very interested in this story i want to know but yeah that's not our topic for the one discussing the impact of media on female sport but before we do that let's take a break before we bring in our guests and we'll see you after the break


My name is Howard Schatz. I'm the photographer of this and a few of the other pictures in the show. I did a project on boxing. It was a six-year project. I photographed all the champions. But before any boxer, in this case Sergio Martinez, a world middle-weight champion came to my studio. I studied everything possible and I made notes and tried to find an idea that hadn't been done before on him or anybody else. This photo is not Photoshop. It's taken with one frame. And I had timed his jump to know exactly when to open the frame and when to close the frame and then when to single pop the front. All the other light comes from behind so it's not the degrade him. So I'm very proud of this image.