Welcome to this course on Transition Metal Organometallics in Catalysis and Biology. We have been discussing a very interesting reaction, which is Reppe chemistry with regard to this particular topic. Now, Reppe chemistry stands very relevant in today's context and we are going to be looking at the development in the overall scheme of the developments that happened in Transition Metal Organometallic Chemistry. In this context, in today's lecture, we are going to take a look at the chronological sequence, in which the Reppe chemistry evolved under conditions and requirement that was the need for the day. Now, what we had seen in the earlier class is the fact that this Reppe chemistry allows access to a large number of functionalised chemical feedstocks or compounds all originating from acetylene chemistry. And it was as if the acetylene serves as a feedstock for various different functionalised chemistry. And today, we are going to see this development in the light of the overall development of Transition Metal Organometallics in the scheme of things and we are going to see how the need of the day resulted in the development of Reppe chemistry. Much of the research that goes on in the present day as well as it was relevant in earlier times depends on the need of the day and is guided by the economics and the need of the time. And hence, in current context, for example, the much of the research is about developing renewable source of energy. This involved looking into options like solar, wind, water, biomass, so on and so forth. The reason for more need for the development of renewable source of energy arises from the fact that these are clean energy, that means no carbon footprint or no carbon dioxide and so on and so forth. So, these are the reasons which allow us to focus more on renewable energy. The other reason to have this emphasis on renewable energy arises from the fact that depletion of the carbon footprint from the face of the earth in terms of the so-called non-renewable energy like petrochol and petroleum of fossil fuel. So, the way the focus has been on renewable energy in the current century, things were however different if we go back just about 100 years or so. For example, around 1900 till around 1950s, the focus of the energy source had been primarily on non-renewable energy. And these involved fossil fuels, which would include sources like coal, natural gas, crude oil. Now chronologically, if one were to look at that these emphasis of energy from these sources had been in the order shown here that petroleum as well as the natural gas crude oil sources were probed mainly in 1950s whereas the one those of coal or coal-driven energy sources were more in vogue even before that that is in 1800s or 1900s. Now to see the connection with respect to acetylene is that from the coal is a major source for production of acetylene and whereas from natural gas or from petrochemical industry what people get is ethylene or propylene. Now the way in current times the focus had been on generating energy from renewable sources about 100 years or so back the focus had been on gathering energy from non-renewable sources which were for example from that of coal or from that of acetylene or to be more accurate that in early 1900s or so the focus had been on getting it from acetylene which is a product from from the coal whereas maybe about three or four decades later in 1950s the focus shifted from on to acetylene to more economically feasible source like ethylene and propene. Now the whole gamut of rapid chemistry starts from here that we talk about it is about utilizing acetylene. Now rapid chemistry as we have seen in our previous discussion that acetylene could be converted to large number of functionalized products and that had solely been because of the efforts of Walter Rappey who found out how to deal with acetylene and to elaborate further on that for example one can convert acetylene to acetyldehyde which is a useful intermediate aldehyde are useful intermediate for other functionalized chemicals functionalized feedstock and the conversion of ethylene to acetylene can be achieved by treatment with water in presence of sulfuric acid and mercury sulphate and these had been one of the major exploits of acetylene so that one can see the need for developing acetylene as a feedstock for carrying out chemical reaction however and that had been the reason that has led to the development of rapid chemistry however with time the focus shifted from acetylene to ethylene which was more easier and more cheaply obtained from natural grass and crude oil and then that had led to sort of exploring the possibility of using ethylene to for making acetyldehyde so that again the useful intermediate for accessing other functionalized feedstock could be gained and for this also resulted in a very important process which is called Wacker oxidation so Wacker oxidation involves reaction of ethylene in presence of palladium by chloride catalyst and copper chloride catalyst which results in formation of the acetylides and this process this process from obtaining acetyldehyde from ethylene become more prevalent in 1950s and overtook the production from that from acetylene which were more prevalent in 1920s so what we see is that the shift of sort of technology for obtaining functionalized feedstock moving on from acetylene to ethylene now these were the stories which were more invoke about 50 or 60 years back whereas now we move on to more unconventional but more permanent solutions that is exploring energy from renewable sources like solar, wind, water, biomass so on and so forth and the primary reason is that at some point or other the whole of these non-renewable sources would get depleted from the face of the earth and then our energy requirement has to be made from those sources available from the renewable energy now even under the current scenario there is a larger argument still prevalent in favor of developing this rapid chemistry which sort of makes a comparative estimates of how long this fossil fuel like coal or natural gas or crude oil would last on earth and based on the estimate it is still suggested that probably the natural reserve of coal will outlive that of petroleum products and hence we still would require to focus on getting energy some amount of energy using the rapid chemistry and this brings us to the relevance of rapid chemistry in today's context even though both coal and natural gas crude petroleum at some point or other would get exhausted but coal reserve would outlast or outlive the natural gas and the crude oil reserve and hence the energy potential arising from coal should also be exploit even under today's context when the focus is shifting towards more renewable energy. Now another point to mention over here is that in this world where everything is still yet to be standardized or people do not have a standardized opinion on several issues there are countries pursuing each of these technologies depending on their results for example China China has a large coal reserve and China still explodes the potential of acetylene as a feedstock now with these being the scenario there is a lot of thrust in looking into the acetylene chemistry and as far as the chemical nature as the chemical intuition is concerned acetylene has higher reactivity more reactive than ethylene and hence would require less step in reacting or in reactions to reach the intermediates than what one would require from that of acetylene. Another last but not the least but important argument however in favor of non renewable energy is that unlike renewable energy for example like that of the solar energy there is depending on the strength of the wind there is a huge fluctuation in the power that is generated arising out of this wind whereas in contrast to that energy from non renewable sources like coal provides a steady supply of energy in terms of the electrical power that is generated and hence there is still demand as well as argument in favor of exploring the non renewable energy sources as an option for making our energy needs now with these background I think now you would have a understanding of the reason as to why repeat chemistry which was developed so early on in 1900s is still relevant in today's context and that those reactions has led to so many different products because of its various chemical exploits and that had been carried out by very dedicated scientists for example in the form of repeat who has developed this chemistry and the name suggest so now with that I think I have provided you a picture of how relevant is acetylene and conversion of acetylene to other feedstock and the challenges involved in this which was the need of the day in early 1900s when the energy options were from non renewable sources were explored and even now about 100 or more years later the repeat chemistry is still of relevance because of reasons just mentioned now now with these we come back to the central of rapid reaction which is acetylene and then we are going to sort of look into the utility of acetylene apart from what I have been just talking about on repeat kind of conversion in our daily need now acetylene as I mentioned apart from the repeat chemistry has been long used for welding purposes and the first use of acetylene in welding is noted as early as 1906 and the reason being the applications of acetylene in welding is because this is the strongest safest and simplest safest and simplest to use as a fuel gas now why is it so useful because it gives a temperature of around around 3000 degree centigrade when mixed with oxygen in 1 is to 1.1 ratio so these by and large is a very important aspect that you can reach a temperature of about 3000 degree centigrade now if you compare this temperature this is almost about half the temperature of that in sun maybe 6000 or 7000 degree centigrade so if this is very high a temperature in which most of the metals would melt so application wise this temperature is by far the highest or the hottest of all fuel gases hottest of all fuel gases and hence it can easily melt all of them and hence it is not a surprise that acetylene is found extensive application in welding purpose now it has a specific gravity of about 0.9 relative to 1 for air so that means acetylene is lighter and hence would move up if unused so it is not going to sort of you know sink or stay low if there is any unused acetylene is there so in that way it is kind of very safe to use and also the oxygen ratio that it requires is very less which is about 1 is to 1 many other fuel gases for example ethylene or propylene would require more amount of oxygen to burn than what acetylene would and because of this reason because of its light nature because of its low oxygen consumption ratio and because of the very high temperature that it can attain when burning with oxygen acetylene is the best safest strongest and simplest fuel gas to use and has found applications in various welding type applications so apart from conversion of acetylene to feedstock acetylene has also a tremendous application in welding industry lastly it has also a smell of that of garlic so if there is any leak or anything that can also be easily detected garlic like order and all of these provided overview of as to why acetylene was important in context of application as early as beginning of 1900 and why so much research activities were centered around acetylene which has led to the development of rapid chemistry which we are talking about with these you know we are going to be a looking into some more reactions some of the reactions relevant to rapid chemistry as we go on for example the reaction of acetylene with alcohols results in formation of methyl vinyl ether so this is a reaction when vinyl functional group is formed and is a part of the reaction called a venylation similarly another example of venylation involves reaction with cyanides this involves a catalyst which gives acrylonitrile now these kind of intermediates are very important as intermediates or monomers for various polymerization reactions including polymerization to produce functionalized polyethylene where they have this functional moiety cyanide attached to the polyolefin so these intermediates have a lot of put application as monomer for various polymerization reaction so with these we come to the end of today's lecture on rapid reaction in which we have looked into the perspective of the development of rapid reaction in the context of the energy need as a function of time and what we had seen that with the passage of time from 1800 to 1900 to the present scenario the demand for energy have been made from non-renewable sources to that of the renewable or more technologically cleaner sources of energy and this has led to a shift in the energy sources on moving from coal fossil fuel particularly from coal to natural gas and crude oil in 1950s which was that time invoked because of the olefin polymerization discovery and because of the petrochemical developments at that point of time to the current scenario of clean technology involving solar, wind, biomass, water so on and so forth. The acetylene had been produced largely from coal and hence the conversion of acetylene to other feedstock has been explored and successfully demonstrated by Repi through his wonderful set of reaction as well as the development of being able to handle acetylene in higher pressure but unfortunately in 1950s with economics taking over the ethylene and propylene obtained from crude oil and natural oil were much cheaper and hence the development of ethylene chemistry particularly from ethylene to that of acetyldehyde using vachiar oxidation took over as opposed to the conversion of acetylene to acetyldehyde using mercury and sulfuric acid in water which was sort of taken over by vachiar oxidation where one could convert ethylene to acetyldehyde and which could then finally be used for synthesizing or accessing other functionalized chemical feedstocks that eventually gain ground however given the fact that the cold reserve on fossil fuel is going to outlast the oil reserve or the natural oil and crude oil so still even after 100 years so there are important arguments in favor of developing the acetylene chemistry as has been initiated by Repi in this context we have also looked at two venylation reactions particularly the reactions of alcohol with acetylene in potassium hydroxide and that of hydrogen cyanide with acetylene presence of a catalyst give acrylonitrile with these we come to an end of today's class and we are going to look into some more reactions on Repi in the subsequent lecture that we are going to be taken up in the next class so till then goodbye and thank you


Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about shifting sovereignty in the Middle East. But I think we should probably not say shifting sovereignty, but changing sovereignty, changing the significance of sovereignty as it has been known in recent decades and recent centuries. What is sovereignty and what does it entail? I think today in the Middle East, sovereignty to a large extent is a very, very critical point in its history in the Middle East. Whether there is still sovereignty in the traditional form that we have known it is a question in itself. Because if we look around us, we find that more and more areas in the Middle East are devoid of sovereignty. And where sovereignty is not exercised and cannot be exercised. And one of the characteristics of the Middle East, since what is called the Arab Spring, is that the areas where sovereignty is absent are becoming more and more prevalent in the Middle East. And the problem of what will happen there in those areas is a serious problem for those countries which still try and exercise sovereignty when they are unable to do so in any practical form. But there is also, of course, the actors, the shifty actors, as we said in the name of this lecture this evening, or as we call them the non-state actors, who are becoming in certain aspects of the events that we are now following, prime actors, leading actors in what is happening today. And I will be addressing these non-state actors first and foremost before even talking about the states and where the leaders and the presidents and the sovereigns of state are and where they are going. There are two main non-actors in the Middle East who are having an enormous influence on events at present. The one are the Hezbollah in the north, the Shiite grouping in the south of Lebanon, and the other is the Hamas, which is in Gaza. Let us look at the Hezbollah to begin with. The Hezbollah began as a terrorist organization in the north of the Shiite majority in Lebanon. Almost 50% of the population in Lebanon are Shiites. It began as an organization which carried out terrorist acts across the border against Israel. And within the period of time that it has been active from the 80s of the previous century until today, it has developed into a force which is a driving force and will probably be a force which will influence the outcome in Syria, which I will talk about in a minute, in probably a manner which is incomparable to any other actor in the Middle East. The Hezbollah has developed into a fighting force. It's no longer what we used to call a terrorist organization which sends in groups or squads across the border to carry out a terrorist act or to detonate a car bomb in Beirut or elsewhere. It is a fighting force. It is organized as a military fighting force. It has companies. It has battalions. It has commanders. It has areas. It has regional commanders. It is a fighting force which has shown its metal in more than one occasion in fighting us. And I will say in all due respect that I think in recent years it has succeeded in creating a balance of deterrence with Israel. And we have this situation in which we have a state, Israel, with a constitution, with a population, with a civilian life, with a life in areas of science, technology, and whatever it is. And there is a balance between a state like Israel and a non-state actor which has terrorism on its must head. Hezbollah has not only developed as a fighting force, it is in constant process of upgrading its equipment. The equipment is being upgraded from several sources, from Iran to who they owe allegiance because they are Shiites and the leadership of the Shiite forces in the Middle East are in Iran. And they also have relations elsewhere. They receive quantities of equipment and arms from the Iranians, from the Syrians, directly and indirectly from the Russians. And they also have their own development of arms. And they are now entering into areas in the military field which you would normally associate with states. One of the areas that they are now trying to enter into is the area of drones. Drones not only for the collection of information but drones also as a means of transporting weaponry and then letting the bombs drop from a drone into whatever target you have chosen. Drone warfare now has become something in which the Middle East is experiencing in other places. But that a group like the Hezbollah would have a drone capability, this is something I think which one would not have expected so soon. And I believe that they are preparing for a showdown with Israel sometime in the future. They're not yet ready now. And uncharacteristically, the head of the Hezbollah only said a month ago that they do not seek a war with Israel at this time. And this was mistakenly interpreted as saying that possibly they might not seek war with us any time and anywhere. But this is not the case. I believe what they're saying is we're not ready yet. The Hezbollah is also being supplied with a lot of surface to air, missilery, anti-aircraft capabilities since they believe they needed a response to the power of the Israeli Air Force, which has been omnipotent in the Middle East for a very long period of time. And they're preparing for themselves for this kind of showdown. But they're also very active, as I said, in Syria. They are the main fighting force on the side of Assad today. The Syrian army today is in very bad shape. They have no recruits, no new recruits for the last few years. Their units have been decimated by the forces that they have been fighting. And apart from the air capability which they have, which is used mainly in order to drop either incendiaries or all kinds of weaponry on civilian populations, as far as the units are concerned, the land units are concerned, they are not in good shape. And the match of the fighting, the main fighting on behalf of Assad in Syria today is carried out by Hezbollah, which, A, of course, causes them a lot of casualties, but also gives them a lot of experience, battle experience. And it also makes them a player, a player which has to be contended with, a player which has influence, and a player which will determine to some extent what will happen in Syria. There is another actor in this drama, and that is Russia. We all know that Russia is a main supplier of arms to Syria. Russia has staked its revival in the Middle East, its comeback in the Middle East on retaining Syria, come what may. And that is why in the command posts in Damascus, you will find Russian senior officers not only observing what has happened in the field, but also advising on actions and activities and operations. This is a departure from what we have known up to now, but this is something we have to take into account. Russia has no intention whatsoever of giving up what's going to happen in the end in Syria. For Russia, this is the asset test. After having lost Libya, after having lost other footholds in the Middle East, including Iraq, Russia does not want to leave Syria. And therefore, for Russia, this is also a test for the comeback of Russia as a world power. What is happening in Ukraine is a European issue. It is related to Russia's necessity, the way they see it, of having what they call the Cardon Sanitaire around Russia. And therefore, Ukraine is part of the Russian Theater of Influence. Syria is a different story. Syria is the test for Russia of making it back to the seat of power around the Security Council, not only technically as a member of the Security Council which has a veto, but also as a world power recalling days gone by. And we have Iran in Syria today. Iran, for which Syria is key, because as an Iranian said to me a couple of months ago, an Iranian part of the entourage of Rouhani, we need Syria as part of the fertile crescent. It is essential to us in order to, A, to be the area through which we will conduct our activities with Hezbollah, they are the go-between, we do not have a direct contact with them otherwise, and B, because we need Syria in order to deter Israel. And this is for them the asset test. Will they be able to retain their position in Syria? So in the end, the way it looks at the moment, apart from the forces that are fighting in the north, the forces of the Muslim, more extreme people, the Sunnites, who are organized in one way or another, but also organized as fighting forces. Al-Qaeda, the word Al-Qaeda, which is always associated with the fact that you have groups of people who carry out terrorist acts from the 9-11 or here in 7-7 in London. The Al-Qaeda in Syria is a totally different story. It is organized groups, it is a fighting force which is organized, it may be badly organized, but conducting conventional warfare with all that that entails. So we see this combination of non-state actor of a major power in the world, an Iranian effort to become the hegemon in the Middle East, all of it converging on Syria with all that that entails. And with, as I said, Hezbollah being a very, very important player, maybe the most important player in the field. For us, this has consequences. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, we signed an agreement with the Syrians on a separation line, it's called. It's not a border in the normal sense of the term, it's not a frontier, but we have a separation line and this agreement has been internationally recognized and also is policed by the United Nations Security Council. If ultimately in Syria, we're gonna have an Iranian presence there, if ultimately the Hezbollah is going to be entrenched in Syria, will they respect the separation line? What will be the relationship between us and them? Will the Iranians in effect assume responsibility and assume the responsibility for respecting the separation line? Then we will have the beginning possibly of an initial mutual acceptance between us and the Iranians. If not, we do not know what this can entail. I told this Iranian I was talking to that I feared that this could be an occasion in which we would start a process of serious deterioration and he said to me, you are threatening me. I said, I don't think I'm threatening you, I'm simply telling you what are the facts of life? And all this within the concept of what a non-state actor is doing. And we have Hamas in the South, Hamas which today, as I speak to you today, is probably one of its lowest in its history after having suffered setbacks, having been forced to leave its traditional base in Damascus after having been declared just recently a terrorist organization by Egypt which is on its southern borders, totally isolated almost from the world, both physically and politically. And suddenly at that given moment, after a year or so when we had a confrontation with Hamas, a confrontation which entailed amongst all things, 1500 air sorties flown against the Gaza Strip within seven days, we reached a quasi agreement with Hamas in which we agreed that they would be able to do certain things that they were not allowed to do up to then and we would allow them to receive the kind of materials which up to now we had not allowed them to receive through our checkpoints. And here again, we are having this mutual deterrence, if you like, a non-state actor and Israel in a situation in a setup which is very, very uncommon in other parts of the world. Hamas today has a military capability, despite all the setbacks it has been, been experiencing. Hamas today does have an individual capability of producing weaponry. In the last confrontation we had, they tried to get a missile as close as possible to Jerusalem and they weren't far off the mark. And although we had our means of preventing this and we were successful in repulsing this effort and this attack, we nevertheless agreed to a ceasefire seven days after hostilities had begun. And this point has not been lost on the countries of the Middle East. Now, as you know, the Hamas has now sort of emerged suddenly out of the doldrums. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has turned to the Hamas and offered them again to, shall we say, to enter into an agreement in which the Hamas would become part of the leadership of the Palestinians again, that they would become a respected partner on part of the Palestinian Authority, although they have been declared worldwide as a terrorist group. And here again, the net result of this is the Hamas has been able to obtain a veto, a political veto on the discussions going on between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on a possible progress in seeking peace between us and the Palestinians. Now the Hamas will be able, at every given point in time, will be able to stand up and say, we don't agree to this or we don't agree to that and scuttle the talks or scuttle the discussions. And as you probably know, Israel has said that we will not talk to the Palestinian Authority if they don't abrogate this agreement they have just made with Hamas. But this does not seem to be the case at the moment. So on both sides of our borders in the north and the south, we have a non-state actor which is having an enormous effect on both the political dialogue which is going on between us and our neighbors and on the military and the security situation which we are facing in the north and in the south. I would like to move now to say something about other actors in the region and other areas in the region. First of all, I'd like to point out that I've talked about Hamas and I've talked about Hezbollah, but those are not the only areas which are to some extent devoid of sovereignty. One is the Sinai Peninsula between us and the Egyptians. This has always been a buffer between us and Egypt after we made our peace with Egypt and we have a peace agreement. The Sinai was considered to be an area which would be clear of arms and clear of forces. And according to the agreement, by the way, the Egyptians were not allowed to introduce certain types of weaponry into the Sinai Peninsula. And they honored this part of their agreement, of the peace agreement. But now, we're in a position that we accede to constant requests of the Egyptians to introduce weaponry in order that they should try successfully, if this was possible, to overcome terrorist activity in the Sinai. And as I speak to you today, this has not been achieved. So the Sinai, to a large extent, is a no-man's-land with all that entails, with all kinds of terrorist groups moving around there with a lot of weaponry being sent into there. And this is a very explosive situation, explosive in two aspects. One, it could be a launching pad for activities against Israel and we have had several serious problems with serious attacks on our southern border, including missile attacks on Elat, which is our southern port. And secondly, if this continues and the Egyptians have to be there, then the concept of a buffer zone with, by the way, a trip line, a small little trip line between the two sides of the buffer, which are manned by an American, a U.S. force, not a force that can actually enter into combat, but it's a trip wire in order to designate where the line is between us and Egypt. This could be in jeopardy. And this, again, could have an enormous effect on our security and our future. We have other areas where you have no sovereignty. In the north of Iraq today, the Kurdish province is, to all intents and purposes, a semi-autonomous region. And they can do whatever they like and however they like. And then you have Anbar province, which is, as you know, the basis and center for the Sunnites in the region. And there again, an area which is, to a large extent, a no-man's land. So you have areas, islands of no-man's lands in the Middle East. And this, of course, could be festering in ways and means which would be extremely dangerous to all of us. I'd like to add two aspects to this. This grim picture, if I can call it that, somewhat grim picture. And that is that I want to add another element which I think is important in order to understand what exactly is happening today. Economics is playing a role in the Middle East, the like of which it has never played before. Iran came to the table to discuss and to negotiate on their nuclear military programs, not because they were under threat or military threat, but because the sanctions which were imposed upon them by the international community were extremely effective. And the problem reached a point where the regime felt that if it did not enter into negotiations, it could risk losing control of the country, simply that. Iran, despite the fact that it is battling in Syria and elsewhere, is now engaged in a very, very frantic effort, a frantic effort to try and restore some kind of decency to its economy in a condition in the situation in which problems are multiplying galore in two areas. One, a growing scarcity of water in Iran, drinking water in Iran, and food in Iran. The Iranian population of Iran has doubled in the last 30, 40 years and to feed 90 million mouths and to provide for water for 90 million sore throats. This is a very, very difficult task to be able to meet. So Iran at the moment is also on the verge of serious decisions it has to make. And I believe that the way the negotiation will be conducted with Iran will have an enormous effect on the future of that country, on the future of Syria and elsewhere, one thing leads to another. And I would like to conclude not by talking about Egypt, but talking about another country, and that is Saudi Arabia. And I want to devote the last minutes of my talk here my introductory talk to Saudi Arabia. It is conventionally believed that Saudi Arabia has been one of the most implacable foes of Israel and of Jewish people in time immemorial, certainly as of the moment that the Ibn Saud Dynasty took control of the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Saud was considered, has always been considered as the most rabid anti-Semite in modern times. And he has spoken that way, he's spoken out that way in very, very, very stark terms. He has said very often that the time had come to send in forces into Palestine to remove the vermin, the Jewish vermin which is polluting Palestinian sacred soil. The terms and verbiage he has used have been atrocious from every point of view. And one could have gained the impression that Saudi Arabia was the number one foe of Israel, both ideologically, religiously, if you like, and philosophically, if you wish. But if you examine the facts very closely, you will find that when it comes to the Palestinian issue which was the issue which supposedly would have been the issue which the Saudis would have espoused in a manner which almost no other country would have done, the Saudis have been absent almost all the way. And they have not supported the Palestinians with arms, they have not trained them in any form or fashion, they have not participated in warfare against Israel, except nominally in the War of Independence. And I can tell you that if you look back at the records of World War II, an initiative was once promoted by St. John Philby, the father of his son, obviously, called and named Kim Philby, to create a federation in the Middle East which would be under the ruler of Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of Saudi Arabia, and the king of Saudi Arabia would actually move from Riyadh to Damascus, which was his dream initially to be the king of all the Arabs of the Middle East in Damascus. And within this shape of a kind of a federation, there would be room for a Jewish entity in Palestine. And he tried to sell this idea to Churchill in 1942 in the middle of World War II. And Churchill called in the president of the Zionist organization, Chaim Weitzman, and told him about it and told him this is a great secret. You must go to Washington to get the Americans to support this, because if they will support it, I will be able to support it, the way things are at the moment, I can't do it on my own. And Chaim Weitzman actually played a secret visit to Washington in 1942. And he tried to convince the officials in the State Department to go along with this and he did not succeed. But that's not the only thing which happened in 1942. A colleague of mine in the Mossad retired several years ago and at the age of 66, he decided to write a doctorate, to research a doctorate on the question of the Saudi attitude to the Palestinian issue. And amongst the things he was able to ferret out from all kinds of archives was the fact that two very secret Saudis received medical treatment in the Hadassah Hospital in what was then Palestine on Mount Scopus and there was a shroud of conspiracy about their visit there and so forth and nobody really knew what this is all about. Well, he went into the archives further and further and he found there a letter on the letterhead of the House of Saud, of Ibn Saud, of the Saudi monarchy, a letter in which the writer thanked the doctors and particularly if I may say the nurses of the hospital on Mount Scopus for the wonderful medical treatment that had been given to himself and to his brother. And this beautiful letter was signed Fahed. Fahed was one of the sons of Ibn Saud. He later became king of Saudi Arabia. Fahed, together with his brother Mansour, who was the first ever minister of defense of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, received vital medical treatment in the Jewish hospital, is Jewish hospital on Mount Scopus, the main hospital at that time in the Middle East, by the way, and they were grateful for it. And Fahed was the man as a king who first formulated the policy of Saudi Arabia to effect a peace between Israel and the Arab world. It was called the Six Points which later on became in 2002 the Saudi peace plan, which has yet to be taken up as a major document for negotiation. Saudi Arabia is behind much of what is going on in Syria. Saudi Arabia is supporting the forces who are battling against Assad, battling against the Iranians, battling against the Russians. This is not only a battle between the Saudis and Bashar Assad. This is one of the major battles between the Sunnites and the Shiites in modern-day history. And after many, many years in which this relationship was a latent relationship of enmity, which did not break out into open warfare, now there's open warfare between the Sunnites and the Shiites.  Because Egypt is Sunnite, because Turkey is Sunnite, because Saudi Arabia is Sunnite, because half of Syria is Sunnite, and so forth. And it is this element of a non-state actor. Religion is not a state. The Shiites and the Sunnites are non-state actors in a different sense, not territorially, but conceptually. And this is something which we have to take into account and to study well. There are many other issues in the Middle East which I have not touched upon. I try to touch upon those elements which I believe are essential to understand what is happening now, here and now at the moment. And I believe, unfortunately, that these problems are not going to be resolved in the very near future. The nature of these conflicts, which I have mentioned this evening, the nature of the conflicts are such that they cannot be resolved overnight or by a simple negotiation in which you reach a agreement of that kind or another. We have to be patient. We have to know how to manage the conflicts, how to live with the conflicts, how to be able to turn certain elements of the conflicts into coalitions which would serve our interests, the interests of the Western world or Western democracy and so forth. It will not be easy. And I believe that there's a lot of work to be done. And as we look at the Middle East a hundred years, almost to the day, minus two years in which the United Kingdom played the key role in creating the entirety of the configuration, political configuration of the Middle East, the states, the kingdoms and the which groups would be in power and which would not be in power. I think now we have reached the point where all this is now up with a big question mark. And the resolution will not be easy. It will not be easy, it will not be smooth because you have the elements in the region, you have the superpowers, you have the Russia and I mentioned Russia in great detail. I didn't say anything about the United States. The United States is also not prepared or not preparing just to leave the Middle East for a variety of reasons which I don't have time to go into. So with this note of cautious optimism, should I say? I don't know how you would characterize what I've said this evening, but I think of maybe not cautious optimism but of realism. I think we have to face what is happening with all the consequences and the fallout for almost everybody on this globe. Thank you.


Hello, everyone. Happy Weekie Tree Wednesday. Wednesdays have just officially been dubbed Weekie Tree Challenge Wednesdays. So I hope everyone's doing fantastic. You know, we have... I guess we'll go ahead and just introduce everybody when we'll get started. So Mindy and I were Weekie Tree team members and Mindy's also the overall coordinator for the Weekie Tree Challenge. And then below us, we have Jarrett, who we're kicking off this week. We'll be introducing him a little bit later. And then we have Melissa, who we are wrapping up today. We're going to show her all of the goodies that we've found to be really exciting. I know they're both really excited, and I hope you are all excited. I saw in the chat, there are a few of you who are probably up at 2 a.m. right now, and great job. So for those of you who probably have popped in, maybe you don't know what Weekie Tree is. You don't know the Weekie Tree Challenge. I'll give you a little bit of an intro. So Weekie Tree is a community of genealogists who are working together on a single family tree. In other words, we collaborate to grow an accurate global tree that connects us all. And most remarkably, it's free. The Weekie Tree Challenge is our year-long event and part of our year of accuracy, where each week a team of Weekie Treeers takes on a genealogy guest star's tree and collaborates to make it more accurate and complete than it is anywhere else. And our goal is to improve our accuracy on Weekie Tree, add more family connections, and make more friends. And that is Weekie Tree and the Weekie Tree Challenge. And just to let you know if anybody has questions or comments posted in the chat, we'll ask them or show them when the time permits. And Mindy can take it away. Okay, and I'm going to go ahead and give a little bit of just general information on our point system. So we have two ways to earn points. Now, most of us don't do it for the points, but it is fun to have a little bit of competition and also a marker showing you where you're at and your progress for the week. So we have bounty points. Now that's 10 points for every brick wall ancestor, the first new ancestor on each line. And then one point each for the nuclear relatives. So that would be siblings or children's within one step of the direct ancestors. And I tell you, those points actually add up pretty fast. And at the end, we wind up with an MVP, which is our most valuable player. We'll show you that in a minute, but let's go ahead and talk about our collaboration. Starting with the spreadsheet on the left. This is crucial. We have anywhere from 25 to 50 people working on one guest's branches during the week. And so we do that so we can write down what profile we're working on. And that way somebody else doesn't come along, save over it, we lose our work, try and list what profile we're on. On the right is the G2G post that's in our forum. And we list out each of the great grandparents and that way if somebody breaks a brick wall or has an important discovery and they're bursting, they can go out there and put it in the forum. And the third way, this one we can't do without, this is Discord. Now, this is our live chat throughout the week and we are a global site. We do have people from all over the world that work on this. And so there's usually somebody in there chatting. Now, sometimes we're just in there cheering each other on. Sometimes we want a second or third set of eyes on a record to see if it makes sense. We have people that go in there and just get obituaries for people.  We have other people that specialize in land deeds. It's just anything we need to do, we do there in Discord. And once again, sometimes we're just cheering each other on. We've made a lot of friends since it started and had a lot of fun working together. So now we can look at our top five. Including our MVP. And I have to say, you know, we had just a slightly smaller group than what we have had this week.  So it's a little bit harder to drag them back in and get this done. And they still are just at it. But it just makes it that much more incredible and impressive that they got the work done that they did. Now, our top-scoring person of the week was Andrea Stow. And she not only got the top point, she was the top bounty hunter as we call it. She got the most bounty points this week. So our top five overall was Andrea Stow, Donna Bowman, Rosalie Neve, Amanda Edie, and Maddie Hartman. Let's go ahead and look at all the overall stats for the week. Yes. And here's where we have our point system that updates throughout the day. And this is where I said, you know, we can kind of check and see how we're doing with our progress. Now, total points, that's where we pulled our top five from. That's anything, the bounty points and the individual nuclear relative points put together. Now, that's not the edits and whatnot. That's just creating those ancestor profiles. And for these guys, 394 ancestors were added. Now, 80 of those were direct ancestors and 314 of those nuclear family members. So you can see why I say that really adds up. And then for bounty points, we had 340. So that's 34 brick wall ancestors, pretty incredible. And then profiles edited with all these people working. We had 741 unique profiles edited. So that's anytime somebody went in, changed a date, added a source, improved that profile, it saved a point for it. And total edits, and still, once again, this is even not everything. We have people that once get those articles, we have people that work on space pages, do categories, fix suggestions. Those don't even count. But for the edits that do count, we have over 3,640 done this week. Just amazing. It seems like we always have at least 3,000 total edits for at least the profiles. I feel like that's a trend that I've noticed at least. Yes. Really around 3,000. Now, I guess we can get into the goodies and the brick walls and what we found. How exciting. I know. It's fun. This is Fett and Clark Le Masters line. And the orange box shows the new ancestors added to this line. And this was interesting. In his book, that dark and bloody river, Alan Eckert writes, on Dunker Creek off the Monongalia, where no attacks had occurred for a very long time, the houses of Joseph, Cumberlidge, and William Thomas were both struck. So Thomas was killed, as was everyone in the entire Cumberlidge family. Melissa, if it weren't for the fact that your direct ancestor had grown up and already started his own family and not been in that household, you wouldn't be here today. So it kind of puts things in perspective. Yeah. And the direct ancestor leading to them was the son Harvey. And he was 25 at that time. Now, there was a descendant that had a military headstone erected, Matt Cumberlidge, and he shares an ancestor with you. So Thomas thought that he would maybe be a good contact for you. His eighth great-grandfather is Joseph Cumberlidge. He knows a lot about the family. He's the executive director of the Green County Historical Society and Museum. So might be interested to just try and touch base with him. Yeah, that'd be great. And then we have Jacob Rice. This one, Jacob Rice and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Jacobs. They sold a portion of their land in Ellsworth, Tyler County, Virginia for the use of public schools. And this was just kind of fun there, seeing what everybody found as far as the deeds and everything. Their records were really good when it came to that. And there's all kinds of stuff that you can read on Jacob Rice's family. It was just interesting that they've done that. And it was mentioned again in a recent memorial for the school district. I like that because the presentations I do is on school records, researching the school records. Oh, that's awesome, then. So the person who finds this record knows that, and that's why. They were just magical. Okay, now, on the default line, you wanted to know about the furniture store owned by Ida Isidore, Bounder, DeBolt, Ladd, Beatty. She's got a lot of names. And her and her husband, John Talbert Ladd. Maybe that's why he went by JT. Yeah. Apparently, they ran a furniture store that sold furniture and toys. I thought it was cute that the article was found that they had all kinds of Christmas toys for sale. But they also had a second store that offered services to reupholster furniture. So, I know one of those wasn't strowed, so it wasn't right where he was, but I think that's like a 30-minute drive. And that was interesting, that story. I don't know if you know, but when Ida went to divorce John, she changed her mind several times. So, he would draw the papers up, pay the lawyer, and then she'd go, uh, you know what? Let's not do that. Or, oh, I want that. As we just do sometimes. So, I guess the lawyer actually wound up suing John. Not her, but Sue John. Because she kept changing her mind and he had to keep drafting new papers. So, that was just kind of fun. You know, it's always got to be something. I'll say that the baby name is actually new to me. Oh. Oh. Yeah, I do not know anything about that. I guess it was her other husband. I thought that her last husband was the lad, though. No. Baby came after she divorced lad. Yep. I knew that they divorced, but I didn't know she remarried again. Look at that. See, already goodies are going to want to live right away. And I've been, like I said, last week I said that one of the things I wanted to find was the information on the furniture store. Because I knew they owned stores or a store. That's fantastic information. Yeah, I actually have a Google picture I'm going to send to you. A street shot. But it's showing where the store used to be and it's not there. There's nothing there anymore. Well, where the first one is. I didn't have an address for the second one. So, I actually had a street address for the first one. That was interesting. There's a little courthouse right next to where it was. So, that was kind of fun. Now, this is on the Zelma Raph Curtis line. Here, we were looking at James Hill. And you see the orange boxes again. So, you have new, more new ancestors there. Right. James Hill was in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a son of John Hill. His father died in the Revolutionary War and his mother soon after. So, James and his much younger sister, Rebecca, were orphans and went to live for an uncle. Now, I'm not sure which uncle they lived with. But they lived with him for several years and then he died. So, they actually wound up with a Robert Lawton family until both became of age. And James himself, this was awesome, lived to the age of 99 years, three months and two days. Wow, cool. Yeah, that's some longevity. We found longevity in a couple of places in there. So, it was a lot of fun. That's good because my more recent ancestors, meaning my grandparents, grandparents, grandparents, didn't live to that old age. Oh. And then there were actually more than 50 ancestors added on these lines. And of course, it doesn't look like much there, but all it takes you know is for one line to take off and is kind of a domino effect and back behind it. So, more than 50 just on that one line. That's great. That line, the Curtis Line means a lot to me because that's my grandmother's line and she came to live with our family when I was three after my grandfather had passed away and she lived with us until a couple of months after I married and she passed away. So, yeah, she was more like a mother to me than my mother because my mother was, she worked all the time and my grandmother kind of raised us. Okay, and now we have the Wanda Ellen Barthes Line and this we were looking at Johannes Barthes, the father of the older of the Christian Barthes, was born before 1781. Most likely, and I'll probably say this wrong, and Ronald Fingin, Canton of Burns, Switzerland, so I know there were a few there. The Shown House mark was generally used for marking property is for the Barthes family of that area. So, it says the birthplace is uncertain but most likely and they did find other family members, ancestors also in that same little area. It says unfortunately, surviving church records only start in 1831. So, they would have liked to have taken that back further but you do what you can. That's right. Now, this one, we wanted to have good news for you. You know on this one. I know about this, yeah. You had some great interest in that and so our people went out, they constructed the line that seems to be the given one by different people's family, lower, and then they got together and they tore it apart. But sometimes that's what you need, you know, for everybody to get in. Once they were on, the profiles were up, they could go in, make notes, look at the records. Actually, a couple of them could get together and look it over and toss ideas back and forth and that line absolutely did work, did not work. Now, there is a possibility that they are by marriage somewhere related to the Pennsylvania bar terms but not in the way that everybody is saying. So, yeah, and what they found is that he was a Protestant preacher in Ireland. He actually, it was said born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Excuse me. And because of his inadequate preaching, he was kind of, I think, run off and not accepted. So, he married Elizabeth Swarajan in Dublin and migrated to the United States. Now, he is thought to have had five children by his two wives and his will was written in Cabell County, Virginia and I'm sure you already know that you have quite a few ancestors in that little area too. Oh, yes. But the records are fairly decent, so that was fun. There have been a lot of people that have been wanting to try to connect these Pennsylvania bar terms but really where it failed completely was at Stephen. So, when you hit Stephen, nothing made sense above that where it was trying to connect to that. So, there is one Scottish bar trim that their family intermarried. A Scottish bar trim, but yeah, none of the West Virginia bar trims have been proven to be related to the Pennsylvania. So, we kind of felt bad on that but it's still, you know, now you know, you had a whole team of people looking at it and you can relook over their notes and see what they found. Yep, that's right. Sometimes disproving is just as important as proving, so. It is. Now, this was really an explosive line. Elizabeth Pyle's line and that entire orange block there is new ancestors and it just kept going. So, you actually wound up with 100 new ancestors added to those lines and that's just the direct ancestors. That's not the family members. So, you know, you'll find some in between like everything we work out from the great-grandparents back, everything from, you know, there is sourced. Sometimes we connect to a branch. We might have a little area where there are profiles added when WikiTree was still kind of new and people were uploading GEDCOMs. And then when you go further back in the branches, you'll see that those lush profiles, again, more projects have taken them up and, you know, little by little we're trying to get those filled in but you will see some of those and you'll also see some just really beautiful profiles. But in the end, you wound up with ancestors in Germany, Ireland, France, Netherlands, and England. That's great. This one, the Clarence-Philmore Drummond line, we actually were taking a look at Johann Wilhelm Stober. He was born in 1726 in Stafford, Germany. He was listed as a Palantyne passenger, which means from the Rhine Valley River region in Germany, aboard the Snowmalley, I like that name, in 1737. Now, he married three times. He had three children with his first wife, nine children with his second wife. And thank goodness no children with his third wife. But I believe he outlived all of them and he died in his mid-70s in Franklin, Pennsylvania. He was an interesting man. Yeah, sounds like it. His profile, Johann Stober. Yeah, really nice. Somebody did some really nice work. And if you ever do wind up, you know, getting DNA done, it'll automatically populate through your ancestors, and that's what all those links were on the upper right, other people that share that ancestor with you. That's good, yeah. One day. He's got some pictures of his home, Fort Stove. Okay, that's great. Now, next we had Lula Levina, Coonrod's line. And her mother was found to be Mary Arilla Molly, straight, Coonrod. Yes. She married William Sherman Coonrod in 1889. They had seven known children. Lula gained 94 new to you ancestors. And then a couple more that are additional wives that we couldn't find the maiden names for. But that line really took off as well and wound up with a lot. I can tell you a little story about Lula. She was committed to an asylum by her husband, William Sherman Bartram. He had her committed because he wanted to be with another woman. Lula and William had 14 children. My grandmother was the 14th of the 14 children. She told me the story. She was in the asylum for 15 years and then they let her out. She carried with her, which I have the document that they gave her when she came out of the asylum that said on it that she was cured. And she lived for another 15 years after that. And so I asked my grandmother, I said, my grandmother remembered the day they came to get her and they literally drug her out of the house. And I asked her, my grandmother, I said, you had siblings that were older and married and had kids. I said, why couldn't they do anything? And this was in 1940. I have the papers from the court. And they said that there was nothing they could do because the husband had control and he could do what he wanted. And he married the woman he wanted to be with two weeks after he had her committed. And then after she got out, believe it or not, they all kind of still got together for family events. Wow. Yeah. And so I have always found that story to be absolutely horrible but absolutely fascinating. It is. Yeah, that's incredible. Okay. And then further back on the line was Edward Howe. He was born in 1573. And he was actually part of the Puritan Great Migration. So all of those that you see are new. And then going further back on that was, do you have his profile, Sarah, or? Yes, we do. Edward Howe. He had two Elizabeths. Maybe two Elizabeths. Do you want me to show the ancestors or be anything else about Howe or can we? No, we're good. Okay. Looks great.  You know, like I said, you'll find a lot that are back in that era that the projects have just done an amazing job on already. So we found them and didn't have to do anything with those ones. The work is absolutely amazing. Thank you. Now this was peripheral family discoveries. And of course, you know, the worse or more shocking or sterling it is, the more likely you're here to find it in the newspapers and whatnot and find out a little bit more. But good or bad, it tells you something about the ancestor and makes you feel like you know them. So we like to see these. And the first one isn't bad. This is another one with some longevity. Now this is your second cousin, Lena Alice Massey. She was a centenarian. So she died at the age of 101 in Macomb, Michigan. And the Piles line, Elizabeth Piles' first husband, Shelby, drowned just two years after their marriage. She had several tragedies on her line. And sometimes just thinking back to how much some of these women went through and, you know, they get up every day and they just take care of their families anyways. Her son, Benjamin Franklin Bertram, was accidentally shot dead at the age of 19. That one I actually, I found the newspaper article because the person who actually shot them was actually my grandfather, his brother. They were hunting. My father, Forest Cecil Bertram, actually accidentally shot and killed him. I actually stumbled across the newspaper article about it and my grandfather had already passed so I couldn't ask him. But my mother never even knew his father, never even knew about it.  It was. And then we had a still on the Piles line. Archie Piles, your second grade uncle was stabbed to death at the age of 17 in an altercation. I mean, a lot of it just seemed to be focused in this one little area of your branches. I'm not sure why. Another one that was startling on the DeBolt line, John DeBolt's sister, Elizabeth. So your second grade aunt was accidentally struck and killed by Frisco passenger train number two. It's interesting. I think you're free, honestly. I have another ancestor. Gosh, I can't think of who it was now that was actually that was killed by a train. Hmm. Wow. I've got the corners in quest and the stuff. Yeah. And then the last one that we put on here was Oliver Harlan Barth on the Barth line.  I think this is the most tragic articles we found on one set of branches. I don't know if this Barth is the one, but I have one of the things about my Barth family is that they lived in Wyandotte County, Ohio, from very early on, like 1854. And they stayed there forever. They were one of those families that just stayed there forever. And the newspapers there are fascinating. probably went on to a very, very good mystery novel career because the obituaries are amazing. But I don't know if it's this one or another one where there are another well death where they went down into the well. The son was supposed to be cleaning the well. He died of well damp, which I did some research on well damp. And then the father who went down after him also died in the well from the same thing. Oh, wow. And so, yeah, I don't know if it's this one or someone else, but yeah. And then our military. Now, of course, there's a lot more than what we could list on here. But as we work through the week, we tend to find ancestors that served in the military one branch or another. We like to take just a brief moment to honor them. I'm sure that there are plenty more, but these are the ones that we found. So this will be something for you to look back through, you know, as you're browsing through your branches and looking at the news stuff. I will add, I know you put me out of this far, but my father was a 20 year veteran of the Air Force and he was in Vietnam. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, we don't we don't work on anything below the great grandparents. So for privacy reasons. Yeah.  So everything in the yellow is where there was a possible brick wall. And then every one of those little dots like you can kind of see on the pop out, there's a B put for every brick wall that was broken.  But people were pretty even in finding those brick walls around your branches. So that was really a lot of fun.  Because there's just never enough hours in the day. And when you do any kind of professional work, you don't have time to work on your own tree. I do not. You know, I wish I had, I have got binders and binders and binders and stuff that I have not put online yet. So but this is I've seen stuff here that that I didn't I know I didn't know. So awesome. Well, hopefully this is this is met your expectations or exceeded them. I know, like I said, people worked really hard this week. It was cute. One of our team members, I said, Yeah, I went ahead and gave you the bounty points for that. And she said bounty points. Oh, I was just so excited. I was finding all this stuff. She said, I wasn't even thinking about the bounty points. So that's okay. I gave him to you. Now, overall, for our teams this year, and it is this year's going by crazy fast, we've just had so much fun with this, you know, but and this is not including your week here, Melissa, up until now, we've had 21 guest stars, 243 wiki tree years that have signed up for one or more months, almost 2000 direct ancestors created overall, more than 5000 nuclear relatives created for people. And then here's our big numbers, more than 71,000 of those edits and an amazing 464 brick walls torn down.  They are just they're always amazing. Well, I'm extremely impressed. I think that this has exceeded my expectations and thank each and every researcher, you know, I've been one for 31 years and I know exactly what they've done. So they've been in a very short amount of time. And so I'm just very, very impressed by what they've been able to find. And hopefully I can etch out some time to actually start working on it again. And that that was the you wanted us to spark you. So yes, that's what I wanted. And I think it has. I'm interested in some of those things I saw that now I've got to go look into again. Well, that that pretty much I think that wraps up Melissa's week. I don't know if we had any other questions, comments or remarks. Unless he had anything or any finding from the chat wants to say anything. No, I get well, if not happy that they got things done. Yes, fantastic. So I guess we will we'll just thank you, Melissa, for letting us work on your tree and for participating in the challenge. I know everybody was super happy to work on your tree and find all the good, all the goodies. So I thank you guys very much. Like I said, I'm looking forward to taking up where they left off and see what I can do. Yeah, you have lots. You might, will you stay up late tonight to look at everything or will there be a weekend? Probably. Okay, so I guess we will move on and we'll introduce Jared, our next challenge participant, who is super excited to be our guest star this week. I know he was counting down the seconds until he came on. I saw someone say they thought my tweet earlier was pretty funny. So we'll do a brief, we'll give, I'll introduce you really quickly if you want to add anything or maybe we have everything covered. Who knows? So Jared, the genie vlogger, he started researching his family in 2009. He specializes in genetic genealogy and shepardic juice research. He writes a blog called shepardic genealogy. Am I saying that right? I think, I think I... Sephardic. Sephardic. I don't know where the age came from in the front. Okay, Sephardic genealogy has a blog called Genie Vlogger. He works as a lead forensic genealogist at DNA Labs International. Volunteers as a curator in genie.com, is a board member of the Alliance Colony Foundation, is the vice president of the Triangle Jewish Genealogical Society, serves as the chair on the board of directors for the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. And I also read that he, hold on, he also is a musician. That's not there, but a musician. That's right. So anything to add, Jared? Or... I think you covered it. Covered it with your apron, so... And in all, it's free time. Yeah, yeah. Basically, my free time is either cooking for myself or walking my dogs, or cooking for my dogs. When your dogs get fully cooked meals? I spoiled them. I spoiled them terribly. So not always, but all the time. I mean, I spoiled my cat, but making her food, I don't know. I have trouble making myself food, so making her food. Well, I guess one thing I could add is I used to actually work as a chef. Oh, that's cool. That's part of it too. I do kind of enjoy playing. And to the person asking what instrument I play, I'm actually a multi-instrumentalist. I play guitar, bass, drums, keys, and a couple other things like xylophone and stuff like that. Wow. That's cool. Multi-faceted, multi-talented. So awesome. Okay, so I know now Mindy and I will ask you some questions. And if you watch any of these, you probably know the questions that are coming. So you started researching in 2009. What got you interested in genealogy? So when I say I started researching in 2009, that's really when I started researching seriously. But I had gotten interested originally when I was probably, I think I was about nine years old, and I had gone to my cousin's bar mitzvah. And at his bar mitzvah, they had this paper that traced my mom's family. So the Nunes Vaz family traced it back to like 1697. And when I saw that, and I like went through the names, it just was like, whoa, that's so cool. And that was the first time I really got interested in it. And I, my family got me like a really old version of family tree maker back then that was gosh, that would have been in the 90s, I think. And I like tried to trace back, but you know, as little kids, so I kind of didn't do it seriously. And then over the years, I would kind of go on and do stuff. And I actually didn't even realize I was looking at my ancestry account the other day. And I started my ancestry account in early 2008. I didn't even realize I'd done it that early. So it was a lot, a lot of that really came out of that bar mitzvah paper and just like going through each generation and having my occupation and their names and just like it was like so cool. That's pretty neat.  Yeah, yeah. And who was your favorite ancestor? This one is, I'm sure you get this all the time. I actually thought about it beforehand and I decided that I was going to choose my great grandfather, Jack Ecoff. So I actually saw someone say they were curious about the Mills Music Publishing and this is where that comes in. He was just, he was so interesting to me because he was the only ancestor of mine or the most recent ancestor of mine really that was born and grew up on a farm and then had such an interesting career in life and did so many cool things. And he was someone that I always kind of wanted to know more about but like I didn't until I started doing genealogy research. So yeah, I see he pulled up his what's on the page now. But yeah, he was just, he was so interesting to me and I guess I might be giving away something here, but one of the first documents I ever found of him was his obituary, which was on the front cover of Billboard magazine in 1963. I think it was July 1st, 1963. So it's July 13th here on the. Oh, okay. So it might be, it's July 1965. I don't know the exact date. So, but yeah, he, I would say he's the one I'll choose for my favorite for this. Yeah. Very cool. So that's next question. I think I'll have these memorized. Oh my goodness, my cat just unplugged my light. Okay. Do you have any interesting stories to share about your family that you found? Where do I start? So many. Like I was mentioning the Mills music publishing stuff being part of literally Tin Pan Alley and forming what American music is today. Also, my family that was in the Alliance colony, which is also my great grandfather, Jack, the Alliance colony was the first successful Jewish agricultural society in the United States, which was in Southern New Jersey. And it was founded in 1882. And it was just, it's just this super interesting story that very few people actually know about. On another branch of my family, I have my great-grandfather Morris owned the Schubert Theater in New Haven and was big part in theaters in Connecticut and Massachusetts and went out to California and made films. And yeah, I mean, I could probably go on for an hour telling the interesting stories I've found. I know I'm kind of talking generally, not specific stories, but there's a lot. So not sure. That's fine. Yeah, that's okay. And hopefully we can find a few that you don't know about, though. Now, when did you first discover WikiTree? I can't remember. I, as many people know, I'm a curator on Genie. And Genie was the platform in 2009 that helped spark my interest to go serious with this because I instantly could connect and it was, you know, it's a collaborative tree, which is exactly what WikiTree is. And so that concept of not just building my tree like I did when I was young and then, oh, I don't know where to go from here. Instead of, you know, I'm building my tree and then connecting with others that even if it's not that we descend from the same ancestors, maybe we have an ancestor who had a sibling that married their ancestor that, you know, those tangential lines and connecting with that and just being able to find literally how everybody is connected. So because of that, I've always been like looking at all the different collaborative trees, like when FamilySearch came out with theirs as well. So I don't remember when I know it's been years. I feel like I've known about WikiTree since the early days because I feel like I saw posts on Facebook somewhere, you know, one of those genealogy groups saying check out this new WikiTree, but I don't remember when. I don't remember when. That's okay. Yeah. I checked you created your profile in 2019, but that isn't necessarily me and you probably stumbled on. I know that I created my profile a little while after I learned about WikiTree because when I made my profile is because I realized I didn't have anything connected to my GEDmatch profile. And then I learned that WikiTree had worked together with GEDmatch, I guess you could say so that you could link through that. So that was what sparked me in 2019. Be like, oh yeah, I should be on WikiTree. So what are your current brick walls? Okay. So there are a couple. The first one, which I think is the hardest and I'll be extremely surprised if anyone breaks through it is my great grandmother Fanny. So this is my father's line. So my father's paternal grandmother. And I know absolutely nothing about her in terms of her siblings, her parents. I have a general idea of when she was born, but I don't truly know where she was born up there. I do have a maiden name of Baruch, but there's actually a couple of maiden names that have popped up in different documentation and from family stories, some saying Greenspan, some saying that it was Goldberg, some saying it might have been Rosenberg. Baruch was the one that made the most sense because it was on the most documentation. And I did get that from one of my cousins saying that that was the name. Her husband, David, I just recently broke through just a few years ago on him because he was the same. But through DNA, which I'm sure some of you will end up watching that video that I talk about this, I was able to figure out siblings of his and then figure out his parentage and get some actual possible connections to where he was from in what was then the Russian Empire. But Fanny, I know absolutely nothing about.  The brick wall, though, that I think, and I really, really hope that Wikitryas will be able to break through is my, also on my father's side, and this is my Rosenberg line. So these are my second great-grandparents who, they're not the second great-grandparents aren't on there. I'm sure I think it's just my great grandfather, Harry Ross, who was born Rosenberg. And he was born to Benjamin, and we think it's Beatrice, but there's a few Beatrice, Jenny, Annie, you know, she shows up with a couple of names and different documents, which I'm sure we're all very used to for different people. But I have no birth record of my great-grandfather, Harry, who was born supposedly in New York. I have no birth record for his older sister, Mini, who was also born in New York, but we do have a record for his youngest brother, Isidore, who was born in Pennsylvania. But we don't really know much about Harry's parents, and that's where I'm hoping people will be able to help on Wikitry, because I'm hoping that someone with a special knowledge of New York records may be able to find something about their time while there, and possibly pull up the birth records for Harry or his sister, Mini, and maybe that will, you know, find something. But we believe that this may be my only German-Jewish line. And part of that reasoning is because most Eastern European Jews came after 1881 when the Tsar was assassinated. And a lot of the German-Jewish immigration is before that. And this family came about 1878. So it's like right on that cusp.  So I'm hoping maybe someone can find something that can pinpoint a specific area for that as well. And then I have one. Can I go through another brick wall? I don't want to think of too much time. But so another brick wall. This one is actually on my mom's side. And this one will, I think it will require someone with a special knowledge of records in Bessarabia. And this is my line through my great-grandmother Jenny. So this is her father's line. And her mother's line too. But her father's line mostly. So my great-grandmother lived to be 109. But her father died when she was seven. And we know very little about him. We believe that he's from Grodno based on some information we've been able to pull. I do have a photo of him, but because he died in 1904, there's very little on him. And trying to correlate any sort of records back from Grodno is extremely difficult. So that's one of the other brick walls that I would really point out. And then I guess I'm going to include one more. Just one more. This one is going to be special because I do know that I have my mito YDNA profile hooked up. I don't know how much the people participating will be able to access through that. But on my purely maternal line, that is one of my other brick walls. So this one ends with my second great-grandmother who was born Skowacki. But we don't know where she was born. She might have been born in Kiev. She might have been born somewhere in what would be present day Poland. The records are online and digitized. But as is mentioned on this billions of times, I don't have the time to research my own family that much. So it's going to take someone with knowledge of Cyrillic language or Hebrew. If someone knows Hebrew and can use Google Translate to figure out what books to look at. But the revision lists, vital records, all of that are up and available from Kiev. And I am hoping to find this side of that family in those records and figure out more about my second great-grandmother. So those are the brick walls I'll talk about. Yeah. Okay. And besides the obvious brick walls, what do you overall hope to see, hope to get out of participating in the challenge? And I know you've watched our challenge videos. So honestly, I think one of the most exciting things for me is knowing that as everybody's researching, they're probably going to fall across little pieces that I've left on the internet, whether it be talking in forums over the years or like on Genie, we have projects, which is very similar. I forget what you call it on WikiTree. But I know that you have those special pages for like a specific town. Space pages. Yes. So like I have Genie projects, but then I also have like Facebook groups with different information. And then I have, I have my blog, I have my videos, which I've already put in the G2G a link to some, you know, a playlist that'll have a lot of good information. But I'm kind of excited to know that throughout the week, people will kind of be discovering all these little gems across the internet that I've left. So. Yeah. So I've already pinned the link to your playlist in the discord room for anybody that didn't see it out in the forum. They can catch that link in discord now. And then we did have a couple of questions from your captain who will be Laura. Do you have pictures on your primary tree that we can use? Yes. So I am totally fine with anyone using those pictures. I will mention any pictures that are from Find a Grave. I always contact whoever took the photo to get permission. So if there are any photos where it says that it's from Find a Grave, contact the original person to get their permission because, you know, I just need permission to post it. But yeah, beyond that, all the photos and stuff go for it. Yeah, it'll be great to see all those in the, in the tree. Yeah. So it's a lot of fun.  And then we do have our DNA expert. Would you like her to write confirmation statements for your profiles? Yeah. Yeah. I went through, like I said, I tried to hook up my DNA stuff, my GEDMATCH number so people would be able to pull that up. Might oh why. I don't know if I can give more access technically. But yeah, go for it. Any, any stops people can pull. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. I think, I think that's, unless we have any questions from the, the viewers, or if Jerry, you have any last questions or Melissa, you have any final comments before we go or? I'm just very excited. I just think everyone, each and every person that contributed because I know we all know what kind of work it takes and I'm so, I'm grateful. Thank you. You're welcome. And I know everybody's super excited. I don't know who's more excited, us or Jared. I'm so excited. I have, I know it's said a billion times, but I, I barely ever get to work on the tree. I'm always working on, on cases or other people's trees or, you know, so when I like every once in a while, I'll find maybe an hour or two to kind of go through, through some records, but to have a whole week. I'm so, so excited. Apparently, Yoke is, she says, Morse's father, Abraham is said to be born in Amsterdam. My second, no record and 10 year table. 8030. So that's actually, that's an interesting thing he should mention. That is, that has been a question mark in my research, because there's also no record going through the GRO index that I could find that would make sense for Abraham being born in London, which is where he would have been born otherwise because Abraham's parents immigrated from Amsterdam to London. So he was either born in Amsterdam or he was born in London and the UK census records say both.  So yeah, that, that'll be a, that'll be a good mystery to solve if you can solve it because yeah, I haven't been able to find an actual birth record for me either, but his wife was born in London and her parents in Amsterdam. That I was named after my great grandfather, Jack, who was my favorite ancestor that I chose for this. So your favorite answer is the one you were named after. Okay, well, unless there's anything else, we will probably wrap up. Thank you, everyone who's watching. Thank you, Melissa and Garrett. Thank you to our captains. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you all of Wikitree. And please don't forget to like and subscribe. You can check us out on wikitree.com. And we will see you next Wednesday to wrap up Jared's week. We'll have a countdown. There's a countdown. Also Saturday, we have our weekly live cast Saturday morning where we recap the week and we gave a little, little, little hints as to what, how's it going? And I believe this Friday is Friday, date night. Julie, you can correct me if I'm wrong because I know she's in the chat. But yeah, check us out next week, Wikitree Challenge Wednesday. And until next time, everybody, I think next week is at 8 p.m. Correct, Mindy? Yes. Same time, same place. Goodbye.


Hi everyone, Joe for jasmiescasebreaks.com with a random number block randomize that they're doing here live at the national Random number block break for the following teams right there. Everyone knows how this works by now You should these two know thanks Sean. Thanks PJ. They're the numbers right there. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it. Oh That's right. I forgot that we can't do it this way shoot All right, we're gonna have to use psychic science ladies and gentlemen. Sorry about that. I think everyone on the same server has been using Random.org so we've been able to use it right here All right, so we're just gonna use Ram daughter. Let's see if I could use this here We're gonna generate a number between 1 and 12 and we're gonna randomize each list 11 times So this won't keep track with so just follow along with me one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 and 11th and final time and one two three four five six seven eight nine Ten and eleven the final time All right PJ with six Sean with two PJ at nine and three Sean with zero and eight PJ seven one and four and Sean with five in a separate video will be the break itself definitive Coming up next live from Chicago


What's up everybody, I'm the Mangooz, you are awesome and I think it's about time for another summary of the Paragon projects. I've been seeing a lot of questions and confusions out there, so I'm going to quickly go through each one and talk about who's developing it, the projected release date, how to access it, how far along they are when it comes to console release, the current roster, and a quick summary. I do need to note here that they are all on PC, but they all plan to eventually release on PlayStation. They all also plan for the final release to be free to play, however some of them have crowdfunding or paid access. I'm going to strictly focus on the projects that are directly resurrecting Paragon. If this video was helpful, please consider hitting the like button and subscribing if you haven't done so. And please, share this video with anyone you know that needs this information. I'm going to go in order of release date here starting with OverPrime. OverPrime's developer is the Korean team Soul Leave. Their projected release date is already available, anybody can play it right now. Access anyone with a PC can download the game via their website or Discord. Console Progress. They have included controller support and they're working on other compatibilities. Their roster is Countess, Sparrow, Fingmeow, Grim, Howitzer, Murdoch, Sereth, Severog, Twinblast, Muriel, Chimera, Kong, Rampage, Gideon, Kalari, Borus, Bellica, Narbash, The Fey, Greystone, Shinbi, Grux, and Steel. The largest roster and the most accessible, they have a legacy map with travel mode, but the game plays more like late monolith. Now for Predecessor, the developer is Omega Studios. The projected release date is 10 July 2020. The game will be in Alpha and you can register on their website for Alpha Access. It's a lottery, there's no guarantee that you'll get in, and it's available through Steam. As far as console progress, they have worked on controller support and some other functionality. Their roster includes Murdoch, Sparrow, Muriel, Severog, Fingmeow, Gadget, Gideon, Chimera, and Narbash. A smaller roster but with more fleshed out animations and effects, it feels the most like actual Paragon and it plays like early monolith. Now for Fault, the developer is Strange Matter Studios. Their projected release date is 17 July 2020. This one will be in Early Access and can be purchased and the game is available through Steam. As far as consoles go, they have applied for PlayStation partnership, they have controller support, and they have worked on other capabilities and functionality. Their roster includes Twinblast, Gideon, Severog, Greystone, Chimera, Steel, Countess, Sparrow, Murdoch, Muriel, Narbash, Bellica, and Boris. A good sized roster with some changes to some abilities, a well thought out item system and aspects that you choose at the beginning of the game, the map is reminiscent of monolith and Fault feels the most like it's own game with an improvement upon old Paragon. Now for Core, the developer is Metabuff. The projected release date is currently unknown, Access, that's also unknown, Console Progress, they have applied for PlayStation partnership, their roster is currently unknown. Metabuff were among the first to begin developing a Paragon sequel, however they missed their alpha date more than a year ago and have gone silent ever since. They do assure me that they are still working on the game. I hope that's helpful, all the links to these company socials are in the description below, for now this is the Mangoo signing off, you guys have a good one. Mangoo!


update. Good afternoon folks Steve Rhodes coming to you live from the shores of very sunny Delray Beach Florida this year one PM update currently we have all the U.S. indices that we track trading to the upside now is up 500 points one and a half percent two percent for the S&P 84 points NASDAQ two and seven tenths percent that's three hundred and fifty five points Brussels up nineteen one percent some is up four percent hundred fifteen points so we've got some movers out here you've got gold flat traded eighteen eighty nine silvers off thirty three cents twenty three seventeen is a print their lights recruit up to twenty nine one oh four thirty one natural gas is up forty one cents seven twenty six is its print and a thirty year treasury back twelve ticks one forty one oh five let's go take a look at uh let me set this up let's go look at our other market update charts out here give me a moment we'll get this all configured um and uh the reason why i want to go to these charts here is because we'll see some patterns so far we're not going to see any patterns in the ES the NQ or the Dow no bottoming signals or anything along those lines right now the daily charts just suggest this is a counter trend move and the price targets could be their old ULs also are in change lines forty three twenty for the ES thirteen five sixty for the NQ thirty four oh twenty four the Dow now those numbers are going to change a bit but that's your basic target area you see the US dollar index today's bar number nine of a TD nine count says you could see a top be formed between today and tomorrow can be the high of the uh bars eight nine or the bar following bar number nine so you've got a potential short-term topping signal there inside of gold today's going to become bar number eight so that says we could see a bottom form here between today and Monday silver the same pattern uh now in silver you've got a very distinguished A to B equal CD to the downside it's at the one to one level so in addition to you having bar number eight the oscillator in change line changing colors it'd be ideal to get some type of bullish reversal candle to confirm a bottom there lights being crude is trading into resistance the oscillator in change line it's really right about where it's pretty right now but a price can close above this level we're looking at a move to one ten twenty two natural gas still finding reasons it's got a sell the d-point pattern but price just consolidating with inside his daily profile so no real damage done there uh right now the signal would be that price is likely to pull yeah it's a june contract seven oh eight so we're pretty you know i got seven twenty six so that's because i had the uh wrong contract up on my screen on the other chart so i'll change that 30 year treasury it's got a nice td nine count bottom but price is trading back below the bottom of its profile so uh bottom signal here a little bit suspect at one oh two in the afternoon folks stay tuned for the trader's end show but if you're off to start your Thursday have a terrific one and thanks so much for joining us


I've probably got like 1,000 grams of protein in here, it's probably like 1,000. Today we're going to be showing you guys how to not get anything but super sexy and lean in airports. So first of all you know it's ended fitness. We're all about not being in a gym and about doing jump rope and body weight exercises so that you can just travel all over the world and still have a lean body. So the issue that we face more often than not is that when you're in an airport it's super tough or we used to think it was super tough to eat healthy but we're going to show you why that is a bunch. That's right baby you want to go get some snacks? Let's get some motherfucking snacks. What are those? Ah sour cream and onion cringles. On cool man. Boom convenience store done I'm feeling lean already. You know man I got double meat burrito bowl I got some guac I got a little bit of uh rice and black beans here and some ensalada. It's chicken but it's double protein so it's chicken and it's steak and it's guacamole and it's rice and it's black beans and the pico de gallo my man. Oh you like that? You like that in your face? Yeah I bet you do. But tumbo I drop it low I go real quick and I do it because I'm lean flow what


So this Google team is like angels in disguise who have really solved most of my problems in a very innovative way In a very interactive way you do the player. It is the playlist application was really Very useful concept which was been explained But this is excellent where we can store them in our own playlist and we can show it to the students whenever it is necessary But when we are access to internet we can have all the latest contents. So what is happening right now? Recently uploaded everything we can get it on the net. So right now we are having nearly 250 plus students and Teachers around 30 with a ratio of 10 is to 1. It's no use having many students and not training them well because Money is secondary, but whatever work we are doing we have to be satisfied with our work Because the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow Paper and pen is not the only way of testing a child's performance the overall development of a child So that you go grow socially morally ethically a well-developed citizen of India He'll have a good reputation in the society will be able to earn his livelihood in a decent manner My name is Sushina Kallivani Principal of R&D Svidya Niketan. If teachers are not taking keen interest of teaching Technologically the effective teaching then there will be no use. What we don't know to operate the computer or Technology it is even though if we are M.A.C. graduate double-degree graduates It is like illiterate when we know the computer operating system internet system It is like the whole world will be in our hand like we acquired the knowledge in such a way that It is lifelong. We can use it So this is This is just an example of Working on the drive. All kids are operating if teachers are not knowing about me It's a useless things. Classroom teaching becomes more effective more interesting and it creates interest in the children also And it becomes a very good lesson to the children So the idea again is if I have 10 concepts that are going to come in my test in a month's time or in a means time If my teacher can actually put videos of those 10 concepts together and share that channel or that Playlist with me saying that you know this is for revision or this is for review We are all angels in disguise for me Very helpful because whatever problems I was facing you are giving me with a solution. Thanks a lot