Hello and welcome to NewsClick, I am Sumedha and today we are bringing you a glimpse of some of the most important stories that we report about at NewsClick. With four months to go for the general election of 2019, the BJP has already started doling out benefits. The GST rates have now been slashed with only 28 items in the 28% bracket. The items that are now going to cost much lesser than what they used to before are computer screens, television screens and video games. The new rates were announced by Arun Jaitley on Saturday. Tax on 17 items and 6 services has now been reduced. This is likely to cost a revenue impact of over 5,500 crores. This major tax rationalization is coming after recently Narendra Modi announced to bring 99% of the goods under the slab of 18% or lower. Talking of promises, after facing the farmer's ire and multiple protests in Maharashtra, the state government of Maharashtra announced a relief package of over 150 crores for onion farmers. The relief package offered by the Devendra Fadnavis government is a move that is now being seen as something which was too late and too little. Series of agitations in Maharashtra have gained momentum, with farmers being compelled to sell fresh onion produce at as less as 1 rupee per kg. The farmers bearing the brunt of the agrarian distress in the state should have been given a package of rupees 1500 crore. However, the state government has given them only a budget of rupees 150 crore, 10 times less than the earmarked amount. The BJP government came to power on the promise of fighting corruption and graft. A latest RTI reply shockingly shows that the Lokpal selection committee did not even meet once in the last four years, making it clear that the process of selection of the Lokpal was shrouded in secrecy all this while. The reply also highlights that the committee met only once in March 2018, 45 months after the BJP government first came into power. The RTI reply highlights the lack of the commitment on the part of the BJP government and also goes on to show the possibility of a breakdown of the framework of accountability and transparency in India. The activists of the People's Health Movement in the MENA region have called for a boycott of a mental health conference in Israel. The upcoming conference in Tel Aviv is being termed as an acceptance of violent and racist policies of the Israeli government. The activists have also called the Israeli occupation clearly as an impediment on the health of the Palestinian people as well as their mental health. Israel's occupation of the Palestinian region has caused a massive health crisis, especially in Gaza where the continuous blockade leads to medicine shortages. The crisis in health was particularly highlighted in the Great March of Return where those who were victims of incessant firing could not access medical help. That's all that we have for you in this episode of the Daily Roundup. Keep yourself updated and follow our stories on www.newsclick.in. Also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and subscribe to us at YouTube.


Live from Union Square in the heart of San Francisco. It's theCUBE covering Spark Summit 2016, brought to you by Databricks and IBM. I'll hear your hosts, John Walls and Peter Burris. And welcome back to the Spark Summit 2016. We're here in the Hilton, San Francisco for the first of two days of coverage here on theCUBE. I'm John Walls and I'm joined by Peter Burris, who is the Chief Research Officer at Wikibon on theCUBE. Peter, good to have you with me here. It's great to be here, John. You guys have been doing a wonderful job. I know we got a great new guest. Absolutely. Joe Horowitz is with us, Director of Strategy and Business Development at IBM Analytics. Hi guys. Good to see you, sir. Good to be here. Yeah, first off, give me your take of what's happening here. I mean, this shows come a long way in a very short period of time. Yeah, I mean, Spark continues to, you know, maintain its momentum. And I would say it's definitely, you know, you see it here, there's a lot of interest. I think there's more booth. The booths got smaller, I feel like, but there's more of them in here, which I think is a good thing.    I'm like, no, you know what? Keep it in a smallish space and just like, you know, keep this concentrated community in here. And I think that's what, you know, the Databricks team and the Spark Summit team has done really well, has been not to try to like capture, you know, like and start inviting Hadoop, you know, ecosystem folks here and like try to bring in more and more ecosystem folks.  And I think you, you can see that kind of like, you know, the interest of people that it's just, you know, it's about Spark. So I think it's a good thing. But John, I'd actually say that we should define something that we might call the cube heat index, which is the temperature around the cube is the constant. The enthusiasm of the energy index. The constant of the enthusiasm of the number of people milling around. It's about 99.9 right now. It's been like that all day. And certainly you feel it. You felt it at the key notes I thought this morning and a lot of deep learning discussion. But, you know, to hear from Mattheza, Harry and talking about 2.0 and what's happening with that. So I hear all these things. I mean, why in your opinion, why Spark thriving? Why is it taken off? So Spark has really become the true, you know, analytic operating system. We said that last year when we're starting to see it more and more.  You know, our team, we launched a Spark Technology Center last year around this time. And we've really put our money where our mouth is.  I mean, clearly we have a background in SQL.  So, you know, it's exciting to see like the leading edge is still going, right? That they're not like stopping.  So, ultimately, I mean, it's always about the user at the end of the day. You know, the value, whether it's for a customer or an individual customer or an enterprise. So, I mean, what does Spark do, you think, from a unique standpoint that creates that one-of-a-kind value or that special value right now? So, again, it's all about the people, right? So, IBM Design, you know, came on strong the last couple of years. You can see it across our portfolio, across analytics, with what's analytics for, you know, the citizen analysts, all the way up to what we're doing in our cognitive businesses. And we're doing the exact same thing as we think through Spark and analytics and as an analytic operating system. And so, you know, this week, we announced the data science experience. So, instead of trying to be, you know, the one notebook to rule them all, we really focused in and we did a lot of research. We interviewed hundreds of data scientists to really figure out what makes them tick and what they're really looking for in terms of an experience and an environment for them to really be successful. Last year, you put your money where your mouth is, and stepped up in a huge way in terms of your commitment to the Spark community. What have you seen? What's the ROI been for IBM in that year? And what do you think, even beyond that, what do you think that contribution has done to take Spark to the next level? So, when we think about ROI, I think most folks just think about like, okay, what is the incremental revenue that we added to the top line? Spark is now being used across IBM, Watson, cloud, commerce, you know, everywhere, right? And that's telling, right?  It's actually our development is faster. So like, when the example of data works, we went from 50 million lines of code down to five million, right, that's a huge drop in terms of, you know, how fast we can bring products to market. The data science experience we built very, very quickly on Spark. That's why it was built Spark native. And we're able to iterate extremely fast. And so the ROI for us is really about bringing products to market faster and also iterating faster because look, this is an emerging market. You know, we're not sure exactly where this data is going to take us, right? Is it AI? Is it, you know, this or that? And so, you know, if you're not able to work agile and think, you know, quickly and be able to put out products quickly, then you're going to be left behind. So without speaking for IBM. Yeah, I'll answer the question slightly differently and then ask you a question. So probably six or seven years ago, I attended one of the IBM partner world conferences. Yep. And Ginny Romady, the CEO, was there and she stood in front of everybody and she said, IBM is going to serve the CMO. Get to know the CMO. They're going to be an incredibly important person in your lives to all of these partners. Yep.  IBM since then has, you know, not just limited itself certainly to serving the CMO, but has been active at bringing out technologies that really can help businesses improve the engagement that they have with their markets. Yep. And the technologies that are very important to IBM, proving that are the ones that provide greater cash aid for IBM as an innovator. IBM has always had to walk that fine line between following for the enterprise and innovating for those kind of core problems. Yep. And so here's a question. Shoot. It seems as though this, one of the ROI's, one of the big sources of value to IBM is that Spark and your relationship to Spark and your investment with Spark are a proof point of your commitment to going after that new class of problem that's associated with engaging markets and doing a better job of operations. Yep. How are you, what are you doing? Are you making any announcements that are really intended to increase the size of the community, increase the engagement with the community, and open up new avenues for new problems? Yep, so those are great points.  Well, everyone was still talking Hadoop. Even a lot of the Hadoop vendors. So we were willing to kind of, you know, disrupt ourselves, frankly, because we had a Hadoop, we have a Hadoop distribution, and we were willing to do that with Spark because there was still a lot of questions, like, well, Spark, replacement for Hadoop, is it not, you know, we don't have to go there. But we were the first through the door that said, we see this, we see this as a strategic, you know, opportunity, and we invest it. We open source system ML, which is essentially what, you know, our cognitive business is built on, is a very, you know, we were the first to do that for machine learning. Then you saw Microsoft and Googles and others come after us. So I think in a lot of ways, you know, we were first through the door in terms of recognizing the value of Spark. And so this year, we're also, you know, some of the first folks are looking at, all right, now that we have this analytic operating system, what do you, what does every operating system need? Well, you need a, you know, integrated development environment. And a lot of users. And a lot of users. And where are you going to find those users? Are they going to go out and teach them all, you know, Scala and these things? I hope so. Scala is a great language, but there's a lot of folks who are you know, you don't hope that they're all going to learn Scala. I do, we partner with LightBend. We're very excited to be supporting Scala. It's a very nice language. But look, there's a lot of our, you know, programmers out there, over two million by our estimate. There's a ton of Python users out there, you know, a lot of SQL folks, you know, that are out there. And look, you know, they're looking at job security, frankly. And so they're, that's what they know. That's how they, that's how they, you know, interact with data. And so we're not going to, you know, And they want to create new value for the businesses that they're in, whether they're software developers or enterprise developers. But here's my point. This is where I'd like to, like to push you on this point. Here's my point. So many, many years ago as a young, as a young IT person, I was in a room as the first, one of the first times I was invited to a management meeting and we were sitting around a table and it was a long time ago. And we're sitting around a table and we were talking about how end user computing was going to unfold. This is the mid 1980s. And one of the most senior guys, developers in the room said, well, they're all going to learn to do programming and C. And we're all looking at each other saying, our executive team is going to learn to do programming and C. And the guy said, if they can't learn to program and C, they should be taken out and shot. And I remember thinking, that's not going to work. The point is, is that there are large numbers of individuals that still want to look at a computer as nothing but a tool that has an extension of how they think. And so, as we bring those new developers, we're all just going to have to come up with new experiences, new ways of bringing new classes to decision makers and problem solving into the community. Yeah, so there's a number of ways to look at this. So you have to think holistically about what you just described. So that's why we have things like Watson, right? And you think about, in a lot of other ways, for different people to consume data and analytics, right? And so, whether it's through the command line interface, whether it's through a, you might be a visual person, or maybe it's question and answer back and forth, you're going to see a ton of different ways that IBM is basically opening data and analytics to a broad set of individuals. And coming back to the data science piece, which is where our focus is today, we also joined the Arc Consortium. So outside of a lot of proprietary stacks, the Arc community has continued to grow because there's 9,000 packages now, right? That exists there for very specific domain problems, right? And so we recognize that, look, there's this community there, they're no different than any other open source community. And they needed the support of someone like IBM to come in and actually bring that in to the enterprise and make it reliable and actually, and link that tightly to Spark so that they can actually work with any type of data. People think like, oh, Spark, it's another big data technology, it's not. I mean, it is, but it's not only that, it's really a translator for working with all types of data. So the complexity piece, that's really the part that we are seeing our clients struggle with. Not the volume piece, I mean, that's important, but I actually think there's more value if you can start working with all types of data, audio, visual, log, whatever, so, yeah, it's exciting. So do you think Spark is going to be that platform that we bring all these formats in under the umbrella of analytics? Yeah, I think Spark has all of the, all of the exact ingredients we need. It has distributed computing, right? It has in memory, it has really elegant APIs that anyone can use and build on. It has a great streaming service. It has machine learning and we're gonna do a lot more to make that better. So it has all of these core components that not only make it useful, it's also very portable. So one of the things that Hadoop struggled with is, I would ask you to go and talk to some of these folks, how many of you have Hadoop installed on your laptop? No one is gonna raise their hand. It's hard, it doesn't even make sense. But how many have Spark installed? I guarantee you all of them will, right? And that's exactly what Linux did for the Unix world, right? No one installed Unix on a laptop. Linus Torvalds went off, bought a PC off the shelf, and he's like, I can't install Unix on this thing. So he reinvented, he scaled it down, took the key components he needed, and then when he was able to put on his laptop. And that's where most folks start today is on their laptop. Before you take off, I know we talked about this past year. Yeah. Let's go forward. Look, if the three of us are sitting here in 2017, knock on wood, what would you consider to be kind of benchmark activity? What would you say, yeah, that was a pretty good year. This is what I expect to see. I really hope that we can expand the community. I really hope that we can get more people involved. I think there's still a lot of fragmentation in the data analytics community. So 2017, I would love to see people rally around Spark as this operating system. There's other competing similar stacks out there, right? Which is great, I appreciate a thriving community. But for this market truly to grow in the way that Linux kind of lifted up the whole computer science era, so to speak. I think we're on the verge of the data science era, and we just need all of these folks to come together and kind of get behind the community and drive a single kind of way for us to think and work with data. So for me, I would love to have data scientists be involved, data analysts be involved, data engineers be involved, chief data officers be involved, and connect that back to application development and forward to the line of business. I think that'll be really exciting. Well now we've got you on tape. A year from now we'll replay, and we'll see how good, it's been a great year certainly, and looking forward to an even better year in 2017. Joel, thanks for joining us here. Thanks for having me. Awesome. The Cube continues here from San Francisco Spark Summit 2016.


Hi, everyone. Joe for Jaspy's casebrace.com, coming at you with a full case of 2023 Bowman Baseball. This is Jumbo edition, random player break, number one.  All right, so there are the players plus combos right here. So it's a giant list, right, but includes all of the players on the checklist. Now, if you bought one of the first 28 spots in the break, you got a chance to win an extra spot. That's our first dice roll. Second dice roll will be your names and player names, and we'll have a trade window as well. So big thanks to the first 28 right there for getting in on it. Thanks to the others who bought spots straight up. Congrats to the people who won spots right there for a total of 43 spots. Let's do this dice roll first. So name on top. After six, we'll get an extra spot, five and a one. One, two, three, four, five, and a one, six and final time. Jeremy Short, there you go. JS, after six, with an extra spot going your way. So thanks for being an early bird. There's an extra spot. Now, let me multiply these 43 spots by four. So there's one already. There's two, three, and four. So that's 172 total. So now let's get everybody's names here, put them into a clean list, and let's gather all the players and put them into this other list. And we'll put the results of that in the first tab. Now, let's randomize names and players three and a two, five times. One, two, three, four, and five. And five. Got Jacob down to Jacob. Three and a two, five times for the players. One, two, three, four, and five. So after five, we got Angel Janal, down to the Luis Ravelo combo. These are way too many names for me to read out, but I'll show you the list as is, and then I'll alphabetize by your first name so you can see all of your players grouped together. But I just wanna show you the list as is just for the video. Have that on wax. All right, there's your entire list right there. Great. So look at that, Matthew Nielsen with the Drew Jones spot. Very nice, Matthew. Good luck. So let's sort now by column A, and then you can see all of your players grouped together. Aaron, Barry, Brad, Brian, Craig, Darren, David, David M, Ed P, Eric Houston. I think Eric was here earlier with the spot that you won. Got that Spencer Jones spot. Gabe P, Jacob, Jason, Jason Cox, Jason Fractor, two different Jason's than Jay. Jeremy and your early bird spots. Jim Way, Jose with the spot that you won and your last spot, Mojo. Got Mark, got Matt, there's Matthew Nielsen, there's that Drew Jones spot right there. Michael and one of my favorite beers, Cifico. Mickey, Neal, Nicole, Oliver with the spot that you won. Got Mr. Rob Hepler here, the Hepcat. Robert, Ryan, Scottie, Scott G, Steven. And last but not least, Tristan. There you go, we're gonna pause the video. We're gonna open up the trade window. When we come back, we'll see if there's any trades. Then we'll have the break, stick around, be right back. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. No deals were done, so the list that you saw remains the same. Now, for those of you watching live, I've shared the link to this spreadsheet in the chat. So you'll be able to go directly to this list and just keep track of your players right there. I know we just wanna put the final printout on wax, on tape, on the record, on video, as they say. And there's everybody right here. All right, now let's pop open this case. Let's see what we got, random player break. Yeah, let's have some fun, Mick. Let's see what we got in here. Oh, what happened here? Oh, did I hit it with the case, maybe? And here we go. What's up, Rex? Did I hear, I did not see your question about Ken Golden. There's a Ken Golden Netflix show? That's right, Joe Pizzle. A little random player break with some Bowman. Yeah, you missed it. It's been here, it's been, we've offered that since last Wednesday, I wanna say. Whatever the new release day of this was last Wednesday. It was on the site. It was the Lebron Logo Man, the one I pulled. No? Well, I pulled the one that was from like 2019, 2020 Immaculate Basketball, Logo Man only. And I don't think that was sold through Golden, so I don't think they're gonna highlight that one. I think it went through Leland instead. What's the Ken Golden thing on Netflix? What's that about? All right, so first off, all card ship, except for these vet comments, unless they're numbered, obviously. All right, rookie cards will ship. There may be some, obviously, this is gonna ship Juan Soto to 2.99. Now there may be, obviously, that's gonna ship, but prospect non-first won't ship either. So Spencer Jones is a key player. Who's got Spencer Jones? That's gonna be for Eric Houston with the Spencer Jones. Supposedly a card and memorabilia show. Both produced it. All right, our first autograph is Caden Dana.  Is that what Teddy said, Eric, that he was cramping up? He's standing. A little bit healthier for him. Cam Collier is the guy that we're looking out for as well. That's gonna be for Jose as well. Has the Cam Collier, Eric Brown Jr. combo. Think Manning should have a sketch comedy show? Yeah, maybe. I think they're doing fine with all that advertising money they're getting. I don't think they need to do a sketch comedy show. It's a hassle. You gotta find writers, you gotta find, you know, doing all that. I think they'd rather just get paid by ESPN just to go around and do goofy stuff. I mean, that's a sketch comedy show in and of itself. There's Jet Williams at 399. I think if you watch Peyton's Places on ESPN and Eli's Places, those are pretty hilarious. Those are pretty funny. I think that's where they shine. And they bring out athletes to host. I think we're already getting that Rex on ESPN Plus. And I think they get so much money for the advertising they do. I mean, I think they're kind of at a position where they can do sketch comedy, Rex, in ads where they're getting paid tons of money, much more than they would ever get for doing their own sketch card show. Sketch, sketch card? Sketch comedy show. So I think they've gotten to that unique sort of level. Here is Tommy Speck. Who do I got for the tomorrow night for the Sons or Nuggets? Sons. Ryan Gamsby has Tommy Speck. I do.  I know the Nuggets are good. But I think that's got to be a seven game series. You know, you don't think the Sons can make the, they're definitely going to make the adjustments.  DeAndre Aidan's going to have to step up.  You got to put a body on that, on Yokeitch.   You know, I mean, we're doing our best to stop Jamal Murray. So they'll adjust, they'll adjust. Should have one more autograph out of here, right? We only have two, should have three. On average, that's how they get you. All right, next box. Right.  That is correct. What did he, let me just pull up these 10.  I mean, Jamal Murray went 13 for 24 from the field. What is that? Six of 10 from three. He's shooting 60% from three. Like, do you think that's going to happen again? If it does, I mean, that's on the suns at this point. Game one, sure. You know, you can be like, all right, that's what they're going to do, huh? Suns a little dry. The problem is, suns did kind of, that's going to happen here and there, I feel it. Suns for Durant traded a lot of, a lot of that defensive depth away, but DeAndre Aiden cannot have a plus minus of minus 21, Pizzle. He's got it, he's got, he's the only one that could, that could put it, put a body on Yolkage. And he's got a score over Yolkage too. 14 points, seven rebounds. That's not enough, zero, zero blocks. Tom is asking if I, did I buy Contender's Optic Figure D4? No, I did not. It sold out though, we did that break already. Take a look at the schedule, you'll see when we did it. Take a look at our video list. I see it uploaded already. Remember ladies and gentlemen, the schedule will tell you everything we've done previously for the day. What we're doing currently, and what we're gonna do later on. So you're never in the dark. All right, that's gonna be tricky.  All right, there is Purple Chrome, Shay Whitcomb. Astros Prospect going two. That'll be for Matthew Nielsen with the Whitcomb Jr. plus Ronald Acuna Jr. combo. There's another Spencer Jones bowman first. Spencer Jones, Chrome. And then a green paper to 399 Colby Thomas. Colby Thomas. Joe Pizzle and other basketball fans like Scott maybe. Who do you have in Lakers Warriors? I think the Lakers may have a bit of a size advantage on the Warriors and I think that's gonna be helpful. That's gotta be six or seven games. Oh, and a Spencer Jones Chrome Prospect autograph redemption. That's Eric Houston, I believe. Spencer Jones, Eric Houston with the spot that you won. Nice. There you go, Eric. You're welcome, man. Thanks for getting to that filler. Thanks for giving that a shot. I know I tell everybody, listen, don't do the fillers. They're a waste of money.   But stuff like this happens and I can see why the filler's gonna be attractive. Rex is, Rex, I can't believe you won't ask me my predictions for that game. Rex, I wouldn't ask you for predictions on most things. I'm definitely not basketball. We've got yellow paper Von Grissom to 75. All right, well, you know what, Rex? Let's give you a fair shake. Rex, what do you think? Who do you have in the Lakers Warriors series? How many games do you think is gonna go? What do you think are a couple keys to the games that'll mean success for each team? What does each team have to do to win that series? Let's hear it. And our third auto is Johan Hel Aponte. 96 out of 4, 99. And that will be for Ed P. You have the Johan Hel, Seiya Suzuki, and Matt Olson combo. Four or two Lakers, I'll take that. Lakers are too hot. Gilo is saying LeBron thrives on Bear Pokers and the Warriors don't got that unless Tramon slips up. There's a good chance Tramon could slip up. Oliver has dubs in five. Honestly, if I had to go out, you'd have to say Warriors in because of Curry, Lakers like to choke four or three Warriors. Yeah, they showed how much they choke in that Grizzly series, Rex. They showed how much they choke down the stretch when they were one of the hottest he has basketball. This is why we don't ask Rex his predictions. And Rex is probably just parroting what Joe Pizzle is saying about basketball. I got a Randy DeJesus to 125. Warriors in seven, says Joe Pizzle. And the problem with the, yeah, the Lakers do have a size advantage, but the Warriors, good perimeter shooters obviously, when is the understatement, but they've got great perimeter shooting. That's something the Lakers still have some trouble defending. So if the Warriors start shooting threes at will, which pulls AD away from the pain and defending the perimeter, then that's a lot of Steph Curry flying by Anthony Davis and breaking down defenses. So that's going to be a challenge for them for sure. But yeah, I mean, the key is always Anthony Davis, as always. Although I will say that if, this is a big if, what are the playoff odds now? Well, those odds must be out. If the Lakers beat the Warriors, then I think they're going to the finals. The Lakers beat the Warriors, then I think that means they're going to the finals. If, that's a good question. All I was saying, if Steph beats LeBron again, does Steph get into the goat conversation? I mean, if the Warriors knock out another championship, then absolutely. LeBron, Kevin Durant, Western Conference final? Absolutely. I would love to see that. There's Josh Hood to 4.99. That will be four. That's going to go to Ed Peep, who has the Josh Hood-Otani combo. I don't know if there's too many Otani's in here, but there could be some numbered cards of Otani or something like that. He's on the checklist. But I think we have some, just kind of putting our fan biases aside, I think we've got a pretty good set of playoff teams here, some playoff matchups to watch.  You know, like Sixer Celtics are going to be fun to watch. Phoenix Denver is going to be fun to watch. Lakers Warriors, I mean, I guess Miami, Nix? That's, and that's still a good series too. Is that the worst series? Not a fan of the Nix's area yet. Nix Heat, Oliver's saying. There's a Marion Boyd, it's 250, Purple Chrome. You know, and I still think that's going to be a good series too. I mean, I'd still watch it. What's the ideal Final Four? What's the ideal Eastern Conference Final matchup and Western Conference Final matchup? I'm sure the NBA and the TV networks would love to have seen Warriors, Lakers in the Western Conference Final, but I think that's, it's already happening, obviously it's happening now. But Warrior Sons, yeah, no offense at Denver, but I don't know if, I think the matchup with the most ratings, yeah, Warrior Sons has got to be to 150, Julio Rodriguez, blue paper. And we've got Pedro Ramirez. Yeah, I think the, I think LeBron and the Sons would be pretty good too, but not as good as Warrior Sons because I think, you know, the KD storyline, obviously. Pedro Ramirez, that will be for Stephen Carney, as the Pedro Ramirez-Gavin-Williams combo. Yeah, for the Kevin Durant, Golden State Warrior storyline, I think will be great. Can you imagine the words that Dreymon will have for KD during the series? I think that's going to be a lot, that would be a lot of fun. In the East, what do you think? All you're saying, Nix and Celtics. Yeah, I think that might be the best. Got a big market team in the Nix and the Celtics, and definitely want to knock out a championship with that squad. Got Kyle Harris into 499. And then what would be the best finals match above those final four teams all over?  Or no, has there been too much Warriors oversaturation? But maybe you need like a villain. Everyone's rooting against the Warriors because you've seen them so much and people will tune in. And we got a Ryan Clifford, the big red dog. Ryan Clifford is going to go to Jason Fracto as the Ryan Clifford-O'Neill-Cruz combo. Randall's a mess, or maybe he burned me on a parlay, says Eric Houston. Scott says, I do not include Randall on parlays anymore. Lesson learned. First Drew Jones. Script writers, Gilo saying might have LeBron back this year. Yeah, that's right. There's Miguel Blitz to 299. Oh shoot, this is almost over already. Less than 50 seconds left. Colorado down by one, empty net. Seattle could move on to the next round. Hockey. We'll do an autograph recap at the end of this too. Box four.  It's like a group break. I know when people don't do well in a popular product, they just don't do well in a number of breaks.  One parlay goes wrong and man, it's like, man, Julius Randall's done. Even though he's just went healthy, a pretty solid player. It's kind of, I don't know how much load management Julius Randall's done, but you kind of have to feel for Kauai Leonard, who has been load managed and all that. And in spite of all of their best efforts, he tears a meniscus or something like that early round of the playoffs and then that's that. Paul George bends his knee back a couple of weeks beforehand. That's that. I mean, which I think may be a good example of, hey, what's the point of load managing when you just get hurt at any time? Just gotta live your life. Just go play the game and let the chips follow where they may.  Does Kauai have to play zero minutes? Can you not put them out there for 15, 20 minutes or so? Call that the load management? I mean, I do get the argument for load managing. You know, I think Greg Popovich kind of popularized that. But now I feel like you could argue that Pop was probably doing it for smart reasons because he's a very smart coach. And I feel like everyone's just kind of ran with it and it's kind of gotten out of control.  First expansion team to win first playoff series against defending champions. I feel like there's a lot of qualifiers involved there, but nevertheless, it still stands. I don't know how many times an expansion team has gone to the playoff where they're facing the... First autograph of the box is Vaughn Brown. 58 out of 150. Going with a, what, like a van's shoe symbol right there. Maybe a little division sign if you're in elementary school. That goes to the Giants, or sorry, that goes to Vaughn Brown. Not the Giants, that's gonna be for Neal Schumann. Is that right? A lot of NHL teams actually, and Vegas went to the, I guess Vegas did go to the finals in their first day, but they didn't lose. A lot of other teams have to. I guess I feel like NHL expansion, whenever there's, they've had some expansion teams recently have been pretty generous with their expansion drafts. Is that part of the reason, Jason Jackson? All this, you know what? My tower, this might be a little surprising to some people, but I have not seen that movie. I have not seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Here's Alejandro Osuna, Aqua, a wave to 125. Hockey needs a three point line, says Gilo. If you're gonna give him a three point line in hockey, wait, are you awarding three goals? Gilo, that's a lot. That would have to be on the goal line, if you shoot it from the goal line on the other side, on the opposite side, you score a goal. Yeah, I don't think it's gonna work, Jason. There's Jose Ramirez, pink to 2.99, and we've got Manuel Beltre, and that will be for Jay Goins with that one. Any rule changes that should be made in hockey? I think, hockey's like soccer. I feel like, or even like baseball, there's really shouldn't be too many fundamental rule changes. I mean really the only major rule changes that have been tinkered with, I think overtime has been tinkered with a little bit, but fundamental parts of the game, there's Jay's bow into 3.99 paper. I don't know if there's been a call for any changes there. No one says hockey games take too long. So no, I don't think there's any real fundamental, you know, or pace of play changes. Is there anything like that? I don't think so. Not to my knowledge. I mean, I've been watching, every year I've been trying to watch a little more hockey every season. And as a sort of, as a casual fan, there's nothing where I'm just like, oh, that's confusing or I don't understand this or you know, like I wish there, what's more of this or that doesn't make sense or anytime I ask Jason about a question about a rule, it's always like, oh, that makes sense. There's no situation where I'm like, oh, that's just weird. There's nice Edward Julian, by the way, this speckle autograph, he's one of our key players we're looking for, 63 out of 299. Edward Julian goes to Neil. Neil Schoon with the Edward Julian Javier Baez combo. But there's never a moment where I see a weird rule asked like someone about it or asked Jason about it. And I've never heard him go, well, it's just a weird quirk of the NHL or something like that. That's just the way it is. No one likes it, but there might be rules that exist, but none that I've really come across in my casual viewings, where Jason's like, oh, that's a weird rule, that's just the way it is, you know? I wish they'd change it someday. I don't really hear anything like that. I mean, I think a sport like the NFL could stand to simplify a lot of rules. It was Cole Young to 150. I feel like if you just, I mean, maybe growing up with it is a little different because you just kind of learn something every year of your life. But if you just took like, I don't know, let's say you took someone, probably the best example would be like someone who's watched soccer for their entire life. Never even seen a single snap of American football, right? And let's say they're 25, 30 years old or something like that, and that's all they've been watching and that's all they're kind of, it's kind of hard to explain. I mean, the fundamentals I guess are there, but I mean, there's such a huge learning curve in terms of like, penalties. Think about all the penalties. There's false starts, there's off sides, there's too many men along the scrimmage line, can only have so many men there. You know, who's eligible, how come everyone's not able to catch a football? Like they have to learn that. So those big guys up there, they can't catch it unless they tell them they're eligible to catch it.  You know, I feel like it could get pretty overwhelming for someone to kind of learn if they don't like, you know, as a child, you got hours to spend just learning the game, so it's something different, but as an adult, it's different to reinvest in the game. It's not as simple as soccer, per se. They were, who's they, Eric? So they were saying today the timers in the MLB have increased the instances of IL. Yeah, I don't know, that brings to mind one of my favorite games, coincidence or correlation? You know, is it just a coincidence that's happened and people are just connecting dots? Or is there actually correlation? I don't know if we'll really know until the end of the season. If, you know, just to keep track of all the time changes, like what, are pitchers being rushed to pitch the ball? Like, who's getting injured more? I don't see why hitters would get injured more just because of the clock, that doesn't make sense. I suppose pitchers could get injured because they're rushing to pitch, but I don't think they're really being rushed. You know, if they were just like, if it was just like, you pitch, the catcher catches the ball, whips it back and they have to rock another pitch again, like if they kept doing that, I could see that. But if you look at the game, it's really not, it's really not, they don't seem like they're rushed. Like, I feel like they have plenty of time to get the ball back, get the signs, get into their routine, you know, set, wind up and throw. Here's Juan Cerella, or Cerella. And Juan will go to Darren McKenzie, but ultimately, IL listings are up. I mean, let's take a look at some of the IL listings, like who's on the IL and why? And does it have to do with the pitch count? Or the pitch clock, not the pitch count, pitch clock. I would argue that it would be the bases. Now that it's a little more inviting to steal a base, are more players attempting stolen bases and are those players likely to end up on the IL? Players that normally don't steal too much? That's steal, but not that much. Are there a number of steals up? And also, are those the players that are landing on the IL with maybe like a tweaked hammy or a strained calf? You know, something random like that. But I don't see how it would affect, how the clock would affect pitchers, or hitters that is. It would mostly be pitching, if anything. There's a Marion Boyd to 399. And there's Andy Pais, it's a big prospect for the Dodgers. And we have Moises Baesteros, 60 out of 75. This Cubs prospect going to Darren McKenzie, that is 60 out of 75. All these Justin Crawfords, by the way, or go to Jim Wei, that is, Jim Wei Yin. Ooh. I feel something different on the back of my hand, ladies and gentlemen. It is the cool, cool feeling of a printing plate on the back of my index finger, where this card is resting. I feel the cool, coolness of a plate, there it is. Is it autographed? You don't think so. Isn't there usually a numbered card, then the auto? Yeah, not autoed, but a Juan Olmos plate. It was Olmos, an autograph, but just not quite. Juan Olmos going to, it's for Craig McGinnis. Let's hope he becomes a superstar. Super Estrella, Juan Olmos. Craig, all aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-hoo. Any Matt Mervis yet? No, I've not seen a Matt Mervis. So an odd thing happens this game, Whit Merrifield returned to Kansas City a few weeks ago to a warm welcome, stepped out of the box, tip his hat, and I think they called the Pitch Clock Penalty on all. The Pitch Clock gave, they're not sentimental. They don't care about nostalgia or sentiment or anything like that. It's a cold, cold SOB. Doesn't care about former players returning. All right, we got a Yoann El Aponte, another Yoann Hell. Four for Ed P. You know what, that's on the ump. Doesn't the ump start the clock? Who starts the clock? I think the ump starts the clock, right? I think, I was just gonna say, yeah, Oliver, I think Cody Bellinger got the same thing, too. I mean, the umpire should just be like, hey, we're gonna not do the clock. Let's give this first. The ump should know, umps are baseball fans. They should know. They know these players. They know the history. They're not idiots. I blame the ump, Gabe. The ump should have been like, listen, let's give Whit Merrifield time out. Let's give Whit Merrifield his time.   All right, three boxes ago. Pitch clock should never be an issue for most players. Don't think it used to be in the minors. Yeah, well, at least, when did it start in the minors? Three, four years ago, maybe? I guess anyone who was in the minor league system three or four years ago, probably. I don't think Whit Merrifield has ever dealt with a pitch clock in the minor, so.  So I want to say a vast majority of the players actually probably haven't dealt with a pitch clock, if you think about it. What's the average age of players in the major league? Maybe that's not a good metric. What's the average age of starters of everyday starters in major league baseball? I mean, eventually, when all those players, I guess, age out, yeah, eventually, we're kind of in a transitional period. Once all those guys age out, then, was it longer than, yeah, someone looked that up. How long has the pitch clock been in the minors? I want to say it's within the last, I don't think it's as long as, it feels longer, but I don't think it's as long as we think. I don't think it's more than five. It might be four or five years. Is it more than that? All right, another box. Here we go, good luck, everybody. All right, we've got a Carlos Jorge. Man, I love his use of the canvas here. It's strong. That's a player I'm rooting for. A player with a bold autograph, he must be a bold player. Carlos Jorge is for, is for Brian Heyman. Refractor autograph, 17 out of 499. Here we go, number 25 Reds Prospect, according to Baseball America. Yeah, I don't know how the punishment of officials work in different, on all the different leagues. There is some sort of, there is some sort of evaluation system. You know what I mean? Because the only punitive thing that I know of is that if you don't grade out as well, you don't get post season assignments, which is essentially like a bonus for good officials. Because I think it's just more money for those playoff games. So if you're on a playoff, if you're part of the playoff team, that's like an honor, being rewarded for it. So there is an evaluation thing. They just don't roll out there. But it's not public. The NBA kind of does something where, or they will maybe say, yeah, we messed up on this call or that call, but for specific things. But NFL or, NFL or MLB definitely has not adopted that. I think that's a nice little feature that NBA officials do. But I think that's only from the, the officials unions are pretty strong. So, you know, for obvious reasons, they don't wanna put a lot of negative light on themselves. But, but yeah, I don't know. So I don't know what the punishment system is. That's never revealed, you know, by the player or the officials unions. And, you know, probably for obvious reasons, I don't think any officials wanna get called out. So they've probably collectively bargained or whatever, saying that, yeah, we're not gonna, we don't have to. It's a private, it's a private money. It's not, I don't think Major League Baseball really controls too much. Like in the way that I don't know if they could force the Major League Baseball umpires union to like, you know, to take accountability. I suppose they could, Michael Royo, by the way, goes to Craig. That's why.  But I think the umpires union has kinda said, without calling him out, I think it pretty much been like, yeah, we have an evaluation process and we use that to determine who ends up in playoff games. It's not cause we like you or not. Which pretty much says it all. It's Gabriel Martinez to 125. It was Justin Crawford. Well, Rex, that goes into the, goes into what is a reviewable play or not? That has also been collectively bargained and agreed upon. What plays are reviewable when? So there's that. There's Micka Bell to 150 atomic. Now, the argument of course, there's Zack Nito to 175. That is, he got called up too. That goes to Ed P. So I guess the argument is, well, if you're gonna have review cameras out there, let's have everything be reviewable, but everything is not reviewable. So there's complications there too. Oh, NBA reviews are the worst. Yeah. I thought MLB reviews are bad and they are pretty bad, but just especially for some reason this season, like, maybe they've always been that bad, but for some reason I've just, it's just kind of needled me a little bit more. It just bugs me a little bit more this year, the way NBA reviews are taken. Like there's been some complicated ones where I'm like, all right, yeah, I could see why that would take some time. But I've seen some real obvious ones where there's still, there's Manuel Beltre, by the way. That's another one for Jay Gont. But like, I'm like watching that, it's like, it's real obvious and they take like, and the announcers say it's obvious, the crowd isn't, even if it's like an opposing crowd, they're not saying anything because they've seen it on the big screen, and they're just waiting. I don't know what they're waiting for. Is this a problem with the people who are looking at the review? Is it all sent to a central replay center? Why are they taking so long? You know? I feel like half the time, someone went out for a smoke break or something like that. Like one guy in the replay center goes out for a smoke break, and then there's like a big red light beeping in the control room where it's like, we need a replay assistant. All right, two boxes to go.  They run to the thing. Wait, wait, what play am I, where were you? Bob, where were you? I was out for a smoke break. Bob, we're in the middle of the game. We could do that afterwards. There's nothing that's going on. Well, now something's going on. We've been waiting for like four minutes. Yeah, you can't review everything. I mean, you know, I feel like you almost have to be like, let's review nothing and just have it the way it was before or let's review everything. I'm kind of getting to that point. And just be like, listen, you can review everything. I don't know how many reviews basketball gets now. Is it like two, one review? And then you keep, or one challenge, and you keep the challenge if it's successful. Yeah, pivotal moment of the game. I mean, that gets to be a little bit, I mean, I think they already kind of do review there's Jonathan Mahia in Victor, 57 out of 99. That is for Darren McKenzie and the Mahia, Xander Bogart's combo. They kind of do that already, do they not? I feel like there are a few moments where in pivotal moments they're not reviewing. I don't know, I've heard people argue that every moment is pivotal, Rex. Let's say your pitchers in a, your pitchers in a bases loaded jam in the second inning, it's two outs, you know, and they could get out of this inning with one more out. But then there's that one play that happens that turns into an extra batter which turns into a crooked number, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's Colson Montgomery to 125, Bowman Scott's top 100, Aqua at number 43 on the list. Colson Montgomery will go to Oliver. There's Martin Gonzalez to 199 for Seattle. Could be analysis paralysis, bi-analysis, however you want to say, well who's that, I really didn't see that, a really bad quality, ended up being the last track out of the game.   Now the argument is that in the bottom of the ninth, every pitch is pivotal. So are you saying you can review every pitch in the bottom of the ninth? There's Myro Shendrick Martinez, 78 out of 100. Goes to Jay Goins, daughter's prospect. I mean, if it's a blatant bad call that everyone knows is a bad call, but I like how often, I mean, I'm not trying to be, that's that, I'm just trying to explain, I'm just trying to illustrate just how tricky it could be. It's easy to say, well just a bad call, but then how many bad calls? Is it every batter, every pitch in the bottom of the ninth? How much time are you willing to give up in a game to argue those? Cause then at that point, you should just be like, well, let's just have an automatic ump.  That way they'll be never any, they'll never be a problem. Which I kind of wouldn't mind by the way. As the years go on, there's Jordan Diaz to 399.  It's all a waste of our time. Here's Matthew Wood. There's Jim Wei with Matthew Wood.  Just robo and no one can argue with it. Let's just really dial in robo umping. That can adjust to different heights of players, different batting stances, all that sort of stuff. Let's make it super high end, super state-of-the-art. Not just what you see on TV today, but just let's just really make it some of the most amazing technology ever. Let's just put that out there. Humans can still decide, can still decide outs on the bases. Got a James Wood purple paper to 250. I mean, yeah, if we can have robo cop, I know that was maybe a failed experiment, but I feel like if we have the technology to build robo cop, we have the technology to build robo ump. Why can't we just take the robo cop technology and put it towards robo ump technology? There's Ariel Almonte, 56 out of 499. I mean, Eric Houston, I saw the same documentary, robo cop, that's a good documentary. And we saw firsthand what robo cop can do. Barry Roberts has Ariel Almonte. We watched the documentary, we see what robo cop can do. Good and bad. Right, amazing documentary, Eric's saying. So we know what robo cop can do. Good and bad, we've seen the documentary, we've seen what it is. Maybe there are some issues with it, but I think it has shown that we have the technology to build a robo ump. We need justice in the strike zone, ladies and gentlemen. We need justice in the strike zone. Are you favorite of taking humans out of a referee action only in baseball or just in other sports?  Or maybe just use more robo technology in more black and white issues, you know what I mean? They do that with offsides, the offsides rule in soccer.  There's computer technology that'll dictate, oh, this guy's shoulder was over, one foot was offsides. I feel like that's important for soccer.  Especially as fans, when we can see when we can see a box on the screen and we can see where the pitches are landing inside the box, you know what I mean? When it gets to that kind of technology, like, you know, there's a lot of like, you know, Monday morning umps, if you want to call it, is it couch umps, couch umpires who are just like, that's not right, you know, like, right. They use that Hawkeye technology in tennis. Are you telling me we can't use that for baseball? Just for balls and strikes, which is the thing that we seem to be debating the most over something that should be sort of clear and obvious. The blue line of scrimmage on them is still not in, still inaccurate. Yeah, I got to look into this Jilo, but I used to be outraged about the same thing. But someone or like why there was an argument like why first downs can't just be automated or something like that? Because I think ultimately the camera only accounts for where they see the ball on the TV broadcast, something like this. If there was some science involved that I didn't wrap my head around. But I think on the field, the refs and the side judges are coordinating to exactly where the football is on the line of scrimmage. Let's say we're looking down the field here on this camera angle so the end zone is back there. And so like I think where they're putting it, they're lining it up with the side judges over here. And the camera that's looking down on the field on a football game, yeah, I think there's perspective issues with that too, Mike. There's something I'll have to look that up. There's Julio Rodriguez paper to 4.99. And cameras are placed in, it doesn't seem like it, but cameras are placed in different angles in different stadiums, because they're all built differently. So camera wells in one stadium will be at another part of the stadium, which also complicates issues. There's Lazaro Montes, 77 out of 125. That is a lunar parallel, lunar aqua maybe? Yeah, I'll have to look that up. There were some ESPN E60 should do a story on it, but there's Randy DeJesus. But pretty much there's a reason why humans are still marking downs and ball positions and stuff like that. And why that chain gang still exists.  And here we are figuring out, not figuring out an accurate strike zone. In the beloved game of baseball. That's un-American. Un-American folks.  Hi, I'm from 2023.  I mean, how disappointed would he be? He's like, I guided this country, you know, out of a civil war, guided this country through a civil war.  He'd be like, we have not advanced at all as a society. There's Yenir Fernandez, 62 out of 150. A little color match there. Blue Chrome for the boys in blue. Blue Chrome, take two. Blue Chrome for the boys in blue. That's gonna go to Scott Goodman. Oh, Rex. Would Lincoln know what baseball is? Open a history book, Rex. Open a history book, Rex. Actually, I don't know if he would or not, but early forms of baseball were played in various union and confederate camps throughout the civil war. Played a lot. Organized baseball, as we know, it probably didn't happen until much later. But many forms of baseball were happening during those times. One of the soldiers' favorite pastimes. But baseball, as we know, it probably wasn't until double day. Organized all of it. Codified some rules and figured some stuff out late 1800s, 1890s maybe. So I'm not entirely sure if I had a 399 green paper. I don't know if Lincoln, I'm sure Lincoln knew of baseball. Do you think Lincoln ever played baseball? That I don't think so would be my argument, Jason. But there's Randy DeJesus to 150. Blue Chrome for whoever has Randy DeJesus. Should be one more autograph here. But I mean, I would imagine that he's like de-de-de-de telegraphing reports back and forth from all of his generals and stuff. There must have been a report coming across as desing, you know, the soldiers are camped in for the winter.  And there's Jacob Berry. Jacob Berry goes to our final autograph going to, the other page here. Going to David Harrell, big boys, 007. That's the Marlins first round pick six overall. I've never seen the ridiculous six. Is that a documentary on baseball? With Lincoln height frame, yeah, he'd probably be, what's Abraham Lincoln's official height? Abraham Lincoln height. He was six four. How much do you think he weighed? No. I mean, that's a, that's, I mean, if Lincoln weighed six four, two 15. Woo, nah, he's probably six four, one 90. That's a solid, that's a solid, maybe a solid point guard height right there. And today's NBA anyway.   Look at the pictures. He's super skinny. Can you find it online? Does anyone tell you like, no, I don't, I don't, I don't see weight. I see a lot of height, but I mean, I don't know, but maybe they wore looser suits back then. You know, that seems like, seems like he could be, he could be hiding a lot of weight unless he was just ripped. You know what I mean? You don't see Lincoln with his shirt off.   I read that biography. All right, that's random player break number one. We got another one in this tour if you want to get it going. Sometimes during these long breaks, yeah, we get sidetracked a little bit. We'd like to have fun here, folks. So thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us. I'm Joe for jaskiescasebreaks.com. That was a nice hit. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


It is our great pleasure on behalf of P&I to be welcoming Winston and Judith here as part of the first Australian New Zealand 2 Plus 2 that has occurred with the four of us. We are very mindful that this has happened very early on in the life of the New Zealand Government and for that we are deeply grateful to both Winston and Judith in coming to Australia to have these talks. When we think about our relationships with the community of nations, each of those relationships has a different character. But the character of the relationship between Australia and New Zealand is one of family. There is no country in the world with whom we are closer than New Zealand. And it makes this meeting and what we have spoken about today particularly important and the manner in which we have engaged in the dialogue between Defence Ministers and Foreign Ministers and as a group of four has very much befitted at a personal level the relationship which exists between our two countries. We all recognise that we are meeting at a moment in time where we face a troubled world and strategic circumstances that we share which are deeply complex. And in that context there has never been a more important time to work with close friends and we do not have a closer friend than New Zealand. Today and my meeting with Judith and again in our meeting as a four. We have committed to working much more closely together in terms of Defence operations to give effect to deterrence. We have agreed to work much more closely together in terms of building interoperability and interchangeability between our two Defence forces. In other words we are committed to constructing two Defence forces which are seamless in the way in which we are operating. We bring much greater effect when we work together than we do when we work on our own. And I think there is a huge step forward that has been taken today in terms of building that seamlessness. Core business of course for both of our countries is the Pacific. And we have agreed to continue to pursue the Pacific Response Group which we initiated at the recent South Pacific Defence Minister's meeting in Yumiya last December. And we look forward to developing that. And finally we have agreed to send a team to New Zealand very shortly to brief New Zealand on developments in relation to AUKUS and particularly AUKUS pillar two. I think the content and the manner in which we have spoken today really does reflect two countries which have a very shared view of the world and a shared sense of how both of us need to go about our business in terms of working in the world. And that is making sure that in every respect we can work as closely together as possible. Thank you Richard and Penny, ladies and gentlemen. Both myself and Judith Collins have had the most interesting, by that I mean by interesting, expansive conversation with the two serious ministers from the Labour Government and Australia today. I've been about politics, it's been about and just summarised by Richard when he talked about interoperability with defence. That's a very complicated word but we need to do that and foreign affairs in our aid programme in the Blue Continent, in the Pacific, wherever we might work together and make our effort and money go further, that's what we need to do. And everything we talked about today in 2024, right here right now at the end of this day, is of far greater acuity and importance than it's ever been in the lifetime of anybody in this room. I think I can say that fairly, in the lifetime of anybody in this room. So it's a very significant date and a very significant time and I do think that it'll be a benchmark going forward of when we turned things around and got greater results for the efforts of the New Zealand taxpayers in our national, in our regional and our global interests. So thank you very much. Thank you Winston, well can I add my voice of welcome and thanks to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Collins for coming to Australia. We are the closest of friends but we are more than that, we are family and that is demonstrated by the bonds of history, by the bonds of geography but also by the bonds of community and we live in a country where we have so many of your compatriots working here with us in Australia. The significance of the 2 plus 2 at this time is substantial. What it is is the foreign and defence portfolios coming together to talk about the shared challenges but more importantly work out how we can better work together so that our influence in the region and the world is greater together than separately. We spoke about what we can do together in the Pacific, we spoke about stronger regional capability, we spoke about being much more strategic and granular in how we operate together whether it is in the defence portfolio or in Winston and my portfolio areas. We deeply appreciate the Deputy Prime Minister Peters and Minister Collins Winston and Judith making this trip so early in their tenure. We do recognise what it says about the importance of this relationship and what we say to you is it is a relationship of similar importance to us so thank you for being with us. I would like to thank in particular Richard and Penny and the whole team that has been looking after us here in Australia and I know that Winston and I have been enjoying and learning a lot more about some of the opportunities for New Zealand and Australia in the foreign affairs and defence areas. We face a world of increased strategic competition and challenges increasingly the rules based order which we rely on as democratic countries is under threat and in this complicated strategic environment one thing is crystal clear Australia is our closest friend and partner it's our family and we are stronger when we work together and so Australian officials and as Richard has alluded to have been actually asked to work together with New Zealand officials to see some of the opportunities that are available in Orcus too for New Zealand. The opportunities that that open up to our space and technology sectors are actually immense and it is very important that some of this great work that has been going on in New Zealand is part of that wherever possible because throughout our shared history our people have always stood shoulder to shoulder. We've made some comments today around the interoperability in defence and also foreign affairs in defence that means that we have taken the step today of authorising and instructing our officials to work together to look for opportunities in procurement to make sure that when we purchase that we are looking to see how that fits in with our friend and partners so that we are constantly thinking the ANZAC model where we are better together when we are there. So it is really important that we did that. So today's combined defence and foreign policy meeting furthered that shared understanding between New Zealand and Australia and more importantly we have identified ways where we can strengthen and deepen our future. So thank you so much for having me. Just on Israel, a question to both Foreign Ministers, Minister Robin Putez. Did you discuss funding for the UNWRA in the way for Israel's allegations? And exactly what conditions to both New Zealand and Australia I haven't seen that before. So I might start if I may on UNWRA. Can I start by reminding people why successive Australian governments since 1951 have funded this organisation? It is because it is the only organisation which delivers the sort of assistance and substantive support into the occupied Palestinian territories within the international system. So that is the reality. Can I also remind people what is happening in Gaza at the moment? We have reports from the UN that 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza are actually starving and a million are at risk of starvation. An estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza are internally displaced and there are increasingly few safe places for Palestinians to go. More than 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering within UNWRA facilities. And 3,000 of the workers for that association are working on the humanitarian response in the most trying of conditions. That is the context in which Australia and Australians provide humanitarian assistance to UNWRA. Now we have made clear that these are deeply concerning allegations and we have made clear they need to be thoroughly investigated and those responsible need to be held accountable. And I have directed this week, Australia's humanitarian coordinator to lead urgent work coordinating with like-minded partners as well as UNWRA on these and other matters. But I think it is important that we remember why it is that previous governments have funded this organisation but also the scale of the humanitarian crisis and the absence of any alternatives if we are serious about trying to ensure that fewer children are starving. And that is what we are faced with. You asked whether we discussed it not in great depth is the answer because... Yes, we did. To some extent. Yes, but because Australia has its position and our position was based on the fact that you have 13,000 plus, probably many more, it's difficult to say, people working from that organisation in Gaza as we speak. There are so many hundreds of thousands of people as it has to the results of their work and our humanitarian aid. But with the timeline of the tranche of our next funding, we had an opportunity having heard the allegations which we regard as deadly serious because the UN is investigating them to find out what the UN's outcome of that investigation might be in plenty of time for us to make when our tranche is due the next lot in the middle of this year and the decision before that. And so we do not want to hear people rushing to the press saying New Zealand has stopped it because we have not. I'm at a very, very far from the bird go that we had said we are looking at what this investigation means. Our timeline for the next tranche of our ongoing multi-million-dollar aid will carry on until we have made that decision having had first the benefit of that investigation's evidence and findings. Perhaps just to answer the other part of your question, to be clear, there are no exports of weapons from Australia to Israel that have been for many, many years. Australia's defence export control regime is one which is far and detailed as applies to defence exports or dual-use items to anywhere in the world. And in short, the application of that process takes time. Well, thank you. As you know, we have announced further sanctions today and today, of course, marks three years since the coup in Myanmar. The date on which the Myanmar military overthrew the democratically elected government. And I'm doing not only a decade of progress, but a decade of progress towards democracy and stability that many people in the region and many people here in Australia care deeply about. We have imposed further sanctions on five entities with direct links to the Myanmar military regime. We believe this sends a clear message to the regime and we continue to engage, particularly with our ASEAN partners, on their approach to seeking to encourage a return to democratic principles in Myanmar. So we just choose to... No, we have, whether on Myanmar or in relation to other human rights issues, we approach the world as it is. We seek to shape it for the better. We recognise that Australia doesn't dictate what happens in other countries, but we can influence. And part of that influence, not the only part, but part of those is to utilise sanctions strategically and that is what this does. And to the Australian ministers, we certainly contain my position as a minister that investigates the return of warheads. Why specifically are you came on New Zealand joining the time of that deal and what specifically can we offer us that interest to you? Well, since the beginning of AUKUS, it has had two pillars and there has been a water focus on pillar one, which is obviously Australia requiring and you can power submarine capability from the United States and the United Kingdom. A pillar two, which is really focusing on the development of other advanced technologies, has received interest from other countries to participate in that, particularly countries from Firebinds. It was an issue that we spoke about today in our meeting with... I don't know, even as the commons might want to add to this. In our AUKUS Defence Ministers' Meeting which occurred in California at the end of last year, our focus was particularly in respect of pillar two and making sure that we are taking that forward. We want to see runs on the board in relation to pillar two between the three countries, Australia and the UK, but in the longer term, we're open to the idea of pillar two being open to some other countries who may be interested. In that context, we're keen to ensure that New Zealand is abreast of where discussions have got to between ourselves, the UK and the US in Malaysia to pillar two and that was the base on which we're sending the team to brief New Zealand in the very near future. Thank you. Is it a space project? Well, of course, we have for our size as a nation population, we have quite an active space industry and also technology sector which is involved with providing assistance to quite a few countries in terms of their defence areas but also in terms of telecommunications in other areas. It is quite important when we're looking at pillar two to work out quite what we can add but also where that fits in and I think it would be very helpful for the right people to come from Australia to see some of what we already have and so that we can see whether there is something that we can add in there as well which will be very useful to our space and tech sectors. I don't think it's... If you look at what I and many others have said over the last few years, I don't think it's any surprise to hear me say our region is being reshaped. We often speak about having come to the government at a time of the most difficult or challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War. I think we do live in times where the world, the region is being reshaped and Winston speaks very passionately about the importance of remembering our democratic traditions and our democratic values and interests and countries which seek peace, stability and prosperity, the preservation of international norms and rules, a region in which sovereignty is respected, where we maintain the capacity to both agree and disagree. These are all attributes of a region that enables democracy such as ours to flourish and we have a role in that. Obviously there is, we know, the relations between the great powers but we have a role in that and we particularly have a role as we have discussed in the Pacific and as I have said to Deputy Prime Minister Peter I believe New Zealand has a lot of wisdom, a lot of history and cultural expertise to bring to the discussion of the Pacific which is one of the areas as we know of greater contest, greater competition. We know that and we want a region that is stable, we want a region in which the Pacific family is responsible for regional security, we want a region that continues to develop and we want to be part of that and we want to work closely with New Zealand to those objectives. Thank you. Excellent.


Since coming into office less than two years ago, the government of St. Lucia under Prime Minister Hon. Philip J.P.A.'s stewardship continues to live up to its people-first mantra and has successfully delivered relief to both private and public sector workers in addition to initiating strategic policy measures that shield St. Lucia consumers from the brunt of historically high inflation and places more money back in their pocketbooks. As promised by the Prime Minister, on March 23, 2023, $11.5 million in outstanding back pay was disbursed to public servants. We paid civil servants $11.7 million off of back pay. On Tuesday, civil servants are going to receive $11.7 million in back pay and their pay increase, which was negotiated by the last government but we are doing it. So from tomorrow, all the provisions in the last collective agreement which is not negotiated by us, negotiated by the last government but we are going to keep the promises of the last government. So civil servants, all our obligations to them as far as the last collective agreement are going to be met. And tomorrow, if $11.7 million back pay being paid to them in the service on Tuesday. Owing to the Prime Minister and Finance Minister's prudentially sound fiscal management abilities, the multi-million dollar government payday was disbursed amidst unfavorable economic headwinds in the external economy. To date, Prime Minister Peir, with the backing of the Cabinet of Ministers, have signed off on various policy interventions that have directly benefited St. Lucien's. More than 4100 St. Lucien's have been paid outstanding tax refunds in the last 12 months. Last December, active and non-active public servants collectively received $6.8 million in back pay from the government. The government paid $4.4 million to about 47 former employees of LEAT 1974 Limited. 196 former employees of Majestic Industries Limited each received a $10,000 one-time payment and more than $2.5 million was allocated to the stimulus program. NIC pensioners currently receive an additional 4.2% on their monthly payments while government pensioners received a one-off payment of $500 each last year. Effective January 1st, 2023, both public and private sector workers earning up to $25,000 annually will not pay any income tax. Between 10,000 to 14,000 workers will benefit from this new tax exemption which amounts to an additional $12,000 to $14,000 million of more disposable income for these workers. From the Office of the Prime Minister, Rihanna Isidou.


What's going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here soon talking about a few different topics in this video today We'll be talking about screen six and we'll be talking about The wrath of Becky which is a sequel to Becky and then we'll be talking about evil dead rise to round it out So just kick it off because this is mostly a scream six video as you see from the thumbnail in the video title Screams six we know has the six woodsboro survivors and the batch of new characters that we haven't met and we will not meet Them until March of course I've seen the discussion online Related to which survivors out of the six have a chance of being the killer in scream six if they were to go this route Well, I think just to go from process of elimination in my mind We can instantly immediately Eliminate Sam and terror from that discussion because they are what I would say are modern Sydney Prescott's for this new Creative team with their own unique struggles and issues that Ghostface wants to come after them for similar how Ghostface was targeting Sydney related to all the Trauma related to Marine Prescott. We know Sam more so than Tara is the New final grower of this trilogy Now moving into Gale Weathers She hasn't even less chance of being a killer in my mind Just for the simple fact that she strikes me as someone who wouldn't jeopardize everything that she's worked So hard for just for that next groundbreaking story to the point that she dawns the mask and becomes the killer Also, we know that she just lost do we so she must be struggling there with that I'm not saying that couldn't lead to her snapping. I just don't think Narratively in and the way she's been written up until this point. I don't see her picking up a knife I could however see something like this going down because it's not something that is completely off the table Because if you were to tell me a narrative where she didn't kill anyone But actually orchestrated a pair of new killers coming to her city in order in order to cause trouble Just so she can have news to cover then I wouldn't be shocked there I would find it to be more likely than gale just straight up killing people I find that aspect to be more in line with gale as a character the gale just straight up say hey You know what? I'm gonna go pick up a costume pick up this knife.  I don't I don't see it happening Mindy and Chad to me have a slim chance of becoming the killer in screen six simply because these are Randy's niece and nephew which to me means they either get the Randy screen to treatment with a shocking death in some fashion or Some death that even Outdoes what they did brutally to the Randy and scream to or they both get messed up really badly like Randy did but somehow live That's my thoughts on those characters now. I saved her for last. I'm gonna talk about Kirby Surprise surprise to me. Honestly. Yes going off of everything that's already out there Kirby would make the most sense if they wanted to make a survivor the killer in this movie She has the most likely chance of being the killer in scream six if they were to explore that route She's in the FBI which I imagine would give her access to old woodsboro evidence that we know is popping up around this movie Or at least have her in a position to abuse power to gain access to this stuff more so than someone like Sam Tara Chad Mindy I know in the past you've had Roman breaking into the woodsboro PD to get Sid's files And of the fact that in screen three a lot of stuff that Roman is doing you could pinpoint it logically on someone like Kincaid, but it wasn't Kincaid But I think if we are once again having Ghostface doing shady activities that tie into stuff public officials or FBI agents in This matter have access to I'd imagine the narrative this time would be pinned to someone who genuinely has access to this evidence And Kirby is definitely the most likely out of the survivors going through what we know that would dawn the Ghostface costume This time around that I could see it being her reasons for the spree could be tied to trauma from the events of screen four Hayden's only like what five feet tall so I expect to see comments about her height down below So I'm already ahead of you there So I'll in this section of the video by saying I don't believe that she will be the killer at all again This was mostly to discuss who has the most likely chance out of the survivors to be the killer Considering everything we know going into the upcoming film out of all of the survivors The person who has the most chance to be the killer in my mind is indeed Kirby Reed because she is now in the FBI She could have access to old crime evidence more so than any of the other people that are not tied up in Being a public official like a police officer or even what she's doing working with the FBI So jumping into the next topic We got our first look at the wrath of Becky which is the sequel to Becky again from 2020 If you recall that movie it was basically an R rated home alone before we had a movie like Violent Night Which released this past December with David Harbour if you haven't already go check that out It's a great movie Lula Wilson is back as the titular character Becky and this film is actually going to have its premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival later this year in March The synopsis reads after living off the grid for two years Becky finds herself going toe-to-toe Against Daryl the leader of a fascist organization on the eve of an organized attack The cast this time is including Wilson, Matt Angel, Courtney Gaines, Aaron Della Villa, Michael Ciro, Denise Burce Fernandez, Jill Larson and Kate Siegel Now I'm not gonna lie When you mention Kate Siegel that just eat immediately for any project boost my excitement If I was already excited for the project and then you tell me Kate Siegel is in this if you are familiar with the Projects Mike Flanagan does many of you also probably recognize this is Mike Flanagan's wife You know how phenomenal Kate Siegel is as an actress and that she is I would say the queen of monologues So I'm not expecting her to have a monologue that is very captivating in this upcoming movie But the sheer mention of her name That's enough for me to be even more excited about this upcoming sequel to Becky more than I already was because I think Becky was a Was a nice fun movie that was released in 2020 when they had everyone going into lockdown it was a fun horror movie that definitely would remind somebody of a movie Like home alone, but just with a lot more gore and graphic content, of course now just around this video out By talking about Evil Dead Rise Evil Dead Rise is also premiering at South by Southwest as well So if you didn't know this this should be exciting news for you This again will occur later this March prior to its theatrical release Which I believe is also occurring that same month like a few weeks after screen six a horror fans are gonna be eating in screen Or we're gonna be eating in the month of March. I mean to say so We'll get to read first reactions very soon once this occurs I know the trailer for this dropped a few days ago But I avoided it to be honest because I've decided this will be the movie I go into completely blind this year and a lot of that was inspired by the reactions I have heard from the trailer which are just nothing but praise for this upcoming project and I haven't seen some of the reactions I saw I'm like I haven't seen people react like this over a trailer in quite some time Maybe I'll do my best just to avoid it. I have seen the official images. Everything looks like it's going to be very Terrifying looks like it's gonna be a fun movie This movie of course has a plot following a role where Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie who was raising three kids on her own in cramped LA apartment The sisters reunion is cut short by discovery of mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie's building giving rise to flesh Possessing demons and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood Imaginable again evil dead rise is going to have its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival in March a few days before It's theatrical release that same month You'll get to hear some of the first reactions fresh out of that premiere Can't wait to see what people have to say about this movie I might end up budging and go ahead and just watching the trailer because I've seen so much praise for it But I'm trying to hold against watching that I have something tells me this might be one of the best horror movies of the year Let me know what you guys think about this down in the comment section below if you haven't already course make sure you subscribe to Postification numbers video in the description. I'll have links to my social media accounts I'm on Facebook sort of an Instagram you can mess with me there Of course, let me does any movies news or views let me to cover in the future and with all that in mind guys I will see you in the next video