He said it'll be a challenging assignment That will be in an area with no power Water cell service and our mission was to go to Moss Point, Mississippi to set up, establish, and run a base camp for a thousand Emergency workers. We're told the people down here are very nice, but they're angry, hungry, thirsty So as we head down to these areas, if people try to stop us, roll down the window a little bit, answer questions and if anything starts taking place, we were to keep driving and not stop. It was a six-hour drive from Atlanta, Georgia to Jackson, Mississippi We've seen gas station lines at least two miles long We're standing on the foundation of a house right on the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf's probably 30 feet away Looking down the coast There's not one house that we can see in either direction. They're all completely gone The smell down here is pretty bad also You have the bayou and the mud Every now and then you'll come upon a pile of rubble that we're fairly certain has some kind of a dead body in it either animal or human because the smell is just horrible There's raw sewage floating down the street because we're at the low end. It just bubbles up out of the manholes and and rolls down the street We just ran into a group of firefighters from I believe they're from Glendale, Arizona that have been assigned to search the area. They're also experienced the same frustration We are that they There doesn't seem to be any coordination or any direction here They were just dropped off and asked to search an area and then when they're done there they'd Report back and they'd go search another area But all the street signs and all the pretty much all the roads signs are gone So you really are kind of guessing where you're at The use of wildland firefighters on all-risk assignments is based on our knowledge of the national interagency Incident management system or NIMS and more specifically the Qualification skills and experiences that we've gained in the use of the incident command system or ICS Wildland firefighters have not only responded to the hurricane relief efforts, but we've also responded to some rather unusual assignments We helped stop the spread of the exotic Newcastle disease Which was spreading through the chicken population in Nevada We responded to the Columbia shuttle recovery efforts and through the United States Agency of International Development or USAID We helped with the eradication of a locust infestation in Western Africa We've been increasingly called upon to help our international partners in various capacities It's not that uncommon anymore to find wildland firefighters that have taken overseas assignments We responded to floods tornadoes and even the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attack The 2005 fire season will probably be remembered more as the 2005 hurricane season We sent over 13,000 firefighters to help support hurricane relief efforts Looking ahead and preparing for this fire season. We can only wonder what we may be asked to do next What we do know is that when a national need exists be it a hurricane earthquake volcano Flu epidemic or whatever our assistance will probably be called upon again So the questions that beg to be asked are how do we prepare for these non-fire assignments? And how do we keep ourselves safe when we're on these assignments? We recently talked to some people who just returned from all-risk assignments and here's what they had to say As I got the resource order the first thing I did to make sure of what we were going to do so I could brief the team in route was Call the local unit call the the four supervisors office in Jackson, Mississippi and talk to the lead dispatcher Talk to the expanded dispatch folks and it helped quite a bit I think this is sort of an unusual situation and as that several of the team members knew a lot of the folks From Mississippi that we'd be working with but all the information that we could gather still didn't prepare us for what we're actually faced with As we got on to the incident It was a Make it up as you go sort of a thing. We actually had to saw our way into our ICP And I don't think any amount of preparation of the forest gave us even though the delegation of authority was very good very thorough It just didn't reflect the magnitude of what we were faced with and then all of the the other things that sort of Accumulated got tagged on other duties as assigned. I Think the team In dealing with the human factors were probably a lot more challenged than just you know Taking 20 saw teams and shot crews, you know saw on our way through the forest to southern Mississippi to try and get roads open, you know, that was Sort of routine, you know, we felt comfortable doing that. We know what we could do But you know in dealing with all the people that had lost everything The first impression I had as we got down on the south end of our assignment and in Gulfport and making contact with one of Our other teams from the Great Basin down there was just the smell The stench of rotten destruction and death and you know, it was very unusual the physical Factors that we're dealing with there, especially in Mississippi sleeping out on the ground You know the the message I guess to folks that would find themselves and something like that is you've got to prepare yourself Probably as much mentally as you would physically for the discomforts the lack of amenities You should need Prepare to go and be self-sustaining for several days until they can get an infrastructure set up Because in a lot of these cases at the onset of these disasters, there is no infrastructure. What you take is what you'll have Take your medications that you might need personally If you can I know there's weight limits on aircraft and stuff But make sure that if there's a group of you going make sure you've got first aid bottled water Rations MREs, you know if you can't take them with you make sure that it's on that end set up for you And I know a lot of these people that are on the receiving end are scrambling to set stuff up for you to make you Effective and efficient But they may not have the wherewithal to do that if everything that they have been depending on is destroyed So take as much stuff as you can with you that you think you might need batteries Extra batteries for your flashlight your radios Sometimes that radio and a repeater are going to be the only communications in existence to where you're going so prepare ahead of time Four warned is four armed Be expect the unexpected you have to just know that you're not going down there as a firefighter strike team leader means nothing to to All risk assignments. I mean functionally the incident command system works very well for us There are varying varying degrees of how much the incident command system is used amongst the agencies amongst FEMA the National Guard and us and I spoke to you earlier about how functionally everybody works really well up and down their chain their Functional chain of command including FEMA the National Guard Incident management teams and the federal agencies they work really well The challenge is breaking down those barriers between those functional changes and getting that communication going across the board Because a lot of the complexities and difficulties Come from that very thing. So if you're if you're a firefighter going down with the team or on a single resource assignment Don't go there expecting to be able to acquire the things you need come with what you need Because you're most likely be stuck using it situation awareness is is probably one of the most important things because We are brought in in a capacity to provide aid in an environment that we're not used to So one lesson I learned is There are the obvious hazards. They're the obvious threats. There's the piece of roofing hanging off the roof There's the large chunk of metal. There's the nails on the ground They're the things that just automatically come to mind, but there there are things that you know, you may not consider We were in an area where there happened to be just a lot of insulation floating around in the air You couldn't see it You could feel it. It was hot. It was humid and it was real sweaty You'd feel it on your skin, but you know, you weren't really thinking about I wonder how healthy it is to breathe this stuff You know and we found out a lot of the folks on our team Started hacking and and just we're very irritated in the lungs. So it's it's it's hard to it's hard to nail down situational awareness because There's just so much going on our The other end of the spectrum is you could be in a place that's just untouched by any And he just any distraction any disturbance and you'll be fine The important thing is to go in Knowing that you might end up in one of those areas where the conditions are really bad It's just your situational awareness has to be High as it always is for a firefighter or an operational person, but you just really have to take everything It's a very broad scope. You have to look at everything around you look up look down look around You're really assessing everything When you're going on an all-risk assignment as a federal employee The experience levels and the people you'll be working with are going to vary quite a bit You may know more than the person you're working for You may be working with the person that's learning as much as you are and is on on the same level as you are so you really have to tap into who's with you and And and build a working relationship with the folks that are with you on a single resource assignment You're you're going to be working for someone directly. You may not know them very well In the team environment, you're working with folks. You're comfortable with you understand that chain You know their capabilities and it works really well. So you really have to Use who you have and what you have around you to your best benefit And there's going to be a learning curve to figure out how to do that because a lot of us aren't sure how yet You know I the personnel that I Were involved was involved with from the wildland fire groups did an outstanding job I'm a firm believer that when people are asterized to the occasion They will and I think the wildland firefighters have a lot to be proud of I Found a very beneficial to As a team to find out special skills when people were coming in who's a forklift operator who has some carpentry skills Who's done? Flagman type of work that we were doing in traffic control those kind of skills were very important to find the special skills and We're so used that we know how to fight wildfire very well or do wildland fire use and those type of prescribed burning operations That we really had to have everybody you know evaluate. What is the risk management and how are we mitigating our risk in these situations? So when you're doing these new tasks you have to look inside the organization you have to look outside the organization We had a FEMA Administrator that had run one of these areas previously in Florida When he showed up and he brought some Ideas and safety stuff that we really hadn't thought about that. I thought was very important Then we did do a ours with crews and making sure personnel that there was feedback which We were doing a ours with some crews when they were leaving I think it would have been more beneficial And hindsight to do more frequent a ours I think that would have been down at the unit bases and that just so we could get some of this feedback coming back And how people were functioning and ideas in that As far as heading out on all risk assignments. I think I Think it's key because of the way we've been called on we are we have been and will be I think continued to be called on for all risk I Think at the start of the fire season or when that when the crew gets together for the wildland fire season They talk about that potential with the understanding that hey, if it does happen, maybe right up front saying Does everybody? Understand what we might be involved with here and there may be some folks that say I'll fight fire, but I'm not emotionally prepared to go and do those sorts of things Maybe because an experience that had a previous year in the law risk incident said hey And it wasn't good for me and I don't want to do that now again That could be a crew issue, but it may I think it's only fair to the crew members that they have that open discussion at the start Of the fire season before we get into the all risk, which is usually I mean the big events Certainly the past few years have been the hurricanes, but again You know the issue doesn't mean that you know if the shuttle Columbia shuttle had had landed in Texas in August then there would have been maybe some different prioritization of Of our resources for well and fire resources maybe to go and share some of our resources in the recovery efforts So it could come quickly, but I think as the crew as the crew comes together Initially at the start of the year whenever that is they should talk about these issues and I think that is a key rather than all the sudden come late August early September and crew members find themselves on a plane going to Louisiana and really haven't haven't talked about it Haven't thought about it and hadn't made that decision the minds that they're ready in a sense They've begun to emotionally prepare themselves for this type of event. I think our involvement should be In those areas that we have the expertise We have the qualifications in a sense We have this in a sense the safety and security training that will get us in a sense keep us out of trouble and not get us into trouble and I mean one example I heard of that one group was part of the Hurricanes were you know, they got to the assignment and they said here put these you know these Uniforms on because you're gonna go in and pulling debris from this hazmat area. They said Excuse me. I mean that at least apparently that crew said wait a minute. We're not trained in this We don't you know apparently takes several hours to maybe 40 hours to learn how to properly use the gear and to make sure you don't injure yourself or Expose yourself through through tearing the gear and so they said no so again if we do get called the all risk I think it's it's incumbent upon us To make sure that we tell those folks that have asked us to become involved that we that we define what we can can't do Will and won't do I Think we're finding in these all risk Incidents that we we are drawing on different skill sets Then then we would normally just have for the while and fire environment and I think it is good for a crew to sit down Once they get to an all risk incident and say okay Evaluate what's what's what are they asking us to do and do we have the skill sets within the group here within the team within the crew that can help to meet some of those and I think That's important because that one could keep you that Those skill sets could also be help you with the situational awareness because those folks may know what can get you in a trouble or not That you may not know in as a crew for a while in fire environment. So I think yeah, I think I think those types of I guess Evaluation of the skill sets within the crew team whatever are critical It's hard to be involved in any major disaster and not have some sort of emotional response to it This is especially true when you find yourself working closely with people that have been affected by the disaster To get a better handle on the emotional side of all risk assignments We'd like you to read the information reprinted in your student workbook The first one is a section taken out of the field operations guide or fog for disaster assessment and response This guide was developed by USA the Bureau of Humanitarian Response and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance It was modeled after the NWCG Fireline Handbook and it contains information on general responsibility for disaster responders The section in your student workbook is on personal health and critical incident stress The second write-up is from the final report submitted by the Hurricane Katrina Safety Assistance Team This is only a short portion of the entire document which could be obtained by visiting the Lessons Learn Center website listed in your student workbook


My name is Lynn Jordy. I chair the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. I was born in a little town about 30 miles south of the Canadian border, right on the North Dakota-Minnesota border.  I realized, I guess in my first year of undergraduate work, that I really enjoyed mathematics and computers. Somebody told me to learn about computers. This is back in 1971, because no matter what you do, computers will be useful. So I learned as much as I could about computer programming and statistical analysis. And that did turn out to be a very useful toolkit. But then in 1972, 1973, I took my first Human Genetics course. We used Kurt Stern's 1972 red book, and that was the book I couldn't put down. And that's when I knew Human Genetics was very likely what I would end up doing. But the quantitative training, along with the interest in human biology, human genetics, it seemed like a very good fit at the time. It seemed like a field that had a lot of potential. And I think I was right about that. The Cumbria project was something that started when I was a graduate student. We had a visiting speaker named Derek Roberts, who was a professor at the University of Newcastle. I showed him some of the work I was doing on a Finnish isolate population. He thought the same techniques I was using there could be applied to the Cumbrian data that he was collecting. So I visited him in 1978. We put our heads together. I did some analysis. And the thing that we found really interesting was that there was a district in Cumbria called the Lake District, where we looked at the genetic data that were then available, which was blood groups and protein polymorphisms. The people in the Lake District actually looked more like Norwegians than they did other people from England. And we think that that probably was a reflection of the Viking incursions in that area a thousand years ago that still had a genetic signature on the present-day inhabitants. So we were, as many people were back around 1990 or so, interested in the competing out-of-Africa versus multi-regional hypotheses. And there were, at that point, I think there were more speculations than there were actual data. But that's been, I think, one of the great developments in human genetics. During the 90s and subsequently, we had access to much more data. So we were really able to test those hypotheses more effectively. And in 1995, Alan Rogers and I published a review paper where we posited that probably neither of those hypotheses was exactly correct and that the truth would lie somewhere in between, probably closer to out-of-Africa. And now with the genetic data we now can analyze, the sequence data and so forth, we know that we are mostly out of Africa, but there have been these smidgens of contributions from other archaic populations. So it is a bit of a blending of the two hypotheses. So if you look at where human population genetics was, say, in 1980, we had an abundance of theory. We had a lot of great methods. We just didn't have data to apply them to. So the genetic variants that we could look at really consisted of several dozen blood groups, protein polymorphisms, all of which were ascertained originally in European populations. They all tended to have relatively high frequency alleles. That's how you could find them. So the estimates that we got of population history were biased in a lot of ways. And some of them, it turns out, are under selection, so that further complicates the issue. By another name that I'm sure you've heard would be Dick Lewinton. He had an enormous influence on the field, not just in human population genetics, but in fruit fly genetics, just population genetics in general. Another very influential person was Newton Morton, who was in Hawaii for a long time, and did both human population genetics and also gene mapping methods. He had an enormous influence on the field. Jim Neal at Michigan with his work in Japan and then on the Yanomamo had really a very lasting influence in our field. Well, the first time I was on a review panel with him, it was an NSF review panel, Molecular Evolution, and I have to admit I was intimidated. And we were both reviewing a proposal, and I knew that his review was a lot more favorable than mine. And I remember feeling some trepidation thinking that there might be a big argument here, and I knew he was really good at arguing. So I laid out my argument why I thought the proposal was not really up to par, and he just said, well, this is your area. I'll go along with it. And I was relieved. We had a beer together that evening. We talked about linkage disequilibrium for two or three hours. It had a wonderful time, so it was really a positive experience all the way around. I did see him argue pretty strenuously with someone else and very effectively. Well, I think we are all products of our politics to some extent. I think it's one of the things that we as scientists really have to watch and we have to struggle with, because ideally our science would not be affected by politics or other prejudices. But I think that it was one of our greatest challenges to try to maintain our objectivity. Well, I had two abiding interests. One was evolution, where things come from, where we come from, how we relate to one another, because evolution is the great unifying theory of all of biology. My other abiding interest was human disease. I was one of those people who couldn't decide whether to go to graduate school or medical school, so I maintained a strong interest in human disease. And what I really hoped to be able to do was to put those two interests together, and the whole field of linkage disequilibrium actually helped to do exactly that, because suddenly people were interested in this previously arcane evolutionary measure, linkage disequilibrium, in the context of disease gene mapping and discovery. So I was really happy to see evolutionary genetics and medical genetics begin to converge that way, because originally in the 1970s when I was being trained, there were two very, very separate fields, but now we've seen that there is a really wonderful convergence of the two, and they benefit one another, because of course evolution tells us about all variation, including the subset of variation that causes disease. So we really can't understand disease and the genetics of disease without understanding the evolutionary factors that underlie it. I think in many ways it was, and of course the convergence wasn't only due to linkage disequilibrium or the interest in linkage disequilibrium, but I think that really was emblematic of the way in which the two fields could come together. There's always been some interplay between medical genetics and population genetics for a lot of good reasons, and there are systems like the HLA system, where there is substantial medical significance, but also to understand the variation at HLA, we have to understand the process of natural selection, of diversifying selection. So there I think there were some common interests. But the reason that linkage disequilibrium received so much attention starting in the mid-1980s was that for the first time with RFLPs actually, we were able to identify polymorphisms that were close enough together so that there would be substantial linkage disequilibrium there in human samples. Yeah, and we can essentially go in the other direction and make inferences about things like gene flow, population sizes, from patterns of linkage disequilibrium in the genome. Well, I think it's similar to the distinction we would make between just genetics and genomics. With population genetics, we were always using specific loci, specific systems, sometimes for a specific kind of study, say, mobile elements. But with population genomics, of course, we are looking at whole genome sequences. We can look at the totality of genetic variation in each and every subject. So it gives us just a much wider view of genetic variation. Well, Henry was actually on my PhD committee when I was a graduate student. And I think his biggest influence on me was in telling me to take more math courses. He was one of the best applied mathematicians I've ever known. He could look at a page full of equations and in a few sentences explain what it all meant. Or if he wanted to model a process, an evolutionary process, he could write a page full of equations. So he had a really brilliant analytic mind. And he urged his students to try to learn as much about analytic methods as possible. So he did, early in my career, have a substantial influence. Much of his field work involved collecting blood samples and using, again at the time, blood groups, protein polymorphisms to look at genetic variation in southern African populations. And at that time, very little was known about the origins or affinities of those populations. And some of the methods that he applied were groundbreaking at that time. And he realized that a lot could be learned about the ancient history of those populations, the potential migration patterns of Bantu speaking versus other Africans and so forth. So in that way, I think he had a substantial influence on the field as early as 1970 or so. I was fortunate in having several people on my committee that were excellent scientists. And Spueller, who had been at the University of Michigan for more than 20 years and then came to New Mexico, I think sometime in the 60s or 70s, was on my committee. He had a tremendous breadth and depth of understanding of genetics, of evolution. So he added a lot of, I think, intellectual weight to my committee. And a third member of my committee was a man named Peter Workman who was trained in plant genetics at Davis and then became interested in humans. He became interested in Finnish isolate populations. So one of the reasons I chose to do my graduate work at New Mexico was that Peter had access to these wonderful, at the time, genetic data from Finnish populations that had high frequencies, for example, von Willebron disease and also several recessive conditions. And we were interested in how genetic drift and founder effect may have contributed to that. And he had a great data set. I had quantitative skills, so bringing those two together was actually a great opportunity for me. Anthropology subsumes so many sub-disciplines. And what I was attracted to was really the evolutionary genetics part. I have to confess I know very little about cultural anthropology or linguistics. I tried to be an archaeologist for one summer. By the end of the summer I knew I didn't want to be an archaeologist. So what attracted me was really the evolutionary genetics focus of some anthropologists. And that's where people like my committee members focused. And that's where I thought there was fertile ground, not just for pursuing evolutionary studies but then applying that to human phenotypes including disease phenotypes. Because that was something I was always really interested in. I had colleagues who could do theoretical population genetics all day long. And I could do that but to me it was a little bit sterile. The mathematics is beautiful but at the end of the day I want to be able to apply it to something that's real. There are a lot of different kinds of factors that can influence or bring about genetic diversity. Usually we think in terms of geographic factors. They isolate populations or they promote gene flow. But there can be social factors that influence mating patterns. And in the early 1990s, Mike Bomshod came to do his pediatrics residency at our School of Medicine. He had brought some DNA samples from India to do mitochondrial DNA analysis on. And he asked to have some space in my lab. So he was doing lab work while he was doing his residency. And that got me interested in genetic variation in India. I hadn't worked in that area at all before. And as I learned more about the so-called caste system, I realized that this was another mechanism that influences mating patterns up to a sixth of the world's population. And I think Theodosius Doboschowski described it as one of the greatest if unintentional experiments in human genetics ever carried out where people did mate according to a prescribed system. So we were curious to know what effects that system might have on genetic variation. If any, we thought it was entirely possible that we would see no genetic differences. But there were some relatively small but detectable genetic differences among the different caste groups that we had collected. And furthermore, we could see that different caste groups had greater or lesser affinities to other populations, reference populations that we compared them to. And I think probably our understanding of Indian history wasn't as good as it could have been or should have been. But I think that the patterns that we did see in at least that sample might reflect greater common ancestry among some caste groups with central or western Eurasian populations, greater common ancestry with other populations for other caste groups. And the work that we published in the early 2000s was largely confirmed by the much larger study that David Wright published in 2009 where he saw differences between what he called a northern and southern Indian component. So I think the work that we did on a relatively small sample, although it was several hundred people, has been largely substantiated by subsequent work. One of the things we saw was that there is greater differentiation for Y-chromosome polymorphisms which are entirely male transmitted and inherited than for mitochondrial polymorphisms. And what that appears to reflect is that women can move in the caste system more easily than men can. So you would predict that there should be greater differentiation for Y-chromosomes and that's one of the things that we saw. Certainly our studies of genetic variation can inform us about population history because every major event that has occurred in the history of a population, gene flow, a bottleneck, an expansion, leaves its mark on our genome. So when we have a collection of genomes now from a present day population, if we're clever enough we can make some, I think, good inferences that have historical relevance. But I think it's also important for people who are doing genetics to learn as much as they can about written history, about the archaeological record, the fossil record. I think sometimes we're not as conscientious about that as we could be. We were aware that the caste system is a sensitive issue and in fact technically had been outlawed but still existed and that in some ways has similarity to the, quote, race issue in the United States and there is unpleasant baggage associated with it. We tried to be very careful to specify that our work was simply looking at the consequences of a process of social differentiation. It was interesting and a little bit disheartening to us to see some popular articles in the Indian press that kind of turned it around and said, why don't your genes determine your caste, which of course we didn't say, didn't mean, didn't intend and would completely disagree with. But I think this is something that does happen in genetics research. Sometimes our results are misinterpreted no matter how careful we try to be both in our scientific publications and in explaining things to the lay public Well I think sometimes we have to try to anticipate what the public may perceive from a statement we make which means being doubly careful not to sort of take them down the path to an inference that we would never intend, especially with things like race or ancestry because science is often misinterpreted and I think sometimes we can head that off just with careful language. I think we have to be as true to the data as we can be. I think we have to be as accurate as we can be. But in our interpretation, especially with issues like race, which can have truly harmful consequences for people, we just need to exercise extreme caution. With each new tool, one of the things that we want to do is to validate it by comparing the results from that tool with what we've seen before. With mitochondrial data, one of the things that was reassuring was that the patterns we saw with mitochondrial polymorphisms largely replicated what we had seen with other kinds of markers, autosomal markers, but they gave us a different kind of picture especially of the maternal lineage and they actually allowed us to make inferences about dates, for example, the common mitochondrial ancestor of humans out of Africa events and so forth. But I think a comparison with not just other genetic tools, but especially in population genetics, population history, really evaluating the other kinds of evidence for history can help us to make the best use of the new tools as they come along. Until really just the last few years, there was a huge class of variation we just really couldn't look at and that was rare variation. The variants that have arisen in the last 5, 10, 15,000 years, we could look at subsets, we could look at samples of that variation, but with whole genome sequencing, we can literally look at it all. That gives us a much better window into things like population bottlenecks, populations and so forth, because rare alleles are very sensitive to those events. They give us really exquisite signatures of those kinds of events. So we have a degree of resolution that simply wasn't possible before. Well, I think the real bottleneck now is more in the computational sphere. We were amassing sequences now by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions. There are still populations that are unexplored and I think there are interesting inferences to be made, but the big challenge now is a computational one, even just storage for all of these sequences. We place this all the time. We get another 500 sequences or 1,000 sequences and how are we going to store all of that, how are we going to process it? So we need clever methods for analysis. There's no question that's where I think most of the real intellectual firepower is going to be focused. Certainly the whole process of informed consent has changed a lot in the last three or four decades. Consents that would have been acceptable 20 or 30 years ago now simply are not. And I think in general, although it does impose more burdens on the investigators, it does help to protect people participating in the studies to make sure that they do know how the data are being used or will be used. And especially now when we can sequence whole genomes, we can look at every variant, every disease-causing variant, every susceptibility variant. It's important that people have adequate protection. When we're sampling populations, again, the same principles of informed consent apply. And because of those reasons, sometimes there are populations, certainly individuals, but sometimes whole populations that just rather would not participate in these kinds of studies. And that's their right. I think it's a lost opportunity for them in some ways. But still, we have to respect their preferences. The two projects had very different sampling frames. So the Human Genome Diversity Project or Human Genetic Diversity Project really focused on very specific populations, often populations of specific anthropological or historical interest, sometimes populations that were really in danger of extinction. And part of the rationale was that these populations may soon be gone. We should know as much about them as we can while we can, which scientifically makes some sense. But it was interpreted by some as saying, well, the real concern is just getting the DNA. And I don't think that was the intent of Kavali or any of the investigators involved in the HGDP, but that was an interpretation. And I think that worked against that project. The HAPMAP project very differently sampled large, essentially cosmopolitan populations. In the early discussions I was involved with in planning HAPMAP, at one point some of the planners advocated no population labeling of the HAPMAP samples. The population geneticists in the crowd were opposed to that because we knew that linkage disequilibrium patterns would vary among these major world populations. And to not know who was who would severely compromise what we could do with the information. So that ultimately it was decided, and I think wisely, to use basic labels so that we knew who was from which population. But I think because ethicists, social scientists, physicians, geneticists were all involved in the planning of HAPMAP, those meetings involved hundreds of people. I think there was a greater sensitivity to how the data could be misinterpreted. So a lot of the objections that arose with HGDP were kind of mitigated just by the way the HAPMAP project was planned. And it had the advantage of being planned later. And having seen some of the concerns that arose with earlier projects because of just maybe a little bit of lack of awareness of how things might be interpreted, I think HAPMAP was able to pretty much avoid that. I guess fitness is one of those examples of a term that's used in genetics and in population genetics in a very specific way. It can be measured numerically. But in the general population, I think in the lay population, when you hear a term like fitness, it has a qualitative implication that some people are indeed more physically or even cognitively fit than others. And really in genetics, fitness simply refers to how many offspring you produce. And that variation in that can be due to all sorts of different factors. So it's a great example of the term that we use with a very specific meaning that can be grossly misinterpreted by the lay public. The HAPMAP did have the very specific purpose of essentially informing our linkage disequilibrium studies to really help design the most effective genome-wide association studies. Now, the data have been used in a lot of different ways. But the real intent of the project, what the money was buying, was actually quite specific. Prior to the HAPMAP, our knowledge of disequilibrium pattern throughout the genome was very, very limited. I've sometimes compared it to a map of the world in, say, 1500. We just didn't know a lot about many regions of the world, just like we didn't know a lot about many regions of the genome or genomic variation among the populations. So the HAPMAP really changed that. It turned out to be absolutely essential in designing effective microarrays. I think you could estimate that it saved hundreds of millions of dollars in what would have been unnecessary genotyping. So personally, I view the HAPMAP as a very wise investment that helped us to economize many, many hundreds of thousands of genotyping assays after that. One could always quibble about which populations are chosen for analysis. And to some extent, it's always a matter of what is doable and what's, in some cases, convenient, what's available. But I think both the HAPMAP project and the 1000 Genomes, and I'm probably biased because I was involved in both of them. But when you look at the returns, when you look at the thousands of studies that have used the results from HAPMAP, the thousands of studies that have used and will use the results of 1000 Genomes as reference panels, I think they've had, they both turned out to be very, very sound investments.  It can fund a larger program like that, that an R01 simply, you couldn't get an R01 to do that. But in supplying your resource for the entire world's population of scientists, I think both have been remarkably successful. More successful than maybe we would have predicted back in the early days of HAPMAP. To my knowledge, there wasn't really a pivotal moment or an inflection point. I think at least what I observed was a gradual buildup of resources and knowledge. But I'm not sure that I'm not even sure that I'm the best person to address that particular question. But that's my perspective. It's very different from, say, the whole genome sequencing story where suddenly next generation sequencing came on the scene, and that just changed everything. I mean, that was revolutionary, really. There are a few scientific methods, I think, that can compare to that. We still know, for example, relatively little about genetic diversity in Africa. And I know there are efforts underway, consortiums, to really increase our understanding of African diversity. But to me, that's a clear target for more projects just because there is so much human diversity there and so much to be gained from learning more about it. And a number of other parts of the world where that's also the case. I think sampling more populations in more places, it also will give us a better understanding of the continuous nature of genetic variation. One of the early criticisms of HAFMAP was that we had one European, one Asian, and one African-derived population set of samples, and that that would kind of reinforce notions that there are basically three human groups. Of course, that was never the intent of HAFMAP. But I think this broader sampling will help to disabuse people of the notion that there really are three boxes or four boxes or whatever. Ideally, we would have a sampling, this has been suggested, a sampling grid every 100 kilometers throughout the world. But the problem is you don't have an IRB every 100 kilometers, you don't even have populations or people every 100 kilometers. But we still, I think, working toward a more even and unbiased sampling of human genetic diversity is a worthy goal because it will give us a better and more unbiased view of that diversity. And it will also help to convince people that we don't belong in boxes. Well, I became interested in mobile elements, I guess first when I realized that they compose possibly as much as half of our genome. And anything that constitutes that much of the genome and is almost completely not understood merits investigation. Now, we became interested in them at first in part because they are really good evolutionary markers. Virtually all mobile elements insert once and are never deleted. So we know that if two people share an ALU insert or an L1 insert at the same place, they almost certainly shared a common ancestor at some point in the past. So as evolutionary markers, they're essentially ideal. We know ancestral state, we know the derived state. So that was an initial attraction. But the other thing is that they are just innately cool in that they can be copied and insert elsewhere in the genome. We know cases of disease that have been caused by the insertion of a mobile element. One of the first ones was a neurofibromatosis case reported in the early 1990s. And we still don't understand fully that mechanism of retro transposition. How exactly does it work? How do the ALUs piggyback on the L1s for retro transpositional machinery? And we still don't know that much about their effect on the genome. And I think that may be the most interesting question of all. What do they actually do? To what extent do they change gene expression? To what extent do they affect things like recombination, the mutation rate? They're a very strange thing to happen to a genome. And we still don't know exactly what the consequences of their hopping around are. Another interesting question is, this is almost like a host-pathogen relationship. They do things. What do we do in turn? How do we activate, for example, methylation to silence them and to minimize their impact? Why was there a burst of ALU insertions in the primary genome 50 million years ago? What did that do? What did it accompany? What effects did it have? And how did it get muted?


Medical imaging really makes visible what otherwise would remain hidden, and it has already become a key technology in medicine. With the modern 3D ultrasound, for example, I was able to see my daughter six weeks before she was born, and actually I got very well prepared for her mood. But the way doctors look at these images is quite different from how you and I would look at them. Doctors get very long and hard training to become incredibly skilled in seeing critical patterns in these images, to tell the difference between healthy development and disease, and to see whether a treatment works or not. But some diseases are so complex that looking at a single image is not enough to fully understand what's going on. And this is where it gets really tricky. So a brain injury, for instance, might show in one image. But to really understand, to get the full picture of the disease, you need to take multiple images, multiple scans with different techniques so doctors can make a decision. But there's a problem, because reading those complex images is not only very time-consuming, but it really pushes human abilities to the limit. And patterns of disease can often be so complex and subtle that it's really difficult to get it from the images. Brain tumors, for example, they can appear almost anywhere in the brain with very different sizes and structures and shapes. It's very difficult to understand exactly what's going on. And often it's not enough to make a tumor visible, but we need to measure what's going on. For instance, tumor size is very important to make a decision whether you do surgery or other options. But tumor size alone is not enough. We need to understand what's happening inside the tumor. For instance, do active parts become inactive when you give a particular drug? Now, this is really important information that doctors need to make the right decision at the right time. And without that information, there is a real risk that critical patterns of disease go undetected. How do we help doctors and make best use of these images? And putting it all together is really challenging, but this is the challenge that we are taking on in my lab at Imperial College. We ask, what if we could train a machine to help us read those images, to detect patterns that humans find difficult to see? And can we even go beyond this? Often we don't know what we are looking for in those images. What are the patterns that describe a disease? Can we build an intelligent machine that can help us find those patterns? Just a couple of months ago, we have all seen a machine beat yet another human world champion in yet another board game. But what was really exciting about this achievement was that the machine's skills were not acquired by programming, but by learning. So the go-playing machine has learned by playing millions of games to detect patterns of great gameplay. And our machine learns by viewing thousands of medical scans. And one of our first big achievements was being able to train a machine to recognize all major organs with an accuracy of a human expert. Now that's really important because now the machine understands what is visible in the image. So we took this further. We then trained a machine that could search through multiple scans and detect patterns of abnormality. We could highlight suspicious regions that might, for instance, indicate a cancer. And that's important because now we can help doctors not miss important patterns that otherwise by just human reading might have been missed. Recently we even went one step further. So we now trained a machine that can detect the most complex patterns of brain lesions and putting them all together to build a 3D map of the brain that would show those lesions with an unprecedented accuracy. Now these maps are so precise that we can start making the important measurements and give it to the surgeon to support their decision. But going from the lab to clinical practice comes with great challenges and it's about trust. Doctors, understandably, are very reluctant in taking advice from a machine that behaves like a black box. So understanding how a machine comes to a conclusion can be as important as what it decides. So for us as researchers that's really important.  So we designed it from the beginning so we could lift the lid and look inside and what we found was really exciting because that's what we didn't expect. When we looked how our machine did this the interesting thing to note is that we never gave any advice how to detect a brain lesion, how the brain even looks like but our machine figured out by itself that the brain consists of different structures like grey matter and white matter. We know that mapping those structures is important but the machine has figured that out by itself. This is what really convinces me that artificial intelligence has so much to offer in medicine. It will not only help us to routinely find critical patterns in very complex data it will also help us to learn something new to reveal insights about the most complex diseases and make the right decision when it really matters. Thank you.


Madame la sénatrice, cher pénis, monsieur le ministre. Bonjour à tous et à tous, merci de votre intérêt pour l'Australie et les relations pour l'Australie. Merci beaucoup pour tout de vous, pour votre présence et votre interest dans la relation du parti de France et de l'Australie. Je voudrais dire que, ensemble avec le ministre pour les armes forces, nous sommes très heureux d'y hoster aujourd'hui. Le ministre du Premier ministre et le ministre pour les armes forces et les ministres de la Revenue d'affaires d'Australie. C'est la première fois que nos consultations sur les issues aux armes internationales et de la défense s'organisent. la personne, les résultats sont toujours mieux que quand nous parlons de l'internat. Donc c'est génial de pouvoir vous voir encore. Je suis heureuse d'avoir eu la chance de vous rencontrer pour le premier temps, le ministre. Alors, bienvenue à vous tous. Notre objectif aujourd'hui était de continuer le travail que nous avons fait pour rébuilder une puissance ambitieuse entre nos deux pays. Ce travail a été entretenu pendant les dernières mois et je crois que nous tous aimerions être parmi les ministres de l'Ontario. Et l'ambition, comme je l'ai dit, parce que c'est la mission de la Présidente de la République et le ministre de l'Australie après la rencontre du 1er juillet en Paris. Ce visage important de la Présidente de l'Australie a lead to a joint communiqué that was published and has served as our compass and cause. It recalled, first of all, of our community of values, democratic countries, strongly committed to the respect of the rule of law of the international order based on our common plan of the United Nations. And that unites us. So today, once again, we were able to acknowledge that our positions were very close on the major international issues but the war led by Russia and Ukraine or the challenges all around the world and in particular in the Indo-Pacific region. And beyond this proximity as democratic countries and on the rule of law, the head state and the Australian Prime Minister asked us to work on a roadmap based on three pillars, defence and security, climate action, education and culture. And I believe I can say that we are making good progress in each of these three areas. And today in particular we agreed that long history and our many shared interests in the Pacific, a region where we all neighbors should lead us to make the deepening of our cooperation in the region and with the countries of the region a cross-cutting theme in the entire relationship. France will devote more resources to this. This year we will multiply by 2.5 the budget of the French Development Agency for projects in the Pacific. It is an effort that I am meant to announce here today. And for the first time we will also contribute to infrastructure financing with a green harbour project in Papua New Guinea together with Australia. And this is only one example amongst others. I could also mention the coordinated response which both our countries together with New Zealand bring together in case of natural disasters with the France mechanism which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. More broadly, regarding climate action the Australian government has made some ambitions commitments. We commended these on the occasion of the visit of the Prime Minister on the 1st of July and I would like to commend them once again here. And in our opinion these commitments very much adjusted for Australia's bid to host COP 31 in 2026. So COP 21, COP 31, that's already a good part of the ship. And Australia is considering doing it in partnership with Pacific Island countries and territories. So some 10 years down the road after COP 21 we believe it is an outstanding application that we will support when the time comes and we talked about it. From a bilateral point of view the fight against global warming holds promising prospects. In particular we are working to strengthen relationships between France and Australia from research centres or universities as well as our companies but also of the Pacific countries on energy transition challenges. We also have some great projects in the field of education and culture as you will see in the joint communique. I will stop here on this general introduction. I will first leave the floor to my colleague and friend Sebastien Le Corp, new minister for the armed forces and once again it gives me great pleasure to host both our Australian colleagues here. Thank you Madam Minister. Thank you to Catherine for organising this plus 2. Successfully delighted to welcome our two counterparts in rebuilding this relationship between Canberra and Paris. We've decided with the minister to multiply meeting opportunities to densify the dialogue. No tabou subject across the issues with the deputy prime minister and defence minister. It's our third official meeting today first bilateral organised in Singapore on the fringes of the Shangri-La meeting as soon as I came into office when he came into office. A bilateral with two high points in breast a few weeks back we're able to have discussions on the operational capabilities of the French Navy and an important memorial occasion around our combatants the Australian soldiers who fell for our freedom and that sets into perspectives that perhaps the recent disagreements by focusing on the major sacrifice of the Australian speaking as minister for the memorials and this plus 2, 2 plus 2 allows us to roll out a number of operational decisions regarding security and defence matters. Four points were discussed specifically some find a solution today but with a subject of a discussion previously at the Brest meeting the minister will no doubt confirm the question of aid to Ukraine where we discussed the last time in Brest with an important effort undertaken by Australia from the outset as support to Ukraine and with Richard we said that it might be useful to offer our Ukrainian partners and friends a joint solution that's going to be done particularly on the 155 ammunition we've discussed recently a lot of equipment that can be gifted to Ukraine in fact for time to time in the media people don't focus on fuel, spare parts, munitions which is in fact the number one request from the Ukrainians on the daily basis several thousand 155 millimetre shells will be produced joint with a novel partnership between Australia and France between industries for France next well known that will lead this venture and Australia can bring powder for these shells and this partnership will allow over time, over the coming weeks and months to assist Ukraine I won't say any more the minister will return to that also our ability to train in supporting Ukraine more resilient and more enduring over time and we're right to put pressure on our defence contractors and doing that with our two countries our two states of course we're prepared for the long haul exchange refuse secondly on security in the pacific region singularly in the south pacific is obviously defence of the French national territory includes Wallace and Foutena New Caledonia, French Polynesia often say we're neighbours in the pacific which really does give us a few rights and duties and an ability to assist and interact with Australia which is specific and compels us to a form of strategic closeness with our Australian friends the Australian Chaud is here be meeting Thierry Burkar the French chief of defence forces to review the various operations and joint training exercises very often maritime the southern cross will be held once again in 2023 against illegal and unregulated fishing not unconnected to the diplomatic efforts on climate protection recalled by the minister joint commitments in the air pitch black was held successfully a few weeks ago and which for both our governments is a starting point in other words a foundation below which on the operational front we don't want to go more concrete translation since it's a bedrock we're going to task our respective armed forces to build a training agenda operational for the years to come with maybe multi-year not just for 23 24 but to consider further out 25 26 27 what might be done they've been understood the priority of both our governments is obviously respect for sovereignty of each country and state the Pacific goes of course for Australia goes for France overseas territory also respect for the sovereignty of other island states in the Pacific sovereignty in the edge on land but above all maritime sovereignty and it's a major challenge at a time when we're seeing a number of denials of access to maritime routes and that's a key point all the more true the president will return to this as the coming weeks but the military French military present the South Pacific will be strengthened in the coming years our military budget presented du Marseille a few days ago with this all-time budget effort of 413 billion euros as a specific Pacific chapter strengthened naval capability on the Numia naval base bolstering our strategic or tactical capability and fighter aircraft the president will have occasion to spread out this roadmap that's an opportunity for Australia to work on interoperability between our two armed forces ability to train and joint of third part I'll accelerate a major training exercise we know that many Pacific states spreading needs for training of their own armed forces not unrelated to climate change civil security missions protect the local populations we have offers to make jointly with Australia by making sure that there aren't competing training offers and that complementary to one another the event of natural disaster the minister recall the successor the France agreement but from Nomia we can perhaps pre-position more forces to project them in order to bring relief to the states in the areas one of the points we discussed extensively fourthly we can't talk about security in the Pacific without showing an interest in space the extent of the distances very long distances an ability to have a global view of security in this water continent which Australia is of course the most important island one of the major points of effort for our armed forces there again in our military budget there'll be an historic effort in terms of space and military to observe the earth from space to communicate from space but also for the first time to secure space from space goes without saying there space-based capabilities will have specific functions that we seek to develop Australia with our industry sometimes things make sense for purchase or leasing we have French and Australian companies developing solutions now where again we'd like to work this interoperability we see it's our generation of decision makers that must take the right decision otherwise our countries will be up behind in 10-15 years a letter of intent has been signed for the launchers Australia has needs to launch a number of satellites it's the beginning of a new cooperation venture starting with the signature of this LOI I'll have occasion to travel to Nomea in 2020 for the SP the MMM of the Defence Minister Summit in the South Pacific organised by France supported us with the various countries in the area to allow us to host it the Deputy Prime Minister will be that as Defence Minister of Australia will have further bilateral exchanges between Canberra and Paris via Nomea and that's one of the historic items to roll out a security agenda across the area thank you well thank you can I Penny and I both are being here in Paris to renew my really good friendship with Sebastian and to meet you today Catherine today we've conducted our meetings on a first name basis with a high degree of warmth as we've gone about the important business of the bilateral relationship between Australia and France and I think the personal warmth between the four of us in a perfect way the return of warmth to the bilateral relationship between Australia and France and that really began last year when Prime Minister Albanese met with President Macron here in Paris which really began a new era in French-Australian relations which we are really happy to progress today with our 2 plus 2 meeting and that could not be coming at a more important time given the fragility of the global rules based order which we see in the Indo-Pacific but which we obviously also see in Eastern Europe France is our closest neighbour France is a liberal democracy in the Indo-Pacific which shares a vision of a globe which is governed by a global rules based order and in that sense as our closest neighbour France is really in the very top tier of relationships that Australia has with any country in the world and that's been absolutely reaffirmed in the meeting that we have had today and as we have conducted our conversations today much discussion about how as 2 countries which stand for the global rules based order how we can do more to work together in upholding it that's very much the case in respect of Eastern Europe and in supporting Ukraine in the face of the unprovoked aggression by Russia and as Sebastian said we are really pleased to be able to announce today that we are working together in providing a supply of 155mm ammunition to Ukraine this forms part of the ongoing level of support that both France and Australia is providing Ukraine to make sure that Ukraine is able to stay in this conflict and be able to see it concluded on its own terms it is a multi-million dollar project and it represents as Sebastian said a novel cooperation between Australian and French defence industry and we are really proud today to be able to make that announcement it speaks of the growing and deepening relationship between our two defence forces which we've seen with high level meetings as Sebastian said at the chief of defence between our two forces at the level of our departments of defence we are seeing a much greater tempo of Australia and France working with each other in exercises in quite a sood in talisman sabre and in pitch black last year where France participated at an unprecedented level this speaks to a growing military to military relationship and we are also seeing it of the reciprocal access agreement which we seek to pursue which will see greater access between Australia and France with our respective defence facilities this is a step that Australia has only taken with but a very few countries and to be moving down this path with France speaks to how importantly we regard our relationship with France and our defence relationship with France the letter of intent that we signed today in terms of cooperation in respect of space we see this as a really important field where we can be working together and it also speaks to a much greater cooperation which we both aspire to in terms of technological cooperation between our two defence forces and finally there is no more important place for this cooperation to be given expression than in the Pacific where both France and Australia live and this is not only in deepening the relationship between our defence forces in the Pacific but working together in deepening our respective relationships with the defence forces of the Pacific island countries countries such as Papua New Guinea Fiji, Tonga and there is much that we can do together in deepening those relationships as Sebastian said working particularly in respect of training is a real opportunity for France and Australia to work together to build the capability of the defence forces of Pacific island countries all of this speaks to a growing level of cooperation between our two countries not just in respect of defence but across the board what we really see today is an ongoing evolution in what really is a new era of cooperation, friendship and warmth between Australia and France Thank you very much Can I start by thanking Catherine and Sebastian for your generous hospitality today in this beautiful setting and to say how much we appreciate the effort you've made in getting the 2 plus 2 on track today and how much we've appreciated you making so much time available to us, I was very appreciative Catherine you called me very early on when I first became foreign minister and we've met I think this is the third time so I appreciate very much the effort you've invested in this relationship France, we are deeply invested too in this relationship as Richard said what we see, we have great ambition in this relationship France is a global power it's a member of the P5 it's a nuclear power it's a member of the G7 it is key to the European Union and critically it is an Indo-Pacific power and we share values I think Sebastian used the phrase strategic closeness we do, we share values we share interests at a time where the world is being reshaped on the cooperation with France in the Indo-Pacific region we both share an interest in, a desire for a world that is peaceful that is stable, that is prosperous and that is respectful of sovereignty and the work we are doing together and seek to do together is directed towards that end a world that is peaceful, stable of sovereignty as Catherine said we are pleased with the work that is being done both by officials and also the subject of previous discussions between Catherine and I for the bilateral roadmap that the President and the Prime Minister described and we look forward to that being finalised in the near future it outlines the cooperation with a focus on the Indo-Pacific can I also thank France and Catherine for the indication today of the support for Australia seeking to host the conference of the parties number 31 climate change is as we all know an existential issue we respect and are grateful for France's leadership in establishing the Paris Agreement we want to through this bid to host the conference of the parties we want to work with Pacific Island nations to elevate their voices in the international forum on climate change because they bring to that discussion a very acute and existential understanding of what climate change means we spoke a great deal about the cooperation over and above climate change in the Pacific we recognise that the Pacific Island forum and the members of that forum which includes French territories is an arena where we want to cooperate very closely and we look forward to continuing to do that so I want to simply close by thanking you again for your generous hospitality and warm dialogue today thank you Ben si vous avez quelques questions for our guests we stand ready to answer questions from the Australian from the Australian newspaper America has just revealed some quite gross deficiencies in their naval shipyards the French ministers can you trust Australia and is President Macron's offer to supply interim submarines still on the table and to Deputy Prime Minister Miles on the same theme how are you looking to bridge that ever widening capacity gap for nuclear propelled submarines on the Australian capabilities I'm sorry that I'm not in a position to we're obviously working closely with the United States and the United Kingdom to develop a nuclear powered submarine capability and to develop the optimal pathway to achieve that capability and we will be in a position to make our announcements about that soon which is the schedule that was in fact established 18 months ago I think the short answer to your question is that there are no plans for any conventional conventionally powered interim submarine capability as we move towards gaining the nuclear powered submarine capability which we are working towards Merci nous avons une deuxième question de Rob Harris second question from Rob Harris from the city morning in the past few days there's been a leaked memo from a US general with the Air Force Minahan warning of potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait by 2025 given both interests in the Indo-Pacific here do you take his views seriously and secondly considering the increased military aid to the Ukraine from the west how well resourced both nations to undertake a conflict in the Indo-Pacific if I may hello Rob, good to see you can I start by making this point and I've made it at the United Nations and also in Washington when I was there and it's a point about agency and it's a point about guardrails and the point about agency is this we all have a choice to make about how we deal with escalating strategic competition and the choice that we believe we should make is to utilise our efforts to elevate our capability in order to promote peace and stability and that is the focus of our capability piece that is the focus of our diplomatic piece and that is the focus of how we will talk about these sorts of issues it's critical for humanity that we do not allow the competition between great powers to escalate into conflict that's critical because it would be disastrous and so what I would say is we ought never assume that we have no agency we should be one arguing for the sorts of guardrails that president Biden has spoken about to ensure that competition does not escalate into conflict and we should in relation to Taiwan as you know we should be resolute in our view that there should be no unilateral change to the status quo en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho en écho Bonjour, j'aurai voulu savoir quel est le montant du contrat de l'extrême, ce que vous avez décidé plusieurs millions de dollars. Vous paraissez avoir, le prochain, plusieurs coopérations à la fois opérationnelles dans un temps spatial des défenses. Et pour ce qui est du stade de l'hôpital, avec le space dans l'industrie, mais il constate strictement les marches militaires et on regarde la différence australienne. Il me semble qu'il n'y a rien de pour le moment. Et ensuite, vous allez être visite d'un membre du pays au fond de l'Union. Vous pensez qu'il y aurait un tour dans ces aléons pour France, un ou l'autre, à un point ? La relation avec les États-Unis et l'Union du Parc des Orques n'est pas une aléon, c'est un relation fondamentale qui est à part la part de la technologie. Et évidemment, le coeur de cela maintenant est le pays et l'Union en travaillant ensemble, évidemment avec l'Australie, pour permettre à l'Australie de avoir une capacité de submarine nucléaire. Nous travaillons très proche avec France. Et ça a été le ténère de la conversation que nous avons eu aujourd'hui. Nous travaillons très proche sur la construction de notre interoperabilité, nous travaillons très proche sur la construction, nous travaillons avec un grand sens de coopération entre nos forces défense, nous travaillons beaucoup plus proche, beaucoup plus proche en respect de notre industrie de défense et de la technologie de partage. Et donc, nous voulons voir une construction et une construction de notre relation avec France dans un contexte défense. Et ça a vraiment été le sujet de la conversation que nous avons eu aujourd'hui. Première question sur l'Ukraine. L'Ukraine, comme ceci, nous parlons de plusieurs milliers de chelons. Nous n'avons pas de plus de confiance pour le docteur français de la discrétion sur l'aide d'Ukraine sur ces fonctions stratégiques. Vous appréciez l'idée pour nous, c'est d'aider l'aide signifiant, par définition, nous regardons un classe signifiant, ok, des milliers, et encore plus, un effort qui est continu, parce qu'en ce temps, parce que ce sont des frères ukrainiens, il y a une sorte d'aide, le ministre de la colonne, c'est juste là-bas, que l'Ukraine ne sait pas tout ça, mais l'Union ukraine, nous a mis en place la régularité, la predictabilité, et la reliabilité des délivres qui ont été réalisés, le mandat, donné à notre industrie, par les deux gouvernements, c'est d'avoir un offert qui est robuste, et particulièrement résilient, avec le temps, par sa capacité d'appliquer la reliabilité des armées ukrainiennes. Second, vous vouliez vite entrer en espèce, ce n'est pas une capacité militaire, je peux apprécier ça en France, on n'a pas suffisamment expliqué ou insisté sur notre objectif militaire, et j'ai l'occasion de faire ça sous l'autorité du président, si Richard me permet de répéter un point de nos conversations que nous avons eu, depuis que nous avons assumé l'offre de la collectivité. J'ai mis la question à mon counterpart Richard, est-ce qu'au cas, est-ce que c'est un bloc, ou est-ce que c'est un bloc possible de capacité ou de coopération militaire pour le futur ? La réponse est non. Et Richard, sinon nous ne serions pas ici en prenant ce 2 plus 2, avant vous. Qu'est-ce que c'est un tract ? On est en train d'y aller, d'abord, nous avons plus de coopération conventionnelle de capacité, de goles, de maritimes, de l'air, mais on voit, pour un grand nombre de raisons, que ce n'est pas grâce à la décision albinésie, mais à la décision des prédécesseurs de nos deux guests ce matin, il y a évidemment une forme de rigidité dans les programmes, comme ils l'ont été déclarés. J'ai vu cette rigidité dans les programmes que les forces françaises ont eu. Donc, le parc que nous avons essayé de créer ce matin, c'est de dire, on va essayer de le faire sur une blanche de papier, c'est-à-dire, sur les capacités pour lesquelles nous avons essayé de développer pour le futur. C'est facile. Et cette LOI en espèce est vraiment venu à la même heure. Nous avons eu cette idée quand nous avons rencontré un peu de weeks ailleurs, par looking at the respective requirements of our own satellites and the need for launches, First Avenue or Cooperation Collaboration, or because requirements and certain military functions capacity to develop or by jointly a number of satellites for joint capabilities or le leasing of image flows or services, satellite services from one government to another. I'm being deliberately vague and generalist. I mean, mandate has been given to the armed forces and the equivalent of the weapons procurement executive on the Australian side to develop a target in 2020. It's key because the immensity of the Pacific gives this challenge. We see maritime surveillance as 30, 40 years ago. It doesn't make sense for the next 30, 40 years. So space is one of the elements of the solution. Other segments where I'd like us to have an operational dial. Of course the drones, French Polynesia is big, is like the size of the whole of Europe. New Caledonia and the Seoul Caledonia Territory is as big as Austria. Guyana is as big as Portugal moving away from the area. So it goes without saying. The very size of our overseas territories presents us with a challenge on the technology front to ensure security and sovereignty and that. Typically if we start insuring the sovereignty and security from Numia for all the territory, territorial waters and the EZ, it wouldn't make sense not to do it in partnership in interoperability with Australia our direct neighbour. What's more is that we're there to assist one another in possible crisis scenarios. The starting point, it's exacting. It's demanding. It will take time. It'll take time. We have to recognize it. It's going to take time. But this strategic closeness that we're trying to kick-start, let's go with operational closeness between the armed forces and possibly technological closeness on future segments. That's the ambition. I'm sure it'll work. Ladies and gentlemen, the ministers will take one more question. AFP, You don't want to give more details, but I'm going to try and insist a bit. I'm trying to understand why, for example, these 155 munitions must be produced jointly. I'm in the powder that you mentioned coming from Australia. It's not available in France or is there a resolve to present cooperation within the realm of communication and President Zelensky of swiftness. What's the delivery timeframe for this? Ambo, thank you. There are, so I'll be vague, in line with what Sebastian has said, and that's important in terms of protecting the operational fidelity of what this will be used for. But there are some unique capabilities that exist in Australia and some synergies that can be achieved by Australia and France working together in relation to the supply of this ammunition. So there actually are complementarities between our defence industrial basis which allow this to happen, so it makes sense. But it's also true that we wanted to act together as a statement about how importantly Australia and France regardent the support of Ukraine in the current conflict. And both of us have supported Ukraine separately in other ways, but we wanted to make it really clear that Australia and France do stand together in support of Ukraine in the face of this Russian aggression. So there is genuine complementarity between our defence industrial basis which allows this particular project to happen. But, yeah, we want to shameably want to work together and it's a really important statement that Australia and France is working together in supporting Ukraine. Peut-être quelques éléments, perhaps a few points as a follower. Firstly, we stand by the pressure that we're putting on our armed forces at the time being. The President referred to war economy, the Satteri trade fair last summer. All countries are faced with this reality to have an armaments industry that must produce faster, controlling its costs and managing its stock levels. We're all in the same boat. It's one of the issues that we're addressing as part of our ministerial meetings at NATO. So, in the enablers that allow us to give visibility, exert pressure on the armaments industry, of course, what we can do as part of our military budget, but to really massify certain orders and this aid to Ukraine at two countries, of course, just simply allows us to pull and to build up and to share the, share the, if it's a bit mercantile, share the bill. That capability means we can do it at two by limiting, of course. How can I say this? The budgetary effort and, sorry, and by not drawing, not leving, drawing on our armed forces stocks. Therein is the virtuous aspect of what's proposed, the delivery that's going to go straight from the contractor heading for the Ukrainian army in better timelines. OK, you're asking about the timeline. Expected first deliveries in this first quarter. There we need to respond rapidly and, of course, we can use the various stock replenishments with the next, but if we're announcing it, it is that we can deliver it rapidly. Merci beaucoup. Merci.


Good evening, folks. Good to see all of you out tonight. Nice evening, nice evening, and a mild, actually, better than usual. We are delighted to be here tonight to present a man who is to Cabot Arts that Johnny Applesey is to Apples. What about this? I really do. It bears your signature. Dana has put together an arts council in Cabot that is enviable for any community. We took one step in that direction last June, and we'll be taking another step of this coming June when we have our second Worcester Arts Festival. Yes. That time is June 8th, and I think publicity is, some publicity is already out. We're issuing a call, this is the call time, and we want to collect names of potential artists and vendors. Dana Robinson has really done a wonder at Cabot. In fact, I think it was his initial album, correct me if I'm wrong, Dana, which I know you will, was entitled The Town That Music Saved. Is that right? Yes, it's inspired by the book about Hardwick called The Town That Food Saved. Yes, yes, yes. So he has appeared here once before, and we are delighted that he's been able to come back. This is our final concert of the year. We'll be having our Christmas white ceremony coming up in December, but this is the end of the concert series, and we've been very highly entertained by some wonderful folks. So, take it away. Thank you, David. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Hi, everybody. So, my darling wife, Susan, since her regress that she can't be here tonight, she's with her parents in Manchester. Her parents are quite elderly and needing attention from time to time, so she's doing that. What's quite elderly? Well, it's mid-90s. They need help from time to time. So, I'm here, and I'm happy to see you all here, and I'm singing some songs for you. Does that sound all right? Yes. So, David's told me that we're going to do a set of music, and then we're going to have a short intermission, and then I'll have another short set of music after that, just so you know what's going on here. So, I'm going to start with a song that was written by Pete Sutherland. Pete Sutherland passed away about a year ago now, and I kicked myself for not learning more Pete songs before he passed away, but I learned a bunch in the last year, and I love them, and I'm happy to sing them, and this is one that really caught my ear. I like writing about Vermont, and all the things about Vermont, but I never would have written a song about Swanson. And he did so here from the point of view of the birds who live and migrate around Swanson, so this is called from a bird's idea. And there's a part for you to sing on this, and I don't need to teach it to you because I think you'll get the hang of it because I repeated so many times. Easy pickings from a bird's eye view, there's a lake so blue, highways and flyways we're all connected to, the haven and the humans too, that's the place we're all sponsored from a bird's eye view. A lying rock quarry's in a bog iron mine, a marble mill's boomed and the factory whistle's blue, a bustle from a bird's eye view. There's an outstair in one enormous barn, in the summer on the island where the humbleberries grew, and they watched barges passing from a bird's eye view. A bird's eye view, there's a lake so blue, highways and flyways we're all connected to, the haven and the humans too, that's the place we're all sponsored from a bird's eye view. A blue sky up in the sky, a bird's foot delta, it's a place we recognize, the bays and the wetlands, the world of greens and blues, as prey, it's a picture from a bird's eye view. Down the shaggy parking lot, that's the place to be, hot and crispy fries, someone always rocks a few. While it's worth a trip to Swanson from a bird's eye view, from a bird's eye view, there's a lake so blue, highways and flyways we're all connected to, the haven and the humans too, that's the place we're all sponsored from a bird's eye view. But mighty nervous too, full of danger from a bird's eye view, making wishes with your dimes and nickels too, well here's a wish for Swanson from a bird's eye view. From 1995 to when, soon I moved here in 2015, we basically spent our life on the road, putting on like average 50,000 miles a year, driving back and forth across the country, doing shows.  Especially when all the state parks in Florida have some sort of entertainment, some are in a winter concert series outdoors, so we get hired to play at the state park. And so, picture this, people sitting in their lawn chairs, in shorts and t-shirts, as the sun is going down, 70 degree weather, my mind is blown. And, beautiful kind of wild forests of central Florida, believe it or not, it was so exotic, it feels so exotic, especially since I had never been there before, I thought I was in some foreign country. I wasn't a foreign country, but it was Florida, so. Anyway, to top it off, even before we started the show, this big tall, lanky, old, craggy dude with a cowboy hat kind of came up to me, thrust out his hand and said, Hi, my name is Hank Mattson.  And I'm looking at him going, whoa. Yeah, I said, well, you know, hi, and he says, now, you don't know me from Adam, but I want you to put your music to one of my calls. And I found it difficult to say no, and I told him just to go ahead and send me something in the mail, or email me, and he said, I don't do that email stuff. But, you know, we got home a couple weeks later, and there was an envelope in the mailbox, and I opened it up, and it was a poem he wrote, and he conversed it, and said it was called, When This Old Hat Was New. I'm usually dubious when people send me their poems to put music to, but with this one, it was good. And it ticked a box for me. It was about, you know, the history of Florida, the cattle history. This takes place around Civil War times, and it was just sort of a sweeping, epic thing. And I thought, well, I'll give it a try. So I really just sat down at my desk and kind of bashed this out, and it worked. And I sent it to Hank, and Hank was very pleased, and I got a phone call from him, like, maybe a year later, saying, hey, there's this Florida song contest. Do you mind if I submit our little song? And I say, go, knock yourself out, Hank, go for it. And I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything. Like, six months went by, and then I heard it won first prize. So I was like, how did these things even happen, you know? So I'll sing it for you here. It's from the point of view of an old cracker cowboy poet, a factual, a real person by the name of Jake Summerlin. And I'll just let you tell this tale here. It's called, When This Old Hat Was New. In 18th, Sue and I were on tour in California, and, you know, we've had rain lately, or they've had rain lately. California is basically in a state of chronic drought. I left there when I was 16, and I never went back to live. I've been through there for touring, but, I mean, I grew up, in my mind, seeing lakes and reservoirs pretty full. And then on this particular tour, it was just astounding seeing them, just almost empty, absolutely, parts looking, and just really scary, dry. And we spent some time in the Semite, where, of course, we're always inspired by John Muir, and the work that he did establishing the park and just his legend. So that kind of came together to make this song here. It's called, John Muir's Walking Blues. Number two is Vermont. Vermont's had dry ears, right? We have shallower wells, at most. Just because it's the green state, it doesn't... you can take our water at the brink.  Let's do it! That was equivalent to a light flashing. Yes! Let's see, it was... In 2019, I wrote a grant to the Vermont Arts Council with an idea for an album. And I had some... Vermont... Well, the idea was to write an entire album with Vermont-inspired songs. I had a couple... I had a few ideas. And for the rest of the ideas, I thought, well, around the state, looking for stories. The fact of the matter is, I didn't have to drive anywhere. All the stories were like within spitting distance of cabbage. And I think that you could probably do the same for Worcester, Middlesex. Any of the towns got just a trove of great stories and things specific to the nature of just a little micro-reach. I've got a great one for you. I've got a totally good one. Go ahead and tell me now. Not later, okay. So, well, one of the ideas I came to this project with was, okay, so you know, when you're driving into Vermont from out of state, all of a sudden it feels different. You could have a blindfold on. You would still know it. Well, the roads are worse. That too. So, this has just been on my mind for years. And I thought, okay, I'm going to try to figure it out. Why is it? It's still a mystery, but this song kind of has helped me kind of work through the different ideas. I'm not going to tell you the title of it because that would give it away. But I'll just go ahead and sing it. All right, ready, go. The air picks up their scent, Cross the fast, And verdant hill, Vertel of lost, And older, I guess things just change more slowly here. Watching the cows graze, Is nothing. This is another one I wrote for that. With a good scenery. Windows at the house. Beautiful hill in the back. Often Paul's horses go running by. Moveable scenery. It's a beautiful thing. I was happy to mention that, sort of, Obliquely mentioned the horses in this song. Also, the song is kind of about the Wenduski River, Which is about a hundred yards from our house. I wrote this, started writing this song on the day that Ciri's got lifted on top of the state house.  But there's something about it that was just so moving. I don't really understand what it was. How many of you were there? My thought was, you know, the last one, The one that they took down was getting to be a hundred-ish years old, And that one was made of pine. And it was time to, I heard it was rotten through. It was time to replace it. But this one now is made of mahogany. It's all these new tech paint that will help restore it for years and years. So, can you imagine things, that Ciri's, I'm anthropomorphicizing here a bit, But can you imagine what that Ciri's will witness in the next hundred or more years? Of the Wenduski River going by, Montpelier sort of changing before our eyes. It just, you know, it really kind of moved me. Driving up to, towards Cabot going home, It's like, there's this watershed, there's this valley. I guess I'll just, I'll try to sing this and I'll try to remember the words. It's this very seasonal song here too, so. Thanksgiving day, we went tromping through woods. The green man had just shed his clothes. The bounty of leaves made a blanket of gold or silver. The ancient grey storms. This is the land where the storms come to die. Here's where they run out of steam. There's nothing around here for to brighten their eyes. Nothing to sustain their greed. Four bears said the land was good. We can build a new life. It's the water to melt our own wood. We'll sow, then we'll reap with the scythe. Winters are dark and winters are long.  This place, we gladly atone. Your pony's on down. Bring them up from the flood plain. The forest of my heart, soil of my soul. Hold fast to your true secret name. Please come stand for a hundred years more. Come watch us transform. We're frightened and anxious like me. Little babies will sleep, and we'll wait against the Sprout in the spray of rice from the banks of the river. Let's do something now. Our children be proud. It's time for us now to deliver. Giving day, we went chomping through woods where its camera racks beamed in their glory. Find ourselves lucky in this place. Come let us continue. When I was living in Westfield, back in 90, I've just started singing this one again because it just so rings true. Back then, it was learning how to build stuff, learning how to grow stuff, living off the grid, hauling water. My son's diapers in and out on a sled to the laundromat in Newport. They went out cold and wet. They came back light and dry. But today, it's been the past couple of days, it's been good for doing yard work, right? With Gardens Tibet, I was cutting down some of the raspberry canes. I was hauling manure, thank you Paul. So this song, like I said, I wrote back then, and it's still the same. It's called Raspberry Cane. I couldn't sing because it's my promised plan. Little sweet cream upon the raspberry cane It would make panties show me everything. It's fair where no one knows my name. I will sing the song, cast a bird along about the raspberry cane. It hurts to go and make it longer still. It's not the same. There's never been the years gone by. Kind of seasonal. I think about this from time to time because I've got a lot of friends who are traveling songwriters and they're playing all these concerts all over the country still and they mostly come from more populated places, suburbs and cities and stuff. A lot of them live in very rural areas because there ain't no money in the rural areas. And I'm thinking, well, why aren't I doing that? Maybe you might identify with this. The thing that nourishes me the most in life is feeling connected to the forest and the landscape around me. Simply put, just off the trail, just walk through the forest and just see what's happening. What's growing? What's the shape of the land? Where does the air smell like? What's the water doing? What's the sky doing? Where did the birds sound like? How's the light? All this stuff just kind of... I've become a news junkie since all this stuff that I don't want to talk about, you know? But the antidote to that is walking just in the wildness and the beauty of it. So I think I mentioned that to introduce this song because this is a gift, literally just a gift from the landscape or whatever. We did this show in this rural place and on the day off after that I just took a walk up the little valley and it was just kind of a normal fall day. It was a little bit chilly and I felt something and I stopped and I put my hand up and the air was warm, like bathtub warm up here and it was cold down there so I stood there like a fool going on. And I'm like, yep, I'm not imagining this. This is real. And so I didn't make this connection until like the next day that the very place we were staying in was called the Zephyr Valley. So was the warm Zephyr wind that was actually happening on that day. So that's where this comes from. With a dream said for any end It's held to me a riddle See willow Why my darvin' sings Harvest moon On the horizon Harvest moon Sky Harvest moon Listen You must listen Until you cannot hear a sound This soul must listen Until you cannot hear a sound Distance efferently Happened in Cabot in case you were just in case you don't know Every Sunday afternoon since September of 2017 No, yes, 17. There has been an old time jam session at Harry's Hardware. It's a great fun thing and it goes from 12 to 2 Lately it's been going from 12 to 4 because there's enough people and people don't want to stop playing and the place closes at 4 and they just let us exhaust ourselves. So it's really nice. I recommend if you haven't checked it out if you got some friends from town and it's a Sunday and you're looking for something to do head on over to Harry's. It's a cool scene. This kind of typifies the kind of well we play a lot of there's two things we play a lot of this is a song maybe there's a song every 5 or 6 or 7 tunes that we do so it's not a lot of songs but they say old time music it's better than it sounds. This one's called Down the River I Go Uncle Joe and you can sing that part with Rich Mead It's like this isn't it? It's very much in the music for this the morning that Sue and I it was good very auspicious for a tour and she wasn't there and all of a sudden I was home set I was like what is this weird feeling so in these folk clubs that we played in they say as a way of saying good night they say safe home or safe journey home and they say it in such a way with this American accent you cannot come close to saying the kind of graciousness that they say it with but I wrote this song to express that I was missing Sue and that I was looking forward to being back home but also kind of an homage to the good folk clubs there so we'll give a little bit of this to this room here in Holster and thank you all again for coming and being part of this this evening it was nice to sing for you it's called Safe Home