Coming up on DTNS, Google makes ads look more like search results. A direct TV satellite is about to explode one way or another. And an Egyptian priest speaks 3000 years after his death, thanks to a 3D printer. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 23 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm Roger Chang, the shows producer. We were just talking about frozen iguanas and chili and all kinds of good stuff on patreon.com slash DTNS is good day internet. That's where you get it folks. Good day internet patreon.com slash DTNS join that wider conversation. We dig deeper into the tech stories. We talk about other things. It's a lot of fun. All right, let's start with a few tech things you should know. XTA developers reports on a new APK for Quickshare, which is a Samsung alternative to Apple's AirDrop. Nearby Samsung phone users will be able to share pictures, videos and files with discovery set to either all users or contacts only. Quickshare will also let users up upload content to Samsung cloud, which can be streamed to Samsung smart things devices to download at a later date. Users can upload up to one gigabyte files with a two gigabyte per day limit. Looking at the APK appears that the service is set to come to all Samsung devices running one UI 2.1 or later. After a electronic arts announced that it was removing its Tetris games from the Android and iOS stores, the Tetris company announced that its version developed by the game company network is now a free download on both platforms. The game has just one mode and five different skins and an online leaderboard is coming soon. Yeah, mystery solved. Looks like Germany and the UK are leaning against a ban on Huawei networking equipment. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos regarding 5G rollouts, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, I don't think I make myself particularly secure if I completely eliminate providers in their entirety and then don't know how they develop. So it sounds like she's going for let's have a lot of options. Maybe Huawei is going to be one of them. US Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin has said he will meet with the British Finance Minister on Sunday to discuss Britain's position on Huawei. Reuters sources are saying UK officials plan to propose barring Huawei equipment from core networks and restricted government systems, but not proposing a total ban in the UK. Waymo announced it will begin testing autonomous trucks in minivans in Texas and New Mexico this week. Testing will include the modified Chrysler Pacifica's used in its Waymo One service as well as long haul semis and focus on promising commercials commercial routes. Twitter announced that it's rolling out the ability to leave emoji reactions to direct messages on iOS, Android and the web. Users will be able to choose any of the emojis available on Twitter as reaction and users not using the latest Twitter apps will receive the reaction as a separate message. Reactions can also be removed from conversations at any time. Google's information security engineering team have detailed security issues in Safari's anti tracking system, the intelligent tracking prevention or ITP function. ITP has meant to restrict cookies, but Google found that the way web content was treated differently by ITP could then be used to figure out where you were going on the web. Apple fixed some of the issues in its December security update, but Google says the fixes don't address the underlying problem. ITP uses an on device algorithm to collect details about sites visited and Google detailed five attacks that could discover that information. Alright, let's talk a little bit about dating Justin. Oh, yeah, Tom. Match Group announced that it has invested in and partnered with Noon Light and will roll out Noon Light safety features to match Tinder, OKCupid, plenty of fish and its other dating apps. Tinder will be the first to roll out new user safety features starting on January 28 including a photo verification system. Verification requires users take a selfie in real time, emulating a pose by a model it has provided in a sample shot. This will be compared to users profile pics and provide a blue checkmark to indicate verification. Tinder is also introducing a system to detect offensive messages and then ask daters if it bothered them. The company plans to use the information to create an undo feature that lets users unsend messages flagged as offensive. Tinder will also provide a free access to Noon Lights on call emergency service assistance. Features like these will roll out to other match group apps in the months ahead. Yeah, the whole kind of match a photo with something to verify that it's you. That's helpful. Anybody who's hung out on dating apps as long as I have knows that there are a lot of people, you know, upload photos and you're like, I don't know something seems fishy. We meet somebody and it's not the same person or maybe as an outdated photo or whatever.  And of course, I'm talking about these other apps too, although Tinder is match groups biggest app by far, at least right now. What I think is more interesting is this kind of panic button feature that I believe that match group, it was sort of under duress to to add something like this because there were pressure from there were a lot of news reports and you know, there are sexual predators on these networks and these people aren't getting vetted. And this is very dangerous. And it's on match group to do something about it. And as somebody who is an end user of you know, whether if I open up a dating app right now, you know, and I'm swiping through people and you know, maybe I see somebody that seems kind of cool. Well, they could be a sexual predator and so could somebody that I run into at the local library. You know, there's there's a vetting process that doesn't really happen in normal life. And I'm not saying that this is a bad idea. I am saying that if I am vetted along with a lot of other people, and some of this has to do with allowing the app to know your location where you otherwise would not give it access to that. Again, it's supposed to be about your safety but it's also tracking you or to know who you are meeting up with. That means that the app and possibly third party apps in the future might know who I saw and when you know, it turns into a privacy issue versus a security issue and what is more important to you. And boy does not make dating fun. Well, yeah, I think that the biggest issue here is that dating is a vulnerable process and beyond the excitement of people meeting each other, you do have an element of being sort of out there in the breeze. And if these safeguards can help you feel more secure in connecting to people, then that is a step forward. But there's always the unintended consequence. And I agree with you that that specifically if this does then lead into a direction of either more targeted advertising or more targeted ways that make you feel, you know, intruded upon in this vulnerable scenario, then that is a net negative. Yeah, I mean, this, this is an example of why we really need better approaches that consider all the applications, not just let's manage our apps by who's loudly complaining about them, right? Because the complaints are stop collecting data about us and companies are resistant, like, okay, we're not going to collect any data because people get really upset match did that to their detriment to the point where people are like, wait, you're not collecting enough data about the people on your platform. And they're like, Oh, okay, we'll start collecting data and we'll start doing these things. And I'm not saying any of the things they're doing are wrong or bad. But we're probably going to have a backlash against some of these things at some point if they didn't think them through, you've got to come up with a holistic approach to this sort of thing, whether it's a dating app, a search engine, a smart speaker, whatever, that says, very clearly, this is what needs to happen. And the public needs to be like us and think about it and go, okay, where is the line supposed to be? Let's let's not just manage by shouting. I also think, you know, the idea of the panic button is that you know, the premise is, if I'm somewhere, I all of a sudden go, this isn't good, you know, I'm kind of alone. I don't like this. I am able to get help. My first reaction was, what do we call it 911?  Well, no, it actually the way that the company has laid it out is, you will first contact our team, we will figure out if you're actually in enough danger that we then we would contact the authorities and I'm just thinking to myself, and this is all supposed to happen like in a clandestine way, like under the table at a wine bar, like, you know, there's a lot of the the the idea behind it, I do not hate the execution is is in question. Well, and noon lights just a service for doing that. You can you can download noon light right now and put it on your phone for any reason, right? So it match and integrating it into their dating apps is just making it easier to access. Totally. Oh, let's talk about UI and design, shall we? And Google has changed how it differentiates paid search results from organic search results on the desktop. Paid results now look pretty identical to other results other than a small black and white ad icon that resembles icons used to indicate sources. Until 2013 paid results had a different background color, you might recall, it's kind of a yellow color really at least in the desktop version of Google that I was using. After that it used unique colors to distinguish ads as well. So they were pretty obviously ads up at the top. Google Sunday of Jane says that the changes have reduced the number of colors on the page and brought more harmony to the layout. Digi Day reports that one digital marketing agency has noticed increased clickthrough on ads since the change. Yeah, up in that ad revenue brings harmony to the layout team, I'm sure. And when I say that, I definitely on paper, I'm agreeing with the Verge and others that say, well, this obviously is meant to increase ad revenue at the detriment of you clearly being able to know what's an ad and what isn't. That said, I feel like these pop out to me better now. And I wonder if that's just because I always look for that little fave icon that tells me the publisher that they put up in new search results. Like, okay, is that the Verge? Is that a company I've never heard of? What is that? So I'm training myself to look there. And since they made this change, I'm like, oh, that's an ad. That's an ad. That's an ad because I'm already looking in that corner. I doubt that everybody works that way. But for me, this change has actually made me more aware of which of these are ads because I don't have to think about colors. I am fascinated by the Kremlin analogy of any time that Google makes any kind of decision about advertising because this is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Everybody gets paid. Everybody the world moves because of Google ads. They revolutionize the market. They have not only dominated online along with Facebook, they have dominated ad sales writ large. When you see major networks go out and talk to advertisers for their big rollouts, they are making explicit pleas that you should advertise with us. And this is the reason why it's better than digital advertising. So with that being said, I wonder whether or not this is a troubling sign that they want to goose their ad revenue a little bit because if Google ads are flagging, if Google feels like they need to to keep this going and refresh it and make it look slightly more like a native search result, then what does that say for advertising full stop? You know, that is a very fair point. The other side of it is Google has probably reached saturation and also needs to show growth. And one way to goose that number to show growth when you're nearing saturation is to change the rules of the game so that what you have already works better. And that's exactly what this does. I mean, from a purely designed perspective, when I look at the new layout, I go, yeah, that looks better. It does. It just does. At the same time, because I've been looking at Google search results over the years, you know, in prep for the story. And yeah, back in 2013, it's kind of ugly, but it was pretty front and center. The ads were very obvious. I also have never thought, if only my Google search results were more designed forward, that is something that the company is making a change not because the public outcry demanded it. It's because the ads need to be clicked on. All right, Microsoft's making developer tools available for the dual screen Microsoft Duo. That's the one that runs Android. It's not a foldable. Remember, it's two screens. By default, apps will occupy a single one of those screens. And then users can choose to span it across both. That's by default. However, developers can change that to another treatment. And we've got some ideas from Microsoft in this SDK. Microsoft suggests master in detail where the second screen relates to the first. So you have like main information here and maybe some supplemental information over here to page. That's most obviously in a Word document where you have one page here, second page here, like a book for side by side comparison. There also is running two instances of an app side by side with drag and drop capability between them saying don't just have, you know, the one app span the two screens have two instances of the app and allow your users to drag things between them. There's also dual view with a different view on each screen and a companion pane, which like might be good for Photoshop or something like that where you offer controls on one screen, main view on the other. Microsoft also suggests optimizing apps for note taking so that they work in landscape mode. They say usually flat is when people want to do note taking. There's also things like making sure dialogue boxes are on one screen or another so that the gap between the two screens doesn't interrupt them and for images spread across that gap, developers can either mask it, meaning it looks like it goes under the gap or cut it so that it stops and then picks up on the other side of the app or the gap. There's an Android emulator out today. If you want to test your duo apps and a preview SDK and emulator for Windows 10 X based Neo, the other dual screen device is also on the way. Microsoft also made some web standard proposals public for dual screen devices for showing HTML on dual screen devices. This is one of those situations where I kind of go, yeah, I just need that one, you know, the duo version of an app running side by side where I go, oh yeah, all of a sudden it's twice as good. I think that anybody who let's say, I mean, right now I've got two desktops in my little office environment right now didn't used to don't don't need them, but having them so much better. And you figure out a workflow that works better for you once you have that option, particularly if the two screens talk to each other. And I think that that's key. Yeah, it's like dual monitors, but smaller and in one device, I guess. But yeah, Microsoft's hoping the same thing as you, Sarah, they want to see some app developers show off some cool uses for this. AT&T's Direct TV has asked the US FCC for rule for rules waiver to quote conduct emergency operations to deorbit the spaceway one satellite and quote, spaceway one suffered damage to its batteries. And right now it's operating off solar power, but an upcoming eclipse would apparently cause an unavoidable use of the damaged battery that could cause the battery to burst. So Direct TV wants to fully deorbit and decommission the satellite before the eclipse season begins on February 25th. The waiver is needed because there isn't time to use up or expel all the propellant on the satellite. The reason the FCC requires all the fuel to be expelled is to avoid an explosion. But Direct TV points out that if they don't bring the satellite out of orbit before the eclipse starts, you also have the risk of an explosion. So which explosion do you want to risk FCC? Yeah, the filing is also a little bit confusing because they keep saying deorbit, which usually means disposal orbit. That means bring it down to where it burns up in the atmosphere. And you don't really have anything cluttering up the orbits. You don't have anything clearing up the ground too much. But the filing according to ours Technica here says the new orbit would be 300 kilometers above the geostationary arc, which would make it a graveyard orbit. So that would be a way to avoid the the explosion say, Well, we can't get rid of the propellant. So we'll put it up in a graveyard orbit. And then if the battery explodes, it won't hurt anything because it'll be away from everything. Our's Technica asked AT&T for a clarification on that point. And as far as I'm looking right now, they haven't heard back from it. But one way or another, you've got a satellite that is the backup satellite for serving television to Alaska, they say they have plans in place to provide other backups for Alaska that it's not usually used anyway. So they don't expect any interruption in service. They just don't want the thing to explode. Well, so this is a question that I'm sure a lot of people are asking. Let's say it does explode. And we know that there is, you know, a satellite itself would burn up in the atmosphere and not actually reach land. Is there a danger to any of us if this does happen? Probably not. It's probably not going to land on you. The chance, I mean, the planet's mostly water. And we make up a very small percentage of the landmass. But you know, it's good to control these sorts of things. But it's different than saying, the planet's mostly ocean, it probably won't land on you. And it won't because it's going to burn up before it ever got close enough to earth itself. Yeah, I mean, but that's the thing. It's like, if you if you properly handle it, there's almost zero chance it caused any problems for anybody, whether it's another satellite in orbit, whether it falls in a populated area. If you let it explode on its own, there's no telling what it'll do. Well, let's move on to brains, shall we? Scientists from Google and the Genelia Research Campus in Virginia have published the largest ever high resolution 3D map of brain connectivity from roughly 25,000 neurons in a fruit fly using the technique calling connectomics connect connect connectomics. Yes, the latest connectome, which is what that particular map entails, covers roughly one third of a particular fruit flies brain. Previously, the roundworm C elegans had its brain completely mapped in this way fruit fly a little bit more complex, though, the scientists sliced sections of the fruit flies brain into 20 micron thick pieces that's very, very small, streamed electrons from a scanning micro-soft into the micron pieces of micro microscope rather and then process some 50 trillion 3D pixels they're known as voxels with an algorithm that traces the pathways of each cell. No fruit flies, you might wonder why the heck a fruit fly they work well for connectomics because they have very small and relatively simple brains, but they happen to display complex behaviors such as courtship dances between fruit flies. This is something I didn't know until today. The data from the project is available for anybody to download if you are curious. Oh man, we actually studied the little fruit fly wiggles in a science class that I took one time with the mating dances and stuff fruit flies. They display a lot of very complex behavior. So they're good for lots of studies in genetics and makes them good candidates for something like this. The controversy is among scientists who say, you know, we've been doing connectomics for almost 15 years now. And what have we got out of it? The answer is, well, we haven't really done enough mapping yet. It takes 15 years for for this kind of stuff to start divulging the kind of data that's useful. But there is a question right now of like, okay, now we've got this this data available. Anybody can get in it. Will there be anything come out of it? Will will we have any developments that use it? But even so I just think, you know, the idea of doing this kind of 3D mapping and scanning is is fascinating, even if it's just for a genetic anatomics for mapping those synapses. I really don't know where to go from here, except to say that I've spent the better part of a week and a half doing my best to kill as many fruit flies as possible in my kitchen, because they have become such a nuisance. But I do think that obviously they are this this entire process is something that hopefully we get something out of. But I can understand the idea that, hey, look, maybe we're pushing this rock up the hill for no reason, because we haven't really gotten a whole lot out of it up till this point. I mean, you know, it works taking research money from something else. That's, you know, more pressing. I mean, I think that that's probably what researchers would complain about because nobody's going to complain like, you're doing something cool. That's lame. It's more of like, well, we could maybe be mapping the brain in a way that helps, you know, somebody who's paraplegic walk again type thing. If this is if this isn't that, then, you know, that's one thing, but it is cool. I love the idea of a Sarah Lane curated science journal. You're doing something cool dot dot dot lame exclamation point. I think personally, my gut tells me that you need to keep doing this because even if the fruit fly map doesn't come up with any great developments, eventually we're going to want to know how the synapses connect. And that's going to be useful in an understanding the human brain. And you just, you know, we had C elegans that's very simple. Now we got a fruit fly. I feel like this is this is the kind of, you know, non practical research that you just need to grind through, because knowing a map usually ends up showing you something. Scientists from Royal Holloway, the University of London, the University of York and Leeds Museum used 3D printers to replicate the voice of an Egyptian priest who was mummified 30 years, I'm sorry, 3000 years ago during the reign of Ramsey Steele 11. I would love to know if someone was mummified 30 years ago. It feels like it was 30 years ago, but it was that long 3000 years. Anyway, the vocal tract of Nessia Mun was CT scanned to make a 3D model, which was then printed. They were then able to use the 3D printed version of Nessia Mun's vocal tract, pair it with an artificial larynx to synthesize a vowel sound. Would you like to hear the vowel sound? Yes. Here we go. It's, it's taking a little while to load, of course, even though all the times that I played before the show, it was fine. Basically, the BBC describes it as sounding like a goat bleeding, not bleed, but bleed like a meh kind of sound. We waited 3000 years. I'm sure we can wait another few. There we go. There we go again. That's not me. That's Nessia Mun. Yes, Nessia Mun. Nessia Mun's goat. It's a vowel sound. It's just a test to show that they could do this. It's believed to be the first project of its kind to successfully recreate the voice of a dead person. And they want to use some computer models to attempt to recreate whole sentences that Nessia Mun might have said. He was a priest of Ommon, so they kind of know what the liturgy was. The results of the experiment were published in the journal Scientific Reports. Not, I'm not going to say that this is cool.  But, you know, if we if we're comparing, you know, slicing the microns of a fruit fly brain to this, I'm going with the flies. Wait, really? No, I totally go with this. I think that this is this is super cool. The 8000 year old voice, you know, even if it's just a guy. I guess I would have wanted it to be less goat like and again, no, no love lost with goats. But but I don't I don't know. I'm struggling to feel like this is something cool. There is an entire I mean, civilizations rise and fall before we had recorded technology, right? And now we take it granted because so much of our lives is photographed and recorded on video, including what we are doing right now. But I would love to know the original sound of, you know, George Washington, right? I would I would love to know how historical figures sounded. I think that that would bring our history to life more than it is now. And yes, this sounds a little silly with our with our Egyptian goat bleeding. But I think that where this can lead is fascinating. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, as Nessie Munn says, subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. If you like mummy stories, well, we've got a subreddit for you. Submit stories that you care about and want us to care about and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. You can also join in the conversation in our discord, which has happened. You can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. Now, a large portion of our email yesterday was about chilly regarding Good Day Internet's discussion, but we did get something DTNS pertaining, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Craig wrote in and said regarding the story about Microsoft Search and Bing, which was adding web results to enterprise wide searches, kind of forcing Bing on on on folks using a Chrome extension. Craig says, at my former employer, that was a supplier of financial software solutions. There were always a number of people who were fooled by internet email phishing scam tests, and they were clicking on fake links. I'm sure we weren't unique. It seems to me that the bad actors could easily take advantage of search and Bing to game those searches and deliver fake search results to targeted corporate domains. For example, XYZ corp VPN client, click here. If only takes one user to fall for it, right? I'd love to know if any sys admins out there are also worried about this. Yeah, Craig, that's a fair question. And I'm certain somebody has thought about that idea and probably trying to implement an execution of that kind of phishing scheme. So it's pretty much if you can think of a phishing scheme, somebody's probably trying it. Whether it's an increased risk above other phishing schemes, the easiest one is just an email, right? That says, Hey, click here and you don't need to target Microsoft search and Bing for that. But you asked the right question, Craig, which is, Hey, any sys admins out there worried about this feedback at daily tech news show.com. Let us know. 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So I did think the title somewhere I read was about forgiveness, so I wanted to bring that back again. And I shared yesterday that that was a real clear message to me. This path, being about forgiveness, was what I really needed in my life. And learning about the idea of forgiving what never really happened and all of that.  And um. And um. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. And but really learning that it's all about forgiving ourselves is the biggest challenge. So when I'm seeming to be forgiving outside of myself, it's coming back to me. And then I start to experience more of that peace and more of that joy and more of that I forgive. And then I just do want to acknowledge my husband. Maybe it was when I was gripped in fear at one time, he kept saying, forgive the situation, forgive the situation. And I was like, what do you mean? I had to forgive a person. And he taught me about forgiving the situation. I found a lot of power in that. So I'm just hoping maybe you guys talk a little bit more about forgiveness. Yeah. That's a great question. Because we've come from, whether we came from Catholicism or whatever we came from in this world, usually when people talk about forgiveness or forgiving, what people either did to you, they shouldn't have done, or they didn't do what they should have done. So there's a lot of forgiveness. And the Bible talks about forgiveness 70 times 7, implying that you really have to be aiming for something that will probably take practice in terms of linear time. And also, this idea that you forgive your brother for what he did not do to you, that that's something none of us were ever taught. It's like, what? Say what? What do you mean?  Is this the kind of forgiveness? But it's actually going into a healing in mind and a transformation. And it comes in flashes. I know for a male, it's all thoughts is a big part of it. Because as long as we see everything on the timeline and we have these memories, we were just talking at the break about working with patients who get arrested in a traumatic memory, elderly people, that just relive the same traumatic memory over and over, like Groundhog Bay, like a loop, just keeps looping around and around. For most people, they do have recurring patterns, whether they do past life regressions or whether they just look at this so-called lifetime. There are certain patterns that come back, but it's really helpful to start to see that those patterns are really thoughts and beliefs, not events on the timeline. So that idea of forgiving situations, it's only the ego that thinks in situations. It's only the ego that thinks in terms of separate people. And at one point, this Holy Spirit said to me that situational thinking is the problem. We believe that there's these situations in our life, and they have beginnings and endings. And yet, from a higher perspective, it all just melts together in a simultaneous way. And yet, we have to loosen from this linear way that we've been perceiving everything in, because the ego invented past, present, and future on a timeline. It took me a while before I grew up in my biological mother. I was a history teacher. And when we took history, the history teacher would draw on the chalkboard a long line, and it would put the little increments and put a little dot and say, this is the present, and go back into history. And then the future, the arrows. And all of us grew up believing that the present moment was in between the past and the future. That's the way it seems. So finally, I got into a course of miracles, and Jesus said, no, that's not what the present is. It's not between the past and the future. That's pretty radical. Talk about assumptions. That's the most basic assumption. Imagine putting the dot somewhere else. He said, just like, all right, it's not between the past and the future. Then tell me where is the present? He says, the present is before time was. So you have to look at the grammar. The present is before time was. Before Abraham was, I am. He was teaching it 2,000 years ago that we're going to find the present moment. We have to go at it a whole different way, because as long as we try to do it from the old construct, we're always going to find that the present just seems to be this little ineffectual little blip. And what does forgiveness mean? It happened before. How do we erase what happened? So that's very important, because when we start to open truly to the present, we have to have a whole new way of thinking about time. And that's what the early workbook lessons are about. He even says in there, we need to introduce new time ideas. And that's at the early part of the workbook lessons. So Jesus is saying, the fundamental nature of how you perceive things is all based on linear time. And the ego invented linear time to keep you guilty, to keep you trapped, and say, oh, you've got a long and guilty past. The ego says, no doubt about that. Don't try to evade the guilty past. And the present moment that it invented between the past and the future is this little blip. The ego says, you can't do much. It's such a tiny blip. You can't really, it's ineffectual. You have no power. The past is just going to roll on over that blip into the future. You're guilty in the past. You're going to be guilty in the future. And you're condemned to death. And it's not surprising how Christians end up talking about hellfire and burning in hell, because linear time was constructed to keep alive hellfire, the idea that you're just condemned to eternal damnation. And time seems to be pretty tight vice on the deceived mind. So once we start to realize that the power of the present moment is the power of decision, it's also our power of trust that Armel's been talking a lot about. That's a decision in the present moment. And anything we are experiencing is just a decision in the present moment. And people say, what about karma? Is it there are things that we've done in the past, like in a karmic sense that we have to undo? Well, John Lennon wrote the song Instant Karma. And he was teaching us that we actually have the power of decision to release ourself from all of the past and live in an eternal state of bliss. But we have to train our mind to do that. And really, we always are talking about the present moment. It's not something that happened in the past that's making you feel the way you are. It's just choosing to hold on to the ego and hold on to the past. It covers over the true present moment and keeps you in a delusion as if the same pattern seemed to repeat like Groundhog Day. Phil keeps stepping in the pothole. He keeps putting his foot in the water until one day arrives when he's walking along and he starts to step in it and he goes and he hops over it. And as soon as he hops over it, then every day after that, he's training his mind. He's aware of the whole and he doesn't step in. And that's kind of how it goes with us as well. Yeah. There's one thing coming to my mind about Instant Karma. It always makes me mind when I hear that because truly separation is a present decision.  It's really a decision that is made in the mind and it's a present decision. It's not like it happened 2,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago. It's in the moment. And so Instant Karma is the perfect way to describe what karma can be because what it would be is that when the decision is made to be separated in the moment, then there's a whole world it comes about. And therefore karma exists in that moment. But it's instant because if you choose again and you choose to realign with the spirit, karma is gone. It was just an idea. It was just a thought. And I just have this friend coming to my mind because I just worked closely with him for several weeks in last summer, last spring. And his story was there's something missing, something that I didn't do in the past and I need to do it now. I need to kind of run and do it now to make sure that I'm not gonna miss something and then I can accept the atonement. And that's always the story that's going on. It's like, there's something that I missed or that I messed up or I was wrong about or I did wrong and now I need to cope for that. And I need to pay somewhere to pay for that. And once I would have paid my debt to the spirit, then I can accept the atonement. But it's just a story. The thing is that any time you accept, you choose separation instead of the spirit, then the story of what you think you are, the story of your life just comes about. And for him it was there's something missing. I missed something.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2020-2021 Panini Prism of Draftpicks Basketball, two box, random pack break number two. Big thanks to all of these folks right here, Guy, Kyle, and Patrick. So what we're going to do first is we're going to open up the box and number each pack and then randomize your names and match you up with a pack number. I'm not a fan of this configuration here because this always happens. That always drops into the box. All right, so there's one, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Nice. OK, now let's do some randomizing. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it 12 times. Six and a six for each list. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12 in final time. After 12, we've got Patrick down at Patrick. Six and a six, 12 times for the numbers. One, two, 11, 12 in final time. After 12, we've got pack six down to four. All right, so Guy with pack one, Kyle with pack nine, Patrick, you have the rest. I don't think anyone's going to trade pack, so we're actually going to do this. Let's do this sort by your first names first. Actually, this is exactly the order we're going to go, and we're going to go Guy with pack one, Kyle with pack nine, and then the rest will be for Patrick. All right, Guy, good luck.  We've got Aaron Naismith. Listen, I don't know what the upcoming draft class is going to look like. I got to do some more research on that. But maybe Devin Vassel gets hyped coming up to the draft in about a couple of weeks.  Rookie Otto. And we've got Patrick Williams, Hyper, we've got Jaden McDaniels, Red Wave, Devin Dotson, and Zeke Najee. All right, so that was for you, Guy. Let me actually print these labels out. That was the very first pack, laser. All right, there we go. All right, so that was for you, Guy. That print is kind of small. I might have to shorten that up a little bit. Why is that so tiny? Take three. That's a little bit better right there. So, Guy, there was your first pack. Kyle with pack nine, and the rest of these are yours, Patrick. Kyle, good luck. There's Zeke Najee, Silver Rookie, and Tyrese Halliburton, 152 out of 199. Autograph. There's Niko Manion. There's Global Prospects, Lamello Ball. He could be top five pick, top three pick. We'll see. There you go, Kyle. And now the rest is for Patrick. Thanks, Patrick, for grabbing all these packs. We might have personal boxes available on jaspys.com. If you're buying all these spots, maybe you might be interested in a personal box. And that's on Instagram live only, at jaspys.com, ladies and gentlemen. At jaspys.com, on Instagram. Patrick, good luck. We've got Daniel Turo, and we've got RJ Hampton. That hyper pattern in the background. There's an autograph for you. There's Jaden McDaniels. Obi Toppin, I think, is a name, right? I feel like I've heard that name, too. That red wave, not numbered. Cassius Wilson, Winston, and Killian Tilly.  Cole Anthony, four out of 25. Josh Green, silver, and a one out of five, Devin Dotson. Is he good? He's from a big program. That's pretty nice, Patrick. Let's hope he gets picked by a top team. And all aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-woo! There's another Obi Toppin right here. A Peyton Pritchard to $199.  I think this guy's supposed to be pretty good, too, right? Denny Avigia, and there's Tyrell Terry to $199. Yeah, all that info is on the break schedule. Tyler, that's a $299. I don't think these red waves are numbered, no. Everything ships, obviously. I like those silvers. Paul Ibuah, $151 out of $199. I feel like I've heard this guy's name being bandied about. $20 out of $199. Rob Wooder, the second. RJ Hampton-Hyper, rookie. Patrick Williams to $199. There's Lamello Ball. $126 out of $149. Elijah Hughes, got a nice cracked eye. $169 out of $199. Onyeka Okongwu, Peyton Pritchard-Silver, Alpha Diallo, $100 out of $149. Any relation to the other Diallo? And then out of $149, Casius Stanley, Obi Toppin again, and there's Okongwu right there. So there you go, Patrick.  My college knowledge, not too strong on these guys, but I'm hoping that they'll all end up being top picks in a couple of weeks. So thank you for that. Thanks, everyone. Thanks to Kyle and Guy as well. Kyle Guy as well. Thanks, you guys. Thanks, everyone. More in the store, jaspyscasewrakes.com. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye.


Here we are in our example, Form 1040, populating it with LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along, but it's a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access to the Form 1040 related schedules and forms at the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Starting point as usual, we've got the single filer, Mr. Anderson, no dependence, W2 wages, 100,000 standard deduction at the 12,950, getting us to the taxable income, 87,050. We're mirroring that in our income tax formula, which we may or may not use this worksheet as we go forward, but here's the 100,000, there's the 12,950, there's the 87,050. We've relying the tax software to do the calculation. My calculations indicate that. For the tax, which is on page two of the Form 1040, 14774, 15,000 withheld gets us to the 226, which we're mirroring over here in our equation. Okay, that said, let's go on back and run the scenario where we're gonna have another situation where we have income from a business, income from the business. So let's just look at the differences. I'm gonna imagine a situation where we don't have any income as a W2 income anymore and we just have the income from the business and look at all the different changes that will happen, including the change we're focused on this time, which is the deductibility possibly of the health insurance. So let's see how that would work. I'm gonna go on over and say, let's remove the W2 income and let's just say that's gone. Let's just, we'll just delete it this way. Boom. And then we're gonna go into the Schedule C and say that we have then, I'll just populate the income side of things. Let's say it was gross income 120,000 and then we had expenses for advertising to 20,000 just to get some subtraction in there. So that should give us 100,000 of income pulling it over. And then we have the Schedule C. Now, obviously I didn't populate a lot of the other stuff to go through the Schedule C in detail. We'll talk about it later, but the general idea is it is an income statement in essence, income minus expenses. We could see some of the added kind of confusion just with regards to bookkeeping to implement or input the income statement into the system and a client's possible need for bookkeeping help just with that. Just also note that if you take on clients that have businesses, you're also gonna run into most likely the mileage method for the car, home use of the office and whatnot. So we'll dive into some more of this stuff when we get to the Schedule C stuff, but just be aware when you're trying to sort out what kind of clients you wanna deal with, business clients are gonna be a lot more complex. That gets us the 100,000 net income that pulls into the Schedule 1. As we would expect, there's the 100,000 for the additional deposit. Income and adjustments to income, which pulls into the 1040. So now instead of having the 100,000 up top, it is down here on the information that came from the Schedule 1. That kind of makes sense, but it doesn't stop there. The fund doesn't stop there. We also are gonna have to calculate the taxes, self-employment tax. So we talked about that, so we could see then here's the 14129. That's over and above the income tax, which usually we don't have to deal with when we're dealing with clients that have W2 income because they have the employer dealing with their social security and Medicare taxes. Here we have to calculate the employee and employer portion on the net income, which was in essence that 100,000, although it was just adjusted a little bit. And that goes then to 1040 page two. So we've got the tax calculated, but we also have this other tax of the 14129, which is another added issue. We also, as we saw in a prior presentation, get half of that tax, as we can see here, as a deduction, marrying what would happen on a corporate side of things where the employee pays half the tax, the employer pays half the tax, but the employer gets to deduct the items. And so we should get to deduct this half right here, but we can't deduct it on the schedule C because we have to get to the net income in order to calculate the tax. And that would be a circle reference. So they put it over here on the schedule one, page number two, and there's the half of the deductible portion of the self-employment tax. Now, on top of that, we talked about in a prior presentation, a calculation possibly of a SEP or simple as types of plans that could be set up for a sole proprietor. So that's another thing that will typically come up, if you deal with clients that have their own businesses, then you have issues with regards to, they don't have access to a 401K plan possibly from a W-2 employee, if this is their only business. So you might have to deal with possible planning to be able to set up a 401K, but that's usually more complex. So a simple plan like a SEP or a simple or something. And then you've got the health insurance situations. And so now the question is, if they don't have access to any other kind of health insurance, then you should be able to get a benefit, you would think for the health insurance here. And then your first thought would be that, well, shouldn't the health insurance be deducted on the schedule? Scheduled election. C, so that gets a little bit messy because we're not putting it on the schedule C over here. It's pulling over to the schedule one and you can kind of imagine why that might be the case, right? Cause if it was on the schedule C, then you'd get to deduct, you'd get to lower your income over here on the schedule C, which means you'd be paying less social security taxes. So the fact that they put the health insurance possibly on schedule one, isn't gonna have a benefit for your social security taxes, although it will have a benefit for your income taxes. So that's what we end up with.


tem is, indeed, the basis of an inclusive society. We must recognise the achievements of children with additional support needs. In school leaver destinations, those positive destinations that you work, training or employment or further education have improved from 71 per cent to 85 per cent.  We have more young people going into positive destinations, with fewer young people leaving with no or lower qualifications. Unlike the Tories, we will not demure from the difficulties, we will not dismiss the critiques. We will face up to the reality of that lived experience. As demonstrated in the opening remarks of the Minister for Social Security, there is an employment gap between disabled people and non-disabled people. That gap is bigger in Scotland than it is in England or, indeed, the UK as a whole. It is lower than the north-east of England and it is lower than the gap in Northern Ireland. I am very interested in the work of Professor Colin Lindsay, who talks about the clustering of ESA claimants around west-central Scotland and how he attributes that to the job losses of the 1980s and 1990s, part of that de-industrialisation process that the Tories provided over. By contrast, we have seen the UK Government dismiss and belittle the damning verdict from the United Nations Committee on the Conventions of Rights of People with Disabilities, which had a very specific inquiry on the impact of welfare reform, and they concluded that there was reliable and credible evidence of grave and systematic violations of the rights of people with disabilities. The UK Government's response was, well, welfare is not the only way to help people living with disabilities. That is true, but it is not an excuse to strip welfare support from disabled people right across the UK. When the UK Government was found wanting by the courts with regards to PIP rules, they did not change their behaviour, they changed the rules, they changed the goalposts, they are writing out people who need support to manage their therapy, they are writing out people who cannot follow a journey route due to psychological distress, somewhat ironic given that this is learning disability week and it is only a few weeks past since it was mental health awareness week. When it comes to the Tory rhetoric of supporting people with disabilities into work, I do not know whether we should laugh or greet because 800 disabled people lose their mobility cards every week across the UK. How on earth does that help people into work? They have cut £30 a week for ESA work-related activity group claimants. How does that help people into work? They have abolished independent living fund, which we reintroduced. How does abolishing independent living fund help people to live independently? Then there is the bedroom tax. We have seen what is happening south of the border with that disproportionate impact on people with disabilities. We have seen rent arrears increase and we have seen evictions increase. According to the UN, the bedroom tax curtails the rights of people to choose their place of residence in accordance with article 19 of the convention. By contrast, this Government sends £47 million to assist 70,000 households, 80 per cent of whom have a disability. None of those measures are fair, none of them are effective, they are nasty and they are toxic, all of which the Tories still say that that makes them feel proud. I know that disabled people and their families often have to fight for everything that should be theirs by right. That is exactly what this Government is aiming to change with our disability delivery plan. I want to end my remarks where the Minister for Social Security started and to thank all those disabled people and disabled people's organisations who have worked so hard to produce a disability delivery plan that we will implement and put into action. That concludes our debate on a fairer Scotland for disabled people. We move to decision time and there are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. I would remind members that if the amendment in the name of Adam Tomkins is agreed, then the amendment in the name of Alex Rowley would fall. The first question is that amendment 5594.2 in the name of Adam Tomkins, which seeks to amend motion 5594 in the name of Jeane Freeman on a fairer Scotland for disabled people be agreed. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed, we'll move to a division and members will be cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 5594.2 in the name of Adam Tomkins is yes, 25, no, 74, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore not agreed. The next question is that amendment 5594.1 in the name of Alex Rowley, which seeks to amend the motion in the name of Jeane Freeman be agreed. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed, we'll move to a vote and members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 5594.1 in the name of Alex Rowley is yes, 74, no, 25, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore agreed. And the final question is that motion 5594 in the name of Jeane Freeman as amended be agreed. Are we all agreed? We're not agreed, we'll move to a division and members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 5594 in the name of Jeane Freeman as amended is yes, 74, no, 25, there were no abstentions, the motion as amended is therefore agreed. And that concludes decision time. We'll now move to members business in the name of Brian Whittle and we'll just take a few moments for members to change seats.


Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Matt Gill of White Rock Minerals. How are you today? I'm Will Tracy. Thank you. For all of you investors from the cannabis sector, we're trying to draw you into gold. And of course, there's a gold bull market in Australia right now. Is that correct, Matt? So gold prices in Australian terms are going really well, over $1,800 an ounce. Lots of minds in Australia making lots of money and we want to be one of them. So we have an Australian, we have gold and we have a gold Australian company. So would you mind telling us more about White Rock Minerals? And you know, this is one of the companies I saw at a conference recently that I was so impressed with. I just liked the overall story. Can you share this with the investor intel audience, please? Sure. So we've got two projects. As I say, we've got two children. We have a gold and silver project in northern New South Wales in Australia. And we also have a zinc silver gold project in central Alaska. So great underpinning precious metals to jurisdictions and that in a nutshell is White Rock Minerals. Let's go through this, please. Let's start in with the gold. How many ounces do you currently have proven with your gold resource? So we, in the language that we use, a York reserve of 160,000 ounces of gold. It sits within a resource of over 340,000 ounces of gold. That's just in our New South Wales asset. We've got a similar amount of gold sitting in our Alaskan asset as well. So if you add those two together, it's over 600,000 ounces of gold. And so for new investors into the gold market, what does this actually mean? And talk to us a little bit about the grade, please. Okay. So that's a really good question. So grade is a bit of a concept that I'm a mining engineer, but for some people it's a little bit hard to understand. So grade is the richness of the rock. Grade is measured in grams per tonne. To give you an idea, the average gold grade in Australia is a little bit over one to one and a half grams a tonne. What does that mean? That means if you had one million tennis balls, one of those is a gold grain. So you think, wow, that's very low grade, but that's the trick with gold. Gold is so valuable that you can only, you only need one or two tennis balls out of a million to be very profitable. And so that's deemed to be high grade? So high grade depends.  So really good question. So generally high grade, and that would help you mine underground, probably anything certainly over 10 grams a tonne or 10 tennis balls per million. So over 10 grams would be generally considered high grade, and anything probably under one gram would be considered low grade.  Yeah, and that would be a great mine if you had a mine that was 10 grams a tonne. So our Mount Carrington child is one and a half grams a tonne. That's average for Australia, so average means well 50% of them are worse than that. So with the Australian gold bull market that's presently happening, is it too late to get in, Matt? In my opinion, never too late. Okay, so we also have silver and zinc. Would you just talk to us a little bit about that resource, please? Sure, sure. So silver, we have as much silver in value as we have gold in value at Mount Carrington in New South Wales, and in fact in Alaska we've got twice as much silver as we have in our New South Wales asset. So we have actually 70 million ounces of silver between those two, which is the equivalent in value to one million ounces of gold. So it's a significant asset base as well. So I'm going to ask you the same question we've been asking. A number of resource CEOs recently are managing directors, we refer to you in Australia, is that correct? Yes. Why are you currently a managing director of a resource company and you're not getting on board with being a managing director of a cannabis company? So look, so when I went through uni, you know, you have a choice about careers and I guess my DNA is mining, solutions, problem solving, working with people. So while I'm partaken in that industry, it was certainly illegal then and in Australia it's still illegal. I, mining just resonated with the technical and the people side of it and I've done that for 30 years and have never looked back and I have no regrets and I'm very happy in that career. So I'm a young investor and I'm looking at diversifying into a gold and in this case we've got silver or technology metal and we have a sink. Why would I select white rock minerals over some of your competitors? What are your biggest competitive advantages? So I think board, I don't think investors give enough consideration to the quality of the people that are handling their money. So two of the four of us on our board are mining engineers. So with respect to many companies, we're not lifestyle lawyers or accountants. So we want to do stuff that adds value. I think that's really important for an investor. I think commodity diversification is also pretty important so that your portfolio is not all in one commodity. So gold, silver, zinc, you know, one can be up, two can be up, one can be down but they balance out and I think a really important component that I think differentiates us is jurisdiction diversification. I don't think investors give enough thought to sovereign risk. So being in Australia and being in Alaska and Alaska in particular is in the top five of the Fraser Institute. I think an investor needs to look at those components, not just how good the grade or that it's a hot metal at the minute but look at some of those other factors that I think help give it credibility and basis and support. So one more question, Matt. When do you think the bull market, the bull gold rush is going to come to North America? So if you look at US gold prices, they're not bad already. I mean, they were peaking over 1300 US only in the last couple of weeks. They're a bit volatile but that's the nature of the mining industry in general. Australia's a little bit different. When we get that exchange rate kicker, which is why we actually do quite well, we base it in US dollars and then have an exchange rate. So I would have thought generally that the gold bull market is already knocking on the door of North America but you should come to Australia first. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Matt. Okay, my pleasure. Thanks, Tracey.


Haswn i'r ffrindwyr i ymgyrch i deiligion i gael, i wneud cyfnodd cwestiynau nhw gydag Ilewyr i'r bys yn gallu ei ddweud i gael, a Flef Gairan ystafel sy'n gallu cyfnodd cwestiynau i gael? 1. Sarah Boyack A fedrwch i fynd i gael i'r Gweithredu gyfaniadau gwybod ym Mhyself i eu gwneud. Mae Gweithredu gyfaniadau gwybod ymgyrch i gael i'r Gweithredu gyfaniadau gyfo'r Gwydan Government to discuss EU issues. Cabinet Secretary for Europe for Europe on 11 November this year for discussions on key elements of the UK Government's EU renegotiation and the forthcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. The Scottish Government also attends quarterly GMC, joint ministerial committee on Europe meetings and the next one is on 7 December. The Cabinet Secretary for... Sorry, I thank the minister for that answer. Can he give me the assurance that the Scottish Government will vigorously defend EU environmental legislation as part of the fitness check that the commission is conducting and do everything it can to encourage the UK and other devolved administrations to adopt a consistent approach to this crucial regulation, which is one of the bed rocks of environmental protection? I thank the member for that question. I can certainly give reassurance, also thank her for her promotion as well, which is very kind, but in terms of the refit and the environmental legislation and the directors and the advice that's being taken, I think it's been raised by a number of stakeholders. I want to thank the stakeholders in Scotland, I've had it raised by a number of stakeholders and some of the elements of that, of course, do give us concern, I think they're listening to those stakeholders. I can give an absolute assurance that it has been raised and that we'll continue to raise it and if the member wishes, I'll continue to feed back to how those discussions are going. Question 2, Graham Day. To ask the Scottish Government how it encourages TV companies to provide a region-specific programming across Scotland. The Scottish Government believes that broadcasting should be fully devolved as set out in the proposed amendments to the Scotland Bill. However, we are continuing to engage with all of our public service broadcasters on this issue and I've made it clear through the charter renewal process that there is a need for increased national representation in TV and radio services that the BBC provides for Scotland. We acknowledge the important role that local television services play in strengthening public service broadcasting in Scotland. Note the success of the STV channels in Edinburgh and Glasgow and welcome the services that are due to launch in Aberdeen, Aire and Dundee in the future. Thanks, Graham Day. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. The STV maintains an appropriate resource presence in Dundee, delivers a taste-size specific news slot across the platforms and as the cabinet secretary noted, will launch a dedicated STV Dundee channel in early 2017 to serve the wider taste-size area. The resourcing and level of service to the areas in mark contrast to that of the BBC. Can I ask the cabinet secretary who influences the Scottish Government might bring to bear to ensure the city of discovery and why the region is treated more appropriately by the BBC? I welcome STV's commitment to Dundee and the Angus area. Indeed, it's interesting to note that OFCOM's third public service broadcasting review shows that 81 per cent of those questions said that STV's news programmes provide a wide range of good quality news about my area and, of course, in relation to the BBC, its own reports state that under 50 per cent of people in Scotland thought that the BBC was good at representing their life in news and current affairs content. Clearly, STV has to be established in the area but clearly in terms of the competition aspect that will have pressure on the BBC, but clearly in terms of the service provision for Scotland, the more that we can have produced in Scotland a news agenda that is reflective of Scotland, whether that is on a national basis or indeed locally, that will benefit the audiences of the BBC, but clearly there is a new operator in Dundee and I think that that will have some healthy competition for audience and viewership. The cabinet secretary will know that STV is raising concerns about the accessibility of the city TV and will she make representation to DCMS on reorganising the EPG guide? Where in regular discussions with DCMS a number of issues and clearly the EPG positioning is one of those areas and in relation to possibilities of reconfiguration with some of the other changes that are happening, so very conscious of that issue and obviously the visibility of local television on the first page or are high up in the EPG does make a difference and it's something that we're a supporter of. Question 3, Roderick Campbell. For the question, Scottish ministers regularly meet with representatives of all EU institutions, for example Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop was in Brussels yesterday speaking for the UK at the cultural and audiovisual council where discussions included how Europe can co-operate and prevent the destruction and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage and conflict areas. A number of ministers meet with EU representatives on a wide variety of issues. At a fitness check of the birds and habitats directives and that these directives protect a number of areas in my constituency of North East Fife, can the minister advise what the Scottish Government's position is in relation to the retention of the directives and will the minister commit to pressing the UK government for early confirmation of the UK Government's position? Thank the member for the question. The minister for environment, climate change and land reform has overseen the Scottish Government's contribution to the UK Government's response. They are in the evidence gathering phase of the fitness check of the two nature directives which the member alluded to as the member will be aware that the fitness check is part of an established European commission programme of regulatory fitness and not a change or not a change in the scope or objective of EC law. The UK Government's response to evidence gathering phase has been published by the commission on the Europa website. A commission conference was held last week to consider the draft emerging findings from that phase and the commission has announced that the final outcome will be known in 2016. Post-demonial minister has answered that question for Roger Campbell. Can I ask him what role he will be playing in the EU discussions over the security following the recent events in Europe? I thank the member for the question. In terms of the incident that took place in Paris, it is fair to say that the working between UK Government and then wider European partners has been very strong. We have a link between the justice secretary and the Home Secretary, and we are constantly updated in terms of being involved in co-bored discussions and any other resilience discussions. I can give the member the strongest assurance that co-operation not just in these islands but across the continent and security and safety of our citizens is our number one priority shared across the continent. Does the minister agree with the principle of devolution of power? Does the minister agree with me that this Parliament should support the UK Government in its pursuits to achieve renegotiations of the EU, to achieve a leaner and more competitive EU with the UK at its heart? I believe in lots of all devolution of power. I should say that that would be unsurprising to the member. On the EU's reform, we have made our case known in terms of reform. We have a 28-page document that, if the member has not read, I will happily forward on it. In terms of reform, we believe that reform of Europe should be sought in a positive manner, as opposed to necessarily threatening the EU with a referendum. We have put forward our case for reform. The UK Government has put forward theirs. We would absolutely agree with some of that, in terms of giving national parliaments and devolved parliaments more say over issues in Europe, but somewhere we have a bit of a disagreement, and those will come to play into the forum, I am sure, as and when the EU referendum is announced and the campaign begins in earnest. To ask the Scottish Government how it promotes gender equality in the arts. The Scottish Government supports the arts primarily through Creative Scotland as part of its on-going equalities diversity and inclusion review. It is improving equalities, monitoring data collection and analysis across all protected characteristics. It is gathering more sophisticated data on employment, progression and representation of women in the arts, and Creative Scotland's equalities diversity and inclusion report 2015 was published on 30 April. Within the arts bodies funded by Creative Scotland in 2013-14, women made up 50 per cent of the workforce and 65 per cent of the operational management. Creative Scotland was the first public body to meet the First Ministers 50-50 by 2020 equality target for their board earlier this year. The cabinet secretary will be aware of concerns over underrepresentational women and creative roles. While Creative Scotland is collecting data from organisations that they fund, it is only collecting the employee workforce data, which excludes freelance or other contracts that are directly related to creative roles such as actors or directors. I hope that the cabinet secretary will agree with me that if we are going to address gender equality and creative roles, we need the proper information to direct this policy. Will she commit to raise this matter with Creative Scotland? Yes, I am happy to do so. It is an issue that I have long had to have concerns about. I think that it would be a great shared endeavour if, across party, we could make that one of the priorities to ensure that, not just in the publicly funded organisations, but in the culture of the culture of this country, we ensure that women are represented at all levels, particularly where there is creative direction, particularly in freelancing, which might not be as easy to get in terms of reports. I am happy to share that endeavour. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage films to be made in Scotland to boost local economies. We support and work with Creative Scotland to champion Scotland as a premier location to create high-quality productions for both the large and small screen. Creative Scotland's location service works closely with regional offices across Scotland to bring productions to local areas and benefit from Scotland's superb locations and highly trained crews. Sunset song, which had scenes filmed across various locations in Aberdeenshire in the Merns region, brought a boost to the local economy during filming and fans of Grassley Gibbons novel can avail themselves of a VisitScotland interactive map, which highlights the various locations used, including Fettar Cairn, Glen Tanner Estate and Arborosnod Church. The Cabinet Secretary has astutely pre-empted my question, because I was going to ask her to join me in congratulating VisitScotland and their partner organisations on the production of the film map of the site in Aberdeenshire, where Sunset Song was shot. Indeed, it has been a critically acclaimed film. What further action will be taken by the Scottish Government and, indeed, by VisitScotland and other agencies involved in boosting local economies to ensure more films are shot in those areas with similar impacts, we hope, on those local economies? The member may be aware of recent development funding and production funds that have been made available from Creative Scotland to encourage more filming in Scotland, but in terms of the local economic reach, the idea and the proposal that is showing films will promote the area is a very strong one. A number of people come to Scotland precisely because they have seen the scenery. The initiatives such as VisitScotland and others to promote the location of Scotland and to see our cities and our wonderful scenery. A number of films are already being filmed just now, which have yet to hit our screens, which will further promote Scotland in the future. Like Richard Baker, I very much enjoyed Sunset Song as well and the premiere of Sunset Song, which is going to be on 4 December. Will the cabinet secretary agree with me that locating the Scottish Film Studio in the North East would be fantastic and the city of Discovery, Dundee, could encourage filmmakers in the North East to stay and work here while actively encouraging international filmmakers to discover the best Scotland has both visually and creatively? As the member may be aware, we are currently at a critical stage in commercial and confidential negotiations for a new film studio in Scotland. He should also be aware that we can't progress film studio proposals that require 100 per cent public funding, so therefore a private sector partner is required. We have not been approached by any private sector partner in the North East, and I am sure that that might come as some disappointment, but there are opportunities for private sector partners across Scotland to see the talent that we have and the opportunities to come forward with proposals. It is quite clear that Sunset Song will do a great deal for the Scottish film industry. Those of you who have not got one of the early tickets to try to see one of the early premieres on 30 November, I would encourage you to do so. It is a fantastic film in so many different ways, and it is very emotionally charged as well as visually beautiful. Excellent. Question 6, Bruce Crawford. Crifon for Mr Crawford, please. It is blinked at me, Presiding Officer. I guess that means that it is working. To ask the Scottish Government what progress it is making in relation to the conservation of the historic built environment. The Scottish Government has established our newest non-departmental public body, Historic Environment Scotland, to provide strong and effective leadership to the sector to ensure that our unique heritage is enjoyed for years to come. The new body came into existence on 1 October 2015, and will lead on the delivery of Scotland's first ever historic environment strategy, our place in time. The strategy was developed in collaboration with partners from across the sector at a recently very successful conference, which was held in Dundee during a wide range of heritage boards together to explore the many ways in which the strategy is currently being delivered, as well as looking at how best to ensure delivery of our shared ambition for Scotland's historic environment going forward. Thank you, Bruce Crawford. The cabinet secretary for her apply, and can the cabinet secretary tell me when it is expected that the national conservation centre in Stirling located at the engine side at the fourth side will be open for business. What its primary purpose will be, what benefits will throw from its activities both for conservation in Scotland and, as you might expect from my own perspective, for employment and the economy in the Stirling constituency. Incidentally, the fourth side area would make a fantastic location for Scotland's new film studio. I am very pleased to confirm that the engine shed a historic environment Scotland's ambitious project to create Scotland's first national centre dedicated to building conservation is on schedule to open at fourth side in summer 2016. I think that it is yet another boost for Stirling and its profile in terms of our heritage. It will focus on raising standards and awareness, it will have education training opportunities, research in different areas and digital documentation and, indeed, climate change adaptation for the built environment. It is already receiving significant international interest, and there are great global opportunities for Scottish expertise to be showcased there, as well as being a boost for Stirling itself. Question 7, Neil Bibby. Phone for Mr Bibby, please. To ask the Scottish Government why action it has taken to promote culture in which Scotland is a part of Scotland. In 2014-15, Creative Scotland invested over £2.6 million through 50 awards to individuals and organisations based in the west Scotland region. In 2015-16, £1.2 million in the six local authorities who make up the west of Scotland parliamentary region through the YMI school-based music making fund. With Creative Scotland investment of £1.4 million between 2015-16 and 2018, three regular funded organisations, Cove Park, the Beacon Arts Centre and Hands Up for Trad, are being supported in the west of Scotland. The Cabinet Secretary will be aware that Paisley has recently launched a bid to become the UK city of culture in 2021. Paisley has a rich cultural heritage and has produced many famous music artists, actors and poets. The bid would also act as a catalyst for job creation and regeneration, with a multimillion pound facelift for the museum as part of the project. Does the minister agree with me that Paisley has a strong bid for the UK city of culture in 2021? Given today that there has never been a Scottish host, can I ask the minister what she will do to help Paisley in the bidding process? I am very aware of the Paisley 2021 bid that I met with Remershire Council leader Mark McMillan, chief executive and the bid director on 27 October to hear more about their ambitious plans. There may be other bids coming from Scotland, but he is quite right to identify that there is a strong case to have a Scottish bid. Obviously, we can learn from the experience of Dundee, who performed extremely well but did not secure in the final regard the actual bid itself. The UK city of culture is an opportunity to showcase cultural heritage. Paisley has a rich heritage in lots of different aspects, including contemporary music and wider heritage, not least in terms of textile and design. It is a strong bid going forward, but, as you might appreciate, there may be other bids coming forward, too, from Scotland. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support and promote the local newspaper and magazine industry. Local newspapers and magazines are a vital part of our healthy democracy. The industry also benefits from business rates policies, which include our decision to cap the business rates poundage below inflation this year and our small business bonus scheme. The small business bonus scheme alone removes or reduces the rates for over an estimated 99,000 properties, the equivalent of two in every five. That provides much welcome support to many small firms such as some local newspapers and the magazine industry. In addition, the Scottish Government and public bodies use local media, including newspapers, to advise advertised campaigns such as preventative health and road safety. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for that response. She rightly says that local newspapers are and remain an important part of our culture and indeed remain a vital source of information for our individual communities, particularly in rural communities such as mine in Galloway in West Dumfries, which I would add would make an excellent base for Scotland's fledging film industry. However, the UK Government, as I am sure that she is equally aware, is currently undertaking a complete review of business rates for weekly titles, which is expected to look at whether newspapers might have partial exemption from those rates. Despite the measures that she has already indicated, can I ask the minister if she will support a review of business rates for local newspapers? In terms of the Scottish Government's initiative, the small business bonus scheme is certainly a leader in helping small businesses, so there is a competitive benefit for Scotland compared with the rest of the UK currently. In relation to that, we look forward to hearing the response for that review that is undertaking. However, we have yet to hear any initiatives that might come from on the back of that, but we will examine them when they come forward. We now move to questions on infrastructure, investment and cities. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage partnership working to secure growth and investment for cities. Cities and their regions play a central role in driving economic growth. The Scottish Government is committed to working individually and collectively with Scotland's cities to optimise that growth for the benefit of the whole of Scotland. The Scottish cities alliance fosters partnership working between our cities and Scottish Government to secure growth and investment. In addition, our support for the city deals in Scotland is predicated on strong regional partnerships that include the wider public sector. Thank the minister for that answer. Will the minister join with me in welcoming recent news that the number of new business start-ups has surged in Glasgow, including, of course, in my constituency of Glasgow Cath over the last year? Of course, I welcome that news and that very positive national picture as well. In fact, the number of businesses in Scotland as a whole is at a record level of 361,345, as at March 2015, an increase of 7.8 per cent since 2014. That underlines our commitment to ensuring a supportive business environment in partnership with local authorities through the business gateway initiative working to secure businesses, including new businesses across the country. Question 2, in the name of Neil Findlay, has not been lodged. A satisfactory explanation has been provided. To ask the Scottish Government what progress it is making toward the ending of the practice of trains discharging effluent onto lines. Working with ScotRail, Transport Scotland has agreed a programme of works to install collection tanks on the only remaining trains operated by ScotRail that still discharge effluent onto the track. That programme commenced at Norsebrem's Workshops in Springburn, Glasgow, with the first trains fitted with tanks and returned to service. The target completion date for those trains to be fitted is 31 December 2017, which is three years earlier than planned. I am grateful to the minister for that reply. It seems to be an ancient technology that we should be spreading effluent online, and I am grateful for his reply. Will the minister confirm that that will mean that the only trains that will continue to discharge in the line after that date are trains that sneak across the border from England? Will he further confirm that, with the replacement programme on those lines, that that will end in 2018? The trains that are responsible to me as transport minister through ScotRail and other franchise have accelerated that programme. I have to pay credit to the trade unions as well, who campaigned on that issue and worked with me. We went through the programme to accelerate it to ensure that the appropriate tanks were fitted. Of course, it is messy to the staff and, of course, unpleasant for everyone working on the railway lines, so those are directly responsible to me. Yes, those lines will be clear, those tanks and those trains will be addressed, and there are some that are still responsible for the Department for Transport, where they have not had that programme accelerated and may still be discharging on Scotland's railways. However, I know that it is a matter that they are still looking at, but certainly I am happy with the actions that this Government has taken. To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with the UK Government regarding the HS2 rail project coming to Scotland. The Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities met the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLaughlin, in June of this year to discuss the on-going study of HS2 Ltd, which was jointly commissioned by the UK Government and Scottish Governments into the broad options for expending high-speed railways to the north of England and Scotland to achieve a journey time of not more than three hours between London and Edinburgh Glasgow. The Cabinet Secretary also met Robert Goodwill MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, earlier this month at the HS2 Ltd supply chain conference in Edinburgh. I thank the minister for that response. There are unconfirmed reports that costs for the HS2 project have increased by 30 per cent to £30 billion. If that is the case, can the minister indicate how such a rising cost is likely to affect Scotland's transport budget and the overall viability of the project? The differencing cost, as I understand it, is down to the 2011 prices with actual costs, and then, of course, projected costs that DFT is monitoring. Because of the current expenditure today being built into the Barnett formula, if that president continues, there should be no impact to our transport budget. Of course, we keep a very close eye on that, and it is worth reminding the chamber that we support the extension of high-speed rail physically to Scotland so that we enjoy the actual benefits, rather than simply being made easier to travel more quickly to the north of England. Clearly, we are keeping a very close eye on costs and the necessary expenditure for Scotland. To ask the Scottish Government whether it has carried out an assessment to determine the average cost of building new railway stations. There have been no assessment carried out to determine an average cost of the building of a new railway station. Many factors, variable factors such as the size and location of a proposed station, associated groundworks and the requirement for additional infrastructure, can impact on the cost of any station. Can I thank the minister for that answer? One of the key criteria for applying to the Scottish stations fund is access to third-party funding and that promoters must be able to demonstrate that alternative funding sources for the proposed improvements have been exhausted. At a time when budgets are tight for local authorities, does the minister believe that scouting for private funding is the best use of council resources? Sometimes, I think, there may be useful and necessary interventions from the private sector, whether it is through planning obligations or so on that may be appropriate and helping to contribute to infrastructure, so they pay their way in transport improvements. There are a number of examples that can be showcased to show how that can be done. I think that in partnership we should continue to focus on investment in the railways. The Government has committed some £5 billion in railways investment, but, of course, if we can leave it in, other sources of funding can do even more for the railways in Scotland. To ask the Scottish Government what upgrades are planned for the A9 north of Inverness. We want the very best for communities and those users of the A9, and that is why we will continue to improve transport infrastructure in the north. In fact, since 2007, on the A9 north of Inverness, the Government has invested £5.5 million in the A9 Helmsdale to order-of-case-ness improvements phase 2 scheme and £13.3 million on the refurbishment programme for the Keswick bridge to deliver a reliable crossing for road users in the next 30 years in addition to routine maintenance. An improvement scheme to remove the hairpin bend on the A9 at Buriedale Braise is also currently in preparation in addition to routine maintenance activities over the next three years and the excess of £1 million of resurfacing is also planned for the A9 north of Inverness. I thank the minister for that answer. What is the likely timescale of the public local inquiry on the Buriedale Braise? The minister ought to know that the travelling public and developers who need changes that will help larger vehicles to get up there want to have some certainty about when we are likely to see a decision on that and when we are likely to see the actual development take place at the Buriedale Braise. I understand the demands for the work at Buriedale Braise. I really do, but the matter for timescales is independent of Government. It rests with the DPEA, a matter that I remember very well from my previous brief within planning. However, a pre-inquiry meeting is scheduled to take place on 2 December and the date and duration of the inquiry will be discussed at that pre-inquiry meeting. I say again that I understand the local demands for that improvement project. A number of Highland farmers have approached me about the lack of labour for fallen vehicles and other slow-moving vehicles on the A9 north. Does the minister accept that allowing opportunities for slow-moving vehicles to pull over is a major contributor to road safety? Would the minister look again at the problem? Of course, we are delivering the dualling of the A9 and we look further at spending plans to see what else can be done around road infrastructure improvement and very mindful of road safety issues. Of course, that is a matter that we will keep in mind, but we must also balance that with our spending commitments and availability of spending, which is a matter that is being discussed right now in the House of Commons as we find out what the spending review means for Scotland. To ask the Scottish Government what action the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities will take to facilitate the creation of low-emission zones in Scotland's major cities. We have a vision, which we set out in our clean air for Scotland strategy for Scotland, to have the cleanest air in Europe. Low-emission zones are a key part of that strategy. Over the next year, we will develop guidance and a new framework to enable local authorities and their partner organisations to work together to deliver the best measures, including low-emission zones for their air quality management areas. Answering what the minister will remember in the debate last week, I highlighted the problems of air pollution in the parts of my constituency. Will the Government commit to introducing low-emission zones in key cities with air pollution problems by 2018? Crucially, will it commit to supporting local authorities' implementation of low-emission zones through full funding? We will certainly be supportive by way of policy and interventions and also around the funding package that exists. Of course, there are necessary arrangements to be put in place in terms of guidelines and monitoring as we go through that programme to 2018. The current programme is indeed described as ambitious but will be supportive as we can with local authorities as we tackle air quality in partnership. To ask the Scottish Government what progress it has made in ensuring that a may bowl bypass achieves the status of a shovel-ready project. Following consideration of a public local inquiry reporter's recommendations for the A77 may bowl bypass, Scottish ministers have decided that orders should be made without modification. We are now progressing the design work for this important scheme, with a view to publishing made orders early next year, which, subject to no legal challenge, will complete the statutory process. It's good news, minister. Can we now expect a financial commitment for this project from the minister and when this might be forthcoming? The Scottish Government remains committed to commencing construction of the A77 may bowl bypass at the earliest possible opportunity, subject to the satisfactory completion of the statutory process and allocation of funding from future spending reviews, which will, of course, be informed by today's announcements. Question 9, Jim Hume. Jim Hume is not in the chamber. Question 10 has been withdrawn, as the satisfactory explanation on Mr Doris's behalf has been provided. We therefore move to the next item of business, which concludes question time. The next item of business is debate on motion number 14942.


This study demonstrated the potential of using DS-INA, immunofluorescence, DS-IF, as a tool to detect and monitor INA viruses in marine environments. The technique was successfully applied to heterocapsicekular squama, a dinoflagellate species which was found to produce DS-IF signals 1,000 times higher than background autofluorescence when infected with the SS-INA virus HCINAV. Furthermore, DS-IF positive cells were observed throughout the entire infection cycle, reaching up to 63% of the population. Additionally, photosynthesis and chromosome integrity remained unaltered even during peak replication, suggesting that INA virus infection does not disrupt these processes. Overall, this study provides evidence that DS-IF can be used to detect and monitor INA viruses in marine environments, thus providing a powerful tool for studying virus-driven ecosystem impacts. This article was authored by Samantha Arcoi, Boudi Utama, James W. Sperling and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


The size of the Latin American economy and its young demographics are especially important for the United States, because our economy is tied much more closely to the economies of our neighbors than to those across the oceans. Forty-three percent of all of our exports stay in the Western Hemisphere. We export more than three times as much to Latin America than we do to China. And I want to repeat that because I don't think there are very many Americans who understand or know that. We export more than three times as much to Latin America than we do to China. We export more to Latin America than to Europe and more to Chile or Colombia than to Russia. North America is the largest free trade area in the world. Latin America has undergone such a profound democratic transformation that it can now be a model and even a mentor for those fighting to create and protect democracy everywhere. Let's not forget that before the Middle East, it was Latin America that people dismissed as arid ground for democracy. We can still recall a time when dictators and strongmen dominated the hemisphere. And plenty of Americans thought that friendly autocrats were the best we could ever hope for. But citizens coming together, asserting their fundamental rights in the face of autocrats and military governments, overcame the doubts of the world and the challenges of transition to build democracies that deliver results. The very ideals we hope for in Egypt and Tunisia have already taken place in our own hemisphere. So Colombia, in short, had gone from a source of danger to itself and others to a source of inspiration to all of us and to becoming a vital partner in the great debates of our time. Now the real credit goes to the Colombian people and to the leaders who had to make very hard choices, not just once or twice, but over and over again. But the United States played an important, some would say, an essential role. The money we invested in planned Colombia over that decade, while significant, is less than we spend in Afghanistan in a single week. When President Obama returns from Latin America, he will have set the stage for more stories like Colombia's in the years ahead. Stories with powerful implications for trade and jobs, for education and innovation, for many advances in human potential that we will be so proud to see and that we will benefit from.