Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Washington County Metal Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications. Park Chester Times, www, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the different label. I've always been a host, Laura Seiler. On this edition, we will focus on housing and people with special needs. With us to discuss that and so much more around housing and special needs is Ableton on Air's partner in our program, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Executive Director, Zachary Ralph Watson. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Thank you, Larry. Thanks for having me. So let's discuss housing and people with special needs. First people do that, and I know you've been on the show numerous times. What are the missions and goals of Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity? Well, again, thanks for having me, Larry. Our Habitat for Humanity is an international organization. We're in 70 different countries in all 50 states in the United States. And we have a vision of creating a world where everybody has a decent place to live. We're a Christian, ecumenical, nonprofit, affordable housing organization. And we focus on homeownership. So we build houses using volunteer labor, donated materials and fundraising to build affordable housing for income sensitive Vermonters in Central Vermont. And the homeowners get a mortgage for their home and their payments go to support constructing new houses for other folks that are in need of housing. Okay. I'm talking about people with special needs and housing. What is your opinion about the housing situation? Because as of June 1, we're in Central Vermont. But as of June 1, the COVID relief package or COVID relief for people that are in hotels. Let's talk about that. And how is that going to affect people in need of housing? Yeah, I think the so we received one time once in a lifetime sort of influx of cash during during the COVID pandemic to address the homelessness needs in our state. And Vermont responded with that funding to put homeless populations or the unhoused into hotels and motels across the state. And that program has been ongoing since 2020, I believe. And so the biggest impact of the end of the COVID pandemic and running out of the funds from the federal relief is that are there is no longer funds to support the homeless voucher hotel voucher program for the homeless. And there are currently about 1800 families in Vermont that will become unhoused. So they will be kicked out of the home, the hotels and motels, essentially. So it won't be, there won't be any more funding whatsoever or they won't at the last minute try to, is there a last minute try to not make people unhoused in terms of this? There is. So the the Vermont legislature passed their, their budget, their fiscal year, their 2024 budget, and it did not include funding to continue the program. So if that budget goes through, then there will not be any funds to support no last minute deals to continue the program. Essentially the unhoused populations will depend on. Because the winter months are kind of brutal. They are. Yeah, they'll have to depend on the Agency of Human Services and DCF and other Department of Services, which are already overwhelmed and don't have resources to handle the influx. The Vermont General Assembly, when the budget was passed, there was the House of Representatives was ten votes short of getting a supermajority, which means that if the governor vetoes the budget, then the House would potentially not be able to override his veto. And the legislators that did not vote in favor of, in particular the Democrats that did not, and progressives that did not vote in favor of the budget did so because it did not include funding to continue the homelessness voucher program. So presumably if the budget is not, if the veto is not, if the governor vetoes it and it is not overwritten, then the House and the Senate will have to come up with a plan to continue or come up with a solution for the homeless population in Vermont. Talking about housing for everyone, recently they passed, the Senate passed S-100. Explain a little bit about that in detail and what that is, in this case, when it comes to housing. Yeah, so it's a very comprehensive housing bill. There's a lot of different pieces in it and it attempts to address a lot of the housing challenges in Vermont that have sort of held us back from being able to build more housing over the last hundred years really, or, you know, 80 years I would say. And so the reason this is coming about is Vermont is experiencing a housing crisis and where there is not... An emergency crisis. There's an emergency crisis and then there's for our homeless populations, which is it needs to be addressed now, but Vermont arguably has been experiencing a housing crisis for a long time. Can you explain more about that? It really just means that there's a really low percentage of vacant housing, so the number of housing on the market which is available for purchase. And what that does is it drives up the cost of housing for rentals and for purchasing so that it's no longer affordable for working Vermoners and even people that want to move here to work are not able to find housing. And so rents are really expensive and it's really expensive to buy a house. When you say challenges that Vermont is facing, for example, certain buildings, like for example when we were filming your Barry house, the house was old. Or should I use the word grandfather? I mean what do you do in that case if you're building or rebuilding someone's house? How do you save some of the things that need to be saved? Is grandfathering a problem with some things in terms of housing, in terms of where to put people, especially people with disabilities? Right, so we rehab that house, we rehabilitated it, and lots of challenges with rehabilitation. Vermont has some of the oldest housing stock in the country. I hope that wasn't a bad question. Nope, not a bad question at all. I know it's one of our challenges for the existing housing stock, so we do have housing that's considered affordable on the market for low and middle income Vermoners. But typically these housing units require massive amounts of work. They need new roofs. Rehab, exactly. New roofs, new foundations. They've led, they have asbestos. So somebody that is low income that might be able to afford to buy the house at its mortgage value won't necessarily be able to afford the repairs that are required to make it modern, livable, and even insurable.  So that's one of the challenges with the existing housing stock is that it's old and it's hard to fix up. So the challenges are what I just talked about.  Environmentally, that's not safe. Environmentally, it's a health hazard. But also for the environment, a lot of these older houses are not energy efficient. So they're really expensive to heat and maintain. And so if you want to bring them to modern energy efficiency standards, then it's going to be very expensive as well. And if you don't do that, then you're going to be basically depending on fossil fuels, which are very expensive and very volatile in their prices. And then it's just going to be expensive to heat and cool your home. Is it, in terms of accessibility and your agency, in terms of, let's say, a person with a special need needs... Well, maybe not a completely accessible home, but some accessibility features. Is it more money to put in for an accessibility feature in somebody's home? Like, is that some of the challenges that people are facing now? So ADA compliancy, you know? For newer construction, there is a cost associated with it. You need wider doorways. You need structural pull bars in bathrooms. There either needs to be a ramp that only goes up one foot over. You know, it has to be ADA compliant. Those things can all be expensive. Typically for new builds, if you're able to keep it one story and you're, you know, it's cheaper with a new build. For a rehab, it becomes, it either is not possible or it can be expensive. But, yeah, they're, to meet ADA accessible standards. What are some of the other big challenges that people face with housing, especially when trying to find it? So the S100, the housing bill, again, there's a, it's trying to address a number of challenges that have prevented development across the state. And one of them is density. So that's the number of... Explain what that means. It's the number of units that you can build in a certain area. So the bill makes it so that wherever a single unit building is allowed, it, you, it enables that municipality or that developer to build two units. So it's immediately doubling the capacity of our, or the density of our communities. It also makes it so that any, the density, allowable density for any acre within certain designated areas has to be at least five units. And in some cases, areas with municipal sewer and water can, where there's two units are allowed, they can build four. So it's increasing the number of units that we can build in an area. So we have denser downtowns. So that's, that's one piece that's really helpful. The other is, is around some of the, with, with Act 250, which has been enormously successful in conserving our state and our environment, but has had some, has not been particularly helpful in areas where we do want to develop, like in our downtown areas, where, so it does create some, it does create some exemptions in Act 250 that allow for larger housing developments in designated areas. And then it also limits the appeals process so that currently you can appeal a development based on its character, which is sort of a loosely defined term, but has, has been sort of a rallying call for the not in my backyarders is sort of a catchall. We just don't. Right. We don't, we don't like this. So it doesn't match the character of the neighborhood. So the house of the people that move in the house. So they say, okay, it's two stories instead of one that doesn't match the character or it has a pitch roof instead of a flat roof. It doesn't meet the character. Or we just don't like the color. And that doesn't say it can be a sort of a catchall phrase.  If I know Vermont doesn't have group homes or as many, but some areas don't like certain populations moving in, but that's way in the past. Now we're in the future. So now it all has to do with the building structures itself. Yeah. So in areas in developments that include affordable housing, you cannot use character of the neighborhood as an appeal in the cases of Act 250. So that, that will, that takes some of the uncertainty out of developments and it can be really helpful. But you are correct that density requirements, character of the neighborhood, some of these zoning restrictions that have been put in place. Where, you know, put in place as a way to keep lower income housing out of certain neighborhoods or in some cases to keep traditionally marginalized black and indigenous communities out of their areas as well. Not people with disabilities. I mean, sometimes it might trickle into that. But I'm not specifically aware of that, but it's possible. Yeah. Now let's talk about, let's piggyback. President Carter created Habitat for Humanity. Timmy Carter was a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, but it was a, yeah. He worked to make Habitat for Humanity better, explain a little bit more how people that really don't know how Habitat for Humanity really works. So take us, if someone wants a house, how do they go about doing that and start there? Well, I want to kind of connect it to the broader conversation about the housing crisis that we started on, right? So we talked about homeless populations a little bit, but even populations that are in rental housing that is subsidized, like Section 8 vouchers through the Vermont State Housing Authority.    So our housing pipeline is broken because there are none of those affordable housing options for home ownership for folks to get out of the rental world. The only organization in the state that is building your single affordable home is Habitat for Humanity. And so what we do is we partner with people that are in need of housing. So they live in subsidized housing currently. Their existing housing doesn't have enough bedrooms. The rent is too much. They live in an unsafe neighborhood. There's mold, asbestos. Their appliances don't work. Those are examples of people that we partner with. They have to earn less than 80% of the area median income based on their family size or household size. And we do partner with individuals, but that typically for a family of four, some are around $60,000 or $70,000. And so you have to live and or work in Washington and Orange County. And that's an important part of having a community. And then the fourth requirement, and this is the most important, is that you have to be willing to partner with us. And that means that you spend up to 250 hours. I think that breaks down to three or four hours a week helping to build your home. So you're there alongside the other volunteers building your home. So we have an application process. People can sign up to receive notifications when our application process opens at our website, centralvermonthabitat.org. But I do want to say a lot of people think that we build houses for poor people. And that's not necessarily true. A lot of people in Vermont qualify for our program. A lot of them just don't know about it. And they just don't know. Like I said, if you and your partner, if you and your two kids and your partner earn less than $70,000 a year, you qualify for our program. That's a lot of Ramoners. And so a lot of people think that we just partner with poor people. That's not the case. We partner with a lot of people who have the means and potentially could afford a home, but there's just nothing out there that they can afford. Now you said, let's piggyback. You said housing cliff. So let's, okay. Like people that are on social security, social security, disability, social security, and other federal programs. Is that what you mean by the housing? What exactly do you mean by the housing cliff? Well, so benefits cliff is basically you receive social security, you receive unemployment or you receive heating fuel assistance, things like this. Some of those are not good examples, but heating assistance is a good one. Or food stamps, right? These things help you in your daily activities to afford to do things. Well, at a certain point you earn too much money and you lose all that, these benefits. But the money that you make actually isn't enough to cover what the subsidies provided before. So you no longer can afford fuel. So you no longer can afford food. And so there is actually incentive built into that for people to not make more money. Unless it's a lot more money. Because if you make more money, then you can't actually afford to live. So that's the benefits cliff. And that is a state sponsored system that incentivizes people to stay poor. And again, that's a broken system. The housing cliff I was talking about is something I just made up right now. But that's where you're stuck in subsidized rentals. And if you make more money, you might lose your subsidized rental and then you can't afford to live anywhere. And there's no way to get out of that into a housing situation which would also help you get out of subsidized rentals. No. Is there a main reason why there isn't enough subsidized rentals or enough housing to go around?  I mean, the weather is nice, but what's really going to happen to these people? And the organizations, such as Good Samaritan and such, they're going to be swamped. So what's – do you want to piggyback off that? Yeah, I think the legislature hopes that they will figure it out. They hope that the existing systems will support them. And I think most people can agree that that's not the case, that our system is already pretty taxed. It's pretty overwhelmed. And an influx of another 3,000 people into that system is going to be very expensive and it's going to overwhelm our system. So in some cases, people who are struggling, there's lots of diverse reasons for homelessness. Some of it is mental health, some of it is drug and alcohol. Some of it is you just can't afford to live somewhere. You've got two functional adults with jobs. But people who are dealing with mental health or drug addiction problems and maybe have found some stability through the Motel Voucher system and are able to make progress on addressing their addiction, who are then all of a sudden thrown into the streets. Where I believe we will – I mean, this is all hypotheticals, but I believe we will see more overdoses. I believe we will see more suicides. There's New York or other states such as New York. They're having a migrant issue now and they're putting immigrants in – that come on buses. They're putting them in hotels. But there's not enough space. And this is all across the country. So now we just have to figure out where to put these folks. Yeah, and there's no place to put them. In Montpelier, we have an overnight shelter in the wintertime that is sort of – I hope I'm not asking a bad question. No, not at all. It's just for us in the different churches. And they are pretty close to full capacity throughout the wintertime. Maybe there's room for five or ten more. But that's not nearly going to be able to cover the number of people that are coming out of the hotel voucher program. But the other – as I said, people potentially becoming unstable with their drugs might end up incarcerated, which of course is very expensive. So our prisons might be a place that the homeless people end up because they've been forced out of their hotel situations. It's – nothing good is going to come out of this. And because we don't have a system that can handle it. If we did, we wouldn't be in this circumstance. So there has to be a statewide institutional way to address it. So since we have some time left, let's go into – so there's an application process for Habitat for Humanity. How can people – what types of information do they need to fill out those applications? The initial application is – we ask for your income, your expenses. That helps us determine – you know, give us a sense of what – whether you would qualify for our program in terms of your ability to pay an affordable mortgage. We do ask for a description of your current housing needs, your address. It's just a paper application. I think it's about seven pages, but you don't need any information to fill it out. If applicants meet the initial criteria that I described earlier, you live and work in Washington, Orange County, or in less than 80% of the area you meet in income, you have some reason why you need housing, and you're willing to partner with us, which is just an attestation. Pretty easy application. Then we go through a verification process where we verify your income and things like that. We might change our process a little bit to make it easier for folks, but it still works. Okay. So what are the – so two main questions. What are the misconceptions around poor people in housing and people with special needs if that group comes into play? And then second, what are the future goals of Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity? So I think – I don't know if I can address the question about misconceptions, because I'm not really sure. Okay, so, you know, if you – let me see if I can – if you run into meeting a house, but like if you can't afford it, but you need housing, is that a misconception? Are there misconceptions around – Well, I think there's misconceptions around homelessness that people think that – I'm sorry if I – No, that's okay. So, you know, some people might assume – you know, I think the most visible populations of homelessness that we see are oftentimes during the day on the street, on the bike path, and that can create a misconception about who our homeless populations are. And those people that we see visibly are usually a smaller percentage of the actual people that are unhoused, because most of our unhoused populations are working or they're taking care of their family inside wherever they are right now. And so there is not one reason for homelessness. Providing more housing is not going to solve the problem. It's also a mental health and a drug addiction problem. It's, you know, so we need more social services in addition to housing. So there's lots of reason why people are unhoused. And in terms of, you know, affordable housing, I think, again, when people think of affordable housing they think of, you know, maybe it's low-income rentals where you have – which are, you know, you don't have people living there necessarily for very long, or it's transient by nature or something like that. And as a result there's less buy-in to the property and the community. That's not always the case. But when we think of like the bad examples of low-income housing, you know, that's where people want to go. But, you know, affordable housing is a broad spectrum and there are lots of people, most people really care and are grateful for the support they get both from rentals and from homeownership and that they are fantastic, wonderful neighbors. And actually having a diverse economic, diverse community of low, moderate, and high-income creates a stronger and a better neighborhood. So, you know, that's our sense anyways. Everybody benefits from it. Yes, so we are currently building a duplex in Randolph as our first duplex, so going from single family to multi-family or multi-unit. And so that's pretty exciting. We're partnering with an organization called Bensonwood to help build the exterior to help us build faster. And so we – because we are doing our part or trying to do our part to build houses more quickly to address the housing crisis, after that we are planning to – the city of Barry is selling us a property of land, property for $1, basically donating it to us and helping us with the cost of demolition and so that we can build a new house, existing houses, unstable. And then we have a couple of projects lined up that I can't really speak too much about, but for the last couple of years, we've been working on an architectural and engineering and feasibility study for a larger housing development on Northfield Street. It's – right now it's a conservation plan unit development, so approximately 25 acres of the 50 acres a half would – is planned to be conserved as a publicly accessible neighborhood park. 12 acres could be developed for anywhere between 100 and 200 units. Right now we have a concept design that envisions 115 units as a mixed unit – mixed income community with workforce housing, single-family and townhouses, senior housing, transitional housing for seniors, low-income rentals and affordable income-sensitive home ownership opportunities that we would construct. Well, we would like to thank you for joining me on this edition of Ableton R&M. For more information on Habitat for Humanity, where can people turn to get help if they would like? They can – yes, people can call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. We will pick up if we are there and glad to help you through our program or direct you in the right place. It's the website that people can go to. Our website is centralvermonthabitat.org and that is all spelled out – centralvermonthabitat.org. Okay, for more information on Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, you can go to www.centralvermonthabitat.org or<PHONE_NUMBER>. That number again is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Again, thank you to Zachary Ralph Watson of Habitat for Humanity and I'm Martin Seiler. See you next time on the next edition of Ableton R&M. Major sponsors for Ableton R&M include Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton R&M include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW – this is the Bronx dot info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton R&M include Yechad of New York and New England where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton R&M has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW – this is the Bronx dot com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton R&M is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists.


We talked about your identity, we spoke about the region, now it's time to speak about your global visions. The invasion of Ukraine represents the most serious breakdown in the international order in several decades. And Russia's goal is to break, apparently, the world order that it considered to be under American domination, and Russia seeks to create a multiple order. How do you see the world order at the end of this war? Which elements for you can be structuring democracy against the liberal regimes, China against the United States, we discussed here a lot about that, the industrial north against the global south, how will it affect your region and your country, what role for different international organization do you see, especially of course for United Nations, Council of Security of United Nations that is quite helpless in this war, and OSCE in which all three of you are members, what are your strengths, are your weaknesses in this coming world order? For you, Mr. Vasilyenko. We think that multilateralism, as our Georgian colleague just mentioned, is the only way for the mankind to advance, to survive if you will, we live in an increasingly interdependent world and even the pandemic has again showed us how interdependent we all are. So we, if we talk about where we stand, we stand of course for democracy, for market economy, we stand for the international rule of law, international law primarily, written down, clearly spelled out, and that is also by the way a difference between the so-called international rules-based order, we stand for the international law, a law that is written, that is agreed upon by everybody, but we also stand for the international cooperation and when we talk about the UN, I guess I'm reminded of the quote by Churchill about democracy, being the worst form of government except for every other that the mankind has tried. The UN too is not perfect of course, but that's the best institution that we have had for the past 77 years now and we need to maybe perhaps reinvent the UN, but we need the UN, we need to strengthen the UN, and likewise we need the OEC as a platform that has been instrumental in almost 50 years of its existence. It is going through also an existential crisis right now because of the breakdown of communications between the West and Russia on that platform as well, but we as a country that in the past chaired the OEC in 2010 brought together all leaders of the OEC participating states to Astana where they recommitted themselves to the vision of a united, indivisible, Europe-Atlantic and Euro-Asian security. Of course that vision is now has been put aside diplomatically speaking unfortunately, but we think that institution too has not gone out of its sort of lifespan, it needs to be supported, we want to support it and we will continue to support the OEC. Thank you very much Olga for your country. I'd certainly echo the colleague here and the need for effective multi-relation and how we all need to work together on various platforms and one thing that made me think when you mentioned the pandemic, pandemic has also told us that nobody's safe until everybody's safe and I think this is currently what we're talking about in Europe when we're all faced with the very negative effects of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. So on that whole multilateral architecture of the world and Europe currently there is this emerging European political community which Moldova will be hosting in June. Originally the idea of President Macron now the debut meeting took place in Prague in October under the auspices of the European Council so this is yet another platform to consolidate dialogue at the top level between European leaders and see how we can strengthen our collective security. Thank you Olga. Vice-Minister Darsalia you started to speak about multilateralism have you something to add to global vision of Georgia? Yes thank you very much as you mentioned I partially actually answered this question and we strongly believe that we will have back the international community based on we will have rules based international system again we will have we are the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries are respected we are democracy's governance is the we are the human rights issues are the priority we really hope that we will have back this international system and and within this from the Georgian perspective we believe that the problems of countries like Georgia of our size that again the size or geographical location will not be the key to decide or geopolitical environment will be key to decide to which part of the world countries belong but according to democracy human rights respecting the international rules will be the key where the countries are and that's from Georgian perspective how we see it but we really hope and I hope that it's not wishful thinking that we will have the international system back based on the international rules back on the Helsinki principles all the principles of international law which we build out our second world war which is significantly challenged today


Welcome. This is Melissa Armo with Stock Swoosh and I'm reviewing 2021 results. We're in May. Stock Swoosh show live trading from Advanced Trader Tracking. So this is if you would have risked an advanced risk, which I'll go over in a minute, year to date from January through the beginning of May here we're in 224.583. So let's go over the year and we'll talk about it what an advanced risk is. If you have questions, you can email me at Melissa at the Stock Swoosh.com. You can call me at 929-3200-GAAP. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Skype. So earning season is going on right now. We're at the tail end event, getting some retail into the end of the period. It's a great time to trade because you have a lot of gaps. Also, there's been an extreme amount of volatility in the market. Now as an active trader, you can look at that as a good thing. Again, you have to know how to play it though, but if you know how to play it, you can make money using the play on volatility. I should say when you're getting something, selling off, for example, or something moving higher, which is buying momentum. Now for those of you that don't know what I do, I focus only on gaps. That's all that I do for swing trades, day trades, options, anything. This is day trades only that I called in the live room and most of these are shorts. While some of these trades are longs, most are shorts. Why? I prefer to short. And the reason I prefer to short, I'll just tell you here really quickly is because you get big moves that happen fast in shorts. Selling action, momentum to the downside is panicking. And therefore it happens quick and big. So I prefer to short, especially for the day trades. Anyways, we started out the year bowing. We did. Nice profit in that second day. The fifth spy was a loss. You can see here the best days I have, I'm typically only doing one thing. Like if I'm doing two or three trades, I'm probably having a more difficult day. In an idea world, I look at every trade and I, or every gap even in the morning, or I'm just hitting the bullseye and I'm in and I'm out. And that's the way that I tend to look at my trading on the six, two in Facebook, both loss. BU&D was a big winner and Apple was good. BU&D first trade failed. Second trade worked. This is a retake. BA worked NCCL on the eight. We've been getting back to doing BA recently again, actually. That's sure it's been tricky towards the end of last year, but man, I still love to play that. The 11th Twitter Facebook bowing lost, two in Twitter, two in Facebook loss. Then we did another bowing that was break even Facebook. Then finally worked in Apple. 12th was Netflix, huge trade NCCL. BA worked 13th. Twitter was the 14th. WFC, nice trade in the 15th. Forget that that was earnings. I want to say that it was 15th. Yeah, I think that was earnings. 18th closer, Martin Luther King, Twitter, 19th. Nice trade. Netflix fell. That was a nice one. First one lost. Second one, profitable trade. The 21st, UAL. Nice profit. IBM was a good one. Always seemed to have luck with that 22nd. 25th was Apple. Verizon didn't do much in the 26th. Bowing in the spy in the 27th worked. No trades in 28th. Spy lost in the 29th. Facebook won. It was a good one. No trades in the first. Sometimes I'll have something where I don't do any trades. It was no good gaps in a day. That's rare, but it can happen. February 2nd, UPS lost. Spy was a big winner. Q's, two trades, one winner, one loser. Q come one in the fourth. Spy lost. Then break even. Q come lost. Another break even in the fifth. That was a jade. Things just didn't go right. Diamonds won on the 8th. IBM and Apple lost in the 9th. 10th, ACAM, Twitter lost. Then a big winner in Twitter. That was February 10th. Spy lost. Save was a big winner on the 11th. Disney lost. IBM lost. Twitter was a big winner on the 12th. Close to 15th. Twitter, we did a bunch of times. 16th worked. No trades in the 17th. Walmart worked. Then Twitter worked the 19th. Boeing lost. Walmart won on the 22nd. No trades in the 23rd. 24th, we did spy twice. One loser, one winner. Twitter lost. Disney won. That was that day. BBY lost. Twitter lost. Twice. And DBZ won. Foot Locker was easy on the 26th. Spy was easy on the 1st. DDD was easy on the 2nd. Rush was easy on the 3rd. Easy days are good. Spy, one loser, one winner the 4th. That's called a retake. And then on the 5th, GPS just did not work either time. And Facebook lost. That was the beginning of March. Then the 8th. Facebook lost. Apple won. Stitchfix won on the 9th. Spy lost. Stitchfix won in the 10th. Oracle won on the 11th and 12th. Lily won in the 15th. Spy won in the 16th. No trades in the 17th. Apple huge trade on the 18th. Nike won in the 19th. No trades in the 22nd. 23rd, WMC didn't work out. Apple didn't work either. BA was a big one. BA is fun to trade when it works. March 24th, GIS marked. Qs lost. Netflix worked. And Apple, big one too. Spy won. Loser won. Winner in the 25th. Facebook lost. 26th. Apple won. And JPM won the 29th. Apple was beautiful in the 30th. Sometimes I'll keep doing something if I like it. I'll just stay right on top of it. We did that with the Netflix options actually. The 31st was Luz Lu won. Off for the Easter week. 12th. No trades. Fast loss. Apple won. Spy won. BBY break even the 14th. 15th. See lost. Apple won. 16th. MS lost. BA won. No trades in the 19th. IBM won in the 20th. Netflix 2 trades won. Loser won. Winner. LVS lost. 22nd. Netflix won. IOTC won in the 23rd. No trades. 26. UPS. Big winner in the 27th. 28th. Save loss. Starbucks won. Microsoft won. eBay was an easy one in the 29th. Twitter lost. First trade. Second one won in the 30th. But that was a nice guy. Twitter worked again. May 3rd. Microsoft worked May 4th. No trades on the 5th. That was a good day in Microsoft. Spy lost. Uber lost. Netflix lost. Etsy big win in the 6th. BY&E did not work out.  Finally the last trade worked but it was late in the day and Shack was a nice winner. QQQ's worked on the 10th. And just to go over here what we were talking about as far as average risk on a trade it's about 2500.  Some trades are slightly more because I may do an ad in the trade. That's an advanced concept. Again I'm not going to go into detail about that now but if I have something going in my direction, going in my direction I will add to the trade, okay. To basically get heavier in the trade to make it a bigger position as the momentum is going in my direction. But the average risk on this advanced trade or risk is 2500 a trade. I had a question in the webinar last night and someone said about doing you know increasing my risk. I really don't feel the need to do that right now. I think it's really important to be comfortable with your risk. So you can hold through trades to bigger targets and be able to be flexible if you need to do more than one trade a day. So you need to be very comfortable with your risk and if you're not sure about that ask me. So this was, this was the cues. This was just what we did the other day. Beautiful beautiful beautiful move. Again gap down here. Boom did the puts. Gap down here in the 10. Boom shorted it. So again do you have to risk 2500 a trade? No you can risk a beginner risk. You can risk $100 a trade, $200 a trade. You can take 100 shares if that works for you. These are equity trades using margin. You can trade at a retail trading firm. You can trade at a proprietary dating trading firm. If you would like a referral for those you can email me, but you can really trade wherever you want. You do have to have charts. You have to have charts. Oops going back here where you have the data, the day data, the one minute, the daily and you have to have pre-market data too to follow me in the room in order to join the wine trading room to get my live calls. You have to have taken the golden gap course. Okay I have to say that too. Anyways let's just go over this here briefly. Talk about margin. You don't know anything about it. A $40 stock price is 200 shares which is what? 8,000 in buying power. So which you can take with a $2,500 prop account or you go retail place you need $25,000. You get a 4 to 1 margin. It's really your choice where you go. If the stock moves for example dollar your direction you can make 200 bucks $200 a day is $1,000 a week. $1,000 a week is 4 grand a month and many people are losing. So 4 grand a month is a lot. It's 48 grand a year. Okay you can day trade with a beginner account and risk the only difference is your share size is smaller. I say start small and grow it up even if you have the size to take bigger because you've got to get familiar with doing the trades. Some of these trades are quick. We're running out in 5, 10, 15 minutes. You can grow a small account though into a larger account. You have plenty of time to do it. The most important thing is getting to your goal. How long it takes you to get to your goal? No one knows but if as long as you make it as long as you reach the goal that's all that matters. You don't want to fail. You want to win and that's why it's very important to take your time and learn as you go along. So I teach my method in a class called the Golden Gap course. I teach this class once a month. The classroom A is May 15th and 16th 9am to 5pm Eastern time. Cost of the class is $69.99 US dollars. It's the same for every person that takes it. Everyone pays the same price and it's in US dollars. The class is online. If you're interested in signing up email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. You must email me for sign up forms. Now if you want to do the combo it's the Golden Gap course and the trends course. The trends is May 18th 11 to 3. Cost of the class is $74.99. Class is online. Don't miss this class and it's a good deal. You save half off when you sign up for both at the same time and again this teaches you long-term trends which will help you in your day trading. So information is extremely important. The more information you have the better you're going to trade. The higher confidence and the higher level of conviction. If you're interested or have questions email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. Have a great day everyone.


AL amylidosis, also referred to as light chain amylidosis, is a rare disease that arises due to abnormal plasma cells. Plasma cells are immune cells that originate from the bone marrow and usually produce normal antibodies. These antibodies are made up of heavy and light chain proteins and are used to fight infections. In AL amylidosis, instead of producing normal antibodies, plasma cells produce abnormal and misfolded light chains known as amyloid proteins. These amyloid proteins then deposit in your body and disrupt normal organ function. The symptoms of AL amylidosis are usually related to the organs that are damaged by the protein deposition. The common organs affected by AL amylidosis are the heart, kidneys, nerves, gut, skin and soft tissue, and the tongue. Common symptoms include neuropathy or numbness or tingling in your hands or feet, shortness of breath related to heart involvement, or swelling of the legs such as edema due to kidney problems or heart problems, changes in skin color, joint pain, and anemia. Early diagnosis of AL amylidosis is important to minimize organ damage and improve prognosis. Disease is commonly made with imaging, blood and urine tests, specialized testing of the affected organ systems, and likely a biopsy where a small piece of tissue is taken and looked at under a microscope. As the mechanism of disease development is similar to myeloma, AL amylidosis patients are often treated with the same drugs such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or stem cell transplant. The treatment of AL amylidosis is complex given the organ damage caused by the disease. However, there are promising novel therapies that include a combination of drugs for the future treatment of patients with AL amylidosis. For example, drugs that can help the body to remove amyloid deposits are currently under investigation in clinical trials. For more information, please visit the MPE website.


Wrth gwrs, mae ein debyg o Morheigol 1-5261 o oedden nhw yn yfel ein graif iawn sgwlad am ddysgu o gael a yn ymlaen nhw'n ddylch ni fel hwnnw o'n ddylch! Rhaid i amgylcheddol i chi ffluio gwaith i ddalunau, ond rydw i'n bryddu cyfnodol i fod yn blaen. Fel gweithreffaeth y fflufio ar gyfer sgwlad y mae'n rhaid chi'n dderefu i gael i fod yn pwg. I now call on Ian Gray to open the debate. Mr Gray, you have seven minutes or thereby please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I was asked to lodge this motion today by one of my constituents, Heather Cameron, who was one of the leading action 2015 ambassadors. Heather Cameron comes from Dunbar Grammar School, and throughout last year in her ambassadorial role campaigned tirelessly to promote a commitment to and understanding of Scotland's role in meeting the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN at the 70th regular session of the General Assembly in New York last September. Those goals commit members to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and I welcome Heather and her classmates to Parliament this afternoon. Heather was one of 15, 15-year-old ambassadors who helped in the UK's launch of action 2015 in London, meeting with politicians including Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, but also delivering a petition to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in a campaign launch that mirrored similar launches of action 2015 by young people all over the world. Heather organised a light the way march in East Lothian with fellow Dunbar Grammar School pupils and local community leaders. That took place on the eve of the UN summit meeting discussing the development goals as part of a final call for commitment from politicians to support the goals. Then Heather met with Kezia Dugdale towards the end of last year to ask for Parliament to consider a motion such as we do this afternoon. I have always been proud of the United Kingdom's significant contribution to global aid in supporting those around the world who need our support the most. Britain is a significant contributor, and last year became the first country in the G7 to honour its commitment to ring fence 0.7 per cent of gross national income for foreign aid. Through successive UK Government support for the millennium development goals, the predecessor goals from the UN, we know that we have today 17,000 fewer children dying for reasons of poverty. Nine out of 10 children in developing countries now attend primary school, which is a significant improvement in education globally. However, it is still unacceptable that more than 1 billion people still live on $1.25 a day or less. That is not just about Government. In fact, in some ways it is not about Government at all. Many years ago, I worked as a teacher in Mozambican. For 12 years, too, I worked for Oxfam. In those jobs, I have seen the impact of poverty through war, drought, famine, dictatorship and even genocide in countries as far apart as Cambodia, Chile, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The thing that I learned was that no matter how difficult the circumstances, even in situations where I confess that I would have given up long before, you will always find people who will work together in order to find a way through to improve lives for themselves, their families, their communities and their countries. It is they who will deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. Our obligation is to support them individually in government and in international bodies such as the UN. That is the importance of the UK budget and the Scottish Government Development programme in countries such as Malawi. Presiding Officer, this problem is neither small nor far away. Sustainable Goal 1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. I know that Heather herself is passionate about explaining to people that that means ending poverty here, too. After all, one in five children in Scotland live in poverty. Tens of thousands of our fellow citizens depend on food banks, and a third of our households are fuel poor. When I worked all those years ago in Mozambique in a rural school, young people from all over that country came to school and lived in the most basic of conditions in spite of war and famine and why, because they believed that education was their route out of poverty. That is a theme that runs through the Sustainable Development Goals, and it is true here in Scotland as it is anywhere in the world. The most shameful of the statistics that we know of Scotland about poverty is that it is still the case that your success at school will depend more on how much your parents earn than any other factor—your talent, how hard you work or which school you go to. That is why, across this chamber, we agree that that attainment gap in our schools must be closed, because that is the greatest single step that we can take to ending poverty and delivering those sustainable development goals here in Scotland. In closing, I want to draw attention to another theme that runs through the Sustainable Development Goals. That is summed up in the goal that calls for urgent action to combat climate change. Around the world, we see the impact of climate change be that in drought or, indeed, in flood. We even see it in changing weather patterns here, which has its own impact on agriculture around our own country. I think that it is appropriate to draw attention to that, because it was, of course, a previous pupil from long ago in Dunbar's schools—one John Muir—who was the very first to recognise and understand that, to end the impoverishing of humanity, it is necessary also to end the impoverishing of nature. I think that John Muir would approve of the sustainable development goals. I am sure that he would be proud of Heather and her classmates from his home town of Dunbar. Many thanks. I now call on Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Kezia Dugdale. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First, I thank Ian Gray for lodging this motion and securing this debate, which will undoubtedly help to raise more awareness of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Of course, exchanges in this chamber often revolve around details of very specific policy issues, and it makes a welcome change to take a step back and look at the much bigger picture elsewhere. I am pleased to speak in a debate that takes us back to what has motivated many of us in this Parliament to become involved in politics, even in a small way to make the world a better place. When the United Nations set its eight millennium goals 16 years ago, it directed its efforts to eradicating extreme poverty, or at least by 2015 significantly reducing it across the world. The millennium development goals rightly focused on matters such as education, maternal health, reducing child mortality and improving debt sustainability as separate goals alongside eradicating extreme poverty. I believe that this more holistic approach has contributed massively to its relative success. I say relative because, as Ian Gray pointed out, despite the enormous progress that has been made, there is, of course, still a long way to go. Of course, as we know, civil war and anarchy in countries at the moment such as Libya, Syria and Yemen make it increasingly difficult for these countries to sustain the development progress that they had already made and, indeed, they are slipping backwards. To truly empower people's lives, it takes much more than simply keeping them alive. The key to sustainable improvement is peace and development. Outcomes described in the millennium development goals report 2015, which struck with me most, is that the number of out-of-school children of primary school age worldwide has nearly halved during the programme, from £100 million in 2000 to an estimated £57 million last year. That was achieved at the same time as a significant decline in the number of people living in extreme poverty from £1.9 billion in 1990 to £836 million in 2015. As Ian Gray pointed out, almost a billion people in extreme poverty is still horrific in this day and age. People desperately trying to eek out a daily existence in a world that has more than enough to go round. Millennium development goals have, of course, now been succeeded by the all-encompassing 17 sustainable development goals. I am proud that the Scottish Government takes its role in this extremely seriously and is determined to be at the forefront of achieving those new goals. Last July, Scotland received praise for being one of the first countries in the world to sign up to the UN's sustainable development goals. That time, with Scotland's own sustainable development programmes, which were already in place, such as the national performance framework and Scotland's national action plan on human rights, it has allowed Scotland to hit the ground running when it comes to implementing, measuring and reporting progress. Much of the support that Scotland provides for developing countries is in Malawi, a country that many people have a strong emotional attachment to in Scotland, given their historical connections with that country. The delivery of objectives and outcomes set out in the national performance framework is one of the key priorities in the Scottish Government's proposed budget for next year. When it comes to the budget for Europe and external affairs, it also contains a commitment to continue working across ministerial portfolios to support international aims, including on water management, climate justice, the UN's sustainable energy for all initiative and the UN's sustainable development goals. However, it is important, as Ian Gray has already done so, to acknowledge that poverty is not just beyond our shores but that we have poverty not to the same degree but certainly consistently within Scotland. That is why I am pleased that the sustainable development goals applied to all countries, including Scotland where the millennium development goals were strictly focused on development countries. We have inequality and poverty, and I know that addressing that remains a priority for the Scottish Government. There is much more work, of course, to be done in meeting sustainable development goals internationally and here in Scotland, Presiding Officer, but I am hopeful that Governments, organisations and individuals such as Heather Cameron will continue to work towards those goals so that in 2030 we can look back at an even more successful campaign than the millennium development goals that have been achieved. Iain Gray congratulates me on securing the debate. I also welcome Dumbarr Grammar to the chamber. I also thank Save the Children for providing a briefing for the debate. I am here today because, bluntly, Heather Cameron asked me to. She is such a persuasive young individual that I am defying what is, in a way, a parliamentary convention that leaders of parties come and participate in members' debates, and it is a pleasure to do so. I wanted to share with you how I met Heather Cameron. When I first became leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, we organised a competition called My Scotland. We wrote to every S5 and S6 people in Scotland and invited them to take part in an essay competition to share their vision for the future of Scotland, whether that be 10, 15 or 20 years. Heather Cameron made the final of that competition by writing an essay about how important the sustainable millennium goals were, not just to Scotland but to other countries around the world. It was that passion and dedication that brought her to our attention. The 10 finalists of that competition all came together one day and were put through a number of training exercises. They were exposed to some first-class leading journalists here in Scotland, including Lindsay McIntosh from The Times and Patrick McGuire from Thomson Solicitors, who helped each one of the finalists to develop their ideas, develop their campaigning abilities to come up with new ways to communicate what they believe in and what they stand for. Heather's talents shone through on that particular occasion. I wanted to commend Heather Cameron for the work that she has done, not just to highlight the work of Action 2015 and to do everything that she has done around leading marches through Dunbar, but never giving up on making the case on a day-to-day basis as to why that is so important. If I could refer you to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in detail, there are 17 in total, and I'm not going to go through them all, but three in particular stand out for me, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, and to promote sustained, inclusive, sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. I know that many of us in the chamber stand for all of those things. I was reflecting in preparation for today's debate about my own views on gender equality and how important that is to my own politics. I've stood many a time in this chamber and talked about the need to progress gender equality, because if we don't do that, we will lock women and girls out of the jobs of the future and lock them into low-paid, low-skilled work. It's very important that we tackle that here in Scotland, but it has to be set against the context that Ian Gray outlined in his opening remarks about the circumstances that women and girls find themselves in in so many countries around the world, where they are still fighting for the right to go to school. That is what is so important about the work that Heather Cameron is doing and that all of the ambassadors involved in action 2015 are taking part in on a daily basis. On that note, it's a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I wish Heather and all her colegies the very best with the campaign ahead. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to thank Ian Gray for what I thought was an absolutely excellent speech. I would probably like to thank Heather Cameron for securing this debate. I had my own debate on millennium development goals 4 and 5 on International Midwives' Day in 2009, which called for more to be done to tackle infant mortality and poor maternal health, both in Scotland and overseas. I also spoke on the issue of millennium development goals in members' business by Labour's Desmond Nulty back in 2005. As Ian Gray said, the millennium development goals are proving that when the international community works together, we can tackle some of the world's most pressing problems. I would like to put on the record that my party would fully agree that education is without any shadow of doubt the route out of poverty. I want to acknowledge at Westminster that the Government has taken a leading role on the post-2015 framework, working alongside other UN member states, securing international agreement on its ambitious and compelling sustainable development goals, centred on eradicating poverty. The United Kingdom was the second-largest OECD donor of overseas development aid in 2014 spending £11.7 billion, which was an increase of £2.6 billion on the previous year. In fact, the foreign aid programme even drew praise from the SNP at Westminster. Marie Black was apparently on a visit to Kenya last week, and her quote is, Britain is one of the better countries in terms of commitment to foreign aid. Having seen the difference that makes to people's lives, I think that it is highly important that we maintain this level of support. However, the UK has enshrined, as Ian Gray said, the 0.7 per cent commitment to overseas development aid in law when the international development bill received royal assent in March last year. Ian Gray has deservedly congratulated the work of Heather Cameron, and I have no doubt that she would not have been as successful if it was not for the support of Dunbar grammar school. However, as an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the pupils of Forrest academy in Marie, whose human rights day petition I signed last week and, among other things, they are campaigning for the right to education of the 57 million children worldwide who have no access to education. When I looked back at Millennium Development Goal 5, which is to support pregnant women through birth and reduce infant mortality, more than a million children are left without mothers due to maternal death, and 20 million women experience potentially fatal complications during child birth. In 2005, in eastern Africa, only 34 per cent of births were attended by skilled health attendants. Millennium Goal 5 set the target to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent and to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2014-15. The conclusion is that progress has been made, but it has been too slow to achieve all the goals. Nonetheless, I think that we should acknowledge the progress. Fewer children under 5 are dying from preventable causes, but given that around 800 women die from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications around the world every day, we also need to be aware of the campaign to end fistula. I am sorry that Richard Simpson is not in the chamber because he is hugely supportive of the issue. Fistula is a rupture in the birth canal that occurs during prolonged, obstructed labour, and it leaves women in continent, isolated, socially excluded and ashamed. For every woman who dies of maternity-related causes, it is estimated that at least 20 women experience maternal morbidity, one of the most severe forms of which is obstetric fistula. Nine out of ten fistulas can be successfully repaired, so that is also an issue that needs to be addressed. In my final minute, Presiding Officer, I would like to mark other two points of progress. One is the global measles immunisation coverage, which is now 84 per cent among children between 12 and 23 months. That has to be acknowledged. A country such as Afghanistan, the under-five mortality rate has dropped from 257 deaths for every 1,000 live births to 97. That is between 2002 and 2012. I thank Ian Gray for securing the debate and I appreciate more needs to be done. I now call Minister who is a USAF, Minister of Seven Minutes, all thereby. My thanks to Ian Gray for bringing this motion to the Parliament. My thanks to Dunbar Grammar for Heather Cameron, who I look forward to meeting, if I can, after the debate. I have not met her already and she seems like a force of nature by what everybody has already said and by her emails that I have read in my inbox just yesterday with some additional briefing. I absolutely agree with what Ian Gray and Kezia said that it is incredible to see our young people taking these initiatives forward. It gives you great hope for the future, because you can often be downcast at the scale of the challenge. However, when you have young people like Heather there are many more across the constituencies in forests and up and down Scotland, as people have already said. There are taking forward these initiatives, not being defeated by the scales of the challenges, giving hope where often there is not much hope at all. It is with that that actually drives us, because if Heather had not approached Kezia, had not approached Ian, then who knows whether we would be discussing the sustainable development goals and the global goals at all. Credits are absolutely where credit is due. Who knows, she may be a future politician in the making. That was meant as a compliment, by the way, not as an insult, as some might perceive it. It is a pleasure to be talking about the sustainable development goals. I was struck by what Kenny Gibson said at the very opening sentences of his remarks, where he said that this is why most of us got into politics in some way, shape or form, and he is absolutely right. If all of us cast our mind back to when that seed was planted in our head about entering front-line politics, whether it was as a councillor, as an MP, as an MSP, whatever position it was, we would have gone back home and talked to our partners about it, our friends about it, our family about it. We would have reflected on it internally, of course, but ultimately we are sure that all of us that are here would have chosen to do it because we wanted to make the world a better place, whether it was here in Scotland or whether it was the world at large. That is a good reminder that we can get lost in the debates and the robust debates that we have in this Parliament, often over things that are, of course, very important but not quite on the same scale as the global challenges that the global goals face to take on. The point has been made by everybody around the chamber, but it is worth re-emphasising and reiterating that the global goals are unique, not just in the goals themselves, but by the fact that they apply to all countries across the world. Different from the millennium development goals, they are predecessors that just apply to the developing world and to the countries across the world. That is exceptionally important because of the fact that we have poverty and inequality in Scotland that we must challenge. Therefore, from the Scottish Government, I was delighted that, in the summer of 2015, the First Minister, one of the first leaders across Europe to commit herself inviting in an article that she wrote for the Sunday Herald, that we would be most definitely incorporating the sustainable development goals within our national economic strategies and so on and so forth. There is work to be done on that. How do we do that? We are already working in regard to our national performance framework to see how we can incorporate that within our own legislation and practices in Government. I also want to touch on a couple of the goals. I will not go through all 17 of them, but there are goals that we are helping already to assist with and to take on and to challenge through the Scottish Government's international development fund. I would not have been surprised—I should seem to be surprised when Mary Black was praiseworthy of the UK Government's efforts. I do not think that I have been anything other than effusive in my praise of the work that differed. Yes, I have some differences in terms of often how it is carried out, but it is incidental, really, in the grand picture. I think that the UK has a good record and successive UK Governments have had a good record when it comes to their commitments on international development. We should support them absolutely where we can. We should also be very proud of the NGOs, the schools and the public agencies that do international development work. Regardless of how small that might seem in scale, the impact is undoubtedly huge, and we should be very proud of that. In terms of the work that we are doing in Scotland, we have a £9 million international development fund that is spread over seven countries, and Malawi is probably the primary relationship because of those people-to-people links that exist. We do work alongside in tackling a number of the goals that are there. Goal 5—people have already spoken about achieving gender equality. It is hugely important. It is important, because all of us recognise that we get more bang for a development buck if we are helping to tackle and reduce the inequality gap between men and women. We know that if you educate a man, you educate a single individual, you educate a woman, the chances are that you educate an entire family and an entire nation as a result of that. There is a lot of work to be done on reducing gender inequality, and we are committed through our international development fund to do that.  Goals 7 and 13 are particularly pertinent to those. I would like to reiterate that, from a Scottish Government perspective, we are very committed to ensuring that we tackle climate change and take on the issue of climate justice. I have been to Malawi a couple of times and I have been struck by what a difference renewable energy and sustainable energy can make to people's everyday lives. Whether it was the women or the project that I viewed where they were providing micro hydroelectric from the Melangey mountains right down to villages in that area whereby a woman was the first in our village to give birth in a room that had a light in it—incredible. That was in 2014, the 2013 visit. Or more recently, when I visited villages in Malawi, where instead of having a paraffin or kerosene lamp, people had this sustainable solar panel-lit energy-efficient light bulb, which meant that the children could study for longer and there was no smoke inhalation. I was struck by how small things can actually make a huge, huge impact. Lastly, I want to end on the two points. Going back to Heather Cameron and the people at Dunbar, it is so important that we teach our young people about the challenges that the world faces. Any country can lose itself from being too insular Scotland is not immune to that, so we have to ensure that we teach our young people about the challenges that exist out in the world. We can do that through the Crickham for Excellence, which has global citizenship as one of the modules. I have seen the development education centres in action teaching our teachers on how you can make an impact through that module, but we have to because I too often pick up some newspapers, I too often read blog posts, I too often look at Twitter posts, Facebook posts, that tell me why and ask me why we are giving money to other countries across the world that are suffering when we have challenges here. We have to communicate to our young people why it is important that we continue to tackle some of those issues. The very last point that I want to make is one that I thought was very well made by an excellent contribution by Ian Gray when he spoke about his own experiences and he made the point that we should never lose hope. I think that that is a really important point. I, like many other members here, watch a news and a constant news cycle and it would be easy with all the challenges that the world faces to commit ourselves into a downward spiral, but Ian Gray is absolutely correct that so long as we have good people and there are more good people that outweigh the band people, as long as we have people there like Heather, like many others, who are willing to always stand up against injustice, stand up for humanity and for compassion, then we do not need to be in a downward spiral. They will always be hope and they will always be goodness. I thought that that was a great point and very well made and probably a good point to end on. My thanks again to Ian Gray for bringing that motion, but my thanks especially to Heather Cameron and Dunbar grammar and all the good people across Scotland and beyond who are doing work to help to promote the global goals, wherever they may be. I thank you all for taking part in this important debate and I now suspend this meeting of Parliament until 2 o'clock.


Welcome back to the Cyber Underground. I'm Dave Stevens, your host and this is our mission here on this show to dig deep to find out how cybersecurity touches all of us in our everyday lives. Today, once again, I have my exceptional co-host, the Texar, Gordo. Welcome back. You don't need a nickname this time. We were doing Justin Case. Justin Case. They are Phil Ingeling. Justin Time. Justin Time. Right. Justin Time. How are you doing? How are you doing, man? It's good to have you back. And today, we have a guest star here from Capulani Community College, assistant professor of technology, Hal Cochran, talking about network configuration and management and some best practices and some basic housekeeping we should do for our home and business networks. Hal, where'd you come from? How'd you get here? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm originally from Providence, Rhode Island. I've been here in Hawaii about 11 years. I was in tech support at the University of Rhode Island and wanted to come to Hawaii and was lucky enough to find a similar spot for myself within the University of Hawaii system. So I moved out here about 11 years ago, worked at Hawaii CC, sorry, Honolulu CC for a few years and then moved on to Capulani. CC, I spent the last year at Hawaii CC, so I've made the circuit. But you really made it around, too. And now I'm coming back to Capulani. We're glad to have you back. Coming back home. Coming back home. And while you were out there, you also did CyberPatriots. I was a mentor for the CyberPatriot team for a Kauai High School team. Can you tell our audience a little bit about CyberPatriots, because that's a really interesting topic there. Sure. Well, it's kind of like a capture of a flag type of cybersecurity competition event for high school students. So it captures the flag as opposed to like attack and defend where you have different teams attacking each other or defending against hackers. This is more where they have some virtual machine systems and the students go in and they basically just need to lock down the system. So they need to find the insecure configurations and correct them and harden the systems. Every practice for kids, especially nowadays, when we have to set up our own home and business, that works. Yeah. Exactly. Well, like a whole group attack the hill. Is it like King of the Hill? That's right. Is it kind of like King of the Hill? It's more like each one attacks their own system and then they compare all of them and see who did it better. Got it. Yeah. So the capture of the flag, they'd have to get a file and put their name in it or change the file in the name or something like that. Yeah. The capture of the flag would probably be more like where they have to find some kind of Easter egg somewhere. This is more where they're just doing configurations, locking down the systems. The VMs are pretty interesting. They actually, some of them are self-grading. So as they make a change, they can see that they get points. So it's like playing a video game. Oh, wow. So this is a... And it plays a little song. So this is a virtual machine, right? When they choose a point. So they hear this little tune. Yeah. Is it like a death march or something? No, no. It's like a happy little song. It's like a Super Mario little song, sounds like a Nintendo song. Okay. And if they do something wrong, they get kind of a sad song. Now, this is a virtual environment. So it's a sandbox. It's enclosed. It can't get out to any other systems. No, these are completely isolated systems. So the VM is a virtual machine and there's a number of these virtual machines in this sandbox. Yeah. They'll have a Windows virtual machine. They'll have a Linux virtual machine so that they get their hands on kind of different operating systems. So how many young adults are participating in these programs? That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer for what the total is. More than 20, less than 40. Students? Yeah. Way more than 20. Yeah. There's teams all over the state. One in 20 teams, I would say, throughout the country. Oh, really? Oh, wow. That's good. It's possible to have more than 20 for a team and then that could be one on high school. It's a national event so that they're competing with teams all over the country. The team on quite was fairly small. It was only like four students. So these are all high school students that are really getting their hands dirty and dirty. And I do mean dirty in this world that's out there and competing with each other in a way. Now, this is great. This is good stuff, man. When students are in high school, they're exposed to a vast amount of technology these days. I mean, you've got smartphones, you've got a wireless network, you've got a laptop. Hey, you've got your wrist. I've got a smart watch, right? There's the Internet of Things.  There's Alexa. You can talk to your TV now and there's all these wireless devices that are hooked up to your network and it's great for the kids to know what are the possibilities of compromise on networks. When you think of this network you have at home, it's this ubiquitous magical thing you hook up and you have Internet connectivity, but they need to know what the risks are. So that's what we're here to talk about, setting up, first of all, a home network and then a small business network. So let's talk about setting up our home network. And let's define a couple of the objects you usually get when you're setting up your home network. The first thing that you call one of your cable companies, they bring over that first device that translates the signal they're sending to you to what you need to hook up to your computers. Let's talk about that one first. So that's what they call the cable modem. It's usually a router and a server and a modem, all kind of built into one device. So it's actually a pretty multi-purpose device that we call a cable modem. But as you said, it converts the ISP, the cable company, converts their network to your home network. Your home network is usually an ethernet, the cable that we're used to seeing. But that's probably not what's coming into your house. So you need something to convert between those two dissimilar networks. So that's one of the things that the modem does. In addition, because it's connecting two different networks together, it's acting as a router. That's what routers do. They sit between two ethernetworks and they pass the data back and forth between the... Because most data is passed as packets from computer to pewter. And the router will take that packet and recognize, because of a routing table on it, where it has to pass that information, what computer needs that info. Right? There's an address in there. Right. So I've got my little network at home. That's what I already got going. And that's all going through the router. And then the router's there. And that gets me outside to the internet service provider. And all the routing that goes out there with the millions of billions of devices there.  A little larger. A little bigger. Yeah, right? So we're actually, when we're building a home network, we're building a smaller representation of the internet in general. Yeah. Right? Yeah. The internet is made up of billions of small networks. So we're creating one... It becomes one of the parts of the internet. Oh my gosh. And that's the... And that's the... Oh my gosh. Moment. When you're part of the system, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it keeps us safe though. I mean, we have a cable modem. And does that mean the rest of the world can just look at any computer that's on my network? No. The cable modem will usually do something called network address translation. Which means that it will have... There's two different types of IP addresses. Now, there's an internet protocol address. That's four groups of three numbers. That's the number that you assign to your computer to allow it to talk to other computers. There's two types. IP version 4, IP version 6. IP version 4 is probably still the most common in the home networks. So it consists of four of what we call octets. Groups of eight bits represented as a decimal number between 0 and 255. So when we see something like CSI and they give an IP address and it starts with a 300, we know that's... No. 198.162.280. Okay. Something like that. So we translate between... You're saying the internet sees a public IP address and behind our modem we have private IP address. Exactly. So these two groups that are just basically designated to be... By the powers that control IP addressing, these numbers will be private, these will be public. Set aside. Yes. This is a never allowed to be seen on the public internet. The only good to be used on internal... Should never be allowed. Should never. Should never. Should never. Oh, the problem. I'm sure that's happened a few times. Any correctly configured router will block that from going out onto... So who am I counting on to correctly configure that router? It depends on this situation. You mean my service provider? Yes. Do you think they should know correctly configured routers? I would hope so. I would hope so, but I can't vouch for that. I know. That's always the dilemma. Never know. It's a dilemma, right? They come out with... What are they automatically configured? Some of them. Right? So you don't really know what they're doing. They don't know. What's the next device? So if I wanted to take control of, say, inside of that IP address, inside of my home network, I want to take control of the routing and the Wi-Fi network and the addressing and the security, I need another device behind the modem. So you would need, if you'd like to be able to connect multiple devices through that network connection and also maybe to have a Wi-Fi network inside your house, then you need to have a wireless access point with a router. So again, this is another kind of multipurpose device. It's doing routing because it's connecting, again, two different networks together. And it's providing wireless access, so it's a wireless access point. So you've got a router from the provider. You have a wireless access point that you may buy or even the provider might provide you with. It could. You could get some do. And so now you've got two of these devices that have to be configured properly on the network that allows you to get out to the World Wide Web. Well, the K-1 should be correctly configured by the ISP. We hold that. But you're responsible for configuring the internal router that gives you the Wi-Fi. But what if I get an internal router from a provider? Should they be responsible for doing that? That depends on what your service level agreement is, I suppose. So this is a tricky one, right? This is a tricky one, yes. If they give it to you and you use it exactly as it's configured, they will take responsibility for it. At the moment you say, oh, I want to change my Wi-Fi password because my neighbor has it now, they're going to say, well, then you're responsible for this. Or how about not broadcasting your ID? So that's isn't the best practices, right? Don't broadcast your SSID. So the SSID, for those of you out there, you need to know, when you're looking for a Wi-Fi signal from your laptop or your computer, you get a list, a drop-down list of all the available networks out there. Those names that you're seeing are called SSIDs and they're being broadcast. Service Set Identifier. Service Set Identifier. So those are actually a security hole.  Well, just because you're not broadcasting your service set identifier does not guarantee people won't be able to find your network. Someone who knows what they're doing, who has the right equipment, can still find it. The kind of casual observer war-driving through your neighborhood looking for easy, low-hanging fruit, you know, just networks to be able to jump on, they're probably not going to find it. Well, it's to find war-driving. We're walking as well, as when people walk around a hacker, walks around or drives around a neighborhood, looks for these SSID symbols and the names. And usually there's a little graphic right next to the name that identifies whether it's locked or not. I used to jump when I was back in the bus. There it is, SSID, I was in the bus. So if you don't have that little locking symbol, you don't need a password. There's no encryption, no nothing, you just hop onto that network and go for broke. So what happens in neighborhood I was from when I was a kid and this first started becoming popular, the war-driving, the spray paint assemble outside your house or on a nearby curb so that other people driving by would see, oh, there's an available network that's not secured, I can use that one. So what they do now is on the internet they have these maps and you can look at these maps and you can see where all of the different open networks are. So they upload it into a database that's just represented on the internet as this map shows. It's pretty easy to find. Pick it up on the deep web, like we talked about. On the deep web, so I guess the danger there would be when certain people ask me and this question has come up, who cares if someone else is using my bandwidth, I don't use all of it anyway. If someone needs, why can't I just do a charitable thing and let them use my network? My answer is always, what if they do something nefarious? You're responsible, they're using your network connection. Your public-facing IP address is what the world sees. So all three of us are on the same Wi-Fi through the same cable modem. We all go out to the internet. The internet sees us all as that one public IP address. My S.S.I.D. is David Stevens. Oh, good for you. Right on. Oh, man. But true, their point is, is the fact that even though someone else has jumped on your network, it's you. It's you, not them. It's you.  They're not going to be able to say, oh, wasn't me, it was somebody? It was your network.  Because you're responsible. Thank you. We have a one minute break to please the powers that be the benevolent gods. So we'll be right back. You can be the elf. Yeah. Welcome back to the Cyber Underground for the second part of our show. Today we've got our exceptional co-host, the tech czar.  Not Andrew. Sorry. Sorry. Gordon. I think I need a refill. That's okay, Frank. So we've got our guest, Luis, from the get-go. Luis. Oh, nice. That's a wrap. We're talking about home networks and configuring them at best practices, war driving. And now let's get into the other things that you can connect to your home network and your Wi-Fi that are not your computer. We're talking about the internet of things, everything from my smart watch to my smartphone, to my not-so-smart TV, to my really dumb teddy bear. Then you want to tell us what are the things you learned at the PCAT symposium yesterday? Yeah. At the PCAT IT symposium, I... No, that's Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training for the Hawaii Community Colleges out here in Hawaii. So they had a symposium with a lot of presentations. And one of them was by Jodi Itor, CIO. Jodi Itor, yeah, who's the Chief Security Officer for the U.S. system. And she introduced her talk with Internet of Things and some of the devices you would never think about that have been recently hacked. So one was the teddy bear. There was this talking teddy bear that children could talk to and it would respond. And it used this back-end database that it would access. It would upload to the internet, yeah. And of course, there was almost no security on this, so hackers were able to hack these teddy bears and then they could collect the voice. They could talk to the kids or whatever they wanted to do with these teddy bears. They could listen to what was going on. Right. They could listen to the recording and everything going on in the room. Absolutely. And that's a little spooky and creepy at the same time. That's a little off the grid now. So for Christmas last year, someone gave us something called a Pet Cube. Oh, I saw it. And my wife said, that is so neat. Now I can monitor my pets when I'm at work. And I said, that's kind of cool. Let's see how this works. So I hooked it up and it attached to my Wi-Fi network with no security. And it had a microphone and it had a camera. And for some reason, it had public IP. It had a public IP? I don't know. I haven't broken this thing down to see how it was configured like. But as soon as that happened, I went, oh no, we're out of here. We can't do this. Because I could log in from a website without a username and password and see the inside of my house. Yes, there were my pets. Probably tearing apart my couch or doing something. We're stealing the roll-aids, which has happened recently. But no, that's no security. I can't have that. But that's the kind of thing that's for sale, like the teddy bear. It was a username, password, and people could put one, two, three, four as a password. And then hackers could get in and see your kids. I mean, that's a big security risk. That's huge. And there's a lot of other things. I mean, we talked about the Samsung TV. The CIA can spy on you. But I don't imagine now that those tools are released, it's too hard for somebody other than the CIA to be breaking into TVs. I don't know the microphone. Let's go to the deep and the dark web and we see what we can find in that company. Well, you don't need to go deep, right? We still have a showdown. That's right.  You guys can go out and look out for showdown. But you will find that all the default passwords for all the default devices out there are listed out there, and you can find them any time you want. Which is why when you put one of these home networks together, they have this easy setup that you can walk through one, two, three. But if you don't change the default admin password, sites like showdown are going to tell everybody else what your default password is. And they can remotely configure your device from outside your network, from the internet. So that's the first thing you got to do is change the default password. That's lesson number one. What else can you tell us about IoT? I mean, what other things can we worry about here? Well, Jody talked about some interesting things. One was smart light bulbs. So what about smart light bulbs? So what do they do, first of all? If we plug in a smart light bulb, do we ask questions like Alexa or? Oh, great Oracle. It's more like that's over, but it will let you know when it's about to quit in time to change the light bulb and things like that. It can warn you when it's getting to the end of its life, or when it needs to be changed. Problem is that these light bulbs, as they all talk to each other, it's like a peer-to-peer network where they all share information and talk to each other. So if one of these light bulbs is hacked and infected with a malware, it's going to spread it through all the light bulbs in your house. And then, I guess... It can case back to the manufacturer and take big records on all the stuff. Or you live. Or maybe someone could disable all the light bulbs to leave you in the dark one day if they wanted to. All right, all right. I'll explain it all. Yeah, I had a lot of hopes for these smart light bulbs. I thought maybe every time I put on, like, Barry White, I'd get the mood lighting. You know, you never know. When you put on an iron butterfly, they all go different colors on you. Let's see if I can do that. Let me download the Barry White app right now. I bet there's one out there. I bet there is. So the Barry White and the Barry White Mood app. Mood app. So now, if we use the Internet of Things and all these things connect to our home network, it's got a different name on a business network. Now if I set up a business network and I let everyone bring in their devices and connect to my network, what is that called now? Bring your own device? Oh yeah, bring your own device. So it takes a lot of security policy and implementation to get securely all those devices that aren't owned by the company onto your network safely. So it can be a real challenge because you don't know what type of malware, what type of devices people are bringing on and connecting to your network. And once they're connected to the network, they're able to see everybody else on the network. So if they have malware, it could spread easily from device to device. So that's why it's such a challenge to have bring your own device. Did the state ever try this when you were in Seattle? I was with the sitting and counting. I wasn't with the state. I was with the sitting and counting. We had massive BYOD deployments, but way before that was done, we sat down with specialist organizations in the business that made sure that we put all the right things in place. Because you think about ambulances, HIPAA compliance, police cars, fire trucks, lifeguards, all of those were using some kind of mobile device. And so all of that stuff had to be locked down, secured, tracked. No one, someone lost it, all those kinds of things. Did the sitting and counting give them the device or did they bring their own? We had some that brought their own, but the majority wanted to get something provided by the city. So the police don't bring their own. I mean, there's a lot of reason why that doesn't happen. I wouldn't want to either. I found my police officer. As an IT director. It's liability. I didn't mind bringing my own. And I didn't mind having someone go in and lock it down and do that. Because the comment was, well, if there's ever an investigation, they're going to take your phone. Yeah, but by law, they can only go after the data that's related to that investigation. They can't go after my stuff. So if they lock it down, they're doing your favor. And I did want to carry two phones. I did for five years. I think all of us did for a while. All of us were from the day where we had the pager and the mobile phone. And whatever calculated devices that built. I mean, I have a client that's rolled out 150 MacBook Airs. Mobile. Also, I had to make them all mobile and had to use right products to secure them, lock them all down. Because you have to manage them. I mean, it's just what it is. That's right. The Internet of Things. You don't have a lot of guys to manage that. You just get a couple of guys to manage that. No. I got no guys. Oh, OK. I mean, it's self-managing. That's the beauty of it. A lot of people think it goes on today. That's kind of wrong. I have a client to put in hospital beds all connected to the Internet. So think of that. The hospital beds now connected to the Internet. Well, heart rate monitors already are. The pacemakers. The pacemakers are. This is a tragedy that we have to hook all these devices up. We're getting convenience, but we're creating this huge threat landscape now. We've got to manage this. So what advice do you give to the homeowner? I mean, the homeowners are not techie, you know, not in the business.  And they press the one button configure, the WPS button. Yeah. And some can't be locked down. Some don't have any security built into them at all. And that's the first question you should ask as a buyer. Right. Oh, this is the right price. Maybe for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. That's 50 bucks. Great. I love it. Look at all that bandwidth. And you take it home and it's just wide open to the whole world. It is wide open. I hope your cameras are open to the whole world. So, but when you do a business network now, when you're talking about configuring the best practices, right, let's compare business to a home network. In the home network, you have some options. And one of them is setting the encryption level of the Wi-Fi signals that are going back and forth. There's several options there. The first one is WEP, W-E-P. Which really isn't an option at all. It's been broken for a decade. It's a non-option. Yeah. It was a weak protocol that on top of that has been completely broken. So, if you go to YouTube, you can find a hundred different videos saying how to crack web in five minutes or less. It's like a band-aid without the stickiness on it. Yeah. So, you do not want to use web. Okay. The next level is WPA, which is what, wireless protected access. Yeah. We have free techies here. We can't do it. Well, there's so many acronyms. WPA. So many acronyms. So many acronyms. And nobody ever uses the full. You always use the acronyms. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But what's out there now on most any router that you buy now will be WPA2. And that's better than the other three that is absolutely the best. Now, when you pick that, you might have a couple other options. You usually have options for the encryption protocol. Right. So, there's usually an option for TKIP and AES, which is advanced encryption protocol. Standard. Standard. Right. Yes. Right now is kind of the. By far. Beagle standard. Yeah. So, if given the option, choose AES. So, I guess our consumers should look for elliptical curve in the future. Right. How many consumers of this show do you think we'll know what an elliptical curve is? Well, if it shows up at the drop-down menu and it's at the bottom, then it's after AES probably. Oh, elliptical curve. Yeah. I don't know how to spell it out. It'll be some acronym. DLC. They don't come preconfigured like this. This is the part that irritates them. Right. So, it comes with the lowest level that you could possibly get, and then they expect John Q. Publix, who's just not in this business, to go in and know what WAP2 is, elliptical protocol, all this stuff, and they're all going.  Yeah. What is that? Well, then there's given to me that one. There's firewall options too. Yeah. Right. You can whitelist your MAC address, and we don't have time to go into it. Is that a MAC? Is that only for MAC? No. We know that's not true either. So, there's all kinds of identifiers on all these different systems. Our phones have an IMEI number, which is unique. We have an IP address, which is unique. We have a MAC address, which is unique to every single device that's connected to the internet. All these unique addresses identify us at a certain place, at a certain time, and that's our identity. That's where we are. That's what we're doing. That's a little freaky. So, you want to do these security protocols as best you can so you can reduce that landscape that you're broadcasting to the entire world. Right. Any last minute tips for our consumer out there? As much as I hate to say it, probably the best option is call that friend who works in IT and take him, buy him a six pack of beer, come over and set this up for you. That's just a 15-year-old old buy him a pack of beer. No. It's a 15-year-old buy him a carton of milk. You can give him some credit on what, a Minecraft or something? There you go. Perfect. Right. Just don't let him play on your network. That's not it. We'll go again. Now, if we don't, as a last tip now, if we have a ton of devices on our Wi-Fi network and we've got these great protocols on the router, but one of those devices cannot use that protocol, do you have to downgrade all of your other systems? We kind of have to go to the lowest common denominator, which is unfortunate. You'd almost be better off to trade in that particular device for one that can support the most secure protocols.  Absolutely. Great tips. Thanks for being on. Gordon, the tech star. I got it right. Thanks very much. Louise. Hal. Hal Corker from Capilani Community College. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be home. Okay. Aloha, everybody. Stay safe.