Figure, I'll go ahead and get kickin'. Oh, good, Adam's here, you can heckle me. Sweet, all right. So, State of the Project Keystone. Just to update you on what we've done over the last six months, we've got a little bit of an overview of what Keystone is for those of you who are new to OpenStack, just coming here for the first time. And we've got a little bit of detail of the history of how it's gotten to where we're going and what we're going to be talking about in the future. First, a little intro about me. My name's Joe Heck. I live in Seattle, born and raised in the Midwest.  So, I got involved. Since then, I've been working with the Keystone project for the last, probably year, PTL for the last nine months, and just moving it forward, keeping it really stable with just the standard pattern of making this thing as boring and simple and absolutely obvious as possible so that everything else can be built on it. I don't want it to be fancy. I don't want it to be glorious or anything like that. Glorious usually means something's blown up or there's terrible security alert and the hair's on fire. It's just really not a good thing. So, that's what we're doing with Keystone. So, outline of what I'm going to talk about today. First, why Keystone, where it came from, the origins of OpenStack, what it is, how it's working a little bit, the basic concepts and a high level architecture, then a little bit of the history lesson that I spoke of earlier and then our upcoming plans and what we're kind of thinking about right now to move forward. Why Keystone? In a lot of respects, this was the very first of the OpenStack Commons. So, when Nova and Swift came together as the rack space and NASA initiatives and they started working together, right off the bat, in the Austin and Bear releases, you had separate IDs and you had to make separate accounts to work between them and they're like, duh, it's obvious, can't we just use the same account system? But what really highlighted it was kind of Glance at the time because Glance wanted to make images available out of Swift for Nova, very obvious. But to do that, you started running into, well, identity and problems along those lines, what are we going to do? So it was resolved that we should do something with making a common identity mechanism, framework for authentication and basic authorization and then start moving that forward. So it started off as this common set of internal APIs expressing relevant identity for the projects that make up OpenStack. And kind of out of that, it also sort of became a little bit of a service catalog, not as a primary means, but because some of the URI structures for the REST APIs for specifically Swift had identity built into those URIs. So for Joe, if you want to go to my container, you have to know what my ID is and so putting it into the service catalog made that very easy to expose that out along with the relevant other identity information across other OpenStack projects, different button. At least I don't have a clicker. You guys see Chris's presentation this morning with a clicker thing? It was awesome. So what is Keystone? It's a single source of authentication and authorization. It's the same account and credentials for starting a virtual machine instances as it is to access the glance containers, make a NOVA, where I guess it's Cinder volume back up now, snapshots, put it into object storage, get it back out. All of that requires identity being passed around some sort of trust mechanism going around between the whole thing. That's what Keystone's providing. Keystone's also expanded beyond just authentication to provide a little bit of authorization. It's worth to note though that the pattern that we've set up within OpenStack is Keystone does not answer the question of are you allowed to do this? It simply is the single source of truth and the actual enforcement of policy related to authorization is distributed in the services themselves. And some of that code is in OpenStack common and we're starting to push more and more of it to OpenStack common as it's just sort of this base common framework. And so actually the Keystone project works very actively in both the OpenStack common area and the Keystone project itself which is what's providing this interface to the identity systems. It's also a common means of expressing API endpoints. As I mentioned in the service catalog earlier, hey, where can I get to to go to NOVA? Where can I get to to go to Cinder? Does Swift exist in this deployment? If so, where is it? Same for any other project along the lines. Keystone is internally kind of broken up into four large functional areas, identity, policy, token, and catalog. Now the basic mechanism by which we're doing all the authorization today is a token based mechanism. And so that's where the token comes in. The token is just something that we pass around that has a bunch of metadata associated with it that represents an identity. And so Keystone is intended to be the thing that you can query, you know, I have a token, tell me about the identity of this person and get a lot more information about them so you can get the projects they're involved with, the roles that they have, anything along those lines. Then that sort of fits over into policy and it hasn't been really explicit in releases up until the stuff coming up now, but with the V3 API that I'll talk about a little bit in the future, we're making Keystone also the central source of truth for the policy that all the services can then have a single source of being able to get it from, being able to pull it in and then enforce it themselves. So we also have a single representation of that as opposed to it being splattered across all the projects, different documented elsewhere, making it a little bit easier for deployers and everything else just to consolidate this and keep it together. And then that final part is catalog which just represents that service catalog of what's available and we just try to keep it steady and obvious so that we can have some capabilities there to be able to have one URL where you can go to, you can authorize and then from that you will know where everything else in your environment happens to exist. For the basic concepts of identity, there's three key things right now, there's gonna be some new pieces coming up in this next release of the authentication API. The first is the concept of a tenant or project, horrible naming, I know, I'm very sorry, didn't pick it, I had to sort of inherit that. But it's the basic unit of ownership and what we intended or what was intended when this thing was put together was that that level of ownership wasn't necessarily locked to a single user. So if Adam and I were going to share an account, we could have our different user credentials and be able to use this one thing that had to shared whatever and that thing is called a project and dashboard or a tenant in some of the APIs as you see them today. The user is the actual individual, it's also what we've set up as a service just because of some of the deficiencies of the original V2 API, it didn't quite go all the way to being able to answer questions in a solid and consistent fashion about, okay, well who can reset Adam's password? Who can reset mine when we're sharing this tenant or when we're not and so forth along those lines. The new thing that's coming up that is gonna help resolve some of this was contributed by our friends at HP, it was called domains and they put it in as originally as an extension for the V2 APIs, but it just kinda didn't really make sense there because everybody else had to really respect it, it would have been a cascade of changes through everything. So we went ahead and rolled it into just a new V3 API that's coming up and so domains will be added to this list at the hopefully on the next set of the slides when I do it in six months or so. And then the final bit is role which is simply that named relationship which is always between a user and a project or user and in the future domain. So you can have sort of a domain role where you can reset the password that answers the question of, how do you set this up and so forth as well as having roles on objects or roles on projects that you can then transfer and use else wise. I think it covers the basics. Policy is right now, this says in Essex obviously I didn't quite edit all the slides properly. It's the same as it was in Essex in Folsom as it turns out. It's just this internal concept right now that is what became the code when it went into OpenStack Common and a bunch of great updates got made to it kind of the past week I think to sort of rewrite it to make the format a lot easier to understand and that's the common policy file that we'll be using across all the projects to enforce whatever you get back with user IDs, projects, roles and so forth so you can say are you allowed to do this or are you not allowed to do this? It's a simple rule based mechanism. Nova Glance and Keystone were all using it as a Folsom I believe actually Quantum I had also fully integrated it in the Folsom release and I think Cinder is in the process or may have already finished it up. Didn't quite pay attention to where it all was in those cases towards the end of this release cycle. The token is just an arbitrary string that represents a simple thing and at most basic it's a fairly at the moment short string in the future a much larger string that you just put in an HTTP header and you pass around with your requests the client asks for it whether the client is a CLI client or the dashboard doing it for you it takes care of managing it for you and that's what gets passed around to the very services the services that can then look up your identity information based on that token that's going on. The reason that I mentioned that the token is going to become a little bit longer string is because in this latest release one of the things that we did was enable tokens to be PKI signed entities and so that string went from just a simple UUID thing to an entire signed PKI token that we can then extract a lot more information we can put up additional information on and it really sets the stage to make some really nice advancements in the future to make this whole thing move forward. And catalog, we struggled with this back and forth actually in this last API run there's the idea of services and then each service can have multiple endpoints in many simple deployments you only have one endpoint per service but in some of the more complex deployments like Rackspace, HP and so forth you might have quite a number of endpoints for a single service and so there's two different concepts in there they basically end up giving you a bunch of URL sets and then there's a common pattern that's sort of a convention with an actual policy right now of internal and external API endpoints so that you can have something that just your internal service is used to be able to talk to those endpoints that's not necessarily exposed to customer network or exposed to your customers and then your customers can have a public URL that's the one that they would be expected to use to be able to access whatever. And I mentioned the token it was this string and it had a lot of other stuff associated with it so I went ahead and just pasted a copy in here so you can get a sense of what this thing is actually under the covers. When you actually get a token and go to the keystone and ask for the service this is the data that gives you back that says okay here's the valid token and here's all the information associated with it and this is a little scrubbed up I removed a bunch of endpoints in there just to collapse it down a little bit but you get the sense of it and really the key is just that token ID and that's what you pass in the HTTP headers and that takes care of the authentication. You don't actually have to worry about that that's because we went to all the work to put it into off middle where we went through all the work to put in the pieces into open stack common to make that just very simple you don't have to mess with it it's just there. So at a high level architecture keystone matches almost every other open stack project really because the biggest thing that's different between our project and many of the others is that we don't sit on that RPC bus that everybody else does that sort of came out of that core that was Nova we're strictly an HTTP based mechanism there's no reason we couldn't sit on the RPC bus that just hasn't been a real burning need to be able to do so. There might be in the future. There's been some talk about hey, how can we do authenticated RPC mechanisms and what the implications for that might be kind of interesting. But it's just a standard whiskey application configured with paste, URI routes mapped to configurable back ends and when keystone was originally prototyped it was kind of a monolithic thing and then we basically rewrote the whole kit keeping the API compatibility and we moved it to a much more pluggable interface much like all the other components that you see in open stack today. Cinder and Quantum explicitly where you can put in a pluggable back end that does the thing that you wanted to do. So we have a number of back ends that you can have for identity, for catalog, for whatever else. Some of them are very simple SQL back ends you can have a key value back end or you can plug it into some read-only service that you might already have that does authentication for your organization so that you don't have to re-implement that whole thing. Yeah, sort of already covered this tonight. It's basically keystone is an operational facade to existing systems much like Cinder is to whatever your existing volume systems is and Quantum is for the existing network systems. The supported back ends today include SQL, LDAP, Active Directory, put a big asterisk nest to that and a big thank you to the guys at CERN by the way. PAM and in a simple key value store. Catalog, same thing, there's a template mechanism or a SQL based back end. Tokens, you can throw it in a memcache have a random key value store or use SQL so forth and so on like that. The thing about the Active Directory there's been some recent pieces added by Jose. Fantastic work dude. Thank you. It does mean that you have to configure your Active Directory in some specific ways to represent information that keystone's going to expect to be able to get out. In particular, the projects and the users and roles and know how they match up to your Active Directory schema. If you can't modify your schema there's probably some other work we need to do to really make that happen but it's a wonderful first step. It built off Adam's original LDAP support. Now we've got Active Directory support and we're going to continue to move forward to make it more obvious. So keystone history in a nutshell. I sort of talked about this at the very beginning back when it was all coming together at Glance and Nova and Swift. It was hey, we need to have a common account. We don't want to have to have everybody creating account in every darn system that we have especially as OpenStack was pulling together and wanting to grow. So it really highlighted it up and by the time Cactus rolled around it was under really active prototyping and a lot of good discussions. A lot of things going back and forth. Experiments going out there, trying things around and really kind of nailing things down. And then Diablo is when it was really, was really kind of fleshed out to its full form for what is the V2 API today. That's not to say it was perfect. You know, there's a lot of lessons to be learned there but it really nailed it down. The downside was it was kind of changing up to the last minute there in Diablo which made life a little bit difficult and it's really changed how we've chosen to work on keystone now in the future so we take it a little bit more slow and make sure it's really solid. And most importantly to try not to impact all the rest of the projects because we're at a foundation level that they're all relying on for authentication and we don't wanna make a change and then suddenly break stuff. So it has also had an administrative API and that's where you would do things like changing passwords and so forth. There wasn't much in the way of capability for a user to change their own password and that's still the API that we're with actually. That prototype was great. It really got us out the door. It got us solid and it got us moving forward and then right a little bit after the Diablo release is kind of when I came in and worked with some other folks to step up and move keystone forward past that and so that became the work that went into Essex and that's the time when we went through and we basically gutted the code base, we replaced it and we kept all the API functionality exactly the same. We didn't wanna change both things at once. Let's not do big forklifts. I don't know if you saw Dan went let's talk but the big thing is no forklifts. I mean we need to keep this project solid and I mean opens deck solid and stable and be able to move it forward in well-considered increments and be able to move it as we need to still be able to deprecate things but do it in a very intentional pattern. That was also the time for the architectural shift to more independent drivers so that we could start back ending it into read-only systems as opposed to having just a SQL based system. Pieces have been added in. That's when we had in the original domains API and it was really a tough choice at the time. Do we try to push this all in and do this all at once or do we take it piece by piece and we chose to do it piece by piece so we maintain that 100% API compatibility as we went out the Essex release and really fixed up the stuff if you will to allow us to move forward in the future and then that's exactly what we did in Folsom. So in Folsom the big addition really was this PKI based mechanism for the tokens. That's not enabled by default but hopefully by the end of Grizzly that's exactly what we will be using for defaults and then we'll be able to build on that whatever by the time Grizzly goes out the door. Okay so we'll look at it sure quicker. I said by the end of I got us lots of time to review it. Right, totally derailed me, good heckler. Kept everything rock solid. Again we maintained that 100% API compatibility and then kind of notable we really kind of focused on making sure that when we understood security issues as they came up we dealt with them as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible. We back ported them, we loaded them out, we worked with the OpenStack security team which was a bit of a learning experience for me because I really hadn't done that before but it worked out really well. And I think we got six or seven total security fixes out.  And some of them were like, yeah, we really know this is not the best way of doing it. Let's fix it up. And then sort of at the end of the Folsom release Russell was going through the list and he's like, hey, we really ought to kind of call that a CVE because that was actually a security fix. Oh yeah, right, okay. So then we released a whole bunch of announcements that we fixed it even though we'd fixed it months before. So we're learning how to make that all work properly but that's probably pretty much what we did in Folsom and really set the stage to move it forward and make things go even further in Grizzly. Now what's gonna happen in Grizzly, this is actually sort of a difficult thing to say because our sessions aren't until Thursday. So we haven't actually talked about everything that we're going to do and nailed down all these plans but these are kind of the highlights from talking with some of the core in Keystone and the things that I've been hearing from other people and other talks during the first part of the session. And that is, we're gonna take the V3 API which is actually up there in an implemented state right now in a feature branch, we're gonna land it in master and we're gonna start rolling it out. We'll be rolling V3 out with V2, running them in parallel for some time and then moving that forward. So this means off changes that will impact every project which means going to every project and making sure it works smoothly, fixing the bugs, figuring out what could be done wrong, could be done better. Although we nailed down the V3 API spec in terms of, okay, this is what we're going to do as in we have it now in source control and we're doing it with revisions to update that spec, we're still leaving it open to lessons learned and really that was some advice that I got from Brian in the Glance team that they had done a spec exactly that way, started implementing it and then realized, oh shit, we really screwed this up and then had to go back and retrace some steps and redo some things. So we hope this not gonna be significant changes but we'll start with where we are, we've got initial implementation out there, we've got tests wrapped around it, we're going for full coverage, really move this forward slowly, intentionally, carefully and then get it out there. The idea being have the V3 API out and running as of the fall, ideally by Grizzly and then an H and I somewhere in that timeframe deprecate out the V2. So that we'll switch all the way over to the V3 API somewhere in the next couple releases down the road. So not fast, not all at once, no forklift, a very intentional, thoughtful step forward. The other thing that we're really gonna be focusing on, well, one of the other things that we're gonna focus on is consolidating the policy files. Really heard this loud and clear actually during the end of the Folsom release. It was like, well, what do I do about this? We had a lot of capabilities for our back that were already in the system and it just wasn't clear how to do it from a deployment perspective. And I promised Anne and she's been so nice to me and hasn't told me that I broke all of my promises to her but I did in that I didn't get the documentation consolidated for here's some examples of how to do that. We just ran out of manpower in the Keystone project actually is what it amounted to in terms of being able to consolidate this together, get it out there and put some more examples in place. And really that's also prep work for being able to consolidate all the policy files in Keystone as a single source of truth. So that's gonna be something we'll be focusing on just pulling it together. As a matter of fact, we're having a session on that on Thursday, I think it's at two. Is that when we decided to do it? Yeah, 320. I changed it in, I figured out how to change it in Sketch, so I did. So it's this policy now. So if you're implementing Keystone and have thoughts about what you wanna see in terms of specific RBAC capabilities and segregation and example policy, basically configurations across an entire OpenStack deployment, please come and give us your feedback at that time because I really wanna try to collect this together. I'm mostly in the just collected document phase so we can put them together as recommended deployments and ways to be able to do this. Other things that have been on the list for Grizzly is extending the authorization mechanism. It's been a need for quite some time to have something that would allow us to do delegation or impersonation, something equivalent to that, so that you can say, hey, on behalf of me, I want the system to go ahead and take that block volume snapshot and throw it up in Swift, right?  And how's it actually gonna do that? I mean, is it gonna take my credentials and pass them all around? What if it's time delayed and the token's expired? There's a lot of different pieces that are going on. So we have some proposals out, some discussions going on, and some of this is also up for discussion on Thursday. We're gonna continue to extend down the Active Directory support. I'll hopefully get it to the point where you can use it on a totally stock Active Directory system. And some of that also goes to, what if we wanna use different authentication systems beyond Active Directory? That's been the most common request. But there's also, hey, you know, I've already got Kerberos in my environment. Maybe I'm a research university, something along those lines. I wanna be able to plug into that. And that's been a fairly common request as well. So allowing us to plug into something that doesn't have all the authentication, doesn't have all the details we need for authorization as in projects and roles, but would be able to make the authentication pluggable specifically outside of an identity system and come up with some more patterns for along those lines. And that's where the externalizing authentication really comes into, just as a kind of a combination of that stuff with Active Directory. Obviously moving the default token to PKI, review is up. And then there's a bunch of work that we're doing around the CLI and common authentication. There were some great discussions earlier related to just common CLI tools and making it very easy to use them so you didn't have to know Nova versus Glance versus Keystone to interact with OpenStack. But more importantly also is being able to use KeyStack from the other clients so that they didn't all have to redo the auth implementations, which all of them do right now. But none of them are particularly satisfactory. So we're gonna reset that a little bit, get it set up with a clear Python API, make it available to the other APIs, move that forward. And with luck, we'll have a couple other alternative APIs out there, maybe not in Keystone Core, maybe not anything Core or whatever else, but there'll be pieces out there that are available in OpenContribution that you could use if you wanted to work for multiple languages, whether it be PHP or Ruby or Objective-C or whatever you like. The last thing is, we've got a talk on Thursday at the end of the day. David Chadwick has been talking about how to enable federation among multiple instances for Keystone. I totally blackballed it for discussion last year or last summit because I just wanted to focus on, let's take one thing at a time, but we've got it at the point where we're stable enough now that I think it's really worth talking about what are the use cases, what do we wanna enable, how do we wanna enable trust delegation, and how do we wanna support that? Not for expected, honestly, implementation and grisly, but to set the stage for it, because I expect that we don't have some of the things we need to be able to get there. Maybe we do, maybe it'll go much faster than I thought, but I've learned that this does not always go as fast as I want it to. So do the learning, do the discussions, and then go from there. And that is what I have. So with that, let me open the floor to questions. We'll go from there. Mr. Henry. So in talking about blacking out, as much as possible, yes. The ideal way to have anything in my mind that's reasonably supported is to make sure it either goes into Tempest or it gets into DevStack in some form so that you can run a variation of DevStack that has it available so that we can test it and make sure it runs.  There've been some companies that have approached me over time saying, hey, I'm an identity provider and I wanna write a plugin for Keystone and I'm like, sweet, go ahead and do that. But it's gonna be up to them to really validate that it all functions and assert that it's a good plugin, if you will. Yeah, whoever does it. You are totally channeling Gabriel, aren't you? It looks like you're trying to... No idea. But it's self-supports and it curve rules. You're not talking to Keystone directly about the horizon, so you curve those there and then what I think was gonna happen, especially with the edge of it that fall, if we take a lot of the sort of design capabilities that is then gonna say, so long as you have the HALA certificate and we'll be able to open the beat that provides itself in the form of the, at least some of the sort of generation or at least capacity, you know, only a nice little bit of sky-off, but okay. And that's gonna be a good one. Okay, they gave literally the same that's sort of important because we also need, do we show that we're correct? Ironically, I took... You're using all that, right? Ironically, I heckled Dan just before this, saying, well, how are you doing? How are you exposing these capability things to horizon? They're using the extensions mechanism. We'll clearly need to support that, but I think maybe there's something more that we need to do across all of OpenStack, especially with more and more of us being plugins with those plugins having custom capabilities that some might have and some others might not or optional implementations, if you will, to really expose that up in some fashion to horizon. Anyone? Other questions? Yes. I was wondering for your authorization tokens, in the process of building an application which is likely to use lots of tokens in lots of places, shut them around. So I want them to be very efficient to process. So I'm thinking something like OpenID, which is, you know, HMAT-based JSON objects rather than RSA operations or XML and chaotic-wise, that's something I'm kind of stuck. Is there any desire, plan, thought to support that kind of approach? We are very intentionally supporting a common Python API for the OpenStack projects so that they don't have to mess with doing exactly what you're doing. Whether the underlying implementation becomes something else in the future, right now? No, I mean right now we're gonna move to the PKI stuff and then use that to leverage. But where we go in the future, there's nothing that says we couldn't switch out the entire authentication layer to use OpenID or straight up Kerberos. Shouldn't we be insane enough to want to drive those libraries? You know, something along those lines. It's capable of doing that, but it's not in our media plans at this time. I should recognize it. You must be David. Yeah, I think so. Brilliant, very nice to meet you. I've been wanting to meet you. It's that you actually would define an API and then you would just plug in our own token. You could have a token in any format with just the keystone just called give you the token, we'll get the token, pass it out to the client, the client would pass it back and use it in the call of code. Right. If you did that way, then you can actually say you can have any base node. Right. And that's totally what's on the table for discussion on Thursday afternoon. So if you're interested, please attend. Yes, I am. In fact, that's kind of the proposal that I would find. I would find you, look out for the start. Looks like you're getting support already. Awesome. Yeah. My question is about a new background. So we have all the information we're having, which I would actually probably suggest to all of the federations that we treat federations as sort of a scapegoat where we have some of them. You don't require any of you who intend to do any of that? There is an intention to do something with the state of the token to at least expose a little bit more. Right now it's very simple. It's either valid or not. And it would be nice to be able to support an intermediate state, even if it's not necessarily defined on how that is. And that would be necessary to support something like a multi-factor authentication, whatever you wanted to do. And there's been a lot of talk and thought about it, but nobody stood up and said, yeah, I'm gonna go do that work right yet. If you're interested, it's totally there. The blueprints are up. The support is desired. It's simply basically lacking resources to make it implemented right now. I think we would pull it like this today. Lots of talks on Thursday. I'm trying to get it down. Yeah. Right now, we're working on it. Still gives you a new token. Yes. That is still the case. Reuse intentional reuse of token. I don't think anybody's been opposed to it just so much as nobody stepped up and said, that really pisses me off. I'm gonna go do it. I actually really thought, I actually really implemented it that way. If you're asking the same token, and if you have a special role, how long do you want to do a sliding window if you re-use the same token? And then if you might need a token for, I don't agree with you. If you get a token for $8 or more, you have to really be nervous. I think the right solution is, let's start looking at, keeping it for some other support, but you don't have to actually go for it. Absolutely. Everything that you do, you do it. Yeah, I mean, the right thing to do, but then I'm gonna do it. Well, that's a little bit of a comment to see a lot of stuff. That's the right question. And that's exactly where we're planning on addressing that. Because it asks for basically a new token every time you even kind of look at it. Sometimes it asks for three or four every time you look at it. It's just sort of strange. So it's like, no, let's get that fixed, shall we? Other questions? Yeah. In that delegation discussion, is there any talk about constrained delegation to other users? Yes. And how do I learn more about it or contribute? Thursday. The concept is a policy thing.  In some constrained fashion, which might be constraints on privileges, time to do whatever, right? We've got all Thursdays on piece of design. We'd be there and then we'd be in, in case they'd be built. And it's what you want to substrate. Thank you. So yes. It would be that security. Anything else? All right, obviously Thursday, Keystone Day upstairs. Please, if you're interested, if you want to help contribute, if it's just something you want to find out what's going on and what the actual conversations are and how we're doing the design, join us. It's open for all. Thank you very much.


Aloha and hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Power of Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together for a just and clean energy future for the islands. I am your host, Raya Salter. I'm an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist and principal of Imagine Power LLC. Today, we're going to talk about how we buy electricity and the way it is charged. Most of us open our bill from the utility and, one, do our best to pay it. That's how we do our part. Then, we flip our light switches and turn on our appliances and expect the power to come on when we want it, and when we need it, every time we want it, and every time we need it. That's the utility's role to play. Unless there's some kind of power outage, that's really the end for most of us, the most that we think about it. What should that be the end of us thinking about it? Maybe it's a good idea to think about this some more. Why? Well, we'd all like the opportunity to lower our electricity bills. If you're like me and are the one who actually pays the bills in the house, you are very unhappy when you come home, nobody's home, and the air conditioner is blasting and all the lights are on. I can think a lot of things that are more fun than seeing energy wasted, and I can think of just about anything is more fun than paying a high energy bill. Especially during holidays, I can think of several things that I would rather do with my money than give it to the utility. What about the utility? What about the utility's role? Are they doing enough to keep prices low? Are they doing enough to give me the opportunity to save money on my electricity? Well, the utility in Hawaii has taken some first steps to give consumers more options to use energy and potentially save money while doing so. Today, it is in the news, Pacific Business News, to be exact, that 1,000 electricity customers in Hawaii have signed up for HIKO's time of use rate program. So that is what we're going to talk some about today. What are time of use rates? What do they mean for you, and why are they important? Well, we know that electricity costs are high in Hawaii. Utilities and regulators have made great strides in promoting renewable energy, increasing the efficiency of the power grid, and reducing harmful pollution. However, customers too can be part of the solution by better managing our use of electricity, especially during those times when it's most expensive to produce it. Now, the cost of producing electricity and the carbon emissions associated with it, which can be damaging to both the environment and also can be damaging to human health, very significantly throughout the day, depending on electricity demand at any point in time. So what do I mean by that?  Sometimes it costs more to produce electricity, and sometimes it costs less. And I think it's going to make sense that when is it going to cost the most? When most people need to use it. You see electricity, until we have more technology, until we get better storage options. It needs to be used as soon as it's generated. It's difficult to save and store. So the electric grid and the operators at the utility and the regulators have to look at and be prepared for when are people going to want to use energy, and then they have to be ready to provide it at those times, and it has to be exactly when you want it, exactly the way you want it, and fulfill all the needs that you may have for that energy. So what does this mean? When the energy is needed the most at peak times of day, this is when the utility needs to spend money to make sure that there is a reserve of energy that if for some reason there is a spike in demand that they can have, there can be more resources added. And this is expensive. For example, when a heat wave occurs and many customers begin cooling their homes after work, demand skyrockets and creates what is known as a critical peak. Now again, in order to meet this increased demand, the most expensive power sources, which remain unused for most of the year and generally tend to be more polluting, are turned on. So enabling customers to turn their electricity use down during a heat wave could offset the need for these more expensive sources of power, resulting in lower prices and in many places less harmful pollution. Customers could, for example, set their air conditioner at a temperature to a few degrees warmer or run large appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines, and dryers outside of the times most people are using electricity. Now I've got an interesting example of how this can be a really, really big issue and how it truly is related to how we behave. So this example is from Great Britain. Now even though, as we know, there are a lot of TV shows to choose from in Great Britain, they love their soap operas. So think of the absolute most popular show that occurs, say, in the United States. And imagine what would happen if everybody decided that they are going to tune in and watch that show at that time. So that would be a lot of people coming together to watch TV. Now another thing that we all know about the British is that still to this day, they love their tea. So there's a soap opera in Britain that's called the EastEnders, actually my mother is British and it's something that I also grew up watching from time to time. It's kind of a funny quirky show about working class people in a working class neighborhood in London. So this show is extremely popular. So what does almost the entire nation of Britain do when EastEnders is about to come on? Well, guess what?  So the fact that this many people watch that same show at the same time and light up their tea kettle actually has extreme consequences for the electric grid in Britain. It's actually described as an electricity nuance completely unique to Great Britain. And it refers to the fact that massive swaths of the nation's population will all get up at the same time at the end actually of this popular show and cause a surge in electricity usage by boiling a kettle full of water to make that cup of tea. So what happens? People sit down and watch the EastEnders, they enjoy themselves, and then exactly after, ah, you know, I could really use a cuppa. All of those people has huge consequences. And when that popular show, the EastEnders, comes to an end five times a week in Britain, the grid has to deal with around 1.75 million kettles requiring power at the same time. That's an additional three gigawatts of power for the roughly three to five minutes it takes each kettle to boil. So big is the surge that backup power stations have to go on standby across the country. And there's even more additional power made available in France just in case the UK grid can't cope. At this moment in time, the operator, and I've actually seen a video I wanted to actually download this video to show because it's extremely compelling.  He's got a little television that's next to him on the side. What is he waiting for? He's waiting for that song that they play at the end of EastEnders because at exactly at that moment he's going to have to wait and see what happens to the power and what types of reserves he's going to have to call on and it's actually fascinating when you see the actual footage because some of the power is hydro. So you end up because of these tea kettles, you know, this person behind this grid operations has to turn on some dials that send signals to let this massive amount of water energy just fall. I mean, it is really incredible. So this person stands at the ready and arranges to release massive stores of power to bring online when people fire up those kettles. So you can only imagine the cost that's involved in making sure that the country manages to stay online just because folks want to have their cup of tea. So this is, I think, an excellent example of how human behavior really does affect the energy system. Why don't we have more ways that we can change our behavior and we can start to alleviate some of these problems and the costs that they bring? Well, unfortunately, most customers aren't provided with the type of information on when these critical times occur and have little to no incentive to curb their demand during these times because they're neither rewarded for doing so, no penalized for when they don't. Instead, we all pay the same price for electricity used at all times of day, irrespective of a heat wave or another period of high electricity demand, like the need to fire up our kettles for EastEnders. I don't think there's, I would love to know if anyone out there listening knows of an example here in the United States where some type of particular cultural event actually causes this phenomenon, I would love to hear it. Actually, if there's anyone out here listening in Hawaii or anywhere in the world who is interested in joining this conversation, please feel free to pick up the phone and call our studio live. So, what it is when we all pay the same amount at all any time of day, they call that just a flat rate. Now, many utilities have begun to realize that this type of pricing is hardly efficient. Pricing electricity in a way that reflects its true cost, the actual cost that it is required to make the energy, can help utilities reduce overall costs and pass these lower prices on to customers. So in the example of the EastEnders Kettle example, if the utility, now interestingly enough, this kind of poses an interesting question. What would it take for you, say you imagine yourself as a British person looking forward to your kappa at the end of your favorite show? What would it take for you to decide, hmm, you know what, I like having that kappa tea after my show, but I realize now it's a big cost to the grid and maybe I shouldn't turn on my tea kettle at that time because it costs huge amounts of money for all of us when I do. So that's kind of the question, what would it take to make you change that behavior and what would that mean for you? It could mean that just knowing that it causes this problem would be enough for you to turn off your, to decide to defer that enjoying your wonderful hot cup of tea, or you could say hey, if I could save five or ten cents on my electricity bill at that moment, I'd do it for that five or ten cents because you know, that adds up. Or it could be you think five or ten cents really isn't going to matter, or quite frankly, and I wouldn't blame you, you may think, you know what, I'm having my cup of tea, I pay my electricity bill, and I want to have my cup of tea and enjoy it after the East Enders whenever I want, and that would be extremely understandable. What if they created in Britain some type of penalty? What if they said everybody who turns on their cup of tea at the end of East Enders is going to have to pay five dollars extra on their utility bill? Would that be fair? Would that be enough? Would it be the right thing to do? So that is sort of some of the issues that really are at hand when we talk about charging different amounts for electricity at different times of day. And there are several ways to do this, for example, utilities can charge customers different rates at different types of times of the day or throughout the month. And this is what's known as time variant electricity pricing. This type of pricing allows customers to have greater control over their utility bill. So by reducing electricity use during the times when it's more expensive to produce, they can take advantage of cheaper electricity being offered at other times. Furthermore, environmentally conscious customers can reduce their carbon emissions by timing their electricity use. Essentially, time variant pricing empowers electricity customers by bringing them into the market and allowing them to affect it with their behavior. If we would all shift away from periods of high demand, electricity prices would fall for everyone. So if everyone in Britain decided that they were going to defer that cup of tea, it could save a substantial cost to energy users in Britain overall. So we're going to take a break and when we come back to power up Hawaii, we will continue to talk about time of use rates, what's happening with them here in Hawaii, and why there may be an important option for you to consider. Okay, this is Hawaii, the state of clean energy, a wonderful show we do four to four thirty every single Wednesday. And the progenitors of this show, Sharon Moriwaki and Ray Starling to my left. So how's it going? How's it going Sharon? Do you like the show? I love the show and I hope everybody watches the show and joins in and gives us their comments on clean energy every week. Every week with incredible guests and topics and discussion and mostly candor. This month is all renewable energy and next month we're going to look at procurement. Each month we have a different series and so it's going very well. We learn so much. We keep the public so well advised, the best we can. Ray, what do you think? Well, I think this is the place where it's happening. This is where we discuss the latest of what is going on in the energy world and it's a great place to be, a great place to meet some new people that are into the energy world that we haven't talked to before. So I'm happy to be here. Okay, this is a, you know, energy is the biggest thing happening in Hawaii where they realize that it's not going to affect all of our lives, it's affecting all of our lives and it's like a million things are happening in energy. How could you possibly understand what's happening unless you are informed? This is your way. This is the deal. Hawaii, the state of clean energy every Wednesday at four o'clock, right? Join us. I knew you'd say that. Aloha and hello and welcome back to Power Up Hawaii. I am your host, Raya Salter, and today we're talking about time of use pricing, what that means for Hawaii, who was signed up for a year and why it may be an important thing for you to consider. So before we went to break, we were talking about how expensive energy is at certain times of the day and how energy, it does not cost the same to deliver to you, the customer, at all times of day and how changing behavior, changing our behavior as customers, can actually help lower cost for the utility that could also be passed along to us as energy savings. And this is why Hiko's new time of use rate program is so important. So time of use, or TOU, is the most commonly utilized form of time variant pricing. TOU pricing breaks up the day into two or three large intervals and charges a different price for each. Rates can be divided into off-peak prices, off-peak generally being in the middle of the night to early morning. So why would off-peak be in the middle of the night of early morning? Because, especially in Hawaii, maybe not as much as where I'm from in New York, but where I'm from in New York City, yes, there too. We don't do as much stuff in the middle of the night with our electricity.  That's not when we're thinking about doing our laundry, using our video game machines or even our computers. However, so this is a time when electricity is generally cheaper to bring to your home because there's less demand. However, if you think about it, depending on what kind of washer and dryer, what type of appliance, dishwasher that you have, many of these appliances have time settings. If you're like me, you need to call your daughter or your teen to help you figure it out. But they do have these settings. And actually, I know myself at home, especially when I'm doing laundry, both the washer and the dryer, as it can be kind of warm in Hawaii, I don't really like in the middle of the day to have my clothes drying because it just makes my whole home just hotter. I need to turn the fan on. So actually, if I could put a load or two on and actually arrange to time it so that it's sort of, it washed in the middle of the night, that would actually be something that could be potentially convenient for me. And if I could have a different and cheaper rate at that time, all the better. So that sometimes these things can be win-win. So that tends to be the off-peak time. So when is semi-peak? Semi-peak is usually daytime and evening. And when is peak? Now peak is the time of the highest demand. Now this is usually the afternoon or early evening. What's happening in the afternoon and early evening? Well, if your family is like mine, that's when you're coming home from work, the kids are coming home from school, you're turning on, the kids are firing up the video games or hopefully they're computers for homework. You're starting to fire up the appliances to cook, maybe turn it on the TV so you can watch a little television while you cook. This is the time when people come home and we do all the things that we need to do in our busy lives. So this tends to be the highest time. Now these rates tend to remain fixed day-to-day over the season. So this means, well, here in Hawaii, we have less variance in the season, but this is something that can be studied. The utility will put a lot of time of work into saying, can we predict on any given day what these periods will be?  So the simple method of pricing encourages customers to shift their electricity use away from times of day when demand is higher. However, it does not necessarily encourage reduced electricity use during the critical peak times over the year, such as during heat waves. So most utilities throughout the country have a volunteer TOU rate available to customers, although overall adoption has remained low. Although time variant pricing is still not widely available across the country, more utilities and customers are waking up to the benefits of pricing electricity differently by time of day and month and year and realizing the dynamic rate structures are integral to a cleaner, more efficient energy system. Our own utility here has joined them. In the latest adaptation to meet the growth of solar power, the PUC has approved a pilot program designed to shift usage to times when solar power and other forms of renewable energy are abundant and away from times when HECO has to fall back on conventional generation to meet demand. The voluntary program creates three time periods, each with its own rates, midday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on peak, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and off-peak from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. The midday rates are designed to be lower than the typical customer pays under the current residential rate scheme, while the on-peak rate would be higher than the typical residential tariff. On-Huahu would pay more during the day and others during peak hours. On the big island, customers will also see a swing in those prices, and the same is true on other islands as well. This means that if they wish, people can lower their usage when power is more expensive and potentially save money. The real bang for the buck can happen when lots of people shift behavior and reduce these peak times for power. This is helpful for a couple of reasons. First, the utility will not need to use as much of that expensive peak power. That saves money for everyone. It's extremely important that we get this right, however. If everyone is not able to use time-of-use rates, it will mean if everyone is going to be able to use time-of-use rates, it will mean a big investment in the meters called smart meters that make it possible. A few weeks ago, it was reported in Ontario that time-of-use rates there are not working. It costs $2 billion to install new meters for the customers of Ontario in their households. But the meters and the differentiated prices that are creating are failing to accomplish the cheap objective of curtailing electricity demand at peak periods according to growing research. Now, a series of reports examining Ontario's electricity system indicate that the smart meter project and time-of-use pricing are neither significantly reducing peak hydro demand, hydro is what they use a lot of in Canada, nor persuading customers to shift their energy use to off-peak periods. This was from the Canadian press. The province's rationale behind smart meters and peak period pricing was to give consumers incentives and opportunities to reduce their electricity bills by shifting their time of electricity use. But customers don't appear to be biding. The current time-of-use pricing structure has not provided sufficient incentives for customers to shift away and or reduce use. Concludes a recent review conducted by the Brattle Group Consulting Firm for the Independent Electric System Operator in Ontario. So this goes back to what we were saying before about what is the right package of incentives in order to get this correct. So it's important that we move forward to a clean energy future here in Hawaii. It will require every tool in the toolbox to do this. It's important for a lot of reasons that electricity is clean, but it is equally important that it be affordable. Changing peak behavior is one way to save energy. Energy efficiency is the absolute best way to create a cheaper and cleaner energy system. Energy efficiency makes the grid easier to manage. It makes it easier to integrate solar and other renewable energy, and it makes energy cheaper for you and me. In fact, energy efficiency is not only the least cost and best place to start for saving energy and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, but it's also the most equitable way, being good for consumers of all income levels. So I hope that I have given you some food for thought about how our behavior as customers can affect the energy system and also our wallets. And I'd like to thank you very much for that. So thank you so much for joining me for another edition of Power of Hawaii. Aloha and I hope to see you next week.


Hello and welcome to a briefing on government business forwarded during proceedings of the House of Assembly sitting on Tuesday, the 2nd of June, Wednesday the 3rd of June and the Senate sitting on Thursday the 4th of June 2020. My name is Jesse Leance. In the honorable House of this week, Parliament approves the US $7.9 million for the joint venture to upgrade the Millennium Highway and West Coast Road. The House approves financial relief for St. Lucian residents in the form of an extended period for barrel concessions from now June 2020 to January 2021. In addition, the parliamentary opposition lend support for governments proposed the Labour Code amendment to extend the layoff period during national crises like this pandemic COVID-19 and the tourism levy bill intended to help small tourism related businesses is pulled from the order paper ahead of the sitting of the Senate pending further review acknowledging legitimate concerns with the proposed legislation. First order of business added to the well-advanced preparations for the reconstruction of the Millennium Highway and West Coast Road. The government of St. Lucia has received approval in Parliament to fulfill its funding commitment to the joint venture by way of a loan from the Caribbean Development Bank's ordinary capital resources OCR of an amount not exceeding US $7,945,000. The government of St. Lucia will keep its end of the bar game in the EC 99.4 million dollar undertaking. Minister for Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labour the Honourable Stevenson King gave a breakdown of how the Millennium Highway and West Coast Reconstruction project will be bankrolled. The proposed project will be financed in the following weeks. A loan from the government of St Lucia by the CDB of an amount not exceeding equivalent of 7.945 million dollars which is what we are here to this evening debating and for which we anticipate approval. That Mr. Speaker represents 15% of the project cost. 15% of project cost is what forms our commitment to the project. Then a grant to the government of St Lucia of an amount not exceeding equivalent of 27.83 million dollars which is US 35.342 million from CDB's SFR which is the allocation from resources by the United Kingdom through the Department of International Development under the United Kingdom Caribbean Infrastructure Fund UK CIF resources request representing 67% of the project costs. So 67% comes from the United Kingdom. Counterfeit funding of EC 24.61 million representing 17% of project costs to finance land acquisition, project preparation, institutional strengthening, project management and to partly finance infrastructure works. Reconstruction of the Millennium Highway will cost approximately EC 32.2 million dollars and the West Coast Road EC 66.2 million dollars. The interest rate on the US 7.9 million dollar loan to partly finance the project is a 4.8% per annum on the amount of the loan withdrawn and outstanding. The commitment rate is payable at a rate of 1% per annum on the amount of the OCR portion un-withdrawn. The loan is repayable in 48 equal or approximately equal and consecutive quarterly installments on each first day of January, first day of April and first day of October of each year commencing on the first due date immediately following the expiration of five years after the date of the loan agreement on a later due date that the Caribbean Development Bank specifies in writing. Providing a status update on the Millennium Highway and West Coast Reconstruction project in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, the Honourable Alan Chastney, indicated that the feasibility study and final design were complete and disclosed that contractor bids were being evaluated this week. The next component will see the construction of a roundabout at the junction of the Millennium Highway, West Coast Road, East Coast Road, commonly referred to as the cul-de-sac junction and the reconstruction of the bridge at Ansleray. We're really hopeful that we can start seeing construction particularly on the Millennium Highway as quickly as possible. We want to take advantage, Mr. Speaker, of the fact that schools are shut right now until September. Also, we don't have our doors open to any tourism and even if we were to open our doors, we're not expecting that tourists are going to be traversing the island in the initial part like they did before. So it really is to use this opportune time, Mr. Speaker, to commence the work at hand. That was Honourable Alan Chastney, Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Economic Growth, Job Creation, External Affairs and the Public Service. The Millennium Highway and West Coast Reconstruction project upon completion will improve commutes, road safety efficiency, enhance sectors reliant on this key infrastructure and build climate resilience of the roads. Now, speaking of climate resilience, St. Lucia has scheduled to benefit from road improvement works fully funded by the Government of Japan through the Japan International Corporation Agency JICA. The cul-de-sac bridge reconstruction project, airmarked for later this month, is designed to build climate resilience in St. Lucia's infrastructure. The project running alongside the Millennium Highway and West Coast Reconstruction Initiative includes road realignment work, expansion of the existing bridge, river retraining and involvement in the construction of the proposed cul-de-sac roundabout. Minister for Infrastructure, Port's Energy and Labor, the Honourable Stevenson King, explained that the project is designed to address flooding in that prone area and will be supervised by engineers from the Department of Infrastructure. What the Japanese are going to do in cul-de-sac, Mr. Speaker, is just not to put two I-beams across the river and put slabs on it and say we have a bridge and say it costs 42 million dollars. It's much more than this. The studies which had to be done, Mr. Speaker, to determine the hydrology of the river in terms of the flow and all of this thing, Mr. Speaker, because it's not water running down a hill, it's water settling in a flood plain and it is likely if the hydrology, Mr. Speaker, isn't adequate, you are likely to have much more rapid flooding than ever before. The Japanese were the ones, Mr. Speaker, who undertook all of the feasibilities, design, finance, engineering, you name it, all of the feasibilities costing, Mr. Speaker, we will merely, we will merely the recipients of donor funds. Reconstruction of the cul-de-sac bridge will cost an estimated EC 42 million dollars, courtesy the Japanese government, and take 24 months to build, commencing this month, June. In more parliament news, the government of St. Lucia sought permission to guarantee two World Bank dispersed loans in the Honourable House this week for the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Program, CARSIP, and the Human Capital Resilience Project. The government's guarantee for the CARSIP loan taken out by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union will result in financing in the sum of US $4.1 million to complete St. Lucia's end of the regional connectivity infrastructure to increase bandwidth, ICT-led innovation to remain competitive globally and implementation support, integration and harmonization of regulations, as well as training activities and business incubation loans. In his bid, Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, the Honourable Alan Chasne, reiterated the significance of CARSIP and the convenience of this loan. I'm very grateful that we were able to secure this money at this time, particularly at the cost of the money, at a very, very low rate, Mr. Speaker, for a period of 20 years. Actually, sorry, for 40 years, Mr. Speaker, in total. So, while this will increase our debt to GDP, Mr. Speaker, but the fact is the burden on the coffers to pay this loan back are at relatively inexpensive, Mr. Speaker. And when one considers the significant capacity change it's going to make, both for us and our daily lives, and the opportunity for attracting more people in the St. Lucia because of this additional broadband width, and more importantly, Mr. Speaker, a critical component of this project is the development of our youth and giving them the opportunity now to open up their own businesses to compete on an international basis. The motion was approved in both houses this week. Parliament also approved this week a draft value-added tax order that is on the rate of a tax on goods and services provided by hotels and other providers in the tourism sector to vary the rate of tax for goods and services provided by hotels and other providers in the tourism sector and the draft value-added tax amendment of Schedule 2 order to amend Schedule 2 of the Act. And that is to A, set the rate of tax for goods and services provided by hotels and other providers in the tourism sector as follows, the rate of 7% tax, supplying with regard to a supply of an accommodation service, a water sports service, a tour conducted by land, air or sea within St. Lucia that does not include transportation provided by an external provider. The rate of 10% tax applies with regard to a supply of food and beverages, including alcoholic beverages by a restaurant or an admission service to heritage sites and other touristic attractions. In Schedule 2, under Item 1, A, by deleting the definition of commercial rental establishment and B, by deleting the definition of dwelling and by substituting a new definition that outlines the places that are not considered a dwelling. Under Item 2, by deleting paragraph M and by substituting a new paragraph to specify the type of accommodation service that is exempted. In other tourism matters amid concerns over certain sections of the draft of the Tourism Levy Bill and after careful consideration, the government of St. Lucia pulled the proposed legislation from the order paper after the House of Assembly sitting. It acknowledged that the bill might seem ambiguous, thus giving rise to a certain level of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. A statement from the Office of the Prime Minister indicates that the Act, which intends to help small tourism-related businesses, is too important a piece of legislation to be misunderstood. This legislation is intended to complement what is being done with village tourism, the marketing of brand and other destination enhancement programs to further incorporate and provide benefits to small and medium-sized tourism and hospitality businesses. An early start to the barrel concessions period has been approved in the Parliament. This week, the bill to amend the usual Christmas barrel concession was passed allowing St. Lucia to enjoy duty-free barrels now from June, instead of the usual November start. First mentioned in the Social Stabilization Plan by the Honourable Prime Minister, the Honourable Alan Chastney, in an address to the nation, this initiative is part of a wide range of relief measures to help citizens cushion the social and economic shock brought on by the ongoing pandemic. Mr. Speaker, my government recommended the following. The barrel concession program commence on June 2 to run for eight months and expire on January 31, 2021. The number of barrels granted under this program be restricted to two barrels to each household. Let the beneficiaries of the concession be granted 100% waiver of import duty excise tax on unsolicited personal items, food, clothing, toys, and other household consensuals to obtain in barrels imported. Let the concession not apply to electronic items. The persons are to pay the requisite taxes, duties and charges on barrels outside of the concessionary provisions as applicable in normal trade. Let the unusual penalties and fines be applied if goods are used for commercial purposes and there will be an upper limit of $2,500 per barrel on the value of items qualified. The application of requisite taxes, duties on charges and nonprovisional items like electronics or commercial goods remain. And finally, a bill, the Labor Amendment Act seeking to increase the layoff period during a national crisis like COVID has been passed. The layoff period as enshrined in the Labor Code or the Labor Act as it is known is to allow a business person to face with the condition to lay off its workers for a period of 12 weeks, three months. Upon the expiration of the three months, the employer therefore would it means that that period would would qualify for severance. And the employer would have to pay the worker severance fee. But with COVID and other natural disasters which may protract that period of downtime and a very slight it gives the employer the opportunity to benefit from an extended period which period would be declared by the minister. So once a national emergency is declared and it is protracted over a long extended period, the minister can make a declaration and extend it by a further 12 weeks to allow for a longer period of time for recovery and to get the business back on its feet. However, it doesn't disadvantage the workers because if the worker, the employee feels that he rather just at least sever his own relationship with the employer, then it means that the employer would have to pay his severance pay after the after the three months. The redundancy his redundancy after the three months and to allow him to move on with with his own business. While the employer, it gives him that extra period of time to recover to full business. And that extension, Mr. Speaker, is only provided for periods such as a national disaster, a pandemic or other situations such as these. Now that concludes the highlights of the parliamentary sittings this week of the lower house, the House of Assembly on the second and third of June, as well as the sitting of the Senate, the upper house on the fourth of June. My name is Jesse Leon signing off for now. Do stay tuned for more NTN programming.


Cellinaxor is actually the first in class selective inhibitor of this protein. This protein is called exporting one and this protein is like the function is think about the chaperone carries out from the nucleus different type of tumor suppressor proteins, oncoproteins, glucocorticoid receptor and so the cells don't go to the regular cell that they don't die. And so cellinaxor and this protein is highly expressed in myeloma cells associated with the poor prognosis. So cellinaxor inhibits this protein so this pretty much this protein this tumor suppressor protein etc. don't leave the nucleus and so the cells will eventually go to apoptosis which is the diet the regular you know do the cycle of cell death. So I've been working with cellinaxor now for a few years as part of the stomp trial. The stomp trial was designed to combine cellinaxor with Lodos dexamethasone with different backbones treatment. For instance we have tested the cellinaxor in combination with lanalidomide, pomalidomide, bortosemab, carfilzomeb, daratumab, so a little bit old the major back bone treatment and the patients were assigned to the different arms based on their prior therapy. For instance if there were carfilzomeb naive they were assigned to the carfilzomeb cellinaxor dexamethasone arm. So it's an interesting design but allows us to test the the drug in different combinations you know in different time point stage of their disease. So the results are actually very encouraging with all the combinations. Last year I presented the combination with daratumab, cellinaxor dexamethasone, we are in the process of publishing that and it was you know first of all every single arm has a phase one where we determine what the tolerated those for the particular combination and then each arm were suspended with the recommended phase two portion those and so the daratumab was incredibly effective leading to around 70 percent response rate and it was durable some of the responses were durable in fact I have a patient that is going for three years on this combination. This year Adash I had a poster yesterday on the combination of carfilzomeb cellinaxor dexamethasone and we just completed the phase one B portion of the study so we are expanding we're going to phase two we found that the dose of cellinaxor was 80 milligrams weekly with a carfilzomeb 56 milligram per meter square weekly we treated only 14 patients at this dose we didn't have any dose limiting toxicity and the overall response was 71 percent we also had an incredible amount of VGPR 50 percent VGPR and 20 percent complete admission and interestingly you know all these patients were carfilzomeb naive or whether the medium prior lines of therapy was about four and 50 percent was actually daratumab refractory and we had a very similar response rate about 70 percent for this population of patients so we were very encouraged by the preliminary results is very well tolerated overall and we have few patients going for one year continuation of therapy so we hope to have more robust data relatively soon they're similar or whether they are much less because in all these combinations the cellinaxor is given weekly and when you use the cellinaxor in a weekly rather than bi-weekly there are some GI but they were all grade one and two actually very manageable so less of the nausea the vomiting the way loss so we didn't have we only had a couple of patients with hyponitremia which was you know one of the side effects in this storm trial we had myelosopression I think a thrombocytopenia remains one of the major toxicity of the different combinations we support patient aggressively we give actually in plate weekly maintain the platelets level in fact two of the dose limited toxicity at the higher those were thrombocytopenia and we continue to observe some thrombocytopenia throughout I didn't mention that yesterday there was also the presentation the oral presentation with Christine Chan was part of the arm with the cellinaxor pomalidomide axomethazone also leading to a 56 overall response rate in patients you know kind of sensitive to pomalidomide or whether 30% were exposed to pomalidomide so again we see another oral very promising combinations so I think in my experience working with the cellinaxor now for a few years I noticed that the first couple of cycles are probably the most critical adjustment and we're trying to push the dose you know during the first couple of cycles the response is very rapid and then with aggressive supportive care and dose adjustment as I say I have a patient going for three years so you know as long as you aggressively support patient with antibiotics fluids proper dose adjustment is actually relatively well tolerated overall is by mouth once a week so I really in particularly with the carfilzomeb or the daratumumab but I didn't have any major toxicities beside the aspected one the cellinaxor was approved in combination with that Daxa here in the United States has a bi-weekly administration with the overall response of 26% in very heavily treated patients now in the combinations we're going a little bit earlier once a week and you know we don't have many of the side effects that we're seeing with the bi-weekly administration I think that's an important point because when the drug the combination was approved everybody was concerned about management of toxicities but I have actually a more positive experience so I think the carfilzomeb Daxa-Metazone cellinaxor combination could be an important triple combination for patients exposed in refractory to daratumumab as I mentioned about 67% were exposed to daratumumab 50 were refractory and you know daratumumab is going early in a from satin already approved transplant ineligible you know with the Maya etc and and so we see more and more patients exposed to daratumab and and we have data showing that these patients after failing daratumab they really don't perform well they had the difficult time and so I think this combination could be a promising combination as a sequential next step for some of these patients


Here we have a set of five words, which I'll share one sound. The O sound as in go, show, doe, note, and boat. There are five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the O sound. We can have a simple letter O, O-W, O-U-G-H, O with the magic E, which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds, and the O-A as in boat. Now for a non-native learner, perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the O sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound O. Now that's okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like two, cow, and also rough. So the student has gone from knowing that these letters put together in these patterns will produce an O sound and now they're confused by the fact that the same pattern can produce a different vowel sound here. It can produce a different vowel sound here and a different vowel sound here. Put this all together and we created a situation which can become very confusing to our non-native learner. However, our international phonemic alphabet takes care of this problem by taking various spelling patterns and simplifying it into this symbol here.


As always this is just a fantastic opportunity to meet fellow professionals from all the different sectors that we work in. Archives, academics, libraries and museums is just a great place to be. I think DCDC is unique in terms of the conferences I tend to go to which are usually with museum colleagues talking about similar museum issues. So I love DCDC for being broader, having a wider mix of people. Mae geniwn ni'n meddwl i'r cyflaesol, nid o'r ffordd i'r thymau, a'r ffordd i'r dna'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r ddechrau.


Hey everybody, this is Brett with Summit Auto in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Today I'm excited to show you our very first 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L limited package. We've had a summit on our lot. This is our first limited, and I think that this is probably going to be our bread and butter when it comes to the Grand Cherokee, the new Grand Cherokees and the new Grand Cherokee Ls. They're really nicely equipped. This one has the 3.6-liter V6 Pentastar engine with start-stop technology. It's going to get you 25 miles per gallon on the highway, 18 city, and an average of 21 miles per gallon. This color is Velvet Red Metallic, and this one has the 10.1 radio. It also has the Luxury Tech Group II, and we're just going to do a walk around here. We're going to check it inside and out, go over all the options. Of course, the big change for this year is the new front end, really a good-looking front end. They've done a nice job with that re-design. The hood's a little bit longer, a little bit more horizontal. Looks good. Get all the LED headlamps and fog lights and running lights and everything, the seven slotted grille. This one comes with the 20-inch polished and painted aluminum rims. It has Bridgestone Acopia tires. These are 265, 50, R20s. You can see kind of an all-terrain tread pattern to those. Really like the rims. Pretty good-looking.  That looks good. We'll take a look at the original window sticker, and then we'll continue our walk around here. So 2021 Grand Cherokee L Limited. You can see the interior color is global black. The interior is the Capri leather seats with perforated inserts. It has a 3.6-liter, the 8-speed automatic transmission. Everything on your left there is standard, so the QuadraTrack 1, select terrain, remote star, power lift gate. That's all with the limited package standard here. So where you get into your optional equipment is down here. The velvet red is 345. Trailer tow package is $995, which gives you the receiver hitch, the trailer hitch zoom, the rear load leveling suspension, and the 7-in-4 pin wiring, and automatic headlamp leveling system as well. So Luxury Tech Group 2 is $2,295. I think it should be called Luxury and Tech Group, but that's just me, because it gives you these Capri leather seats, the intersection collision assist, park sense, front and rear park assist with stop, surround view camera, rain-sensitive wipers, review auto-dimming digital mirror display, review backup camera, wireless charging pad, ventilated seats, integrated off-road camera, the second row window shades, automatic dimming exterior driver mirror, door and lift gate passive entry, so the enter and go system memory steering column, and power tilt and telescopic steering wheel. Has the dual pane panoramic sunroof, which is $1,795, and then you get the Uconnect nav with 10.1-inch display, which is really cool, and that's $995, gives you the nav, the amplified speakers with the subwoofer, and the 506-watt amplifier, and then connected travel and traffic services as well. And those wheels on here are $1,495. The total MSRP is $55,610, three-year 36 bumper-to-bumper, five-year 60 powertrain. They're your estimated miles per gallon, and they do not have the safety ratings out for this vehicle yet, but my guess would be that they're going to be pretty high safety ratings as the Grand Cherokee's always seem to be. Take a look up here, you get that dual pane panoramic sunroof. The rear taillights seem to have been squished a little bit, they're not quite as tall as they used to be, a little bit sleeker, they wrap around the side of the vehicle pretty nicely. There's your receiver hitch, four-pin, seven-pin wiring. I took the cover off just for the video, and we like to keep them inside so they don't go missing on the lot. Power lift gate. So this is the L, it's got the third row seats. If you've ever seen a Durango, this setup is very similar. These are not the power seats, these are the manual fold down. So you just grab this handle right here and push it down, and you can see just how nice and flat that those go, and then when the second row is down, you have even an even flatter area to store stuff. They come up nice and easy, but nice and tight there so that there's not a big gap in between there. And we'll sit back there and I'll kind of show you how much room there is as well. Here's your cover for that receiver hitch. They made the tabs really easy to open and close, so I like that. Looks like there's storage underneath here, and that's where you get to your spare tire. To get this gate down, there's a button right here. Press that, it'll beep at you three times, and it'll start coming down and actually beeps at you a total of four, so they haven't changed that. Back up parking sensors. This one does have the capless fuel fill, which is really nice. I think if it's got these buttons, then you know it has the enter and go system. Blind spot monitoring, heated mirrors, directional signals on there. Inside the limited package gives you the pre-leather seats.  Lumbar, both these seats are heated and cooled, power telescopic. What they mean by that is that it goes in and out and power tilt as well. Auto headlamps, you get the nice dark wood grain trim on the doors, and that actually feels like wood. I don't know if that's plastic or not, but I know on the summits it's real wood. This is pretty good looking simulated wood if it's simulated. Memory driver seat, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, and then the Alpine premium sound system as well. We'll hop inside, turn the ignition on, check out the radio and everything that this one has to offer. So you can see it's got the tire pressure monitoring system on it, which is really nice. And then you can change all this stuff. If you look in the upper left you have vehicle info, main menu, and then that's when the dash goes to your digital speedometer and tack. Notice you do get a digital reading right in the middle there as well. It has a nice design. I'm thinking that's probably about an 11 inch display. I might even say it, but it looks really good and it's pretty configurable and nicely done. Leather wrapped steering wheel, this one is heated. You get bluetooth and information center controls on the left. And then that button right here, if you press that it changes the display up top and you can choose your apps for lack of a better term there, what you want to go to. So that's pretty cool. And then on the right side you have the cruise controls and then the adaptive cruise controls. This one does have the paddle shifters on it. And then this is the 10.1 radio. You connect five, so you get AM, FM, Sirius XM radio capabilities. It has the factory navigation system on it. You have your different comfort settings. You can do your heated seats, heated steering wheel. And then you have all your different vehicle settings here as well, including the surround view camera, which is pretty cool. You can see all the way around our picture studio there, the backup camera there. You can change your front camera, wide view, narrow view, go to your backup, and then you can zoom in over the receiver hitch. So you get hooked up to your boat camper trailer the first time, every time.  You can clean it where it'll actually spray windshield washer fluid like that. That's pretty cool. And then they have a trail view cam, but I think you got to have it in drive. Or there it is, forward facing cam. That's the same one. And then you have the FAM cam, which they took this out of the Pacifica from last year. So you can actually see inside the vehicle. I'm not sure if they took all the plastics off, but you can zoom in and see who's being naughty in the vehicle or what people are doing back there. So that's pretty cool. You can actually see me sitting right here. So FAM cam, that's what that's called. You can lower the third row headrest just like a Durango. And then you have all your different settings here. We could go into a whole, a whole long video just on this radio, but we're not going to do that right now. We're just going to get the basics here. Now you do have heated and cooled seat buttons down here. You get a USB, two USBs, two USB C's, and an aux jack. This is a wireless cell phone charge pad. This is the Quadra Track One system. So you still get the snow sand, I'm sorry, snow, yeah, sand mud, snow, auto, and sport modes. And instead of a turn dial, they have this little clicker here. And you can see if you look up in the EVEC here, it actually will change that as you put it up and down. That's pretty cool. 8-speed automatic transmission. They've changed the key fobs on the new Grand Cherokees. They're more of a square. They kind of look like the GM key fobs for the trucks and stuff. But I can tell they're much nicer quality than the GM key fobs. You get the nice Jeep logo on the back. And it's distinct. You'll always know which key fob that you get in your pocket. Remote start, power lift gate, emergency horn, really nice key fob. And the rest of the interior, I like how they laid out the dash. And once again, it's very similar to the Durango. As far as the dash is laid out, I think the doors are a little bit different. But this one does have the power vista rough. And you can see that opens up nicely. Really brightens it up in here. And then you do get assist and SOS buttons up there. Controls for that sunroof and sunshade controls. Home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems. And we'll turn the vehicle on here so I can show you the headlights. And then I can show you this rear view camera. So this is an actual camera that's on the back of the vehicle that shows a real video of what's going on behind you. You can brighten it. You can dim it. And you can also, like, see that's brightening it right there. And if you press that again, it'll actually lower it. Or if you want to raise it. So it'll give you a real view of what's going on behind you. I'm not a big fan of it, but I think some people like it. Or you can just make it a normal review mirror, which is what I prefer to have it at. Anyways, I was going to turn it on and show you all the lights and everything, but I'm going to show you the back seats first, just because this is the newest thing. And they have the second row. Now you can get a grand Cherokee with the quad seats, which I think a lot of people like, especially if you've got two kids and they tend to fight a lot. Having their own seats with armrest divider in there is probably a good thing. Here your rear air controls, these back seats are heated. You do get two USBs, two USB C's in 115 volt, 150 watt plug-in, which is also nice if your kids have tablets and charge them. It does have the latch child safety system, of course, with the for child safety seats for younger children. So these handles go like that. And what that kind of does, it's once again very similar to the Pacifica, how the seats kind of slide forward and angle up. So it's easier to get into the back. Now we're going to get in the back here. Actually isn't too tough to get back here. And while I'm sitting back here, I will show you that, you know, I think this seat is as far back as it can be. And my knees are still not touching and I'm about six foot. So, you know, like it probably wouldn't be the most comfortable ride, but if the seat was up a little bit, which it does slide up, I think I'd be pretty comfortable back here. The seats are really nice. They're firm. So you do get two plugins back here, a USB and a USB-C, and that's on each side. Little Easter egg, you get the Grand Cherokee and the Grand Cherokee L driving along there. And then this one does have the side window shades, which are right here, which remember that's part of that luxury tech group too. And yeah, there's plenty of room back here, but I do like that they have the quad seating, which is pretty neat. It's not too bad to get out of. And these seats just slide down like that. So you can see that this second row quad seat, this one's up a little bit farther than that one. They just are on the slider and they're really easy to slide actually. One hand, pretty simple. Cup holders back here, floor mats. And that's pretty much it. As promised, I'll start it up. Turn on all the lights so that we can do a walk around here with all the lights on. And I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video. You have gotten a really good idea of the overall looks and styling on the Grand Cherokee L Limited Velvet Red. Really good looking color. And as we come around to the front, take note of the LED headlamps, the LED running lights, the LED fog lamps. How good those look. I think Jeep knocked it out of the park with this one and we're excited to get the shorter one without the third row. A lot of people have been asking about those as well. And as soon as we get one, we're definitely going to do a video of it. And to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, Grand Cherokees, Cherokees, you name it, we got it. Go to that website right there, www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations, all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second, you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel. The upper left links more Grand Cherokee L videos like this one, the upper right link to this vehicle on our website. And the lower left and the link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. Click those, check us out. And we're super excited to be offering the brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee L in red velvet 2021. Thanks again for checking out the video. And remember to like, subscribe, and share.


So how do we know that things work? Well, in general, you're going to need to determine a structure of it, just showing that something by and somewhere is not going to be sufficient for your boss to trust you. With COVID, a lot of things that happened just the last few months or the last year at least. So already in mid-2020, there was a structure from Shanghai Tech where they determined a so-called co-crystal. That is a crystal of the protein with its partner molecule bound. In this case, it's a small protease, published in April 2020, I think. Do you see that the small green molecule there, or in this case, the electron density over here? So this was an x-ray structure determined to a resolution of roughly two angstroms, super high resolution. We are ecstatic in this case because you see exactly how the molecule is bound. And at this point, ideally, you now have a process where you understand the biology. You had predicted a binding site where you thought things would interact. If you decide a docking algorithm that was apparently able to target that, you were able to make predictions and you were able to validate those predictions and show that you really had something binding there. You still don't know if it actually has any biological effect though. This just shows that it's bound there, affinity. There are several other groups that have published structures like this. This is just another one, so let me move on to the next step, efficacy. The only way to show efficacy is really to take this in the lab and show that if you're adding these compounds that you thought bound and everything, will they actually reduce versus the viral load if you're having actual cell lines? In this case, it turns out that a few of those molecules actually did. Which again, this is amazing because now we have a molecule where, A, we know that it binds and B, that it's likely to have an effect. The problem is that these are simple cell lines, isolated cells in test tubes basically. Very little says whether this is going to work in a mouse. Why? Well, remember, admethox for instance, right? So there are so many steps left on the way. We're still not sure whether it's going to be a good drug, but things are starting to look promising. The better a binder it is though and the more effective it is, the lighter it is that it will be able to survive those later stages. So could the computer possibly help us here too?


CIT's vision is to produce graduates across all disciplines that are more entrepreneurial in their outlook, both as employees or as entrepreneurs themselves. All our students, regardless of their academic discipline, have the opportunity to engage in entrepreneurial activities and competitions. We have an ACE group, which comprises of academic departments across the four campuses, innovation and enterprise, incubation and students union, and they meet on a regular basis to discuss all things entrepreneurship. This has resulted in a number of entrepreneurship modules being embedded in the curriculum and interdisciplinary modules in enterprise and innovation. CIT has two enterprise interns who are ambassadors in promoting entrepreneurship to their peers and CIT offers students an opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial skills in a safe environment while in college. On graduation, many of our students now choose self-employment as their career option and our first destination survey reflects this with 6% indicating now that they're self-employed one year after graduation. Students are exposed to the entrepreneurial mindset from first year and through our creativity, innovation and teamwork module, we have over 500 students coming up with business ideas and presenting them to the Rubicon team from first year and the Rubicon is one of the largest campus incubators in the country and is an integral part to us creating our entrepreneurial graduates. CIT established the HINX Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence and through the work of the ACE Group and HINX we've achieved top accolades in student entrepreneurship and innovation awards both nationally and internationally.