The next item of business is topical questions in order to get in as many members as possible. Shortens the sink questions and responses would be appreciated. At question number one, I'll allow a moment. At question number one, I call Claire Baker. Thank you. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Mental Welfare Commission's report. Ending exclusion, care, treatment and support for people with mental ill health and problem substance misuse in Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to begin by reaffirming the commitment from myself and from the Minister for Drugs Policy, Angela Constance and the rest of the Scottish Government to saving and improving lives of people living with poor mental health and addiction. I fully support the position that Ms Constance recently set out in the chamber that every drug death is one too many and this remains a public health emergency. I'd also like to thank the Mental Welfare Commission for producing this timely report. We will of course carefully consider its findings in detail over the coming weeks. The commission has made clear our focus must be on delivery. Members will be aware through the national drugs mission and our work across mental health that there is a significant amount of activity underway to deliver more effective and joined up care for people with co-concurring mental health and substance use. That includes work led by Health Improvement Scotland to create better working links between substance use and mental health services. The on-going rapid review of mental health and substance use services, the implementation of the medicated assisted treatment standards alongside the development and the implementation of standards for adult secondary mental health services. I thank the minister for that reply. The Mental Welfare Commission report is damming. It talks about little or no out-of-hours support for people, a lack of trauma-informed care. People rejected access to mental health services due to the addiction and services being understaffed and underfunded. One service user said that people felt abandoned by a broken system. Another said, I just want to see change. All I see is people dying or being forgotten about. The delivery of match standards 6 to 10, which is central to addressing mental health and addiction, has been extended with an implementation date of 2025. That is three years later than what was originally promised. Following the statement from the drugs minister in June, can I ask the minister if the senior leaders have been appointed across Scotland and how the minister will work with the drugs policy minister to drive forward delivery of match standards 6 to 10, which are central to mental health and ensure that they are not neglected as the focus will be on 1 to 5, which will have to be delivered by next year. Minister. Let me make it quite clear to the chamber that both the Minister for Drugs Policy and I believe that mental health and substance use services must be joined at the hip. We have been clear on that standard that we want to see all of the standards fully embedded as soon as possible. The progress made to date has not been good enough or quick enough as far as we are concerned. At the end of the last parliamentary session, the Minister for Drugs Policy wrote a letter of direction to all territorial health boards, integration authorities and local authorities. That directed that by the end of September, chief officers and chief executives must personally sign specific and timed improvement plans for implementing those match standards. The Minister for Drugs Policy will update Parliament further on the progress of those standards in December. Clear Baker. Presiding Officer, all of this activity that I recognise has taken place requires investment. Although the drug's death task force acknowledged recent funding commitments, it said that they did not go far enough to deliver transformational change, they described the funding as woefully inadequate. While the drugs minister does lead on policy in this area, as the mental health minister recognises, partly his responsibility because many of the match standards focus on the relationship between drug services and mental health. Is he confident that the £10 million a year for the implementation of the match standards is enough, given concerns that have been raised around the risk of staff burn-out? Minister. Thank you very much. I welcome the opportunity to answer that question. We are supporting the delivery of the standards with that £10 million a year for the next four years as Ms Baker rightly highlights, but there is more than that going on. I and the drugs policy minister are jointly funding Health Improvement Scotland with funding of over £2 million to improve pathways between mental health and substance use services. His work will be directly with local partners to ensure that people are receiving person-centred care. Let me go beyond that because it is my expectation and Ms Constance's expectation that we use existing expenditure at health board level, at IJB level, at local authority level to get that absolutely right. That is a joint project between all spheres of government here in order to get that right for people. What we will do is ensure that that investment is made properly and beyond that we all need to work together to change cultures and that is why his work is so important in that regard too. Tess White. Minister, I know from conversations with police officers in the north-east that they are often the stand-in for other services when someone is in crisis out of ours. This is starkly reflected in the Mental Welfare Commission's report, which quotes officers as saying that the police and ambulance service are the constant fall-back for other services when neither are the appropriate services to offer meaningful assistance beyond an assessment at A&E. What immediate steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that people in crisis can be swiftly and reliably referred to the right help and interventions out of ours? Minister. Crisis interventions are one of the areas that are being looked at by the drugs task force. Beyond that, we have on-the-ground support at this moment. Take, for example, distress brief intervention and Ms White mentions the north-east of Scotland. In my own city of Aberdeen, the distress brief intervention project there is dealing with people in crisis on a day-to-day basis. Talking to police officers in my own patch, that is making a real difference in taking pressure off of them. Beyond that, the member may well be aware, Presiding Officer, of the pilots that we have going on with the Scottish Ambulance Service, including in Dundee in the north-east of Scotland, where there is quick interventions for people who have mental health crisis. Those things are already happening in many parts of the country. I am quite happy for Ms White to write to me or to Ms Constance. We can update on all the actions that are happening in the north-east corner of our country. Emma Harper. We are all aware that getting people into treatment and recovery that is right for them at the right time is at the core of the national mission to save and improve lives. Residential rehabilitation is one of a wide range of options. Can the minister provide an update on plans to expand access to residential rehabilitation placements? I remind members that I am co-convener of the mental health cross-party group. I welcome that question from Emma Harper, Presiding Officer. Over the course of this Parliament, we are working to increase the overall residential rehabilitation capacity from 425 beds to 650 beds and for 1,000 people to receive statutory funding for their state and residential rehabilitation. The Government has committed over £23 million in funding for the development of projects, the Phoenix Futures, Rivergarden, NHS Lothian and Aberlour. Investment in the four projects combined will provide a total increase of 85 beds by 2526, boosting the current rehab capacity in Scotland from 425 to 510 beds. In addition, we have been working with alcohol and drug partnerships to aid the development of clear pathways into residential rehabilitation. The results of that can be seen in Public Health Scotland's most recent interim report published on 27 September, which found that 218 statutory funded residential rehab placements had been approved across Scotland between April and June of this year, an increase of 85 from the previous quarter. To ask the Scottish Government when it expects to meet air quality limit values in light of the recent report from Environmental Standards Scotland. Current data indicate that EU limit and target values have been achieved across Scotland for all air quality pollutants except for six locations for nitrogen dioxide, three in North Lanarkshire, two in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. The most recent assessment projections estimate that all of these, bar one location in North Lanarkshire, will be compliant during 2022 and that that remaining North Lanarkshire location will follow in 2023. Maurice Golden. I thank the minister for that answer. The report highlighted that monitoring guidance might not provide a comprehensive picture of air quality in our cities, especially around areas with vulnerable people, such as schools and hospitals. Does the minister agree with me that we should install air quality monitors at every Scottish school? Minister. I thank the member for the question. I want to briefly say before moving on to the specifics that I very much welcome the report on environmental standards Scotland. Indeed, I welcome that we were able, with a great deal of work, including by my previous assessor, to make sure that environmental standards Scotland was set up and that there was no governance gap as a result of EU exit. I am statutorily obliged to respond to the report and that within six months, and I will do that. I am not going to pre-empt the response to any of that today, including on the specific point that the member raises, although I think that it is a good one. I will bring it back to the Parliament, but I want to be clear today that I absolutely welcome the recommendations and I am committed to working with ESS to progress them. Maurice Golden. The report concludes that current attempts to improve air quality are not enough, that the system contains significant weaknesses and that areas of non-compliance will likely remain. I understand from the minister's answer that the Government will make a formal response to the report, but can the minister at least give us an assurance that those failures will be recognised so that progress can be made? Minister. Our ambition is for Scotland to have the best air quality in the EU in Europe. I absolutely, whilst working very hard with Scottish Government officials across our stakeholders, we are driving forward progress. We are always alive to where improvements need to be made, including those that are highlighted by Environmental Standards Scotland. I think that it is important to note that we have seen over recent decades a significant reduction in pollution. That has been because of improved fuel quality, cleaner vehicles and an increased focus on sustainable transport. Between 2005 and 2019, which is the year for which we have the most recent statistics, nitrogen oxide emissions have decreased by 53 per cent, fine particulate matter by 30 per cent and sulphur dioxide by 85 per cent. As I say, we are not complacent and we will continue to work through the Clean Air for Scotland to strategy and on the recommendations of ESS in continuing to improve that. Natalie Dawn. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Could the minister give an indication of how the level of air quality in Scotland compares to the rest of the UK and other parts of Europe, and how the Scottish Government will deliver on its commitment to further improve air quality here in Scotland? Compared to the rest of the UK, and indeed other parts of Europe, Scotland enjoys a very high level of air quality. Targets are being met across the vast majority of Scotland and levels of main air pollutants have declined significantly over the last three decades, some of those which I pulled out in my previous answer. Of course, the introduction of low emission zones in our four largest cities, as of May this year, is a key initiative in further improving urban air quality. We have committed to investing at least £320 million or 10 per cent of the total active travel budget by 2024-25, and that's almost triple what it is today. Colin Smyth. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Electric vehicles do impact on air pollution through break and tear dust, so we need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars. AVs don't admit NO2, so they're part of the solution in improving air quality. The Climate Change Committee estimates that we'll need at least 30,000 public AV charging points in Scotland by 2030, but the Government's target is just over 4,000 in the next few years. With only 395 public charging points that were sold last year, when does the minister think that Scotland will reach the 30,000 public AV points that we desperately need in Scotland? Presiding Officer, I should allow my colleague the Transport Minister to respond directly on questions of transport and, indeed, charging infrastructure as it relates to that. Having said that, part of the cleaner air for Scotland to strategy is about bringing together recognising that air quality is a drastic issue that requires to work across Government. I am working closely with the Transport Minister as well as with planning and health colleagues. I suppose that what I'm saying is that I'll have to come back to the member with an estimation of when the roll-out of AV infrastructure will be where he thinks it ought to be. I would draw the chamber's attention to two key provisions for transport as they are linked to air quality. Firstly, our commitment to reduce driving by 20 per cent by 2030 and, indeed, to phase out new petrol and diesel vehicles by the same date. Both of those will have a significant impact on air quality in Scotland. Mark Ruskell. Lung conditions are the third leading cause of death in the UK, with over 2,500 premature deaths per year attributed to air pollution alone in Scotland. In that context, what action the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that local authorities are required to deliver robust and up-to-date air quality action plans with specified target dates? I am in no doubt that air pollution and physical health are very much connected with the very young, older adults and those with underlying health conditions being most impacted. However, the relationship is complex. It is widely accepted that pollution has a negative impact on health, but we also know that the types of illnesses that air pollution exacerbates are also impacted by other factors like smoking. However, on the member's point directly, we have committed under our air quality strategy, Cleaner Air for Scotland 2, to develop that more systematic approach to action plan production and implementation, including our standardised format and a methodology for both agreeing and setting defined time scales for completing individual measures and revoking air quality management areas and reporting progress. We will also commission a review of air quality data collection and reporting in Scotland to identify any notable gaps in data provision with recommendations on how to fill these. Again, this is all part of Cleaner Air for Scotland 2, which we are currently progressing. That concludes topical questions.


Hi, so today I'm finally going to talk to you about insurance, about insurance as a freelancer, more specifically as a freelance translator, but that should apply to all freelancers. It only took me a while because I've been trying to figure it out. I recently moved to the States, and here you need to get insurance within two months of being in the States. And so I got it for here in South Carolina, but it turns out we're moving to North Carolina, so I had to move it there. But I have had experience with this because I've had to do this in Europe, in Asia, here in the States. Yeah. Insurance is a real issue, especially when you're working for yourself, because it differs all over the place. It really depends on so many different factors that I almost don't know where to start. Right away, when you start working, you're going to see if you're incorporated as a corporation, as a partnership, if you're just working for yourself, sole proprietorship, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously it depends on all that. It also depends on the laws of your country. It also depends on where your clients are, and which country they are. So much of this can depend on so many different factors. For example, I was told by a German translator that they, whenever they do taxes, they have to factor in their insurance whenever they file their taxes, even when they're working for themselves. And I know in Italy, if you're working with other Italians, then you're supposed to include the EVA and which is the VAT tax. So here's my advice to you. Figure out what the laws are. First of all, find someone else in your shoes. Find another freelancer. It doesn't need to be a freelance translator. Just someone working for themselves or a freelancer in your country, close to you, and talk to that person. Chances are there is quite a simple way to go about it, but you won't get to that simple way by going on government websites, necessarily talking to accountants or even lawyers. My advice will be to talk to someone in your shoes and see what they do. They probably have forums and stuff online where they discuss this as well. And once you have something in place, at that point, you probably should talk to a lawyer, at least once. If you have a friend who's a lawyer, then that's perfect. Otherwise, make one appointment with a lawyer just so you know you're fine because you don't want any surprises a year from now. That goes, I guess, for all the legalese and everything when you're setting up, specifically talking about health insurance. Health insurance now is, once again, going to be different everywhere you are. So my advice to you would be not to include health insurance in any invoice for a client. No client wants to see extra payments being tacked on there and you don't have to tell your client what you're charging for. What you should do is just include it in your rate. Figure out how much this health insurance will be per month, per year, whatever it is, and then put that in your calculation of expenses. That's it. That's the amount you need to earn per year. Don't invoice clients with it. Don't expect clients to pay for it because you'll find that all your clients are in different countries as well, which have their different laws. If they have to deal with you, who keeps invoicing them for health benefits, and then they find another translator who doesn't do that, they'll say, well, I'll just deal with this other translator. This other translator might still be charging them for that, but they're not necessarily putting it in as a line item. But factor it into what you have to earn. If this means working more, then you have to work more. If this means charging more, then you should charge more. You don't want to say you charge five cents per word, but then it comes out to seven cents per word because you're tagging on VAT and health insurance, et cetera, et cetera. Just charge seven cents per word and be done with it. That's the best advice I can give right now because seriously, the laws are so different everywhere you go. You should inform yourself, make sure that you're doing things legally and ethically and morally, and that you're on top of things so you don't have to pay some huge payment at the end of the year or something, but otherwise just charge your clients. Once again, this video was for Carmen Lowe who asked about health insurance as a freelancer. So hopefully that helps out with how to deal with it, even though once again, it'll be different no matter where you are from country to country, region to region, province to province, state to state, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Thanks. Bye. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, uh, yeah.


A few decades ago, I had this conversation with someone where I said something to the effect of, you know, if we keep throwing plastic out into nature, eventually something's gonna start eating it. And then we're screwed. And the person said, ah, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, fast forward to the other day where I saw a news report, a video, where some people were very excited that plastic-eating bacteria has been discovered. Yay, it's gonna eat all the garbage! We're saved! Humanity is saved!  Yay!  All that plastic that's in the ocean, don't worry about it, it's all gonna be taken care of. Those landfills, it's all gonna be gone, replaced by this plastic-eating goo! I'm just gonna call it the blob from now on. So they're going on and on about how this is gonna save everyone. And I'm thinking, okay, first, that doesn't actually solve a problem. The problem is that humans are acting like irresponsible morons, just throwing away valuable resources. So this makes it so we can do it more.  So that's not valuable at all.  The other problem is, how do you convince this bacteria to eat the plastic that we designated as garbage, but not the other plastic?  Like everything we do now requires plastic. Like, yeah, computers won't work. All that stuff is gone. Well, I guess the upside of that is, if the blob wipes out computers fast enough, we won't have to worry about the AI singularity wiping us out, so there's an upside there. But like, okay, all computers are gone. All the appliances in your house, all tools, electric motors, electric motors have coils of wire, and the coils of wire have a plastic coating that prevents the coil of wire from just being a clump of copper. None of that stuff works, but it doesn't matter because electricity won't work, because all the wires in the world, all the wires in your house, all the wires everywhere are coated with plastic that insulates them from touching each other, and without that plastic coating none of it works, so electricity is gone, fiberglass is gone, Kevlar, any of those materials that are plastic based, you know, composite materials, all gone. Polyester clothing, people will be like walking around, oh no, I got some of the blob on my shirt, and it's disintegrating now, ah, your glasses, they're gone, like all this stuff, like look around at your life, you're plumbing, vinyl siding on your house, like so much plastic, you take the plastic out of your life, civilization is sent back to the dark ages, now you might say oh, but plastic's only been around for like, you know, 100-ish years or whatever, yeah, but how many people have machines from 100 years ago, do you have a steam engine just hanging around, waiting to be used as a backup for when your car stops working, no, no one has that stuff anymore, we don't have brass stuff, we have no backups, we've relied completely on plastic and we've treated it like a disposable thing, and now karma's coming back to bite us, so anyway, maybe I'm totally insane, but that's what I think of this whole plastic eating bacteria thing, I do not think we want plastic eating bacteria in the world at all, what we need is for people to start behaving responsibly and stop making and buying and using disposable plastic stuff, some morality problem, alright, I gotta go do stuff, I don't want to think about this anymore, it's depressing, like I feel like I'm the only one who thinks this, like I'm in the twilight zone, like either I'm completely insane or everyone else's.


The whole impetus for rewrapping our anonymous man really stems from the research that we did this summer with the CT scanning. This anonymous man is Roman period, so he died about 300 AD, was excavated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 50s and then came to Brooklyn. And unfortunately because we didn't really have access or they didn't have access in the 50s, 60s to CT scanning and those kinds of analytical techniques, there was a great curiosity as to what was inside this mummy package and so they actually unwrapped him then. He was unwrapped rather sensitively and because his mummification procedures involve very little resin, the textiles remain in excellent condition. And because of those two factors and also because when he was unwrapped they saved everything, it allows us to actually rewrap him now. So the procedure that we're going to start today is really just a question of re-placing these on the body and then re-folding these linens up and around and then trying to cinch them in a way that makes it a tight package. We have a finite volume that we need to fill because the very outer sheet basically was cut up the center and so a lot of the stitching remains around the feet and so if you think like a sleeping bag, there is a finite volume that needs to be filled. What we're doing in terms of the rewrapping is technically reversible in that we're not stitching the pieces of fabric together, we're certainly not using any adhesive, he's not going to be hermetically sealed. If we had to access the body for some other reason, for example if some other technique came along that we knew we could get some information, it's certainly possible because one of the tenets of current conservation practice is whatever we do needs to be reversible. It's actually one of my proudest moments to be able to be involved in this project of rewrapping him and putting him into a state that he was when he died and became a mummy and I'm happy that we're able to share that.


ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Happy Aloha Friday and welcome to ThinkTek Hawaii. This is your episode of Likeable Science. I'm Cara Miller, your host today, filling in for Ethan Allen. Very excited to introduce to you our guest that we have appearing on ThinkTek today, Dr. Jay DeLavu. Hi, Jay. How are you doing? Good. Thank you. Thanks for coming onto the show. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. We have an exciting topic to discuss with Jay today, particularly ridge-to-reef management in the state of Hawaii. Ridge-to-reef management, if you don't know, means all the way from the mountains down to the ocean and effectively managing the natural resources along the way. Jay recently finished her PhD with the University of Hawaii, Natural Resources Environmental Management Department, and she'll be discussing a little bit about her PhD work and findings with us on the show today. So Jay, can you start by just giving us an overview of what it was that you studied for your PhD and what your project was about? Yes. So we were funded by the National Science Foundation to work with the community of Haena on the North Shore of Kauai and the community of Kaupolehu on the west side of Kauai to help inform how to manage ridge-to-reef resources in a sustainable fashion moving into the future, giving projected climate change impacts and local stressors like coastal development and fishing pressure. Great. Well, I remember there was recently a new study that was published specifically around climate change with some of the new data that's available around sea level rise, not just here in Hawaii, but some other of the low-lying Pacific Islands, really highlighting just what we're up against coming into the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. How does some of the most recent data around climate change affect this project that you're working on? So our work was mostly focused on coral bleaching, which is a result of increase in sea surface temperature. So Hawaii, for instance, in the last 2015, was hit really hard by a bleaching event, which adds more pressure to our local fisheries. So we were mostly focused on bleaching. Definitely. Does Hawaii already have management structures in place that are meant to manage and protect our coral reefs? Yeah. The state has been working on, they use different size limit for fishes. They have marine reserves, like marine-managed area, like the Honama Bay, or Pupukian, the Norshoa Wahoo. There's different types of policy tools that can be used to sustainably manage our Norshoa resources. In the two communities that we worked with, they actually just recently enacted marine protected, well, marine refuge and resting areas, which were initiated by the communities, which resulted in the closure of some of their reef system. So given that some of the impact from fishing pressure was well taken care of, we focused on looking at the impact of existing and projected coastal development coupled with bleaching impacts. Oh, I see, interesting. So specifically, you guys were focusing on a particular type of management, area and strategy. Yes. Can you say a little bit more about that? Well, so if we look at the, just looking broadly first at the Hawaiian Islands, and we can look at the figure one. We can see that the islands are exposed to different natural processes. So along the windward side of the islands, we're exposed to trade winds and rainfall, while on the leeward side of the islands, we're mostly sheltered from with power and rainfall. So if we look at our two study sites, we see that Hainae is actually really exposed to rainfall and waves on a seasonal basis, while Kaopulehu is more located in a dry region on one of the youngest islands and protected from wave action. So the fact that those two places are driven and shaped by those different natural processes, it's important to look at place-based management, because every place is different. So therefore, different management tools is going to be more or less relevant based on the local conditions. Oh, wow. This is really interesting stuff. So basically what you're saying is this is even taking community-based and place-based management to the next level. And in fact, this is zoning in specifically to the specificities of what's going on in this particular community. And then that approach might be completely different from the others, what you're saying, like the Kua'i versus Big Island community groups. Yeah. So for instance, if we look at figure three, in Hainae, we can see that they used a marine closure, which is located under the Makua Reef, which is a fairly small size, but which ends up covering and protecting important fishing grounds, which are protected by their large reef crest around that marine reserve. And if we compare this marine system, marine reserve to our figure five in Kaupolehu, we can see that the resting area that they've established extends out to 120 feet offshore and captures most of the Aupua'i boundaries. And the size of those marine reserves actually are very relevant to the dynamic of the place. Wow. So are these places that have been participating in this type of management historically, or is this a new thing, or is it a form of renaissance, or what is it exactly? Yeah. So based on in the last 100 years, 50 years or so, we've observed a serious decline in our natural resources around the Pacific, which has actually resulted in a cultural renaissance where communities around the Pacific are trying to revive those place-based management actions and trying to tackle the pressures that they're under through local-based actions. And in Kaupolehu are the two first leading examples that we're seeing in Hawai'i. There's a number of communities which are also trying to establish local-scale fisheries and reef management across the chain. So we're hoping that we can learn from those two places locally, but this is a process that we're observing in other places like Fiji, Indonesia, Guam, where communities want to have a say in how their resources are managed. Awesome. And if I'm not mistaken, the process that was made legitimate by law in the state of Hawai'i for this community-based form of management of coastal and marine resources started a few years ago. And since then, there's a few communities, correct, that have been established as officially community-based subsistent fishing areas. But was any of your site one of those, or is there any specifics related to your sites of that process? Yeah. So Haina was designated a CBSFA in a community-based subsistence fishing area. And that was the first one in the state to receive that designation. And it got this designation back in 2006, but after you get that designation, it took another 10 years of negotiation and planning in collaboration with the state to come up with a set of rules grounded in customary practices to then become laws. And these were signed in 2015. Oh, wow. Long process. So it was a long process. So why is this customary way of managing and this local knowledge that you're referring to so important? Well, if we look over the history of Pacific Islanders and Pacific Islands, Pacific Islands are oceanic islands which are subject to a lot of natural disturbances, whether it's tsunami, volcanic eruption, storms, cyclones, drought, too much water. The communities from Pacific Islands have adapted over thousands of years on how to live and thrive in those environments. So they have developed methods of agroforestry, fisheries management that allows them to withstand and in the face of all those uncertainties. And now today we're faced with climate change and a lot of uncertainty towards what is the future going to look like. And it's important to maintain our food production systems because they will allow us to be resilient moving into the future. And coming up with new solutions or using old solutions is what is going to help us thrive moving forward. Awesome. This is amazing. So I can see why both from the things that you've said and some of the excitement that comes up as you're talking about it, this is why you chose to spend the years of your PhD research looking into this and working alongside these communities. So of all those environmental factors that you just mentioned, which in particular were you looking at and studying and tell us a little bit more about which are the most important for the areas that you work in? Yeah. I think one thing that really characterized the differences between Kalpuliwa and Hainan is that they both represent kind of the both end of the spectrums in terms of environmental conditions in Hawaii. Going from sheltered, dry, very young geology to old, one of the wettest place on earth exposed to massive swells on a seasonal basis. One thing that was important for both places is that they are subject to increase in coastal development. They are vulnerable to projected bleaching impacts and fishing pressure was also an issue as they had observed decline in their fisheries. So we wanted to develop models and science that was based on the characteristics of these places in terms of rainfall and wave and how those influence the whole reach-to-reef system and then looking at the human drivers and how those were then affecting the system separately. So then we could then really identify management actions that are grounded in the place. This is great. So this model that you developed, you're saying is able to in a way separate where the biggest impact is coming from. Whether it is an environmentally driven stressor or human one is what you're saying. This model is able to actually gauge what's going to have the biggest impact and how? Yeah, so if we look at figure six, it will actually show how our model was designed and built around. So in partnership with the communities, we developed a number of scenarios in terms of coastal development. Looking at what were the current tax parcels that could potentially be turned into houses. We looked at current golf courses, fertilizers application and basically really designed future scenarios grounded in current land zoning and land use practices. We also looked at what were the bleaching projection for the region and what were the potential impact that we could expect in the main Hawaiian islands. And we looked at what were the benefits of those recently enacted marine closures. And we were able to track the effect of those human drivers throughout the reach to reef system by modeling the groundwater and the coastal discharge from the groundwater, looking at freshwater and nutrients, and also looking at the marine drivers that affect coral reefs in terms of habitat or wave power. And in terms of the indicators that the communities were interested in understanding how they would change over time, we looked at the benthic corals and algae, as well as fish that were important culturally for fisheries. So by being able to track those indicators across the system, across those different scenarios, we were able to identify the areas where we should focus our management effort based on this is where the corals are the most vulnerable, this is where we're discharging the most of our nutrients. This is how we should probably try to reduce our impact through either cesspool removal or fertilizers practices. What an amazing utility that you can actually separate where the biggest threats are coming from and then specifically frame and format your management advice accordingly. I think that that's a really fantastic tool. So for example, what were the major findings? What did your model end up showing both on land and in the ocean for Kuala Lumpur and for Haena? Yeah, so first we kind of established what were the baseline. So if we looked at figure seven, by modelling the groundwater and the rainfall influence, we were able to show that, well, basically confirm what we knew that Haena is highly driven by rainfall and receives a lot of groundwater discharge, which results in dilution of the nutrients that we discharge as well. We also found that ways where a major driver of the coral reef community, so therefore corals are not able to grow as well on the reef slopes because when there's major wave event, they get basically wiped out and then a new generation of corals has to regrow as opposed to Kaopuli, who where corals are able to grow and therefore dominate the Bente community. And therefore because there's also less fresh water discharge, nutrients concentration were a lot higher in Kaopuli. And given that there's a lack of mixing also from wave action, Kaopuli, who turned out to be more vulnerable to bleaching and coastal development across the whole system, while Haena, which would tend to think of the North Shore as being more resilient because of all the fresh water and the waves, turned out to be more vulnerable to those human impacts but at a smaller scale. So really looking at those lagoons and reef systems that support our fisheries. Wow. Well, this is really, really good stuff, Jade. And I really look forward to hearing a lot more about this. I think that we're about to be approaching a break here. So we'll be right back. We'll be right back after this. We're going to show you some exciting commercials in the meantime. And we'll be right back. Thank you. Hello. My name is Stephanie Mock. And I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmers series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomai Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on Thursdays at 4 p.m. And we hope we'll see you next time. Aloha. I'm Jade Farnell, founder of Think Tech Hawaii. And I'm Andrea Gabrielli, the host for Young Talent's Making Way. Wait a minute. This is not a new episode, is it, Jade? No, it's not a new episode. That show is over, Andrea. So what are you going to do now? Why don't we have a summer edition of Young Talent's Making Way, where we focus more on education as a mean for our young talents to max out, becomes role models, and achieve their dreams? What a great idea. So when do you want to begin, Andrea? July 3, 2018, Tuesday at 11 a.m. Young Talent's Making Way summer edition. Stay tuned. Aloha, and welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here as your host, Cara Miller, for Likeable Science. We have an amazing guest, Dr. Jade Delavu, here with us today, talking about her work around marine resource management across the state of Hawaii. Specifically, she focuses on something called Ridge-to-Reef Management. Jade, tell us a little bit more about what exactly is Ridge-to-Reef Management? And where did this system of management come from? So Ridge-to-Reef Management has been around for a very, very long time. And there's a lot of communities around the world that have used this watershed unit for managing their resources. So we can find a lot of those around the Northwest, Pacific, Asia, but also one of the richest area where we can find Ridge-to-Reef systems are Oceania. For instance, in Indonesia, there's the Tumbak system. In Fiji, we have the Vanua. In Solomon Islands, we have the Pua. And Hawaii, we have the Aupua. So what's very common across all of those management units is that the forest, the rivers, and the reef systems are managed as one unit. And you can basically adjust your management actions based on how the seasons may vary, the water flow, or so really going down to the local scale in terms of tackling the environmental. The human drivers are affecting our resources. In Hawaii, this Aupua system started breaking down when there was the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States. Land privatization ended up fragmenting the land. And so therefore, it became a lot harder to manage this system from Ridge-to-Reef as one continuum because there's more and more actors. And now, because it's under the state jurisdiction, there's a lot more government agencies involved in the process. And today, coordinating across all those agencies is also a challenge for this kind of management. So that's also part of the reason why the types of decision support tool that we developed through this work can help facilitate collaborative management. That's a huge undertaking. And I have to commend you because just working within one of the large management organizations for a stint of time, NOAA Fisheries Agency, for example, I know even just when one agency is at the table, there can still be a lot of trouble reaching a decision, let alone when there's a ton of different institutional powers and agencies and stakeholders present to make those decisions. So what do you view as maybe some of the biggest findings that came out of this study? And how do you view this being important for not just the communities that you've been working with, but for the managers as well? So what I found really, for me, fascinating on this project, is that it was a highly collaborative process from the onset of the research design to the completion of this project. I had the chance and the honor to work side by side with community members as well as managers and researchers from multiple different fields. So it's true that today our environmental problems require a transdisciplinary approach to be addressed. And so that's kind of what we try to do on this project. So we worked hand in hand with the communities to develop the scenarios as well as with the managers to look at what was feasible or not feasible in terms of future development, for instance. Then after we went back, we looked at what were the key component of the models that we were supposed to account for and started developing the first versions of the models and running this back again by local experts and local community members who had the local ecological knowledge to then tell us, oh yeah, this is where things are, this is how things are changing, this is consistent with our observations or not. Because another thing that is limiting when we do science is we don't always have the money to go back and collect a ton of data. So this entire project was done based on existing data only. And then to basically fill those gaps, I relied on local ecological knowledge where people who had an intimate understanding of the place could basically look at my maps and tell me whether they were consistent with what they were seeing. And then once we had the model calibrated, we looked at doing the scenario analysis, looking at how things were impacting the system. And then again running those outputs by the communities and managers being like, is this the kind of processes or impact that you're seeing on the ground? Is this where it's happening? So that was another way of trying to validate and ground truth our models using local knowledge as opposed to data, hardcore scientific data. You can say it. And then once we had done our scenario analysis, then the next step was to identify, okay, what were the management actions that emerged from those trends that we observed and running those again by the managers and the communities to see, okay, if we were to upgrade the assessable in this area, is this feasible? How much will it cost? And these are part of the next conversations that we will be having in the future. Now that we've managed to narrow down on the places that could be problematic for the reef, now the question is, well, how can we address that? Moving forward. Fantastic. So for example, where my mind is going right now, I know that just very recently, what was it one or two months ago, we had a lot of flooding that took place out here. I know just in the last six months, there was some serious typhoon damages to some of the other islands that personally I work on. How do you see some of these natural disaster types of events, the severity of them rising, increasing? How do you see that intersecting with some of your findings and management recommendations for the future? Well, so some of the things that we have observed, so after those floods happened, the community's definitely reported seeing a lot of brown water. For instance, in Hainah, I guess I'm talking because that's where the massive floods took place. The community did observe a lot of brown water around the lagoons that weren't clearing out as quickly as we might hope because of the wave action in that place. And part of it is because it's happening right at the beginning of summer, which is when the seasonal waves are not taking place. So we didn't have this dilution and mixing effect until just recently there's been a couple of swells in between that helped clear out the system. But I think moving forward, knowing that we can have those kind of extreme rainfall event, it's important to look at our floodways and maybe prioritizing the cesspools located in those floodways because these are the ones that will end up being washing out all the nutrients that are disposed in those. So these could become priority areas, for instance. And not only in Hainah, but in other places where we know it's a main groundwater flow, which usually intersect with streams. So all those kind of vulnerable habitat but also which represent our freshwater resource should be, yeah, wow. So coming from someone who's a little bit naive, I must admit about the freshwater resources for all of Hawaii, because I know we have a lot of people that are living here on Oahu and I know the water availability, freshwater availability and storage capacity varies from island to island. So as a state, if we're taking this state of Hawaii kind of approach to water resources as we move forward, and I know Ethan would appreciate us talking about water as well, what do you say regarding freshwater? I mean, to just people, for example, like myself, that's a consumer living here on Oahu, what would you say about our freshwater and how it ties into this larger discussion? Well, groundwater is our main drinking water resource. 90% of what we drink across all the islands come from the ground. So I think in particular for landowners, and I know it's expensive and even though the state is trying to come up with some tax breaks, but looking into removing the cesspoles out of the ground and replacing them with at least septic tanks. But I understand that it's also a huge upfront investment, but ultimately, because we are volcanic islands, whatever we put in the ground, our geology is very porous. So everything is gonna eventually leak into the water and discharge somewhere. Of course, every reef system is also very heterogeneous along the coast, but sometimes it will discharge in areas that are important feeding ground for a fish or important spawning ground for a fish. And we should try to avoid that. Right, well, this is all really useful and honestly, inspirational information that I think you've found through these models. We're getting to the end of our show, unfortunately. So what would you say as your final takeaways, key lessons, any parting words that you'd like to leave everybody with? Well, I think we should continue to look into empowering our local communities to manage their own resources and working with the states through co-management arrangements. And I think Hainan Khaopuli who can help teach us a lot of lessons about how to move forward using more co-management approach. And for scientists, I think understanding that we need to work outside our disciplines but also outside our wells of research and come down and meet the communities and work hand in hand with managers to then help us really develop tools and science that are addressing the problems of now and tomorrow's. Fantasticly said, Jade. And I think Jade had a thank you slide also that you have shown for your partner recognition. Yeah, I definitely want to thank my mentors and research partners and collaborators who have made this work possible and the community members for inspiring me along the way. Well, I think it's a phenomenal tool that can be used for a lot of different areas and people and purposes. So thank you so much for sharing with all of us about this tool. And I hope everybody enjoyed it. And this is again, Karen Miller reporting to you from Think Tech, Hawaii. Happy Aloha Friday.


People often ask me why was my claim denied initially. A lot of times I believe it's simply because social security is so overburdened and so bureaucratic that they don't have the time to properly evaluate every claim. Unfortunately it's not until the end of the case when you sit down in front of a federal judge with your attorney and all the evidence that that judge gets to look you in the eyes and gets far more information than social security ever had. Initially social security by and large deals with papers. They don't sit down and speak with you. They look at the forms, they look at the medical records. The main benefit of getting an attorney involved is we help make that real for social security and we help prepare your testimony so that a judge understands what you're going through. The process to get in front of a judge can take a while unfortunately. The way social security works is this. Once you file an initial application usually you're going to get a decision within six to eight months. The bad news is that most people are denied. Social security only accepts 25 to 30 percent of their initial claims. If you are denied you have 60 days within which to file an appeal. The first appeal is the request for reconsideration. That's simply just telling social security hey you got this wrong take a second look at it. If you are denied twice that is when your case goes to court in front of a federal administrative law judge.


On June 31, 2014, a lost CCTV footage was uncovered amongst the multitude of CCTV VHS tapes found in a burnt-down gas station. The reason why this had become an investigation was because the CIA was tipped by an anonymous individual who mentioned that almost 10 to 20 people had already done missing. Whatever's making them vanish, it got the attention of some CSI people, police archivists, even some people from the lost media community tried to find this one specific tape. Tape number 24 was rumored to be named as, June 31, 2014, the vanishing of Jeffrey Ron Stewart. The first individual who vanished off the planet Earth. Now, people thought the people were captured or kidnapped, but when the police tried to ask people, everyone was innocent. How does this happen? You know about the Alaskan Triangle? The term is that people vanish because it's a triangle around Alaska. According to people, they looked up Google Maps of the store, viewed it in a 360 motion, and figured out this was more of a trapezoid shape where people vanish. Near the back where the drinks were, they all vanish. The search started back in 2010 when people noticed three people vanishing from the shop. One eyewitness saw a person literally fall through the floor, almost like a trapdoor. Cops, CSI, even scientists all had to chip in to figure about the mysterious phenomenon. People gave the incident multiple names including, the gas station vanishings, the mobile hotspot, the vanishing point, and the trapdoor of no return. That is until a group of theorists and multi-universal investigators investigated the gas station.  A glitch in the matrix reveals a hidden tile from the floor that phased through, causing a flux and causing people to fall inside. Quickly, they all pitched in and ripped the floor. They found something unexpected.  On the paranormal side of things, on August 20th at 7.10 am, the outside security cameras caught a shadow figure, walking out of the gas station, all that was shown from CCTV number 24. Now, if this gets popular enough, the next series would be called, Tales from the CCTV footage, a collection of unexplained experiences from people who have seen stuff on TV or on security cameras. This picture is the only footage of the tape known. That's all for this video. Thank you for watching.


What's up everybody, it's Jason for jazzymeasecasebreaks.com 2021 leaf metal football draft just sold out This is a five box break. You get two jumbo and three hobby boxes In break number two random players 35 total all those guys and first guys This is a 27 spot break. Everybody gets four random players in the list below again two boxes of jumbo 10 autographs including one printing plate Production or pre-production autograph slab and then three boxes of leaf metal five autographs per box So for my marie rogers all the way down here to zilvin Collins So we quadruple your names There's the names of the players And let's roll the dice and it's a Two and a six eight times. Good luck one two three four five And six in final time are stars eight times. I should say seven eight one two three four five six seven eight shawn wade down to tyler shelvin And again guys, there's all the players What I'm going to do is I'm going to alphabetize By customer name and I'll quickly give you a quick glance at your teams or your players.  You have Trevor Lawrence in there as well Not bad Paul Justin Fields for you right there Ryan You have Najee Harris in there Hints and then Ryan Redman. You have Cal Trask Zach Wilson Suelle and Scott Corwin There's your four right there All right. Well, there you go. Now, I don't think there's me any trades. So I'm just going to close the trade window I'm going to alphabetize it back to the player name And I'm going to print out the list. This is for the shipping or for the sorting team right here And what I'm going to do Is I'm going to like highlight Players that actually get a hit and move them to the side All right, guys. So let's go with the three hobby boxes first Leaves going a little cheap on us, man. I don't know when they used to top a little of this stuff For us I don't want to top a little nothing Javan McKinley 26 out of 35 Let's go into Daniel Sade Sarat Purple eyes 12 out of 20 Michael Pearson's Our Parsons I should say five out of five We have a Mitchell Well serious 15 out of 60 Aaron Billings Lee with that one And the last one here is Jamar Chase Touchdown Kings 28 out of 30 Collin needs with Jamar Chase Next one All right. Next one guys Ben Skrubnik Skrubnik Skrubnik To 99 You got Ben Skrubnik with Howard, there you go This car's just thicker now Khalil Herbert Number 18 out of 25 Matthew Slade of that one We have a Quiddipay Tenacious D 25 out of 30 Carl with that one We have Sean Wade Tenacious D Five of 15 PJ with that one And we got Touchdown Kings Travis Etn Seven out of seven Aaron Billings Lee Jaylin Twyman Three out of three Daniel with that one Terrace Marshall Jr Number 13 out of 99 PJ with that one Michael Carter One out of 15 PJ with that one Patrick Zartan Tenacious D 19 out of 40 Patrick Zartan Chad with that one And we got a quarterback Zach Wilson 12 out of 25 Who has Zach Wilson?  All right two more boxes guys These ones have the one-on-one pre-production Pro plate as well And then nine autographs Javon Holland for the Ducks Pro Duck Nine out of 15 16 out of 25 Scott Corwin with that one Demetric Felton 13 out of 25 Cole with that one DeMonte Coxe PJ Puga Williams 10 out of 20 Carl with that one We got Quiddipay Five out of 30 Carl with that one Khalil Herbert Same time getting back-to-back Same ones We got Brendan Knox Carl with that one Little The Whistle Hollywood We still have another box and the slabs And Amanra St. Brown For the USC Trojans looks like And it's a one-of-one Scott Corwin, there you go And your slab Pre-production proof Is Rashad Bateman PJ There you go Alrighty guys, last box Right here So again, we do have enough to do at least I think two more breaks of this So again, we could run it back For tomorrow Slab right there Kate Johnson Five out of 10 Paul with that one Asim Rose Jr 14 out of 15 Wayne Jr 18 out of 20 We'll find out Wayne Chad B We got Ted Aral Slayton Daniel with that one We have a Stevie Scott The Third Paul with that one We got Taylor Wallace Numbered Five out of 35 This is Kyle Needs Cara Vincent Jr Eight out of 10 Maybe we just have this guy right now Chad We have Daz Newsom State Pride 19 out of 40 Karen Steele And last one before the slab card It is another Jamar Chase Touchdown Kings 31 out of 99 Again Jamar Chase Kyle Needs And your pre-production proof guys Patrick Jones the second Red Mojo PJ You can tell me told you now Hollywood Unfortunately Alright guys and there you go That was the break 35 different autographs right here A couple of players did get repeats But again there are 108 different players In the checklist so still Pretty small odds to get a hit If you did congratulations if you didn't We'll get one next time guys So appreciate it Jacksby'scasebreak.com I'll post with the next one


Oh boy! I thought I was done for the day. Of course not! I'm going to Yahoo to check my email on Yahoo's cover page, main page. Yahoo News! We've got a picture where it says they have a picture of Ben Affleck's bat suit colorized what it is supposed to look like in color. This is the link that Yahoo News sent me to. It says, first official look at Ben Affleck's Batman v Superman bat suit in color. It says, we've seen a couple of shots of Ben Affleck in the bat suit in Batman v Superman, Donald Justice, but not in full color until now. Comic book has discovered a colorized version of the first official photo of Affleck's dark night suit, which is taken directly from Zack Snyder's cruel and unusual films website. So let's see this. Hmm. Okay. It looks good to me. This actually looks like some of the versions that fans were coming up with before, you know, as soon as it was released, people were colorizing it, trying to figure out what the color really was. Some of you probably had the software to actually do that to figure out what it was, it was black and white and then just colorize it. It looks like some of them already. It says, so pretty much as expected, but now that we know exactly what color scheme they've gone with, how do you think it stacks up against all the previous other black versions we've seen on the big screen? I think it's great personally. I think it's great to see something other than black. Okay.  You know what I mean? Forever. You know, it's nice to see this and just reminiscent of the Arkham Night series. So I'm good with it. I am great with it. So post all your comments below and let me know what y'all think of the Affleck's color scheme in this suit. All right. One million subscribers. Woo.


Okay, very good morning. It is Friday the 3rd of September. Hope you're doing well. I hope you had a good week. In terms of the briefing, I'm going to talk about this guy here at the surprise announcement of the Stepping down of the Japanese PM Suga. So we'll talk about that and why the Nikkei actually reacted very positively overnight outperforming within the Asia-Pac region. We're also going to talk a little bit about payrolls Of course the main focal point of the session ahead We'll talk a little bit about the ECB and their bond buying program because there's a latest Bloomberg Economist survey that's come out about the timing of that and then the latest headache as well for Joe Biden With Senator Joe Manchin the West Virginia Democrat last night saying he basically wants a pause on any talks on that Three and a half trillion dollar budget. What's been a really tough month for Joe Biden? So we'll discuss that as well And so let's get straight to it and talk about the overall sentiment on the charts this morning and Things are pretty flat, but that's as you would become accustomed to on the morning of a non-farm payroll So the dollar index pretty much unchanged. That's reflected in oil the major pairs and T-notes equity index futures Flat to just a touch higher the S&P 500 in fact has touched a fresh high Just fleshed out a double top here from the Asia pack and early European entrance test high So that now resides at 45 45 and three-quarters in the futures and that does come after record close We had on Wall Street last night for the S&P again So energy industrial shares among the biggest gainers a bit of reversal from the prior day But don't forget we saw the energy price Oil price recover quite sharply yesterday. We briefly reclaimed a 70 handle We're training back to around the $70 even at the moment training flat on the session So that definitely dragged up Some of the related energy names. I feel really by The sharp decline in US infantry's we've had early this week and then the persistent weakness in the dollar Of course, and you know a quick look at the dollar the dollar This is on a perspective of the last few weeks So this this first initial drop really goes back to around a week ago What we have seen I think is a quite a clear distinct recalibration of people's expectations around this whole notion of tapering Because overall we've seen US consumer confidence whether it be the University of Michigan sentiment reading the conference boards consumer confidence Whether it be the big miss in ADP the ISM manufacturing Move into contraction for the employment component The idea here is that data is softening and then on a global perspective You've also got places like China where overnight further week data their services number So basically it's worst figure since the onset of the pandemic going all the way back to april of 2020 This of course coming in the context of covid as well still being problematic in the us and so I think for now It's not as I said before the fact that tapering is not going to happen. It's just that the hawks I don't think have too much of an argument now to force that early tape of view. I don't really think that has Substance now that the negative kind of build up that we've seen and then throw in more Problem problems on Capitol Hill for biden to push through things like the very large budget plan Someone and so forth and given the messy withdrawal out of afghanistan I think that that hawkish argument has has left town now and so you've seen this repriced in markets That's not just my view the dollar reflects this story and this narrative the Dixie has been consistently moving lower That has come as some reprieve for the major pairs in euro dollar and cable But has also helped support some of the other products as well yields have remained We've seen obviously movement in the us 10 year but more broadly speaking ever since the power jackson hall speech yields have really done not a great deal an equity still trade up record all-time high is pretty much so I think that's pretty much the status quo for the time being overnight though in the age of pack session as I said there was some interesting news so let me get up to speed because The msci age of pack so the broader age of pack region that gets compiled by the msci That actually rallied for its sixth day in a row overnight It's the longest streak we've had since the beginning of the year in january the nick a 225 was the clear out performer As you can see here up just over 2% And it came after the japanese p.m. Suga plans to resign after his approval ratings have Dropped below 30% He's been marred by an unpopular Covid-19 response remember of course They just had the olympics and in the build-up to that there's lots of outbreaks in several prefectures across Japan so that has really dented him and actually you know when you think about politicians overall You know covid really has been the defining factor how they've dealt with that in both lockdowns restrictions Government spending programs vaccination rollouts has been a decisive factor for politicians Perhaps someone like boris has been someone who I guess on several measures perhaps not the most effective on some of those things I just mentioned but still has gone fairly unscathed But that's perhaps true against the opposition perhaps not against Rishi Sunak and others in the future, so we'll see how that plays out But let's go back to japan first of all No, why is stock market rally? I mean you would typically think that Say like in germany for example, we're seeing a surprise move to the spd given the shet who's the The cdu csu person being put forward to be the person to Overtake angler-merkel who steps down for the first time in 16 years at the german federal elections later this year That switch up generally can be nervous in politics because people generally like to see Continuity in these sorts of things albeit actually the spd candidate who I think has acted as vice chancellor And the current formation is seen as a continuity candidate hence Hence he's quite popular But the point being is that general political disruption Normally for markets is negative However, we're seeing the opposite obviously in japan overnight and that's based largely on the fact that The chance of ldp's defeat in the general election actually diminishes Because anyone other than suga Is believed to be able to regain more popular support And also of course the noises around greater stimulus are likely to be on the agenda Which definitely fires up the economy boosts the nike On the back of this overnight the japanese yen weakened that Also buoyed some of the export names of which the index in itself is highly geared So you get that secondary fold higher to give it another little squeeze on the upside So all in all it's to do with the fact that it's not that the ldp ruling party is being challenged It's the fact that they can Resecure that hold on government if you like by having getting suga out basically and having someone else anyone but him in And so hence the reason it's reacted positively I have shared on the amplify me twitter account And a fact box article now if you're not familiar with this Reuters and this is specific for the reuters newswire if you just go to reuters.com for example Reuters have this really excellent thing that they do call a fact box They do it for all sorts. So What this is in this case for the japanese pm situation is it lists All well it is a paid for website But you can get around that of course just go incognito You're in so just a little tip there to the wise But one of the main things that a fact fact box does is one of my questions now is an analyst and to Try to understand then the implications of suga standing down the next question is well, who's going to replace him? We've had the broad understanding that anyone is better But who could these people be because there'll be nuances about their former background that we can use as assumptions Then for the types of policies they might try to implement in future And so a fact box basically gives you a breakdown But reuters do fact boxes for new vaccines for Hurricane ida and pipeline infrastructure damage and things like that Really short concise facts that you need to know to support then the understanding of these stories So I find them incredibly useful And so do check that out I have shared that on twitter already if you want to see the full rundown of the potential replacements In short though What's going to happen is the ruling liberal democrat party the ldp officials said suga would finish his term as its president Meaning he'll stay on until his successor is chosen the party-wide election slated for the end of the month to 29th of september Front runners for his replacement include former foreign minister kashida the former internal affairs minister takakashi And the head of vaccination rollout taro kono and the former defense minister ashiba so If you can repeat all four of those names to me perfectly You get you get a special prize. But yeah, as I said Those names might not be familiar to you But the point being is Who they are What they've done before how they're aligned politically are quite important assumptions to determine then the type of fiscal measures Covid restriction plans things like that that might happen in the future for japan Which is essential for really assessing some of those products if you're trading them. So Just uh Something to think about Staying with asia pack and just going through the news We did have the chinese kei shin services pmi for august and if you can't quite make it out That's this little tiny bar on the right It dramatically dropped from previous month This is the services pmi in china came in at 46.7 Expectations were for 52.6. The previous was 54.9 So this was the first contraction in services activity since april of 2020 The main reason being is the surge of the delta strain of the cobit 19 virus Of course, I did read some stats and actually i'll quickly flash it on my twitter so My twitter handles here. I was sharing a really interesting burn steen Um note on chinese covid yesterday and they were doing some analysis and they were basically saying long story short That china's current covid outbreak is more prolonged And dispersed than anything seen since q1 of 20 of 2020 with 156 residential areas across 15 provinces experiencing varying degrees of lockdown The chart on the right basically is a calculation of peak infections Defined by a start of five straight days of declines and total infections And the the point is is that's rising and hasn't we haven't had a peak yet So the covid situation in china not only is it as bad as q1 of 2020 is It's got no signs of showing a peak as yet. So what does that create? Well The services industry obviously is going to be impacted heavily and this is what we've seen play out already So again, if you think about the fed and you think about tapering, you know, this is a global economy china slowing rapidly Also plays into that federal reserve thinking to a certain degree about why Tapering super early and being aggressive on that front is probably not the most appropriate at this point in time at least So I think I think the streets in in line with that given the repositioning of the dollar and other assets as we've seen over the last week or so Which is why I think I'll get to it in a minute, but I don't think payrolls Is going to dramatically shift the needle too much, but I'll talk about that in a moment Okay, the other things not going to spend too much time talking about this because we will do more next week This is a bloomberg economy survey It comes out the week before the ECB meeting obviously happening next week Where the ECB are expected to release their latest forecasts of which We are expecting an upgrade in inflation. We've seen those high unexpected CPI numbers a few days ago But also growth is likely to be increased for the forecast Don't forget the vaccination rollout program has been relatively successful of late And that's been a more positive force for the economic outlook for the eurozone going forward What it's meant is the economist surveyed by bloomberg have basically said the ECB will start slowing its pandemic bond purchases Timing wise in q4 of this year and may not exhaust the entire envelope That's that word they used to encapsulate the whole program with 1.85 trillion euros Before the end of next year So again, I've tweeted that article for the amphibia account if you want to have a read We'll we'll be talking about it's a lot more of course next week. And then I mentioned briefly Senator Joe Manchin the West Virginia Democrat Last night demanding a quote strategic pause. He said in action on biden's economic agenda So potentially this puts in peril the three and a half trillion tax and spending program The democrats are looking to push forward through congress this fall And of course, this is quite critical to just keep that momentum that we've been seeing which has been flagging of late So delayment of this Is only going to further feed into what already is decreasing confidence overall We talked about the facts about eviction risk as well from homeowners Backdated with their rental payments as well So quite a few negative things stacking up and so there's a lot of pressure On the administration to push these things through and wise Manchin important We'll remember the senate is absolutely split And it takes the vp Kamala Harris deciding vote to tip it over Even on a 50-50 split all democrats must support a democratic plan for it to pass through the senate Joe Manchin not Supporting biden means that they can't pass anything. So he really is like the the deal maker here um Manchin's resistance of course to this comes In what has been a really tough period for biden and this is reflected in his opinion poll Ratings falling to their lowest since he's taken the white house He's had a chaotic withdrawal from afghanistan Resurgent pandemic. There's now been a massive hurricane as well that has whipped through louisiana all the way into new york Causing a number of deaths that we saw just the other day So yeah, it's it's been tough for him But the repercussion is from a markets perspective, can he push through things like this very sizable Latest spending plan and that's looking questionable at this point. So something to be aware of All right quick look then at non farms So the headline change in non-farm paras today is expected at 725,000 jobs in august We've got a range of 400 at the low 1 million at the high It's a bit more of a moderate pace compared to each of the prior two months But stronger than gains that were seen earlier in this year and remember We've still got a void of some six million odd jobs to to fill until we get back to pre-pandemic Levels so the definite labor market Critical to a lot of the decision-making that's going to be happening at the fed around that taper timing argument Um the potential for volatility basically comes From the fact that officials will gather later on this month remember the highly anticipated september meeting where we get the latest projections from the fed comes on 22nd of the month And and the labor market as I said very pivotal for that. So in terms of this report We we generally look at the the kind of pre-employment Kind of checklist of numbers that we've seen to get a bit of a flavor for how this report might come out And so a bit of a mixed bag probably going with the more weighted important ones as precursors for payrolls ADP Remembered just the other day was a shocker Came in at 374,000 below even the bottom end worst expectation The second consecutive disappointment we've had there which does not bode well for today's figure, of course And then the ism manufacturing PMI Although the headline was a beat we did see that A contraction number in a 10 month low in the employment constituent The ism serves this PMI doesn't actually come out until today. So we don't have that intel for now Consumer confidence both on the michigan and conference board figures have declined Predominantly based on the back of the outbreak further of covid and concerns in that matter So all of these would talk to a potential downside numbers Slightly more on the relief side. I guess you've had challenger job cuts corporate layoffs. So all-time lows initial jobless claims The first time employment claims have restarted their gradual improvement Seen for the last year averaging around three five five for the last four weeks So, yeah, the number seems to me fairly fair, but I guess the bigger Question here is what's it going to take and how's the market going to react? I actually think if we get an inline number Certainly if we get a low ball number towards the bottom end the range of 400k I don't think it would be shocking to see perhaps A little bit further extension of the dollar trend Equities all-time highs again at the close for the week That would obviously support major pairs in urodur and cable and the us 10 year could test up at the weekly highs Again, how true that pattern becomes will really be dictated by how bad the figure is The worse it is more likely you might see those types of outcomes on the flip side Um, I don't actually see a particularly large amount of risk really on a high number of around a million I still don't think a million Changes the game Because of all of the things really of a more negative sense that I've been mentioning in this briefing and so Other than just the labor market, which before if you think about it if we go back a few months The economy was kind of firing the missing piece of the puzzle was the labor market returning Things have changed All those other all those other jigsaw pieces are not now quite fitting in place in such a positive way To just then wait for jobs to return So it's now not really just jobs. Everything else needs to come together. So I think even a high number I don't think rocks the boat and would really cement any type of hawkish view necessarily about tapering I still think they'll just stick to the to the timetable of that still really to come In the weeks if not months ahead and so overall then that kind of then Mitigates any substantially violent moves from today's figure perhaps all right Quick review of the calendar other than payrolls I mean that really is the main thing you've got some final Services PMI data coming out of the european uk But that really is the focal point the ism services number does come out at 3 p.m This afternoon post payrolls just so you're aware Also, if you're interested For any stocks traders reddit Are seeking investment bankers for a potential IPO in new york according to sources last night So the IPO Said to be taking place early next year reddit hoping for a valuation of around 15 billion dollars and then for any dax traders The reason why I'm mentioning this is that basically The the exchange is doing some assessments today About what type of companies could well be included in an expansion of the DAX 30 to 40 companies um, and the reason why this is happening is that They want to have a more Reflection of the current state of types of businesses Which now need to include more innovative businesses rather than what classically had defined the The german stock index like chemical companies and things like that So just starting to be aware of there more information on that you can find on my notes that I tweet every morning otherwise final thing Podcast new episode coming out later today. Um, I'm actually off the desk Going away this weekend. So I will not be here from this afternoon But fear not head of trading appears current has got you covered He's going to jump on the podcast with eddy donnes who you might Know and recognize so those guys will put out the podcast later on post payrolls. Okay guys, that's it Have a great session ahead. Good luck for nfp and enjoy your weekend. Take care