Welcome to Toffy TV. This is the first match review of the season. Everton vs Southampton. Good as some park. We're back. Full house. How good is that going to be, Baz? It's going to be excellent. Looking forward to it. It's been a long time. We both got through a game last season with 2,000 in you and 6,000 when I went, but it's going to be great to be back there when there's a full house there and it's looking forward to it. New era of course under Rafa Benitez. We're just going to have to get on with it aren't we? The people who don't want it are just going to have to get on with it because that's the way it is isn't it? That is the way it is. He's now the Everton manager and we move on from the Carlo Ancelotti era to the Rafa Benitez era and hopefully it brings good things. Ancelotti's gone. He's the manager and it's on stage. You've got to just remember that you're not a manager fan if that makes sense. I'm not telling people who don't like Rafa Benitez that they should like him. But you know it's up to the players now and it's up to him to deliver something on to that players and whether that is get the best. Well it is get the best out of those players. It's about time you have the manager who got the best out of the players and I don't care whether people think this squad's good enough or it isn't good enough. You know, half back to David Moyes day he got everything out of that squad. Some players he made better, other players he made sure he played at the maximum. Now you might look at Everton squad and some people do and go he's not good enough, he's not good enough, he's not good enough. But even if you don't think they're good enough, let's have a manager that gets the most out of those players. Even if it's to the top level of the potential. We see other clubs do it. We look at other clubs and go I wouldn't have him and I wouldn't have him and I wouldn't have him. But if you've said to Evertonians, go and pick, would you have eight or nine West Ham players? A lot of people I think have gone. No, not really. No, not really, but West Ham players. Moyes got most out of them. Other teams. Leeds, individually you might take all the Leeds players but collectively you were excellent and it's about time we were able to say every one of our players gives everything and I think that's what's been missing because when you do give everything the quality shines through then everything do have some quality. What we're lacking is real team ethic and I think people just leaving it all on the pitch and I think if we see that as a fan base at least we'll know they're giving everything, we can get behind that. Even if you don't want to get behind a fella in the dugout, you can get behind a lad on the pitch. And also I think look past the manager and look at the team like you've just said there and look at the issues. If you've got a manager, you don't have to like the manager but the manager demanding everything out of the players and the players not delivering it, then it's about time people then start looking at those players and saying you're all the people who are letting us down, not the manager. The manager's not going to be bothered one bit about what people say about him, he's a professional who just wants to get the job done and will turn over every stone I think and I think that's where the people, don't get me wrong, people think he's not a good enough manager and not even worried about his past and that's fair enough, I've got no problem with that. Maybe the last 10 years has been working in a different sort of area to what he was before that, but I think it is about the players now and like you saying getting every drop of whatever, if you see a player on the pitch and you think you're not fancy them, but if they're working hard then you can't ask anything more than that. And I think Saturday is, you know, you're playing a team that last season we saw, saying in the first half of the season you saw that from a team that wasn't full of mega stars but it got loads out of them and obviously by the time second half of the season come that dried up a little bit because it was a small squad. It's going to be dead interesting Saturday, I think because it's going to be just weird being back in the ground, being surrounded by everybody, that novelty of being there and everything, those as fans have to use that and the team has to use that because yes we are in a little bit of a strange situation at the moment, there's not a lot of positivity around because of the circumstances of maybe not getting players in, but I'm sure there'll be players out there Saturday that are, you know, want to impress the new manager and want to work hard for the manager and want to feel part of, you know, something going forward. There's a lot of opportunities I think, you know, certainly with, you know, the new players like Townsend and Grey to change up this side. Gabamen coming back into the squad, there's a lot of opportunities. You know, I'm hoping that we can use that to our advantage. To tell you about a new game we have got, we have joined up with Ultima Fan and it's a cross between fantasy football and a little bit of, like, Ultima team. Be fair, Ultima packs then, you know, foot champions and all that. That is what it's like, it's a little bit of a cross between that. So it's going to be interesting, we're going to be playing each week opening packs, looking at the players, we've got them, putting them in the team and trying to accumulate enough points to do well in the fantasy. Football leader, we want you to get involved. There is free to play, there's three different levels. Free to play, you can play that every week. If you are just playing the free game, a pack drops every Tuesday with three new free players. There is a subscription pack. There's two subscription options if you want to do even better than that. 299 is the silver pack. You get exclusive football content and you get three silver cards each Tuesday. So 299 a month for that one. And if you want the gold pack, the gold subscription, it's 499 a month. You get exclusive football content. You get two gold cards and one silver every Tuesday. You also get a Creator BF52 throughout the month of August and you get a £10 gift card as well. That is for the gold subscription. But let me just stress, you can just play the free game and you do get players each week on a Tuesday. 15 grand prize pot and you can take your share of that if you do well enough. So what are you waiting for? Download the app and play. I'm going to do now. I'm going to open my first pack. Okay, the first player I've got is TJ Hart from Aston Villa. Second player, Trezzagate from Aston Villa. All right. Third person, Ryan Fraser. This isn't a bad pack, Ryan Fraser. Fourth player, R Henry from Brentford. S. Perichet from Wafford. Aaron Connolly from Brighton. Love to go down in the box, Aaron Connolly. Veidil van Dijk. I know people will be ffumin, but he's a gold card. I'm happy that I've got a gold card in the pack. Veidil van Dijk. I know he's the enemy, but he's still a good defender, so he's gone after beat in my side. Nicholas Pepe. I've got a hell of a side here. Leads are the team, I've got. So there you go. You get a team in with these packs as well. I've got Leads, so I'm assuming the points Leads get, I will get. And the final one is Upall Knife of Shane Duffy. And here we go, now I've got to build my line up. Is there, I've put Leads in. Defender, obviously Veidil van Dijk. I'm going to go with Henry from Brentford, as much as Shane Duffy. In midfield, I'm going to have obviously Pepe. No, he's not because he's a forward. He's going to be my forward rather. Trezzagate of Aston Villa. I'm going to have Ryan Fraser of Newcastle. I'm with Duffy, I've gone awfully negative there, but there you go. Veidil van Dijk, Shane Duffy, and Henry from Brentford. Trezzagate, Nicholas Pepe, Ryan Fraser. Each week, me and Peid are going to be playing off against each other, seeing who's got the best team, who scores the most as well. You get 10 points for every player who scores a goal, four for an assist, two for a shot on target. Tackles one, you get a point. For a clean sheet just for defenders only, you get three points. And for teams, if your team wins, I've got leads, so if leads win, you get five points. You get a point for every goal scored. You get a minus point for every goal you can see. Three points for a clean sheet and saves. You get a point for the saves as well. So yeah, that is my team and we will update on how well I did next week. So there you go. That is Ultimate Fan. Download it. It's free to download. Get in the App Store. Get it downloaded at the Play Store as well. And you can join in the Ultimate Fan Fantasy Football League with us. There you go. I think one of the things I noticed being at the Walls game at 6,000, 6,000, 8,000, there was the players then that extra yard because the fans were demanding it. And I think when you've got, it'll be what, 38,000 there that's only in there because obviously Southampton haven't brought the full 3,000 or 3,900. We'll be on the backs to make sure they do the run. And I think that gives the players that extra bit of energy. And I think when that demand is there, and it'll be some adjustment for them, it'll be some adjustment for Southampton. So we can take advantage of that. It is an opportunity for some players to stake a claim. It's an opportunity for them to get off to a good start. We saw that we got off to a really good start last season. So like we've said, the manager issue is sad. But there's not much we can do about it now. He's the manager right now. He's not getting sacked any time soon. He's the right manager. Whether you think he's right, wrong, whatever. He's the manager who's in charge of the team right now. So what we've got to do, what's right to do is get behind the team because we all want the same thing, don't we? We want everything to be as high as they can in the league and to really have a good season. If Rafa Benitez is the man to do it, so be it. So, you know, we get behind them and hopefully we'll be able to shout them on to a victory. First game of the season can always be a bit of an anomaly, can it? Because I think people go into the match thinking everything is fully figured out by the first game of the season. You know, we often say it's not until, certainly when the window isn't shut, it's not until you come back from that international duty that everything starts to settle down. So I think the first few weeks can throw up some strange results or give you a false sense of positivity like we had last season. We're playing the same way or whatever. I think for me, Satie is all about everything getting out there. Waking out, winning individual battles and that little bit of, hopefully that little bit of class taking over. Hopefully Dom and the Cavalrymen will be involved, hopefully the Charleston will be involved. They're both training. And just working that little bit harder and getting the most out of Goodersham Park. Southampton have just lost Danny Ings, he was obviously their chief goal scorer. They've bought a couple of plays in this week, but obviously it may or may not be their first games. So they'll find it a little bit tough without Danny Ings. He was feathery to score the goals for them. We've still got that. Wherever we haven't got it, we've still got the fellas we've allowed on last season to score the goals playing for us. And hopefully that will give us the edge because I just think it's so important to get, well it is. It's massively important just to get off to a good start and just settle everything down a little bit. Because everything in the last few weeks has just felt so up in the air trying to bring players in. Not having money, FFP, it's just felt, we just need it for Satie to just kick her off with a win. Everyone go home happy and then every week you're just building a little bit more. The victory is hugely important. We saw last season, what it does is it's set you up for the rest of the season. We had a great start last season and it kept us in the top half of the division, even when we were struggling.  We've still got three weeks to go on a transfer window. I'm sure Evan will be working right up until the last minute to get people out and get people in. We had this last season, don't forget, the season kicked off and we bought Ben Goffrey the day before the window shift. So it was the same last season in terms of trying to get people out, trying to get people in. The year before was the one where the windows shut before the season. We have experienced this and we need to just make sure that we do the right things on Saturday. Everyone, I'm sure, even the people who have said I'm going to boo over it, I'm sure once they're in, they'll be back in Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock. It's the first one since October, last year at 3 o'clock. I'm sure we'll all be back in the ground. And we can let that ride over us and get back to players and let's enjoy being able to take part in the game because for 18 months we've watched the Netflix show. That's basically what it felt like. We've sat and just watched the game of Fulton and Telly with no input and had to suffer. All the time being there is better than watching on the telly because you do shout and scream or you can feel how the game is. When you remove from it at home, everything's a bit rubbish. And I think the players feel that as well. I was listening at the radio on this morning, Theo Wolcott was talking. He was saying a similar thing if it takes a couple of weeks to get into it. But he said it's the weirdest thing playing football with no crowd. He said because we've all been brought up playing with fans, so when you're playing without it, it's such a strange environment to play with and it's just not the same. So hopefully we can, and we saw that at goodness and didn't, we saw two home wins from Christmas. You know, our home form is atrocious last season. So this season, let's make it a photo, so again, let's make it what it's normally like, which is hostile, difficult to play there. And let's make sure that we're ready to go because these will work hard. You know what hostile thoughts try to like. These will want to get off to a decent start as well. They'll be looking at us and going, we haven't really changed that much. We might be able to, you know, they might be looking and going, you've got beneath us and if we can get ahead of crowd might turn and all. Well, let's make sure that it's the other way. Let's get two goals up early on against these and make them feel sorry for themselves. They play a 4-4-2 in general. Got, you know, they brought in Adam Armstrong from Blackburn, who was very quick. But it's obviously his first game in the Premier League, so he can go either way. He can have a rude awakening himself and think, this is a bit quicker than him. Darwin, have you played against him in pre-season? Well, yeah, yeah, Blackburn. So let's make sure that Ben got free mark on him because he's got the pace to match. They brought in Borgi from Chelsea, who's a big lad, but he's only young. I know he did well on loan of Vitesse. You've got Chay Adams, who we know all about. So they've got a couple of other players. Walcott, who we know all about. So they've got a, they're still dangerous, like most Premier League teams are. Well, they'll be looking at us and thinking, well Calvin, that's a threat. Vestergaard, who had a good season for them, looks like he could be going to Leicester. So if they keep back going, he won't be used on Saturday. James Warpras is doubtful for Saturday. So, you know, the same with us, we've got to get our players back. And get on, get the win. And if you start with a win, everything looks a bit brighter on Saturday night. You come home, you've been the game, everything of one. You're top of the league, even though it doesn't matter.  Tell you what, we've got two weeks to go on the transfer window. If you can get those players. For me, it's about first game of the season. It's generally about not making mistakes. We saw last week's game against Manchester United just rusting us mistakes on the pitch.  You've got to make sure you don't have those mistakes. And if you do, you're at the end of the pitch. It's about getting through certain situations as well. You know, the set pieces and things like that would have changed our style on set pieces.  You know, if it's gone to zone on mark and that we're spot on, that we know what we're doing. They're the little things, I think, in the first few games of the season. Because they are, they can be. It can be so marginal and it can be those little differences of how you've prepared and pre-season. It's nothing to do with how you play because we will have not settled into a system yet. We will have not settled in. The only difference is this manager probably will know what he wants rather than changing it up. Or he'll know what he wants, I think, and that might be the difference in the last couple of managers. And what he wants, he'll actually go in with. So if he wants to start the season and not have Amazon's Regas, for me, he's the kind of manager going, I don't want this fella. I don't need to bow down to you as a player and I don't need to bow down to you as a crowd. This is what I want because this is how I see it. So it is all about just getting through the game. We're not sat here saying we don't need more quality in the squad because we do. We need a right back. No-one could sit here. I can't sit here and go, our business has been great this season. Because people have called me, people have been going, has it? What I would say is we've done smart business for the squad. The Maori great could be a great time and at 1.4 million. And just times there might be a great squad player at nothing. Do I want more? 100% I want more. I want a right back. I want another winger. I'd love a centre of my field player who could carry the ball. I wouldn't sit here and try to insult anyone's intelligence or sit here and try to convince people that everything's great. What I would say is I've said that before. Overall, the squad's probably more balanced than it was last year. We still need more quality last year. We still need more quality now. But we've still got a couple of weeks to try to address that. Right now, right now, as of now, when we're recording this video, we've got enough to win the first game of the season. Dominic Calvert-Lewin being back, Rich Charleson being back. We were unsure whether he was going to be here. We only found out Monday was available. Then the news come out on Tuesday or whatever that he might be available. So that's great news for us because we were sat here on Monday going, Monday dinner time, we're open now and Rich Charleson was back going, I hope Dom's fit because if Dom isn't fit, he might be his king. Looks like he's out, you know, no Rich Charleson. All of a sudden you're thinking, is there a false night? You know, we're going after play and now we're going, I think I'm going to have a two lad to put the ball in the back of the net. Okay, one hasn't had the rest but he's in the habit of scoring goals. The other one has had a little bit of a rest but he's coming back with no. But if we can create chances at least you go into that game going, give them an opportunity, we can get a goalie. Then it's exactly what you said, don't make mistakes at the back. In this first game, if it's not on, put it down the pitch and just do the right things to get over the line because you can build momentum into a season, don't give anything to you. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Just start solid and build off the back of it and then fans will do the rest. If you put the shift in, the fans will do the rest. If the fans go anything in a positive frame of mind, which I think they will, I think people are a bit like now at the moment, a bit negative, a few different reasons. Do you think maybe what we should try to do as a fan base, just right now, is just take every game as a cut, you know what I mean? Because I think too often we all do it, I do it, we all do it. You look forward and you try to project the season, the whole season. When we've seen so many times, you can't, things happen and you go, we're amazing.  Then we were amazing again and we got ourselves back into the top four, then we were rubbish. Maybe we just need to think like just this game, let's get through this game and then we go to Leeds and it can't we get something out of that. Then we go to Black Count and maybe just do it like that until we know what we're playing with because everything is a little bit up to me. To me I've got no expectations of this season and it will play out. I've got to let it play out, I think, because again, sitting here right now with the win or not shut, the couple of players come in that you go and two weeks you go, they make a massive difference, they make a massive difference and it would only take two. It would only take two if we could recycle the squad. It would only take a couple to go, I feel excited now and we'll see what happens. But for this game, this is the first game and nothing else matters. We should be excited that for the people who can go. That would go on back the match and that there's going to be a further attack. And we could have a very positive influence on the game as well. Oh God, without a shadow, without a shadow. So let's just make sure that happens. Let's make sure that happens. Let's make sure we get in there slightly and we're positive and you know, whatever. Just enjoy being back at the match. Seeing your mates and enjoying it and seeing the team in front of your eyes rather and having to listen to Steve McManaman and Martin Keown and Michael Owen and all them.  It'll feel a lot better. Whatever happens, feeling like you've taken part in it. The one other thing I'd say as well is the camp dance on now for Godderson. Three years left that's it. Less than three years now. Baratran is dating me fin. So I think we all need to remember that and go and enjoy drinking every bit of it because in three years it's gone. 57 family games. Something like that, that's it. Let's enjoy it. Cos it is a camp dance now. So after Shrattie we're on 56. So traction. Enjoy. Make it a photo. That's all we can do. 57 games on the run around. Let's try to do it. Keep the negatives out and push the positive. There you go. Let us know your thoughts on this one. We are back first game in Manchester United in March 2020. 2020. Robbed of a vision. Still. Still aggrieved at that one. It's a new era. So let us know your thoughts in the comments on this one. Are you looking forward to your positive? Let us know. Make sure to give this video a like. Subscribe if you haven't already. If you want more great videos. Live videos, videos earlier. A few days earlier. Join us on Patreon. The description and it's on the screen right now. See you later.


Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us this afternoon for the first in a three-part online briefing mini-series about coastal resilience and natural disaster recovery in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. I'm Dan Berset, the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Before we start, though, let me take a moment to step back and offer a thought or two about the broader issues of environmental equity and justice. Just as it was difficult to talk about climate change against the backdrop of the awful spread of the coronavirus outbreak, it is hard to stay focused on these issues when inequality and injustice is taking lives and infringing on our right to assemble and protest peacefully. In fact, though, whether it's coronavirus or the events over the past several days, while our awareness is heightened, inequality and injustice are systemic and ever-present threats to the well-being of our communities. The challenges and risks of climate change are great. I hope we emerge from the outbreak better prepared and informed to make science-based decisions. And above everything else, I hope we finally have the strength to address inequality and injustice so we can take the steps we need to mitigate, adapt, and become more resilient to climate change together. In order to complete a transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy, we will need to find ways for everyone to contribute and ensure we leave nobody or their communities behind. If you're joining us today for the first time, this week's online briefing mini-series is the conclusion of an extensive year-long effort to tell the stories of regional approaches to coastal resilience. In 2019, we brought together panels of experts, practitioners, and community leaders from the Gulf Coast, Northeast, New England, Louisiana, and the West Coast. Earlier this year, we convened experts who discussed efforts around the Great Lakes in the Southeast States, Hawaii, and Alaska, as well as the need for better climate adaptation data. Today's online briefing is part one of the mini-series, Federal Support and Local Action. Tomorrow, we will cover resilient housing in communities, and on Friday, we will learn about sustainable democratic energy and public health. And for the entire time, the region of focus will be Puerto Rico and, of course, the U.S. Virgin Islands. If you've missed any of our briefings on coastal resilience or on any other, pretty much, climate or clean energy policy topic, you can access briefing summaries and video recordings at www.esi.org. And when you visit us online, please take a moment to sign up for our Climate Change Solutions newsletter to learn about other resilience initiatives, clean energy legislation, and to stay informed about all manner of ESI goings on, including our briefing schedule. Our online briefing today, like I said, will cover coastal resilience in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Every region covered so far is different in terms of the challenges and the innovation of those who live there. And the communities of our Caribbean neighbors have a special story to tell. Part of that story is rooted in the heritage and the history of its people. And part is due to the fact that they have done their best to build and live more resiliently in the wake of back-to-back category five hurricanes, Irma and Maria, that hit the islands in 2017, followed by Hurricane Barrel in 2018, and Hurricane Dorian last year, as well as several other tropical storms. That story, how can you improve the resilience of communities while also recovering from unrelenting natural disasters must be told? And unfortunately, as storms are increasingly severe and frequent, the experience of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will be increasingly relevant to more and more coastal communities on the mainland. One last thing before we turn to our panelists. Because we're not in the same room today, I cannot call on you if you have a question, but we'd love to hear your questions. So please follow EESI on Twitter at EESI online and send in your questions that way. Or if you'd like, you can send an email to EESI at EESI.org. We will draw from your question submissions after we hear from our panelists. And now let's get to our panelists. We will hear first from Margarita Varela Rosa, who serves as counsel to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources. In that role, Margarita helps advance legislation that pertains to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the Northern Mariana Islands, excuse me, Guam and American Samoa. She has worked for the departments of Homeland Security and Defense. As an engineer, Margarita has been honored by the Maryland Society of Professional Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers for her contributions to the engineering field as well as her leadership. It is a special treat to hear directly from a policy expert on Capitol Hill and I am eager to hear about the status and prospects for legislation and appropriations this year. Margarita, thank you for joining us today. Look forward to your presentation. Thank you very much for the invitation. On behalf of the Natural Resources Committee, this is an important discussion for us since it has been so difficult to ensure that resources that were appropriated by Congress as a result of natural disasters are dispersed for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition, yesterday was the first day of this year's hurricane season, which NOAA predicts that it will be above normal. So we're eager to share with you information on what are our priorities to ensure that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are prepared. The share of the Natural Resources Committee, Congressman Raul Grijalba, has visited the Caribbean after hurricanes Irma and Maria with his team to assess the situation in the territories and have a firsthand experience of what the impact and the damage was in the year 2017. Some of that impact is still visible today. For example, the Puerto Rico energy grid is still very vulnerable. And my plan today is to go over these natural disasters with you to let you know what is the current situation and what are our policy priorities. As most of you remember, the year 2017 was significant for the Caribbean. Hurricane Irma devastated the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was a category five hurricane with winds up to 178 miles per hour. It costs significant structural damage, including to police stations, airports, the airport hospitals, and also to the ferry. There was also death involved. There were four fatalities and damages up to $1.1 billion. Two weeks after Hurricane Irma impacted the U.S. Virgin Islands and also part of the northeast of Puerto Rico, Hurricane Irma affected Puerto Rico and also the U.S. Virgin Islands, specifically the island of San Croix. Hurricane Maria cost almost $90 billion of damages in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But not only that and most importantly, it also cost the lives of approximately 3,000 individuals in the island of Puerto Rico. The damage that was experienced included almost the destruction of the island's electric grid. For months, the population was without power. Schools were impacted, hospitals, the local airport, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett assessed that approximately 90% of the buildings of the island were affected. So it was a major event for both U.S. territories that required a significant federal response to supplemental packages were approved to address the destruction. Congress passed legislation to provide emergency funding that included community development block grants for disaster recovery. And that was meant to help with the transformation of the electric grid of Puerto Rico and to rebuild homes and schools in the U.S. Virgin Islands in Puerto Rico and also to create resiliency so that future natural disasters would not cause the same impact on devastation that they experienced. So those funds were approved by Congress, they were signing to law by the president. However, it has been extremely difficult to ensure that those funds are actually dispersed to Puerto Rico and also the U.S. Virgin Islands. Congress has had to conduct a lot of oversight over the federal agencies that have that responsibility in this particular case HUD so that notices and also grant agreements are published and also approved so the money can be used by the local government. After these hurricanes affected Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, we have also had to assist the local territories with other natural disasters that have impacted the region. Most importantly, there have been approximately a thousand earthquakes that have impacted the southern region of Puerto Rico since late 2019 and that includes 13 earthquakes that are greater than five magnitude and have resulted in also devastation to schools, to homes, roads, and the economic development of that area. Thousands of people were impacted, primarily their mental health since these were events that continue to affect them for several months and actually continue to affect them to this day. Unfortunately, these earthquakes have also affected the electric grid of the island. So currently the state of the Puerto Rico electric power authority is not the, it's unreliable. It's unreliable, let's put it that way. The grid is still unreliable and requires a lot of investment to ensure that the people of Puerto Rico stop experiencing frequent outages. As a result of these earthquakes, the House passed HR 5687 to appropriate additional disaster funding to Puerto Rico since this was a major disaster. It was declared as such by the president. However, that bill that passed the House hasn't been considered in the Senate. So we continue in the House to advocate for this legislation to be included in future legislation to ensure that the buildings and the infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt to be resilient in the area can actually be addressed. So these are three major disasters that have affected the islands of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. However, there are other threats that continue to affect the resiliency of their infrastructure. For example, coastal erosion, which I'm sure our next speaker will provide more information on. We will continue to advocate for resources to be dispersed, those resources that were already approved and also to ensure that additional resources are assigned to address these natural disasters. And those are the priorities you can help us with to make sure that the residents of the territories have the assistance that they deserve. Thank you, Margarita. That was a really great, great, great, great, great, great. Very pleased that you could join us today. Thank you very much. And you'll be with us for the remainder of the hour, which is very generous. You have a lot to do and so it means a lot for you to be with us. For anyone who might have joined us a little late, let me just make a quick reminder or say a quick reminder about questions. We'll be taking questions, but we'll be doing that at the end. So after our second panelist, who I'll introduce in just a moment. If you would like a question asked, please follow us on Twitter and ask us and that would be at EESI online. If you would like to send an email, you can do that with your question, EESI at EESI.org and we'll, like I said, get to those when we are a little bit later in the presentation. And just as a reminder, in case you did miss anything, of course, this is being webcast. All of the information that you'll hear today, including written summaries of both presentations will be available online within a couple of days at most. Our team does a really great job with getting those online. So if you missed anything, never fear. We've got you covered. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our second panelist, Ernesto Diaz. Ernesto currently serves as director of the Office for Coastal Management and Climate Change and coordinator of the Puerto Rico Climate Change Council. He led the publication of the first state of the Puerto Rico Climate Report in 2014, The Road to Resilience, a guide to adaptation strategies also in 2014, and the first standalone chapter for the US Caribbean as part of the fourth national climate assessment in 2018. After Hurricanes Irma and Maria, he served as state on site coordinator for various response and recovery efforts under the emergency support function 10, sunken vessel removal, and coastal and near shore debris removal, and requested the first mission assignment to assess damages to coral reefs, wetlands, beaches, and dunes under the natural and cultural resources sector. Ernesto, it is great to have you with us today. I look forward to your presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. And thanks to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute for inviting us to share part of our work with the colleagues and provide this briefing on our work. So this afternoon, I'll be speaking about the Puerto Rico Climate Change Council and the work we conducted under the US Global Change Research Program when we, through six key messages, prepared the US Caribbean chapter under the fourth national climate assessment report. I'll be speaking also about effects and impacts of socio-ecological vulnerabilities of climate impacts in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. I'll be also briefly referring to their recently adopted policy on mitigation, adaptation, and resilience, law 33 of 2019. And as it was discussed by our previous colleagues and guests, I'll be referring a bit also to the Hurricanes, Irma and Maria, particularly from the response and damage assessments side and what we're trying to do in order to secure and effectively implement projects using public assistance sections for 28 and 406 of the Stafford Act as well as projects that we have developed for the Hazard Mitigation Grants Program under sections 404. I'll be also presenting something that we've been working intensively on, which is the use of nature-based features and try to make them cost-effective so that we have the ecosystem services of these systems employed for infrastructure protection and communities protection purposes, but also benefiting from the ecological side that they are intended to. So next. So I'll talk about the Puerto Rico Climate Change Council, we're a voluntary association of over 150 members and collaborators that voluntarily gather to assess the state of Puerto Rico's climate using best science and knowledge available to understand Puerto Rico's social ecological vulnerabilities and to develop adaptation strategies to build a resilient society. Representatives from, oops, from federal agencies, Commonwealth agencies, not-for-profit organizations, public and private universities, as well as colleagues from the Caribbean and the United States and Europe, collaborate to jointly gather the best geophysical and chemical scientific knowledge and assess effects and impacts of those trends and changes on ecology and biodiversity as well as in society and economy. Obviously, an important component of this is how do we use that data and that information and communicating climate change and coastal hazards is one of our key missions. As it was mentioned during the introduction, we prepared and published the first ever Puerto Rico State of the Climate Report. It was published in 2014. We also developed a document called Bruta Haciala Resiliencia or Road to Resilience, which is a guide of adaptation strategies for the island-wide level, municipal level, the home level and the individual level. However, after severe droughts in 2014 and 2015, hurricanes in 2017, earthquakes, COVID-19, we obviously have demonstrated that we have a certain degree of resiliency. However, we needed to update this document and we're working on it, conducting a SWOT analysis and trying to integrate it under a multi-hazard approach. In 2018, we also published chapter 20 of the U.S. Caribbean under the Fourth National Climate Assessment. And I'll be referring to these results throughout the presentation. So the key messages were fresh water, marine resources, coastal systems, rising temperatures, disaster response and adaptive capacity, in which we also collaborated with colleagues from the wider Caribbean area. So to conduct our work here in Puerto Rico, we had to take it also into account the context. 40% of the population worldwide live in the coastal areas, 54% of the population live in cities where 70% of the energy is consumed and 75% of the greenhouse gases are emitted. The trend is that by 2050, 68% of the people will be living in cities. So what was the reality in Puerto Rico? It's even more dramatic, 61% of the population living in the coastal areas at 44 coastal municipalities. We have a coastline of 799 miles, 1,125 beaches. And as it was mentioned earlier, 60% of those beaches exhibit certain degrees of erosion and obviously for an island that relies on tourism that's of great concern, but also beaches absorb energy and the reduction on the width of the beach creates an increased exposure to storm risks. So we're not only starting those, but identifying adaptive strategies as well as alternatives to address these issues. We have two ongoing studies with the Army Corps of Engineers, two feasibility studies that in the future will be probably presented to Congress for allocation of funding in terms of the construction phase of that study. So in our coastal areas, those 44 coastal municipalities, all of our airports and ports of course are located in these areas, as well as thousands of miles of primary roads, ridges, culverts and piers. Also, all of our current energy facilities which are fossil fuel powered are on coastal areas. Also our communications, all the fiber optic cables, land and exit at coastal areas. So dealing with resiliency and adaptation and addressing these issues in the coastal areas is of great concern and importance. So this is the reality that I have presented in terms of numbers and stats. A lot of densely urbanized area in the metro area with the main airport, the International Luis Muñoz Marine Airport, as well as the ports and energy facilities developed a very low elevation above mean sea level. Obviously, sea level rises of great concern. During 2017, we had the most active hurricane season on record and you can see hurricane Irma impacting Florida as it had exited already the Virgin Islands and had affected northeast Puerto Rico. Hurricane Jose didn't make landfall and then Hurricane Maria on its way to Puerto Rico. After we were impacted, so power went out, I was without power only for 34 days, but some people were without power for 10, 11 months. So the power grid is something and the transformation of the energy provision to home dwellers, commerces, et cetera, are of great concern and I know that's going to be the subject of discussions tomorrow and Friday. Second day after Hurricane Maria, my team and I went out and started documenting damages and this is what we saw. A lot of areas impacted by direct wave attack attack, the flops, a lot of areas affected by direct wave attack affected not only private and public properties but also wetlands that were under water for days, weeks and mangroves ground, so a lot of biodiversity was lost. One of the cases that I worked with immediately after the hurricane was the response to sunken vessels that not only were lost to the owners of the vessel but were a hazard because those boats or vessels would be probably impacting coral reefs and other structures as well as other boats that may have not suffered effects and impacts from the storm surge and the winds and the waves, but it is important to emphasize that the US Coast Guard came with a plan that were really well prepared to respond. They set up their job, I worked as a state on site coordinator and there was no time wasted there. So I might head off and kudos to the Coast Guard because that's something that should be used by other federal agencies in order to prepare their response procedures. That's my humble opinion. I worked also with other federal agencies during the response phase and currently during the recovery phase and definitely there is much room for improvement. I know that also during 2017, federal agencies, particularly FEMA, had to work with other disasters, not only Maria but also Harvey in Houston and then they had to deal with the forest fires in California, but please take a look at the SOPs that the US Coast Guard implements in order to respond to these events because that could help a lot, not only to the federal agencies to avoid some optimal use of funds and optimize their interventions but also for the people in need in those areas that have been affected by disasters. I will also talk about this groundbreaking study. This is the first time ever that FEMA funded a damage assessment and triage work for natural resources that serve as critical infrastructure. We requested a mission to be assigned to NOAA. It was approved, NOAA conducted this fantastic work with the support from colleagues from the University of Puerto Rico students and volunteers, obviously all experimented divers and marine scientists and this damage assessment has proven to be very useful into subsequent requests that we have presented to FEMA for recovery purposes. And why coral reefs are important? The pictures that I showed earlier were those areas that were impacted by direct wave attack because they didn't have coral reef or reef protection. However, the San Juan metro area, which is where most infrastructure and economic activity occurs, didn't suffer from direct wave attack but even though we got the floods, but the waves were attenuated at the crest of those coral reefs that even though they resulted with mechanical damage from 30 feet high waves and more, but they were attenuated up to 97%. So we are requesting from FEMA to invest on the repair of this critical infrastructure that happens to be natural, but more effective than any gray or man-made infrastructure. And what we're asking is also that we need to consider that hurricanes of higher intensity, cut four and cut five are becoming more frequent, mostly due to increased sea surface temperatures and the coincidence of rains in Northern Africa and the absence of El Nino, for example. So the projections for this year, as it was mentioned earlier, are that close to 19 named storms will impact the Atlantic and Caribbean and six of them might be of higher intensity, cuts three, four or five. So the investment on coral reefs, nourishment of beaches, dunes and wetlands as a means of ameliorating coastal hazards is something that would be a smart investment to reduce the cost of future disasters because this is the trend and this is what we're going to be facing more often in the future. How do we know that? These are the trends and the projections. These are published in our National Climate Assessment chapter, chapter 20. So the projections is that atmospheric surface atmospheric temperature will be increasing by two to nine degrees Fahrenheit. So the best scenario is that we increase by two degrees. In terms of precipitation, we'll have 10 to 40% reduction in precipitation in the Puerto Rico area. And in terms of CO2 concentration, I checked the Mauna Loa station a couple of days ago and we're up to 416 parts per million and that's obviously triggering ocean acidification and increased sea surface temperatures which not only fuels hurricanes but also contributes to bleach corals. So see the integrated approach that we're taking to this. We're interested in protecting biodiversity but also life and property. Sea level rise is kind of our main concern because this exacerbates what happens regularly with tides, waves, and the intense hurricanes come associated with storm surges and storm surges riding on top of a higher sea level have the potential to affect an impact further inland. So all the structures that may be outside of a flood zone currently according to FEMA or planning board maps will be probably affected by floods in the near future and will be exposed to wave attack and storm surges most certainly. So our intermediate scenarios are between three to four feet increases by 2100 and between nine to 1100 feet sea level rise increase by 2100 as an extreme scenario. Other scenarios by other colleagues are more dramatic and present a higher scenarios of sea level rise. This is some graphics of still water. It doesn't include tides or wave action nor storm surge even though we have modeled those. One foot sea level rise increase on the lower left corner will temporarily affect the international airport as a landmark that we can use as a reference. A three feet high sea level rise would be permanently affecting some areas of the airport and a 10 feet increase will definitely be affecting international communications in Puerto Rico. So I mentioned that in 2019 a statute was approved, adopted by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. It's called the climate change mitigation adaptation and resilience law and establishes a public policy regarding the Puerto Rico power grid to progressively use less fossil fuels. It presents a cold phase out, promotes clean energy. It also promotes to improve energy efficiency to lower greenhouse gas emissions from other land uses and activities such as agriculture promotes the use of electric cars. In fact, it calls for the whole fleet of the government to be powered by electric or hybrid cars beginning this year. And then it promotes reforce station and ecosystem services improvement. It creates also an expert advisory committee that meets about twice per month. It calls for that committee to create a mitigation resilience plan. I know that the committee will be requesting an extension to deliver the plan which is sectoral in nature and has multiple requirements to be implemented by different agencies and sectors including the private sector, commerce, et cetera. It doesn't assign funding but provides opportunities for the committee and the initiatives to tap into different funding mechanisms. That's a weak point of the statute. It also creates a joint Puerto Rico senate and house of reps commission. And as in the law 17 that was also adopted in 2019, it calls for establishes some renewable energy goals which is 100% clean energy production by 2050 and 20% by 2022, 40% by 2025 and 60% by 2040. I must confess that I'm not an expert on mitigation issues nor on electric power mitigation. I focus mostly on adaptation and resiliency building efforts. And this is what we have been working on more recently looking at what's been done worldwide by the World Bank and Swiss Ray which is a reinsurance company that has created a very innovative products and it's very interesting because they are obviously concerned about most disasters that they have reinsured will be ending on their desktops and they'll have to be addressing claims by those insurance companies that insured those properties have been totally damaged by more frequent disasters occurring worldwide. So it's important to take a look at what they are doing worldwide and this is what we are asking FEMA to do. I know that they have created a couple of programs that proactively bring these new opportunities to fund innovative projects, to build resiliency and reduce the cost of future disasters but we can do more and we can do it better. So I would urge to take a look at the EarthDec Army Corps of Engineers Engineering with Nature approaches also in terms of corals, the National Academy of Sciences put together an excellent product obviously this is for those jurisdictions seven of those of ours I would say that in the United States have corals but also in the wider Caribbean is of great interest is to build resiliency through innovative interventions with these systems that are threatened by climate change but that also bring resilience and attenuate wave energy and absorb energy from storm surges. So I think that there is a great opportunity to embed some of these initiatives into coastal engineering approaches and we need to continue fine-tuning our land use plans and zoning regulations by creating or integrating dynamic setbacks and coastal construction lines. Several states already have that North Carolina and Hawaii for example. We need to increase the free board requirements and promote adaptive design so that a sea level rises structures can be retrofitable. I know that FEMA's community rating system provides incentives for this to be done but we need to be more aggressive in terms of fostering this type of interventions. We believe that there is a great opportunity through this recovery phase to create a new generation for reconstruction structure. Particularly in the coastal areas it should be hybrid and nature-based and should involve structural traditional protection adaptation measures as well as to integrate nature-based solutions thinking of coral reefs, wetlands, beach and dunes, restoration and creation, green swells as well as horizontal levees for example. Typically we hit a wall when we propose this type of interventions because of the traditional benefit cost analysis tools of the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA and HUD are built to favor rapid return on investment while jurisdictions, particularly those affected by disasters, inherit infrastructure that may require a higher operations and maintenance and in the case of Puerto Rico for example, we are under a tremendous fiscal constraint due to the economic crisis that we're experiencing and we even have a fiscal oversight board. So we need as a sponsor and the owner of the infrastructure to reduce our costs in the future while the agency that's funding the project is interested in the biggest bank for the buck which is obviously the rapid return on investment. We need to discuss those issues. I think that's something that's very important for Congress to take a look at and for federal agencies also to continue this dialogue. In our case, we are sure that the infrastructure that we propose has a longer design life and definitely is aesthetically more attractive and can bring a tourism and recreation opportunities. As such, we requested on their section 428 of the Stafford Act an investment of $31 million to restore those core reefs that attenuated 97% of the wave energy that otherwise would have impacted and increased the cost of Marias on the metropolitan area. But the question still remains and this has not been decided even though we started working on this project around December 2017. Is the restoration of a core reef by the Puerto Rico DNER eligible for public assistance? We still don't have an answer to that. However, we have worked and I have many folders on the upper right hand corner where we have prepared 44 hazard mitigation grants a program for four projects, doubling close to $100 million and still we're in the phase of determining eligibility or desirability. And I know that there are discussions at a higher level, I would say, where FEMA and core three, which is the office of the government dealing with these issues, where priorities are electric power and adequate sensors. But reminding my previous statements, let's take a look at what the Coast Guard does in terms of SOPs and try to bring it to other sectors and missions and discussions so that we can be more effective in getting this funding allocated. These are, and it was mentioned by the previous speaker, there is a lot of funding available. I think we could use that to build resilient infrastructure, innovative infrastructure. I'm guessing around $85 plus billion dollars might be available through public assistance, hazard mitigation, supplemental funding, as well as CDBGDR funding. But here in Puerto Rico, we're not seeing that those monies being invested in a fast, quick, effective manner. That's what I have for this afternoon. I thank you. I'll take any questions from the colleagues. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ernesto. Great presentation. And we do, in fact, have time for questions. So this is where, in the online briefing, I turn it to my colleague, Ellen Vaughn. While Ellen is asking, she's kicking off our Q&A. Let everyone remind, just a reminder, if you do have any questions, follow us on Twitter at ESI online. You can also send us an email at ESI at ESI online. But Ellen, I'll turn it over to you and I'm looking forward to a great discussion. Thanks, Dan. And thank you so much, Ernesto and Margarita, for your presentations. Fascinating information packed. I have a lot of questions. And so I'll just start with one for Margarita. I'm wondering about sort of how you already mentioned the legislation, certainly the supplemental appropriations. And I'm wondering if you are engaged with sort of community organizations in the islands, how Congress might be working with the communities. And then, in turn, how those communities might be encouraged or able to engage with your committee and with Congress. Definitely. As Ernesto mentioned during his presentation, these natural disasters have resulted as an opportunity to invest in the resiliency of infrastructure and transformation of some of the institutions in the island. So we have worked with many nonprofit and community organizations to ensure that they have a say on how these funds are going to be utilized. We think that is very important. And we have conducted several oversight hearings in which we provide them also an opportunity to participate as panelists, to share their concerns, their priorities. So we can also embrace them and follow up on them when we do oversight of federal agencies and when we have conversations with local government officials. So for the natural resources community, engaging with local stakeholders, nonprofits, community organizations, and leaders is definitely a priority. Great, thank you, thank you. And just to follow up quickly, if I may, on that point, on oversight, we were really glad to see the passage of the Disaster Recovery Reform Act and now, which amends the Stafford Act and now of course FEMA being in charge of implementing a lot of that. Ernesto talked about the value of nature-based solutions. And I'm wondering, I guess we're still seeing how FEMA will come out with its guidance on that and what projects will be eligible for funding. And I'm wondering if the committee will be doing any oversight on that in particular? The project that Ernesto was describing, we're actually currently working on legislation. Our committee, I work for the Office of Insular Affairs, which primarily deals with the issues that affect the territories. But we also have a water and ocean subcommittee that focuses on the programs that, for example, Ernesto works with, and they are drafting currently language to also take into consideration the specific needs of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and also the territories in the Pacific. So in terms of oversight of FEMA specifically, we're not necessarily pursuing it that way. What we are doing is actually working on legislation to provide other mechanisms for the territories to have the resources to invest in those initiatives. Thank you. And Dan, I don't know if I have a question. I could go on, but I don't wanna look to see if we've got... I have a couple of questions here from our audience. Yeah, so maybe, I'm having a hard time hearing. I'm not sure if that's something that's just a me problem or if it's an everybody problem. Hopefully it's just a me problem. But let's go to the audience. We do have a couple that have come in and I'm gonna, since we're a little short on time, I'm gonna try to consolidate some of these so that Margarita, you and Ernesto can both have an opportunity to answer. Question is about barriers to spending the resources that have been provided by Congress. And I'm wondering if you could sort of discuss for a moment sort of maybe one or two of the key barriers that prevent projects from being implemented. And then specifically, how the cost-benefit analysis either encourages or discourages the use of nature-based solutions. Margarita, happy to start with you and then definitely wanna make sure that Ernesto has an opportunity to provide his perspective as well. In terms of the barriers for utilizing the funds, the main barrier we have experienced has been to put procedures and the timeline to actually publish the notices that are required to disperse the community development block grants that has taken approximately two and a half years for us to see progress. And that's only the first step for the process to move forward. We have also seen delays in the approval of grant applications. So we think it's essential to expedite that process while ensuring that there are controls in place so that the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands also have the resources that they need to rebuild and be ready for the possibility of other natural disasters. Thanks, Ernesto, from your perspective, how does the cost-benefit analysis that's done for these projects, what kind of impact does that have on the types of projects that are selected and sort of what the barriers of implementation are? Yeah, and first of all, I agree with Margarita that the guidance and the compliance with the bureaucratic processes is one has told the process of effectively investing the funding where it's needed, which is at the community level where the damages occurred. So the need is there, the funding is available, but the connecting vessels to try to effectively convert funding into solutions for the people and build resilience is not happening or is happening at a very slow pace. So that's one of the concerns that we do have because we have to deal with the day-to-day of those communities that are facing the issues. So I have of those many stories. In terms of the nature-based interventions, colleagues from FEMA as well as from the Army Corps of Engineers and different universities and organizations are working to try to see, to effectively communicate that these nature-based features are, they meet building codes standards. They effectively attenuate, ameliorate and dissipate energy and can deal with forces and loadings that protect life and property. But when the decisions are made using the existing BCA tools, those investments that may be higher in the short term, but with lower operations and maintenance in the mid to longer term, as well as infrastructure that will have longer design life, are not favored. Obviously, there is still a discussion of the dialogue that must happen. So we move to this next generation of infrastructure, particularly in the coastal realm. Okay, thanks. Well, this has been really enlightening and it's a great way to kick off our briefing mini series for the week. I hope that all of our audience is able to join us for part two tomorrow at three o'clock as well to discuss resilient housing and communities. And then on Thursday, I have to think about that for a second. The day's kind of all seemed the same. On Thursday at three o'clock, we'll look at sustainable democratic energy and public health, but Margarita and Ernesto, we couldn't have asked for two better panelists to kick us off. So thank you very much. If we were in person, there would be a thunderous applause. But unfortunately, we're only able to do this virtually today. Thank you, Alan. Thank you very much. Let me just reiterate one last time that the video recording of this will be available at esi.org as well as written materials or written summary of everything that you just heard. Ernesto's slides will be available as well. Let me also just thank Troy, who helps us provide or produce this webcast so that it looks so professional and looks so nice. So he's a great friend at ESI. Thank you, Troy. Let me also thank Ellen for all of the hard work that went into organizing this briefing mini series. Let me also thank Omri, Dan O'Brien, Anna McGinn, Amber Todorov, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, as well as two interns. This is their first briefing, Maya Crook, as well as Brigitte Williams. So thanks to everybody. It takes a lot of work to go into these things and thanks to everyone on team ESI. Stay tuned for tomorrow. And if you have a moment, if you haven't yet, please fill out our survey. I think there may be a screen with a link. We'd love to hear your feedback. We're always trying to do better to bring information about climate change, environmental and clean energy solutions to you. And if you have any feedback you'd like to share, we always read it. And until tomorrow, thank you so much. And I hope everyone has a great rest of your day. Thank you again. Thank you very much.


What's going on guys welcome to another video I'm actually at Bass Pro Shops today And I'm going to be going in there getting some tackle I just wanted to take you guys along with me You know you guys seem to like Bass Pro Shops videos stuff like that so I'm taking you guys along with me I got a $50 Bass Pro Shops gift card, and I'm gonna go in there get some baits. Let's get rolling Man It's ain't gonna be good So I've been doing like a lot of river fishing actually I have a tournament coming up this weekend So I'm looking at Looking oh, you're my boys. I'm looking at looking at some baits, especially crankbaits I'm gonna be throwing I'm gonna look spin about 50 bucks. I got that gift card. Why not? Why use it twice? Let's use it once Let's see what we got.  I took a picture of it before I threw it Because I was like this crankbait looks so good like they have to be just chomping on this thing and Ended up just whacking it. I want to come here. I want to get a few But they don't have really any variety or at least the colors I need for like dirty water for like river fishing Sucks I do like this bad boy though second dives eight foot It's exact crankbait. I was throwing on the exact color This color this color should be good, especially in that dirty water this red color and then muddy ish water Mm-hmm, baby right there. It's pretty good. This crankbait right here It's kind of like the similar color that I was throwing it's kind of got like a little bit of brown and chartreuse on the bottom It's this actually a birthday bait though This is a digger. I've thrown one of these before on when y'all bait I'm at one of the events tournament subscription and I caught them pretty good on it. So actually I'm a fan of these little diggers Diggers by Berkeley. I'm gonna try this sucker out. I mean the color patterns somewhat the same I might have to try Look at that one. I could just go crazy right now Really don't need to they have one that it's kind of like a shad wrap as well. I might look into last one This sucker catching boys. Hey, we got 20% off too. There we go I don't feel as guilty anymore.  I'm not anything. I'm gonna get it This is like the exact color I was looking for but it's by banded. Oh My god like that. I gotta get two of them This one's four to eight. This one's eight to twelve Go with this four to eight. Gosh that color is just Smoking It's a life-saving. I just ordered this color of a rage crawl Online they don't have it here. So I'm glad that we ordered those Honestly can't go wrong cuz it's June bugs. I'm gonna try a pack of these. I'm just dropping everything everywhere Just got me a few black and blue jigs striking pro-model jig Nothing wrong with that That sucker get him in that dirty water. One four Three eight. Now I have a half. We're going to the three eighth Buzbee my booyah So many hooks to choose from These are very inexpensive, but since I'm fishing a tournament I'm gonna go with something a little High-quality Getting these EWG boys one eighth No I just need some cheap and expensive bullet blades where there's one eight Come on one fourth. I don't know. I might go with the eight The reason I'm buying like hooks and weights like usually if I'm on Like I'd normally never have to buy hooks and weights had a lot of them But since I've been going to the river every time I go on the river usually break off like around five To like ten times because there's a lot of those mudfish all those jack fish in the teeth And they'll bite it and you go to hooks and just break your line. I'm like by that time. I lose like 10 10 hooks and weights a day black and red color Soft plastics in general. These are sinkers. I'm yum diggers, but then black and red I think I said yellow black and red.   Oh my god Ultra vespic roll and that black and red June bug and that black and red. I should get it Honestly, I think that's gonna do me. I really don't need to buy any more stuff I have a lot right here Actually see a few people are fishing the tournament next week If you guys haven't checked out my fishing for river monster series Go check it out It's kind of what this tackle sports for that series in the tournament some fishing out in Savannah River But go check that out. I'll leave some links in the description or you can just go to my channel and go check out that series It's gonna be really cool like cool content coming. Stay tuned. Let's go ahead and go check out So much for watching this video if you enjoyed this video, please hit the thumbs up button If you want some more like basketball videos tackle videos stuff like this, let me know in the comment section below Seriously, I appreciate you guys so much. I'm just giving some, you know Tips on like what you guys want to see like what kind of videos just leave that in the comment section below But if you could please hit the thumbs up button Thank you guys so much for the support get all this tackle gonna put it to use Catch you guys in the next video. Be sure to check out my new series like I was saying fishing for river monsters That's actually what this tackles for and you'll learn a lot of tips in the video Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll catch you guys at the next one by the way That $50 gift card turned into an $80 purchase


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at the filing status of the individual when they filed their tax return. And here are the filing status looking at the form 1040, single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of a household or qualifying surviving spouse QSS. I call this qualifying widow or widower and you will see why later on why I use this terminology. Now I just want to show you here because since I am looking at the tax return, it says here, if you check married filing separately, if you happen to be filing married filing separately, enter the name of your spouse. So the name of your spouse goes here because you're failing, you are filing separately from them, they're filing separately from you. Then it says here, if you check head of a household or qualifying surviving spouse, if you check this box or if you check this box, enter the child name of the qualifying child is a child that's not your dependent. So what happens sometime is to qualify under head of a household or qualifying surviving spouse, you have to have what's called the qualifying child. Now this qualifying child may or not be your dependent, most likely will be your dependent. But if they are not your dependent, put their name here.  We'll talk about that later. I just wanted to make point here because I'm looking at the form. So the five filing status are single, married filing jointly qualify widow or widower or what they call it the IRS qualifying surviving spouse, married filing separately head of a household. Before we proceed any further, I have a public announcement about my company Fahad Lectures dot com. Fahad Accounting Lectures is a supplemental educational tool that's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation as well as your accounting courses. My CPA material is aligned with your CPA review course such as Becker, Roger, Wiley, Gleam, Miles. My accounting courses are aligned with your accounting courses broken down by chapter and topics. My resources consist of lectures, multiple choice questions, true false questions, as well as exercises. Go ahead, start your free trial today. No obligation, no credit card required. Starting with single, who would file a single? Well, the status is available for people who are unmarried, divorced, legally divorced or legally separated as of December 31st of that year, according to the state law. So let's assume George D was divorced in January and is unmarried at the end of the year. And also George does not claim any dependent, so they don't have any child or dependent. What is the filing status of George? Well, as the end of the year, he was divorced, unmarried. Well, what's available for them is single, single, married filing jointly. This is the most advantageous. Here, both spouse must be married to each other at the end of the tax year as of December 31st. Obviously, they have to be married. That's why it's called married filing jointly. Even if you got married on December 31st, so I'll tell you my story. I get married on December 27th. And I did, you know, back then my wife did not understand the tax law, but I insisted that let's get married between Christmas and New Year's Eve, but I really had a secondary motivation is to qualify for the whole year as a married filing jointly. Well, now my wife understands the concept and she's okay with it. And they both agree to file a joint return. Why? Because they must sign the same return. That's what married filing jointly is. And in this situation, both spouses would report their combined income and claim any credits and deduction on a single tax return. They will combine them together. Filing a joint tax return would result in the lower tax liability than filing separately. Because if you're married, you have either married filing jointly or married filing separately. There's a small exception we'll talk about later, but married filing jointly is the most advantageous. Okay, so if one person during the year passes away, then for that year you are considered married for the whole year. So let's assume in year X1, we have a couple in one of the, they're married filing jointly and one of them passed away. It's still married filing jointly for that year, assuming X1. Now, we're going to have another qualifying status called qualifying widow or widower or qualifying surviving spouse. That's what the IRS likes to use. So remember in the year of death, the married filing jointly will apply because they were married and one person passed away. So year one, year X1, year of death, they are married filing jointly. Now in the following two years, which is year X2 and year X3, if the surviving spouse, now here you have to have specific rules, if the surviving spouse remain unmarried, they did not get married and the end is important, have paid over half of the cost of maintaining a household. So the surviving spouse still maintaining household and paid more than half, where a child who is his or her dependent lived for the entire for the whole year, then you would qualify under qualify widow or widower or qualify surviving spouse. So to qualify under surviving spouse, you have to maintain a home, pay more than half of maintaining home and have a dependent child who lived with you for the entire year. So what happened if you don't have a dependent child and you are unmarried?  That's it because you were married filing separately and married filing jointly year one, year two and year three. Well, you are remaining unmarried, but you don't need the child or the dependent, then you are back to single. Now temporarily, the temporary absences are acceptable if the child was in college or in medical facilities. That's fine.  So does not qualify you. So let's assume that last year the taxpayer spouse passed away and pull out the surviving spouse that not remarried during the current year. So George was Polette's husband. Polette maintained a household for Tony and Maria who are her dependent children. Well, guess what? Under those circumstances, what's her filing status in the current year? The answer is qualifying surviving spouse. Last year, George and Polette were married filing jointly. Assume that Polette did not maintain a household for any dependent child and did not remarried. Well, under those circumstances, she will be single. Now let's talk about the least advantageous filing status and that is married filing separately. Now couples will choose to file a separate return. That's up to them. That's basically an option. Why? Maybe they want to keep their financing separate for whatever reason. It's an option and if one of the couples would like to have it, that's up to them. Okay, they both have to married filing separately. If one spouse itemizes, then the other will have to itemize as well. So let's assume we have husband and wife and they choose to marry filing separately. We have the husband and we have the wife and the husband, they have a lot of deductions so they can itemize 40,000 worth of deduction. The wife does not have a lot of deduction, maybe $500. If the husband itemized, then the wife will have to itemize. So why are we saying this? Because if you don't itemize, you can take what's called the standard deduction and the standard deduction is approximately $13,000 even for a single, the lowest one. So if one itemizes, so basically the wife cannot take the $13,000 or whatever that number is happens to be the change from year to year, she will have to itemize. Now what is itemization? We'll see later on. It's happened on schedule A. It's a list of items that you can bunch together and take as a deduction in total. So if one spouse itemizes, the other one will have to itemize, must itemize. Also, if you're married filing separately, you get penalized on many levels. For example, the individuals married filing separately, they cannot take interest deduction on student loan. Capital most deduction is limited to $1,500. Usually it's $3,000 but since you're married filing separately, you get penalized. Also, you don't qualify for any earned income credit, child and dependent care expense credit. Let's talk about head of a household. Well, who qualifies? You have to be unmarried because remember, if you are married, if you are married, you have two options. You have married filing jointly or married filing separately. So head of a household, you are unmarried as of the last day of the year. There's a small exception which I mentioned earlier called abundance spouse. I will talk about on the next slide. And so you have to be unmarried and maintain a home household which were you paid more than half of the cost of maintaining that household. Now the household is basically your home, the taxpayer home, and you have at least one qualifying person. And that qualifying person is typically your dependent such as child qualifying child or maybe other relative who lived with you for more than half of the year. So notice head of a household H, they have to live with you half of the year. Qualifying window or widower. The child will have to live with you the whole year. You see, W, W qualify, window or widower the whole year. That's why you qualify, window or widower.  They have to be either your qualifying child. We're gonna look at a separate recording or qualifying relative. We're going to look at a separate recording, what's qualifying child, what's qualifying relative. Now for qualifying relative to to qualify you as a head of household, they must meet something called the relationship test. They have to be related to you. We'll talk about that later. But what's not related to you? Just kind of put it out there. Free loading boyfriend or girlfriend will not qualify.  They live there. You take care of the home. They're living there. So you maintain a household and they're living with you for more than half of the year. Well, they don't qualify you because they don't meet the relationship test. Well, let's assume you're a responsible friend or friends. You have an extra room, they lost their job and they're asking you if they can live with you. That's fine. They can live with you. But they are just friends. They don't qualify you as a head of a household for the for this qualification.  Remember head of a household is the idea as you're maintaining a home and the person that you are taking care of is living with you for more than half of the year. Your parents can live in another home. And as long as you are taking care of them, then they are considered your qualifying relative. Then that's fine. They don't have to live with you. Just it's an exception. Now head of a household filing status result in a lower tax rate and a higher standard deduction than a single. That's why you want to have this because it gives you a better tax status. Now let's talk about abandoned spouse because when I talked about head of a household, I said you have to be considered unmarried or abandoned spouse. And what is an abandoned spouse? An abandoned spouse is someone who has been separated from their spouse either physically or financially without their consent. Let's just say physically to make it easy. So basically the person disappear. Now to qualify as an abandoned spouse, a taxpayer must generally meet the following criteria. The taxpayer must have lived from their spouse for the last six months of the year. So the past six months that said you don't know where they are. You know, they're not in touch with you. The taxpayer must have paid for more than half of the cost of maintaining a household for the taxpayer.  You are maintaining a house for yourself. You're paying more than 50% of the cost and the taxpayer must have a dependent child that you can claim who lived with them for more than half of the year. Remember, this is it's going to take you to head of a household. So what are we talking about here? Here we're talking about single parents, single mom or single father who are taking care of the child or children where the other person where their spouse just basically, you know, took over. That's what we're talking about here. So remember, since the other spouse is not there, they cannot file merit filing jolly because you need to sign the return and the spouse is physically is not there. And you can, your other option is merit filing separately, but it's really disadvantageous for the taxpayer. So the Congress said, if you meet those criteria, those three criteria here, your spouse is away, you know, disappeared for the past six months, you are paying to maintain a household and you have a child in that household. Then we would allow you to qualify as a head of a household because we don't want to penalize you and force you to merit filing separately because that's your alternative. So this is why we have an exception for the abandoned spouse. So in this recording where I did, I went through the five filing status single merit filing jointly merit filing separately, head of a household qualify widow or widower or qualifying surviving spouse. The only thing I really did not get into and I said, I will look at it separate recording is what is a qualifying child and what's a qualifying relative because that's important when it comes to head of a household, when it comes to determine your dependency, your dependency and certain credit. I will do this in a separate recording. What should you do now? Go to phone health lectures and look at additional true, false, MCQs, exercises that can help you understand this important topic, the filing status of the taxpayer. Think about it. If you're taking the CPA exam and you don't understand this concept, I really don't want you to pass the exam as an individual, right? And the AI CPA will not allow you to pass. So those are easy points that you can pick up on the exam or on your enrolled agent exam. And if you're taken a tax course by all means, you want to know this and get an A. I'm always here for you invest in yourself invest in your career. Good luck and stay safe.


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I met a brother online and felt like I wanted to marry him. I tried to introduce him to my parents, but my father has turned down everyone I have suggested. I traveled to his home country and got married to him. We've now been married for a year and I'm starting to question whether my marriage is valid. Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. Praise be to him, the handsome and the beautiful. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone and no partner. He says the truth and He guides the way. I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger, may God be with him, and his family and companions. In response to the question that the sister asked, the actual and the default position is that it's not permissible for the father or the guardian to prevent his daughter from getting married to the right person when he comes about. Allah says in the Qur'an, do not prevent them. It means if the right person comes for the hand of your daughter, Allah is instructing us as fathers and as guardians not to prevent that girl from the right person. If the father chooses to be stubborn and prevents the girl from marrying the right person, then in Islam the woman will not be oppressed. The guardianship will swiftly move on to next in power, the person who is closest. I will make a detailed series on this, where I will speak about this issue in great details, who is next in Kim and who is next in power to take over. But then if she doesn't have any of that, she has no one else to take her responsibility and the dispute stands, the qadi will marry her off to the person he sees fit for her. A woman is not allowed to marry herself off if there is no problem, she finds a boy that she likes and she wants him and she's too shy to take him to her father and so she goes and she marries herself off. This is not allowed in Islam, it's prohibited. It goes against the clique of evidences and it also goes against the view of the great scholars of Islam such as Malik Ibn Anas and Shafiq Ibn Ahmed. Imam Abu Hanifa opposed the evidence in this issue with the respect and love that we have for him, we will choose the evidence over his opinion and his view. Because the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said The Prophet said, any woman who marries herself off without the permission of her guardian, then her marriage is false. It's null and void, it has no base to it. Also the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told us if he then has sexual intercourse with her that man, what's the ruling? The Prophet said If he has sexual intercourse with her in this way, then she still has the right of dowry, this woman. And her dowry will be the dowry of the women of her city and her town. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said Now my beloved brothers and sisters, the marriage in Islam is not what many people understand from it. Some people assume going to the town hall and marry yourself off in the UK system, for instance, or the American system, makes it a marriage. In Islam, there is no nikah without the permission of a guardian and two witnesses. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said There is no nikah, there's no marriage to a woman unless there is the permission of the guardian and two witnesses. There has to be two witnesses in Islam. And these two witnesses cannot be non-Muslims. There have to be two Muslims who are reliable. Also in a sister's question, she said I travelled to another country to get married to this brother. The sister should know that it is not permissible for a woman to travel to another country without her guardian with her. Or her mahram. All of those people are her mahram. She has to travel with them. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said It's not permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and believes in the day of judgment for her to travel a traveling of three days or more except that she does it with her father, her brother, her husband, her son, or someone who is her mahram. Now, some other narrations clearly categorically state that she's not allowed to travel at all whether it be a minute or two without a guardian. So, the sister has to understand that and if she did travel without a mahram, without any disputation between her and her guardian and she just ran and she got married and what she is saying is not the case then what the sister needs to remember is that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has a statement Her marriage is null and void and the qaida according to the scholars and the da'bit is that First of all, you traveled without a mahram then you get the sin for it and that is a means that you took in order to get married so you built your marriage from the beginning in disobeying Allah and then if the guardian wasn't a problem for you and you went to the other country and then you married yourself off then your nikah is null and void your issue needs to be revised by a qadi who can look deeply into the issue I only gave you an outline If you have any questions you'd like to see answered as part of this series then you can email us at questions at amau.org


Hello I'm Neil, thanks for clicking on this video. Welcome back to the Happy Hearts. Today I'm unboxing this It's labeled the Telesyn monopod for action cameras, but it's actually listed as the a-faith aluminium alloy extendable handheld selfie stick with telescoping pole for GoPro Hero 6, GoPro Hero 5, GoPro Hero 4 They've got all their bases covered basically. I've got this the GoPro Hero 5 black and I wanted a grip for this for vlogging, so let me just open it up and What I'll do is while I'm unboxing it I was looking for something really specifically good for vlogging with a GoPro Hero 5 black By the way, I know I'm not in the happy hut today. That's round back there. It's such a gorgeous day. I've Got a table and everything when it comes out the box. It comes with this paper Warning attached, which I've really carefully torn off Basically what it's saying in quite broken instructions is I don't think you can see here. There's a lock symbol There's a there's a lock if you turn it one extra turn this mini tripod locks into place But when it's stored as a handle if I try to pull it off while it's locked like that the Legs will snap if I try to open up the mini tripod. So what the warning trying to say is twist it Into its unlock position and then you can open it up easily So I hope you can see that and then And it stands, but obviously it goes down. So you've got to then put it into Lock position so it's Like that it's just that one final turn that will mean that it doesn't collapse, but if you try to fold up the Legs while it's in locks.  I don't know if you can see that That's it. It's just either open or closed but It could not be clearer that you have to have it in that unlock position to Unfold or fold up the legs and Then twist it into lock To keep them there what I was looking for wasn't a selfie stick it was a hand grip and I wanted as small a hand grip as possible and on the pictures on Amazon it looked quite large, but in Reality it's about 20 centimeters. This is rubberized and the The pole itself is Aluminium and the other thing I wanted was the tripod thread. So the a-faith comes with the GoPro Top attached that's permanently attached to the first top section of the Selfie stick. So this is my GoPro frame put the GoPro in By the way, I made a video for Screen protector put that in the description This is what it looks like. So you've got a POV of how it would look like to vlog with this the TELIS in Aluminium selfie stick. Hello. This is how the GoPro looks in the frame without a microphone but it just gives you an idea of The kind of arms length distance With this the stick has with it down at this lowest setting on the box It says that that distance is 90 centimeters and Then to bring it down Just twist and push. It's a collar You can put on the top here phone holder on and then here you can use your phone as your viewfinder for your GoPro. So what you've got now is a viewfinder that's in your field of vision and You can see what you're shooting without having to look off camera And take off the GoPro mount put on this tripod mount. Oh man, look at that. This is how well built it is The bolt has flown off the back. You have a smartphone hand grip Unfortunately the smartphone holder I Just gave it one extra turn and it just snapped clean off the This is now useless Look at that. It's just It's just a plastic Thread. This doesn't work. Don't trust this holder with your phone So this collar is I mean, it's completely. I'm just junk now that is completely useless And if you've got this far into the video Thanks so much for watching. I hope this has been helpful and this stick does seem really sturdy It does seem like it does the business. I'm going to put all of these GoPro hero 5 black vlogging setup videos into one playlist and Again, if you click on the eye in the corner along the top of the screen or look in the links in the description below You'll see a link to this stick and I'll also link to my playlist for some of the other videos. I've got an unboxing I'll be putting the microphone videos on there as soon as the mic adapter arrives and If I figure out a vlogging setup that doesn't involve a bit of plastic Then I'll put that up as well If you have made it this far into the video really appreciate it It'd be great if you could send me a little wink by giving me a thumbs up or Something else that we're doing. We're trying to get our subscribers up to the thousand Subscriber mark at the moment. It's two hundred and two You can help me go over the line of the thousand and then YouTube unlocks all these amazing Extra things I can do with the channel as soon as I hit a thousand subscribers So if you're kind enough to hit subscribe that would really help me get closer to that goal But anyway, I'll put all the links in the description if anything else comes up with this I'll put it in the description as well. This is a long video. Thanks for sticking with it this far and If it has helped or if you have any questions, leave a comment below. It'd be great to hear from you Can you please help my daddy get one thousand subscribers? Just click on his face. Thanks. Bye