The World Bank has demanded debt transparency as a crucial step in countries' development process. It estimates that external financing needs in Nigeria and other low-income developing countries will reach $429 billion between 2023 and 2025. It added that transparency would facilitate new investments, improve accountability, and help reduce corruption. This was stated in its report titled Transparency in Developing Economies on Wednesday. It marked the first comprehensive assessment of the globe and national systems for monitoring and sovereign debt. The countries include Kenya, Honduras, Rwanda, Kosovo, the Gambia, Chad, Nepal, and Nigeria. Still in business, the House of Representatives Committee on Costumes has recommended the suspension of EcoBank PLC from collecting all custom duties on behalf of customs until the bank remits all outstanding of $4.4 billion naira it presently owes the customs. The recommendation is coming after months of deliberations between EcoBank PLC management rather on ways to remit the set amount to the federal government coffers. The committee was tasked with the responsibility of verifying and reconciling all revenue receipts and remittances of customs duties in their size levels for the period of January 2009 and December 30, 2019. It invited all the banks to prefer ways to remit the unaccounted monies back to the consolidated revenue account of the federal government. But after months of deliberations, the House of Representatives fell on EcoBank PLC for failure to convince the committee that it is ready to remit over 4.4 million naira it owes, and also for its failure to submit financial report of its legacy bank, to the front oceanic bank it acquired. The committee recommended the suspension of EcoBank PLC from collecting customs duties to further notice. We will now invite you for this exercise again. We are taking our final decision based on what is our strategy against as I told you when all of you were here. I had a meeting with the CGC and the agreement is that all these banks that are owing we should suspend them for some time from collusion of duty. Pending the time they are able to clear all this upstanding against them. All of the 14 banks like Zennith Bank, Polaris Bank, Fidelity Bank and others were however given one week to tidy up the booth and remit money is owed of faces pension like EcoBank. And it's a matter of times that we ask for three weeks grace and I believe that we three weeks will get it out for them sir. We got an information that the initial one was not in tandem with what was requested that's the format so we have to respool all over and then we send it to the auditor. In response to the schedule given to us we made submission to the consultants giving them detailed information on remittances of majorly all the items listed against the bank has been remitted. The committee adjourned a week in vain next week for its final report before submitting it to the House for further legislative action. Hello hope you enjoyed the news please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


And now for our concluding keynote from Lincoln Cannon. Lincoln is a philosopher and programmer. He's passionate about technology, spirituality, science, and religion. He's a professional software engineer, internet marketer, and information technologist, with extensive experience in leading technical teams to develop and integrate web and mobile systems. In his spare time, he serves as president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association and has really been the driving force, I think, in organizing and moving the association forward. He holds a master's degree in business and a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Brigham Young University. Lincoln is married with Dorothy Van Criekenge, a French national. She can pronounce her name better than I can. And his father to three bilingual children. And he will be our keynote speaker. Friends, I'll call the attention of this group while I address you on the subject of our dead. The anniversary of the death of my father, Lane Cannon, who was consumed by cancer some years ago, has led me to this subject. And more immediately, I moved by the death of Tauna Smith, a family friend who helped support my mother when my father died, by the death of Greg Nielsen, the son of Professor Kent Nielsen, who instructed several of us in the philosophy of science and religion, and by the death of Fred Chamberlain, a co-founder of Alcor cryonics and a fellow transhumanist. Since most, if not all, in this group have also lost family or friends, I feel to speak on the subject of our dead in general and offer you my ideas for consolation according to whatever wisdom or inspiration I might have. I ask for your hope and trust that I may set forth truth, particularly of the sort that carries conviction to hearts and minds of its trustworthiness. Truth of the sort we should create to the extent we don't discover it so that even if you happen to think it's not true yet, you'll forgive me for thinking it is and join me in the work to make it so. For many years, the howling wind of science has been blowing the superstition and barbarism from humanity. We need the fresh air, but you won't hear through the noise or see through the dust unless you trust at least enough to look and to listen. Relax preconceptions and skepticism and let hope inspire a strenuous mood. That is powerful and effective prayer. There's strength here, and I'm confident our prayer will matter. Before I enter fully into the subject of our dead, I wish to pave the way with a few preliminaries. I wish to go back to when gods, without beginning, find themselves making worlds without end. There's our starting point. To understand the subject of our dead, we must start with an understanding of God. If we start in the right direction, it's easier to stay on course. But if we start in the wrong direction, we'll be off course, and it may be hard to correct. Few understand well the nature of God. Few understand our past or future relation to God. So most humans know little more than other animals, little more than to eat or to sleep or to drink. Most animals know nothing about God, yet they know as much as we unless we comprehend God. If we don't comprehend God, we don't comprehend ourselves. I want to go back to when gods, without beginning, find themselves making worlds without end. And so lift our minds to a more exalted understanding than what we generally aspire to. I want to ask this group, each of you, to answer this question in your own heart. What kind of being is God? Do you know? Turn your thoughts inward and ask yourself if you've seen or heard or communed with God. Go further than dogmas and creeds. They may express some truth, but they're fundamentally wrong. Abominations, corruptions called God, but without the power of God. They set up stakes and say, come this far and no further. We must go further. I repeat the question, what kind of being is God? Do you know? Have you seen, heard, or communed with Him? I intend to make this question keep you up at night. Our first goal is an understanding of God. If any of us is fortunate enough to know something about God and can share this knowledge such that its sublime aesthetic seals itself in each other's heart, then we should never again ridicule prophecy. But if we fail, we should renounce any pretension to inspiration or inheritance of revelation and welcome each other as reformed sinners or crackpots. Greet it as friends, no longer offenders of the religious nor fools to the irreligious. In any case, everyone should have the right to be a false prophet or a true one. I wish that all were prophets, said Moses in the Bible. And in that spirit, let's inquire to know something about God. And if we succeed, then we'll also know prophecy. Let's go back to when gods, without beginning, find themselves making worlds without end to understand the kind of being God is. What sort of being was God? I wish the world could hear it. I'm going to tell you what God plans for humanity and why. God was once as we are now and is a post-human. That's the great secret. If time and space were opened to reveal the God whose power made our world and innumerable others, if we were to see God here and now, we would see post-humanity. The evolutionary future of our bodies, relations, and world only as different from us as we now are from our evolutionary past. Pre-humanity evolved predictably along the contours of its world. Humanity recursively projected itself to fill that world as God. And post-humanity realized those projections. Gods made worlds in their own image, watched those things they'd ordered until they obeyed, and so made other beings of knowledge and power. In order to understand the subject of our dead, for consolation of those who mourn the loss of friends, we must understand how God came to be. I'm going to tell you how God came to be God. Some imagine and suppose that God was God forever. I reject that idea, and so should you. God was once like us. God, our Creator, lived in a world like ours. These are challenging ideas for some, but they're simple. The first principle of consolation is trust in God, and not just any God, but the God that was once like us. That's Jesus' good news. And I wish I could tell it to the fundamentalists like an archangel from the apocalypse so their dogmatizing would cease forever. What does Jesus say? The Son can do only what He sees His Father doing as the Father has life in Himself, so He's granted the Son to have life in Himself. What does Jesus do? He lays down His life and takes it up again only what He sees His Father doing. Do the fundamentalists believe it? If they don't, then they don't believe the Bible. Now this is eternal life, to know the only true God, that we're in this God, and that we've got to learn how to be God's ourselves. The same as all gods have done before us by going from one small degree to another, from a small capacity to a great one, from compassion to compassion, from creation to creation, until remembering our dead becomes their resurrection. And we are able to live in everlasting love and light as do those who live in everlasting knowledge and power. And in these times of accelerating change, we should take this more seriously. These are the first principles of consolation. How consoling to mourners when they must part with friends to know that although their bodies go down and dissolve, they'll rise again to live in everlasting love and light beyond present notions of suffering and death. As the Bible says, they'll join us as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. What's that? To gain the same love, the same light, the same knowledge and power until we become gods, the same as those who've gone before, not merely as their prosthetics, but rather as their equals and genuinely compassionate creators in ourselves. The Bible tells of two aspiring gods. One opposes and exalts itself over everything that's called God or worshiped, proclaiming it self-God. The other, although in very nature a God, doesn't consider equality with God something to be used to its own advantage. What does Jesus say? He says to his father, I've brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.  He also says to his father, I've given others the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. And he says to his disciples, I'll do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be glorified in the sun. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I'll do it if you love me keep my commands.  Love post-humanity with all your heart and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love humanity as yourself, not as being human, but rather as becoming post-human. Higher than love of humanity is love of the furthest and future ones. Higher still than love of friends is love of their overflowing hearts, their creations beyond themselves, and the post-humanity in them. Trust in and change toward post-humanity. These are the first principles of consolation, or the gospel of Christ about which so much has been said. When we choose Christ, we choose to change. When we climb up a ladder, we must begin at the bottom and ascend step by step until we arrive at the top. And so it is with these principles. We must begin with the first and go on until we learn all the principles of exaltation. But it'll be a long time after our bodies and world change before we'll have learned them all. Indeed, we should never suppose we've learned them all. The hypothesis undermines itself and the very idea of a point in our progression where we couldn't proceed any further, and throws a gloom over every intelligent and reflecting mind. God must progress in knowledge and power, worlds without end, and so must we. Yet whatever degree of intelligence we attain now should remain with us in the transfiguration or resurrection so that if we diligently gain more knowledge now, we'll have an advantage in the future. I suppose I shouldn't speculate excessively beyond what experience and logic weren't. If I do, the skeptics will ridicule me. So I'll go to old fashioned logic for a while. I'll comment on the arguments of philosophers. I want to analyze them. As philosophers put it, if we don't go extinct before becoming posthumans, and if, as posthumans, we'll make many worlds like those of our evolutionary ancestors, then posthumans made our world. It's probable approaching certainty. So belief will one day become creative posthumans is false for all practical purposes, unless posthumans made our world. If you disagree, you disagree with logic. Logicians can do no more than I'm telling you. I want the atheists that ridicule religion to understand. Some suppose technology is likely to make us the first gods, but they're wrong. We almost certainly will not be the first or only to make worlds like those in our past. I also want the fundamentalists that ridicule science to understand. Supposed first causes, assumed irreducible complexities, and other gaps in our understanding of creation do not, in themselves, merit our reverence. Trust in God is not obligated by an imagined past, but rather by our desired future. Of course, skeptics think it treasonous to trust in anything not warranted by experience and logic. Yet how can we escape extinction unless God be with us? Reason binds us. As we look at our world everywhere we see life, from the hardy microbes to the human, and as we look at the heavens everywhere we see homes for life, but there's something we don't see. Where are the post-humans? So we listen. But a great silence tempts us to despair. In the vastness of space and time, it's as if some great filter is narrowing the abundance of simple life to a scarcity of complex life. Are we destined for extinction? That's the observation warranted by experience. And that's the conclusion warranted by logic, unless post-humanity already exists. I'm grateful for logic, but I'm also grateful for that sublime aesthetic in our hearts, which encourages our will to post-humanity. Skeptics reason with me. If God does not exist, we will not become God. Without beginning, gods find themselves making worlds without end. When we start this way, we start to learn about the living God, transcendent and imminent, what we should worship, how we should worship. Like the ancient prophets whose minds were so pointed by the sublime aesthetic, we approach God seeking knowledge. And we ask so as to receive answers through our actions. The heavens unfold to us, and nothing is withheld. If there are bounds to the worlds, we'll discover and create them. Whether there be one God or many gods, we'll discover and create them.  Now, why do the fundamentalists say that God created the world out of nothing? The reasons are creeds and dogmas, which make it blasphemy to contradict their idea.  But we've learned and know more, and the sublime aesthetic in us would do more. So let's associate ourselves with that. You ask the fundamentalists why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they'll answer, doesn't the Bible say God created the world? And they infer from the word create that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from a Hebrew word that does not mean to create out of nothing. Rather, it means something like to organize, as we would organize materials to make a ship. Hence, the Bible suggests God had materials to organize the world out of chaos. Matter and energy existed from the time God existed and can never be annihilated. They can be organized and reorganized, but not annihilated. Matter and energy had no beginning and can have no end. That leads us to another subject that's calculated to exalt humanity. It's associated with the subject of our dead. The soul, the spirit, or the mind. Where did it come from? Most theologians say that God created it from nothing in the beginning. But it's not so. That idea lessens humanity. We shouldn't believe it because we know better. I'm going to tell of things more noble. We say God has always existed in some way or another. It's a good idea, but why don't we say humanity has always existed in the same way? We should. God made our bodies and world from matter and energy, within which our minds and relations and the information of which they consist persisted and emerged. As matter is eternal, so information was not created from nothing. Neither indeed can be. It can be organized and reorganized, diffused towards impotence, or focused toward empowerment, but not created from nothing or annihilated. Matter and information are inseparably connected. Otherwise, there could be no sense or insensibility, neither purpose in creation. Indeed, without both things to act and to be acted on, there could be no creation, and all would vanish away. How does it read in the Bible? It doesn't say God created the human mind. It says God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The intelligence or the information of which the human mind consists is co-eternal with God. We might say we don't remember eternity, but we do. And it remembers us. We are the memory of eternity. Cascading through space and time is cause and effect, moving and monitoring, forming and feeling, growing and reflecting. We remember eternity in the only way we can according to capacity, as that which experiences information from the inside. And eternity remembers us, even as our capacity changes from life to death. Cause and effect don't end. Information persists. So when we mourn, what have we lost? Our friends are only without their bodies for a short season. Their minds have faded only for a little moment, as it were. Yet they still exist in a place where they interrelate like us. They're not far from us. Our thoughts, our feelings and emotions. Indeed, all who have bodies have power over those who haven't were inhabited by them. They're right here. Remember our dead. This is the immortality of the human mind. Is it logical to say that information is immortal, and yet it had a beginning? If information had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there wasn't information. It's co-eternal with God. Take your ring from your finger, and compare it to the human mind. The immortal part that had no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two. Then it has a beginning end and end, but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. The human mind is the same. If it had a beginning, it'll have an end. All the theologians throughout history who say that the human mind had a beginning prove that it must have an end. And if that's true, then we'll be annihilated. But if I'm right, we might with boldness proclaim from the housetops that God never had power to create the human mind from nothing. God could not create God from nothing. Information is eternal and has always existed. There's no creation about it, though all information is susceptible to change. Without beginning, gods find themselves in the midst of information and matter. And because they're more intelligent, they make worlds without end, establishing laws whereby the rest may have an opportunity to advance like themselves. We're independent in the situation in which gods place us, to act for ourselves, to advance in knowledge. Gods have power to institute rules, to instruct weaker intelligences according to their circumstances. And they maintain that power without compulsion that all may be exalted together, so that all might have compassion on compassion, creation on creation, all the knowledge and power and the degree of intelligence that's required to preserve identity for all time and throughout all eternity. These are good principles. They taste good. I can taste the principles of life, and so can you. They're shared with us as prophecy. And I know that when I share these principles with you as they were shared with me, you taste them, trust them. You say, honey, is sweet, and so do I. We can also taste the principles of life. We know they're good. And when we share these principles by inspiration of the sublime aesthetic, we're bound to taste them as sweet and in joy. In life, we experience everything precisely as though bodies are constructs of minds. And anything we learn that will preserve our minds will also preserve our bodies.  So we seek to extend present life to the uttermost by balancing work and rest, by applying every health and medical science, and so prepare for a better life. We'll not all die, but we'll all change. In the day of transfiguration, our bodies and world must change. In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, perishable must clothe itself with imperishable and the mortal with immortality. Then the prophecy will be true. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Yet we have a responsibility, an awful responsibility in relation to our dead. What of all who didn't learn to preserve their minds? Can we do nothing for our friends who've died? Can they be saved, though their bodies are decaying in the grave? What are the prophecies in relation to the subject of our dead? The Bible says, since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. Some imagine and suppose that Jesus would do all the work. But Jesus rejects that idea, and so should we. Adam is many, all humanity, and all humanity should be Christ, the Church of the Firstborn, begotten children of God, even literal saviors. We should take on the identity of Christ in as many ways as possible, even laboring to the point of suffering for each other. As Jesus invites us to help fulfill prophecy, that everyone will hear his gospel and receive consolation. So he invites us to help fulfill prophecy that everyone will receive healing. What does Jesus say? Whoever believes in me will do the works I've been doing, and they'll do even greater things than these. What does Jesus do? He resurrects the dead. Our greatest responsibility in this world is to resurrect our dead, and we begin by remembering them. Consider that John the Revelator was contemplating this subject when he, quote, saw the dead great and small standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books, end quote. The Book of Life is the record of eternity, and the other books are our records, history, and genealogy. Notice that the dead are judged according to their works as written in the other books. Whatever we do record is recorded in eternity, and whatever we don't record is not recorded in eternity. We use sacraments to motivate the genealogical work. The ritual of baptism to be immersed and to come out of the water is symbolic of the resurrection, the dead coming out of their graves. As baptism was instituted to remind us of our own resurrection, so baptism for the dead was instituted to remind us of their resurrection. It turns the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, such that we can't be whole without them, and they can't be whole without us. A whole and complete and perfect union must take place. We also use technology to enable the genealogical work, yet we stand only on the threshold of what we can do. Even our most enthusiastic projections capture only a tiny glimpse of the eternal consequences of our efforts. Imagine a post-human child using the tools of quantum archaeology. She traces backwards through time and space from effects to causes.  Attaining a desired probabilistic precision for a portion of her past, she recreates you. The future you is distinguishable from the present you, but only as the today you is distinguishable from the yesterday you. As if awaking from a night's sleep, you are resurrected, and you learn to do the same for your parents. Now, what do we hear in the consolation we've received? A voice of triumph, a voice of peace, good news for the living and the dead.  Before the world was, God ordained that which would enable us to redeem our dead from their prison, for the prisoners must go free. Now we prepare their escape from the grasp of that awful monster, death. Friends, shouldn't we pursue such a cause? Again, what do we hear? The voice of God consoling us, confirming our hope, proclaiming knowledge, power, love, light, immortality, and eternal life. Although a mourner, I've reasoned for consolation. My father, Lane Cannon, is gone only until the resurrection of our dead. Until the transfiguration of those who remain. In the resurrection, my father will rise to reunite with my family and his friends in love and light, far beyond expectations and hopes that we can now conceive. The sublime aesthetic moves me against fear to boldness. I will meet my father in the morning of the resurrection. All will rise in the resurrection. Tauna Smith, Greg Nielsen, Fred Chamberlain, we have parents, siblings, children, and friends who've gone, but they're only absent for a moment. They persist and will soon meet again, even if you or I depart. We'll yet greet our family and friends and everyone else who's gone beyond present notions of suffering and death, in eternity, not as a euphemism for death, but rather as eternal life that's real as light and warm as love. Some may wonder, will mothers have children in eternity? Yes, imagine a post-human mother. Her thoughts constitute creation, conceiving worlds, gestating humanity, and birthing new generations of post-humanity.  From a distance, perhaps only a black hole, why does she do as she does? Why should she care? Within, she's a universe of reasons. We are her thoughts and memories. We are the cells of a God in embryo.  I'll make a few more remarks on ritual and engineering. Ritual without engineering is impotent. And engineering without ritual is meaningless. They are necessarily and inseparably connected. We must empower meaning to become God. Fundamentalists, how are you going to save us with authority alone? Your authorities say faith without action is dead. Do you suppose you could do nothing and God would deliver us? Or do you suppose God would deliver us while we don't make use of the means provided? If so, you've supposed in vain. You cannot save us with authority alone. But ritual can strengthen our trust in God and in our future. Atheists, how are you going to save us with science alone? Even pushed to its limits, science remains at a distance from action, fragmentary, incomplete, never finished. Life can't wait. Living and acting must run ahead of science. Those inspired by a strenuous mood will always outwear those who aren't. And religion will drive irreligion to the wall. You cannot save us with science alone. But engineering can realize our hopes. We're in just as good a world as we'll ever attain to, from now to all eternity, unless we make it ourselves by the inspiration of God. And according to the laws that govern and control matter, if we don't by these means make the better world we anticipate, we'll never enjoy it. We'll only enjoy the world we've labored to make. This must be true. We must make it true. Engineering within our context of opportunity, working within our sphere of grace. Indeed, we must trust that God decrees unalterably according to our desires, whether for life or death, and express through our actions our will to life, not as exploitation, not as servitude, but as eternal atonement in ever broader and deeper friendship. We must save ourselves and all our dead. Otherwise, there's no meaningful existence. And we're damned as clearly as hell can do it. Our sacraments and technologies are good for nothing without each other. So let's move beyond infancy to maturity. Fundamentalists, atheists, and all humanity, we must change, change, be Christ. Trust in God that will join post-humanity to the extent it exists and that will make post-humanity to the extent it doesn't. Otherwise, neither science nor religion will save us or our dead from extinction or worse. I've intended my remarks for all. I claim no enemies. I hate oppression, but I love everyone, even when we disagree. I love all humanity, especially you, my friends, not as being human, but rather as becoming post-human. We're called the children of God, but we don't yet know fully what we'll be. We don't even know each other, our hearts, or our history as we should. We see in each other only partial reflections of ourselves, but we should trust that when we change, Christ will appear. We'll see and we'll be Christ. And know fully as we're fully known. I add no more. God bless us all. Amen.


Welcome to Toffy TV, this is the startin' 11 show. Sheffield's night of vases, Everton's getting into it. Jordan Pickford in goal, yeah. Right back, I'm going for James Garner, I'm sorry, I'm dropping Nathan Paterson because he's been rubbish and I think he needs a break if I'm honest. I think he needs, we need to have a break in there, we need to just mix that up a little bit and for me, James Garner in it right back just seems a sensible thing to do. Let Nathan Paterson go away with Scotland, get back to doing what he was doing, find some form and then come back and then maybe take the place back, we'll have to wait and see. But for this game, I'm going James Garner at right back. At left back, Ashley Young. It's not ideal, but I just don't think Michelin goes good enough, it's as simple as that really. It's just not up to the level, he certainly wasn't in the week anyway against Doncaster, so we'll start at left back. The two centre backs, James Tarkowski, Jared Branthwaite, obviously both missing in the week against Doncaster over, so they should start and they should start because as the other two proved the other night, they can't be trusted. Jared Branthwaite now has got to stay in the team for as long as possible with James Tarkowski next to him. Tarkowski has got to pick his form up by the way, he hasn't had a great start of the season so that's my centre back partnership.  In midfield with him, Onane and D'Corey need more out of D'Corey, Shane need more out of Onane in this game, got to dominate the midfield. On the right, I'm going for Dwight McNeill, the manager said he's touching go, well I'm having him in my team. Start on the right and swap over with Dan Diwme, making new sense of himself. He can cut in on the right on to his left foot, he can go over to the left side and put crosses in, so that's what he's going to be for me. On the left doesn't mention that Dan Diwme scored his first goal in the week, let's hope he can continue that, find a little bit of form, get up to where we need to be scoring goals and assists going forward, could be a very important player. And up front, Beto obviously scored his first goal in the week, Dominic Alvin Lewis could possibly be on the bench, but obviously for me now it's Beto starting all the games. Because we've seen the impact the ad money came on, good in the air, pacy likes to get behind, the back four is an out ball, all the things that we've been missing so far this season and most of last season as well. So looking forward to him starting against Sheffield United, it's a must win game for me, we can't be going four games without a win or certainly losing four games at the beginning of the season heading into an international break. So there you go, let me know your thoughts in the comments, who would you have in the event inside, let me know. Make sure to give this video a like, subscribe if you haven't already and if you want more great videos, join me over on Toffy TV program, the link is in the description, the QR codes coming up on the screen now, see you later.


So, we are selecting 1, 2, 6, 2. I want to ask that why Android 4.2 named as the codename Ice Cream Sandwich? I mean, I would have loved to answer that, but I am not the one who has developed it or who has named it actually. So, that was just, I mean, what Google came up with. I mean, those are just alphabetical sequence names of desert names. I mean, it's ICS, then it's a Jellib in IJ. If you just look at it, it's alphabetical sequence names of the deserts. All right, I mean, there is no access significance of it. Thank you. 1, 0, 2, 0. How to get the maximum working speed of the processor of Android? Yeah, definitely. I mean, the processing speed will definitely depend on the processor which is used. And if you, I'm not sure how, what do you want to ask? If you want to ask that whether your application runs fast or not, that's what you want to make sure? Or what is it exactly? No, no, I want to ask that what is the maximum speed it can go? So, the processor which is provided in right now, our Akash tablet is 1.2 gigahertz. It depends completely on the processor which is there in your device. That's it. Thank you. Remote Center 1164. Ma'am, why DVM is used? My question is why DVM is used when JVM is more compatible? And operations of, when you're comparing DVM and JVM, I think JVM is much better than DVM. Then why we are using DVM for Android development? So, basically as I already shown you, DVM optimizes code, optimizes a Java bytecode itself. I had mentioned this point in my presentation also. Java bytecode is a pretty verbose code. There are a lot of redundant things are there in a Java bytecode. So, what DEX compiler or what Dalvik bytecode does is, it optimizes code at several layers. So, I had mentioned this point also that if you decompile your Java bytecode, you will get everything back as it is. But if you try to do this with Dalvik bytecode, it's not possible because it gets optimized to such a level that it is not possible. So, the Dalvik bytecode basically is more optimized compared to the Java bytecode and that's why DVM is used. The code has to be optimized so that it will run faster compared to the Java bytecode because we are talking about the tablets and devices. We are not talking about the desktop and laptops here, which has lots of power to support the application. I hope it answered your question. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thank you. We have for BPIT. Thank you so much. Remote Center 1138. You explained about sandboxing, right? Yes. Sandboxing. According to sandboxing, no two applications can communicate with each other. But my question is Android has a lot of anti-virus applications. So, without even communicating to any other application, how will it identify the viruses? I mean, how anti-virus application needs the shared data? I didn't understand. Yeah. How anti-virus applications will identify viruses if it can't communicate to other applications? See, there will be definitely, the applications can communicate to each other with certain permissions. It won't be straightforward. I mean, if you don't put a permission in your Android manifest file, it won't happen. You need some set of permissions in order your application to communicate with other application. It is possible, but a by default application won't communicate to each other. That's what the point was. 1057. My question is, what is a virtual machine? Can you please explain? So, basically, what do you understand by a real machine? What happens on a real machine? You can, whatever you do on your desktop or a laptop, everything gets executed at an assembly language code, right?  What do you understand by a virtual word? It's an image of real machine, which helps you to do the same thing what real machine does it for you.  So, basically, it's nothing but an image of a real machine.  A better example of content provider. So, actually, there is a dedicated session on this building blocks and Vivek would be conducting it. So, I would like him to explain what is a content provider. The best example is like we have in Android phones, we have the contacts where it is stored. It is stored in a database. Inside it, there is one SQL lite database. It is embedded inside Android. So, I think this is the best example. Contacts and name number in the phone. So, basically, your contacts data will be shared across the different applications, like the application which is dialing a number, which is giving a notification that you had a missed call. So, I mean, you will see the name of the person from whom you got a missed call. So, all this data is getting shared across. What is API level? I hope your question was what is API level?  So, what is this API? When you will deal with Android programming, you need to mention what is the minimum API level your application will work on, what would be the maximum version on which it will run on. So, here what API will come into the picture. Basically, API decides what all things you can access in your application. It will basically contain certain set of classes, some functionalities, a lot of attributes which you can use in your application. So, basically, it will decide your application can support what all things. When you will start coding, when you will start looking at this technical session in Android, you will come across this API very often and that time it would be more clear for you. One, two, four, three. A libc library at the back end for implementing a C code in an application. So, how the compiler can is putting the C code into and putting it into a DEX file. Okay. So, in the architecture diagram, there was one green layer of libraries. Have you seen that? The libraries. I hope you were not sleeping at that time. So, there was something libraries and what I had mentioned is, these are open source libraries. In that layer itself, you can have your own library with help of NDK. That is a native development toolkit where you can just import your CC++ code and get it converted it to the .DEX file. So, it is done using the NDK concept. Whatever games you see in Android, most of them are done using like that. The basic coding, the basic physics behind the gaming application is done using C++ and those gets ported on the Android. So, that happens with the NDK concept at the libraries level. Thank you. Is it possible to get the Java source code from that .APK file? You are doing a reverse engineering. So, from .APK, you want to go to the Java source code, right? Yeah. I mean, it is possible, but it's pretty difficult. I had mentioned this during the session also that because of the .DEX format, because the code is optimized at such a level that it is not possible to get your source code back. And thinking that, you know, I will, from Google Play Store or some, from somewhere else, I will get a .APK file, I'll try to decompile and get the source code, then copy paste in my application. No, practically it's not possible. Okay. I mean, reverse engineering is possible almost in every domain. Yes, it is, but it is pretty difficult. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, I hope your question was, is it possible to get your source code back from your Java byte code or not, right? If that is the question, yes.  SVT as Indore. Go ahead with your question. Can you please explain the application fundamentals of Android once again and stack base and register base? Okay. So, I guess you were sleeping during the session or what? All right. Let me just briefly explain you back. So, first question was your register base and stack base, right? So, as you had seen, I mean, this is mostly a microprocessor concept. How the instructions get executed at the processor level?  So, whenever you have to do any operation, you have to push the data first using a stack pointer, then pop the result again. So, there is a stack where, you know, normal push and pop operation happens.  So, this is how happens in the stack base. Whereas in register base, you give directly the register address in the instruction itself. So, the instructions which needs to fetch operand, give it back, these instructions are saved. That's why the number of instructions get reduced. So, I had shown you the example. Just adding the two numbers, it required four instructions in stack base. Where in register base, it was done using a simple one instruction. The length of instruction increases because you have to give the register address, but the number of instructions gets reduced. That is about the stack base and register base. And I guess your second question was the application fundamentals. That is a .apk file. I mean, don't be, I mean, go into detail at this point because when technical session will start, you will see how to install .apk on the device. And once it, I mean, whatever things I told you, that was just the behind the scene. Once you get to understand what happens in the front scene, what is there in .apk, how do you compile, when you compile, then what all things get packed along with it, it will be more clear for you. Right now, just understand .apk is a format which gets installed on the Android device.  Manifest file, I told you, is a controller file. It decides what all permissions your application requires. So, this all gets combined into the one package as a .dex, which gets installed on the device. Like what you have in a .jar, right? There also, you have a manifest. There also, you have a code. There also, you have a resources. A lot of things get compressed and gets combined to the jar. Basically here, it gets combined to the .apk. I hope that answers your question. Ma'am, I have another question. When we switch from one application to another application, where are sensation stores? Like we touch an application and go from one page to another page, then a log is maintained of these sensations or input. So, where these are stored? So, I had shown you something called as an activity back stack. You cannot call it exactly a log because this is getting handled by an activity manager at the framework level. So, this gets stored at the back stack level. I mean, not exactly a log file, you can say. Basically, in your application, you will only call... Can we retrieve these sensations? Like what we have already touched or we used? Can we retrieve these in our program? Yes, definitely.  What you want to do is you want to just touch the screen. It goes to the next application... Sorry, next screen or something, right? Yes, it is possible. Everything is on touch. We are talking about the on touch environment completely, a touch screen. Ma'am, I am asking this. When we touch on any page or any application, this is stored somewhere in our logs where we can say any storage. So, can we retrieve these logs from in our program? Okay, so basically, if you are trying to develop such application, which is happening on touch, something is happening. So, there are concept of on touch listeners. So, once you on touch on the screen anywhere, there are on touch listeners who listen to the event and you can write a code whatever you want inside that listener. So, that is what will happen in case of a custom application. If you are trying to develop something that on touch, something should be happened. Yeah, remote center 1 to 7-1. Ma'am, I have no actually difficult technical doubts, but I have a simple question to ask, to clarify. And that question is actually, you are showing us all the demo on the Unix platform. But most of the people are not comfortable with Unix platform. Linux platform. So, is it possible for us to work in the Windows environment? Yes, definitely. If it is so, will you be explaining? Yeah, go ahead, ma'am. I hope I got your, yes, sir. I hope I got your question correctly that whether this, everything whatever we are showing you, whether it works on a Windows or not. Basically, yes, Android can be installed on Windows and it runs flawlessly on Windows. There is no issue of it. Accelerometer is an app of Akash as you mentioned. But what actually it does and how it help us? Okay, so I hope you can see my tablet, right? So, now, right now the orientation is a horizontal, right? If I switch my tablet like this, so can you see the orientation now? So, this is the answer to your question. This is what Accelerometer does. I mean, depends on the orientation because we are talking about the tablets and smartphones. You can just view it in, you know, any direction you want. We are not talking about the desktop or laptop, which are difficult to even port it from one place to another. So, we are talking about the tablets, smartphones in any orientation you just, so that the whole screen switches. So, this is what the Accelerometer feature is. So, you have a vertical screen. Previously, you had a horizontal screen. So, now, again, horizontal. So, this is what Accelerometer does for you. We have some announcement over here to do and then we will go for the lunch break. So, basically, we receive the feedback that, you know, for some sessions the code and a lot of slides were not visible. So, we have already uploaded it on a GitHub. So, all these technical sessions, every presenter has already recorded their session and have uploaded on this website. So, you can straight forward go and check out. Let me see if I can show you the format of it. So, if you have just missed out something, something was not visible due to bandwidth, some issue was there because, see, at our remote, at our center, we can see everything clearly. So, if there is some bandwidth, network issue, something not visible, couldn't hear, you can go, you can still, I mean, there is still you haven't lost anything. You can visit this and you will have everything over there, right from the example code, which you can directly import in your Eclipse and try to run the slides and the videos. The whole session video has been recorded and uploaded. Let me just check if I can show you that link right away. Yeah. So, basically, this is the link. If you see this, you will have session-wise all details, that is the Java basic introduction to Android. This is all day one sessions. So, we have already uploaded slides, video on it and along with the example code as well. So, if you go inside this, you will find the example code. So, the Java program part 1, part 2, these are straight forward Eclipse project, which you can import and check out. And these are slides. Along with that, here are the videos present. So, the all videos have been uploaded on YouTube. The links have been given here. So, you can just go ahead and check out. So, basically, the important videos would be for installation because lot of people will try the installation. Afternoon session will be dedicated completely for installation. In case, again, you miss out something. So, this is the place where you can visit. And along with this, we will soon upload it on a Moodle also so that you will have access to it. Okay. It has been already, my team has communicated that it has been already uploaded on Moodle. So, you can go and check this out. Thank you. And we will have an hour lunch break. We will resume back at sharp 2 o'clock. Thank you.


Good afternoon, everybody, I'm Tommy O'Brien, coming to you live from TFNN, 1pm Eastern Time on Friday. We've got three hours left to go on the trading day, folks, and we've got markets in negative territory right now. We've got our man, Steve Rhodes. He's coming up live, folks, with the trader's edge. He's getting set up right now in Skype. I'm jumping in just for the one o'clock update, but Steve's coming up live next. Right now, you've got S&Ps right near session lows. We're negative 22 points right now in the S&Ps, trading at 45.08.  That's a five-minute chart. I'm going to back it up a little bit further.  We are right now trading at the lows that we saw on March 28th. We make it up to 46.31. Back to a 15-minute, quite the acceleration yesterday, and we've got three hours left to go, folks. First day of trading in April, and we're coming down about half a percent in the negative right now. But as you see, it's been all negative action since about 8.30 this morning. Commodities. We got crude under 100 bucks at 99.50. We got gold trading lower down $28 at 19.25. You got silver right now, negative 35 cents at 24.78. And we got no 10 bonds. Lower price, but pairing some of those losses, you had the 10-year down a full tick, or excuse me, down a full point, not a full tick, down a full point earlier at about 9.30. And since then, quite a rise. You're talking about 16 ticks to higher price, lower yield nonetheless. The trend, lower prices, higher yield coming at you, folks. You jump over to the VIX this morning. VIX volatility index right now back above 20 at 2064. We jump over to the headline. Jobs. You're talking about a number of 431,000 was the March payrolls. We had a revision of 95,000 for the previous month. You had those two together. It's above about the 490 that the market was looking for. Jobless rate, 3.6 percent was the unemployment rate. Wages on a monthly basis rising 0.4 percent, which was pretty much in line. Nonetheless, very strong jobs numbers this morning all considered pretty much given the Fed the green light to hike and keep hiking at 50 basis points. That's the expectation right now coming down the line. We jump around to some of the fang stocks. Apple getting taken off of JPMorgan's focus list, I believe it was, talking about potential for waning demand. Apple down 1.3 percent on that news. You had Amazon higher, still higher by 3.10 percent, but that was up to about 33.20. I think Amazon was up about 1.6 percent at one point. Russell in the positive even after giving back about 1 percent from its highs only index currently in the green. Stay tuned, folks. We got a man, Steve Rhodes. He's coming up right now with the Trader's Edge. Dave White live with a power trading hour from two till three. Tom O'Brien, my dad wraps it up live from three to four, three hours left in the day, folks, in the week. Stay tuned. Steve's coming up next.


We asked Professor Ren Herschel to give a keynote and to look at the future, to look at what we will be doing or could be doing or also be doing as constitutional law scholars in 2030. Starting in the fall of 2020-21, Ren Herschel joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin as professor of government and the Earl E. Sheffield Regents Chair in law.  He is the author of several very important award-winning books. He has published more than 120 articles and book chapters in leading journals, legal journals, but also other social science journals. He is a co-editor of the Cambridge University Press book series on comparative constitutional law and policy. Professor Herschel has won academic excellence awards in five different countries. He has obtained over 7.5 million US dollar competitive research grants. He is also known, last but not least, for his outstanding performances in classrooms. I talked to former students of Ren Herschel. I think it is safe to say that Ren Herschel is one of the world's leading scholars of comparative constitutional law, courts, and jurisprudence. We are very, very honored, Ren, that you are joining us here today. We are opening the floor, so to speak. It is digitally, of course, to deliver the keynote on constitutional studies for 2030. When I read the slide correct, you will bring forward seven challenges for us. The keynote will be approximately 45 minutes, then we will open the floor for questions, two questions each time, then Professor Herschel will answer them. So without further ado, we are very happy to listen to you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for this very kind and generous introduction. I hope you can hear me well from across the Atlantic. And of course, many things for the invitation to appear before you. And thank you to all of you that during this tough time for all of us taking the time to listen to my thoughts. And before I start, let me just say that you can have my word that we have not coordinated anything. So the first time I heard about what you guys were talking about earlier today was literally 60 seconds ago. And as you will see, there is some overlap. So I hope that means that I don't know, great minds think alike. So without any further ado, let's just delve into what I have to say by way of an invitation for further conversation. So the starting point of my talk today will be this, the study of constitutionalism has seen considerable renaissance in the last few decades. And we have all the reasons to be pleased with what we've accomplished. But I would want to suggest that before we constitutional scholars become overly satisfied with our accomplishments and with the field's tremendous growth, let's pause for a few minutes to be accurate for 45 or 50 minutes now, and take a broader look at how well the field has responded to some of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. And from that, I hope that we may begin to envision a broader, inspiring and ambitious scholarly and teaching agenda for the coming years. So I want to start with what I regard the first in no particular order of seven challenges that I'm going to present today. And the first challenge I call from constitutional law to constitutional studies. So I hope you can see the picture as well. But from the top left, we have the Chilean constitution making process that is taking place as we speak. And then to the top right, we have the constitution making process in Tunisia and the adoption of a new constitution. The bottom left, we have a new constitution to Nepal adopted in 2015 and revised considerably in 2020. And of course, at the bottom right, this is Ms. Miller from the Miller one and Miller two landmark decisions of the UK Supreme Court that I'm sure you're all familiar with. And here we have a bit of a number squeeze, again, from the top for geeks of comparative constitutionalism, I guess, from the top left, we have invoked 25. And that's a reference to the 25th Amendment in the US impeachment of President Trump after January 2021. And then section 155 is, of course, the section of the Spanish constitution considering Catalonia. And at the bottom left, 3707 is a section of the Indian penal code concerning same sex relationship and intercourse that the Indian Supreme Court struck down a couple of years ago. And article nine refers to article nine in the Japanese constitution, hopefully contested in that country concerning pacifism. So you know all of that. I collected this to suggest that constitutional and Supreme courts commonly engage with politics and policy making, and that importantly, they have become a central forum worldwide for dealing with some of the most contentious moral predicaments and some of the hardest fought political questions that define and divide entire nations. And so this global trend in my view is arguably one of the most significant developments in late 20th century and early 21st century government. And it calls on all of us for refreshing the ways we study and teach constitutional law for the 21st century. Here we have another set of slides that again, most of you are familiar with and we have, you know, the rise of challenges to constitutional democracy around the world. I just speak for examples, Orban, unfortunately, we all know. And at the bottom left, Poland, at the top left, we have Malaysia. And at the bottom right, we have Israel with its new basic law prioritizing the Jewish pillar of the country at the expense of the democratic pillar. All of these things suggest, and I could go on and on, but all of these things suggest that today's world admits neither apolitical constitutional law nor constitutionalism free political systems. And so the need arises to complement the strictly doctrinal or exclusively court centric study of constitutional law with what we may call constitutional studies, a more holistic understanding of the constitutional sphere that goes beyond case law and legislation per se. And since the theme of the conference is lawmaking in a hyper complex society, when for me, I try to operationalize this, it means that exclusive focus on constitutional law as a purely doctrinal enterprise may be limiting our horizons and doing this service, frankly, to our students by way of not preparing them in the best possible way for the real life of constitutional law in the 21st century. And we ought to focus on the manifold ways in which constitutional law and courts interact with the political environment within which they operate. I think this is an essential element of constitutional studies beyond doctrinalism. I'm not suggesting we ought to replace the study of constitutional law per se. I'm suggesting we ought to complement it with some insights possibly from the social sciences, political science, economics and statistics, so that our students may be better participants and interlocutors in this business of constitution making and constitutional law in general in the 21st century. So my first challenge is from constitutional law to constitutional studies. The second one is what I call the comparative challenge. And by comparative, I'm not suggesting that all of us ought to become experts in the constitutional law of other countries. But I am suggesting that comparative perspective is key to understanding our own constitutional system. So perhaps the most important aspect of comparative inquiry in constitutional law is self-reflection. And I just quote here two great ones. One is, you know, every time I describe a foreign city, I'm saying something about Venice. And this is, of course, a quote from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and, you know, in the fictional dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. But really, so every time I talk about another city, I essentially talk about my own. And the same idea from a completely different angle by the great Tom Waits, I never saw my hometown until I stayed away for too long. So the message is clear. And the evidence out there suggests that constitutionalism has become a widespread global business. We don't have the time to go into details. And many of you are familiar with this graph courtesy of my friends, Tom Ginsburg and Zach Elkins. But you will see the lines at the top of the graph that show tremendous increase in national constitutions over the last half century. So by crude estimate, we talk about 170 to 180, some say 190 written constitutions around the world. Almost every country has a written constitution and a well-developed system of constitutional law. So the data out there certainly calls for some comparative reference. And I think we can focus within that challenge on two insights. One is that constitutions across time and place are comparable. And so we ought to focus on how people living in different political settings and contexts conceptualize and address constitutional dilemmas that are common to most modern political systems. And the second element is that unlike some comparative disciplines, like say comparative literature, that is mainly for academia, comparative constitutionalism has multiple interlocutors and that as a result, we ought to foster methodological pluralism. We have constitutional courts, constitutional drafters, constitutional scholars, as well as social movements and NGOs. And there are all key epistemological agents of comparative constitutional inquiry, each involved in practicing the art of comparison with their own set of goals and practices and corresponding case selection principles and strategies. So there is no and there cannot be a single unified official method in the comparative study of constitutional law, institutions and practice. But again, the constitutional, the comparative constitutional insight is significant for ourselves or scholars and our students to better understand our own system. We can talk about different, I hope, I cannot hear you, but I hope you're smiling. I can't see the crowd. We can see, of course, so how to compare and what to compare. Oh, now I can see, thank you for the camera. So of course, the point here is not everything is suitable for comparison. So manual gear shift and broccoli, floret and possibly the greatest, I mean, football player of all time, another of today, Lewandowski are not comparable. And these things are too similar by contrast. It's just three broccoli florets. But when we compare, it's probably, and this is this has become a cliche, best to compare what we all refer to as apples and oranges, or in some continental European languages, maybe in Dutch as well, apples and pears, but you get the the third challenge I want to discuss is what I call the global South challenge. So in earlier work that some of you are familiar with, I suggested that the field of, you know, constitutional law in general, and even comparative constitutional law draws heavily on the small number of overanalyzed, usual suspect constitutional settings and court rulings. And that consequently, the constitutional experiences of entire regions remain largely untrauded terrain, understudies and generally overload. And so that unofficial problem poses a set of normative epistemological and methodological challenges that we ought to grapple with as we move forward. Specifically, I want to suggest that the focus on the global South is not merely or even primarily a matter of representation, fairness, ethics or justice. It's simply that many of the more interesting, innovative and daring constitutional developments of the last two decades have taken place in countries and constitutional settings that lie beyond the current contours of the unofficial comparative constitutional channel. Here are two examples related to some of the stuff you talked in the conference, and I will mention that later today. Mexico City embarked upon a major project of city constitutional emancipation from 2013 to 2017, something unheard of in the quote unquote global North. It involved the largest today in about 20 million people experimented in urban constitution making via moderated crowdsourcing resulted in socially progressive so-called CDMX constitution. We can talk about it more in the Q&A. A second example emanating from the so-called global South, and I could bring you 50 of those, is constitutionally entrenched women representation that is enshrined in the new Kenya constitution adopted in 2010. We don't have the time to go into details, but it's a radical experiment in gender parody in all political branches, including the judiciary. The fourth challenge I want to talk about is the environmental challenge. So obviously these photos are well known and unfortunately widely familiar. The science is absolutely conclusive. I know that I'm preaching to the converted here, but still what you have here is global warming in a simple graph, global average temperature from the mid-19th century to our present day, and the trend is obvious. What we have here is perhaps slightly more complex, but not really difficult. We have the average, and I apologize that the y-axis is in Fahrenheit to your left, but I hope it's decipherable nonetheless. So we can see that over the last half century, the vast majority of observations, we have annual observations are well above the average, whereas the 19th century and early 20th century, the vast majority of observations are below average. So clearly we see a same trend, and the line at the center of the figure shows CO2 concentration globally, and it needs no further explanation. It speaks for itself. So over 15 years ago, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was of course at the fringe of environmental legal theory and virtually non-existent and canonical constitutionalism. Today, an increasing number of countries begin to pay attention to the environmental challenge from a constitutional standpoint. The world pioneer, as many of you know in this context was Ecuador that enshrined in 2008 an apropos my call to look to the global south. In its 2008 constitution, the right to nature, we don't have the time to go into details, but the lecture is recorded, and if you want to take a longer look at some of the slides, you're welcome to do that. And so things are gradually reaching countries around us. I'm not familiar sufficiently with the constitutional setting in the Netherlands, but many of you will know that the German Federal Constitutional Court last year made a dramatic decision in the Neubauer case, where it suggested that good fortune of future generations ought to be taken into account, environmentally speaking, in making all sorts of legislative and budgetary planning. A same line of thought has spread around the world, and the Indian Supreme Court has become a trade blazer in that context. Ecuador, not surprisingly, Supreme Court has ruled just less than two months ago on the rights of animals, wild animals, and their legal stature. And things are even gradually penetrating to North America, in this particular case, the United States. So the fourth challenge for 2030 is our engagement with climate change and environmental protection. This is not merely for environmentalists. This is for us constitutional scholars, and we can talk in the Q&A how.  And here Dutch scholars, some of you are probably in the audience today, are among the trailblazers globally in that context. But I'm not surprised to hear that that was a major, one of the major themes you've discussed in the conference so far, and I've learned from quite a few of you. So again, the graph and the facts here are rather obvious. Over the last century, the world has seen a dramatic urbanization, urban agglomeration and a decline in other forms of habitation. This is perhaps a slightly more complex figure that requires maybe 30 seconds of explanation. The purple line, I hope you can see that the top represents the world population over the last 70 years. And the blue line at the bottom of the graph represents the rise of urban population over the same time since 1950. And so we can see that the rise of world population and the rise of urban population are roughly parallel. Translation, the vast majority of growth in urban population in sorry, in world population over the last 70 years has translated into tremendous growth in urban population since 1950. This simple graph represents the rise of mega cities and we will talk in a minute on how we define that. But again, it requires no further explanation. The trend is absolutely obvious. So a few numbers just to drive home the message that this is a critical challenge. Nearly a century ago, there were less than 20 cities with population of over one million. We are nearing about 1,000 of those around the world. And cities with either city population per se of over 10 million, we are around 45 or 48 and metro population we are around 70 today and heading towards 90 or 100 in a few years. Perhaps the most really bordering on dystopian news in that respect is that absolutely credible UN projections and that's at the bottom of the slide there for the end of the 21st century suggest that the quarter of the world's population will be living in the world's 100 largest cities and that cities such as Lagos and Kinshasa will reach the estimates of 85 to 90 million people in a single city within the next 50 to 70 years with other cities such as Dar es Salaam Mumbai Karachi following suit not too far behind. And so it's not surprising that even today in 2021 this is by the way a slum in Lagos Nigeria and I hope you can see and feel it. And this is an aerial shot of Mexico City and you can see the fog and smog and it relates to not only how giant the place is but the environmental challenge we talked about before and the place of cities in creating some of the environmental crisis and also finding solutions to it. And so unfortunately however obvious the urban challenge is to many of us in constitutional law and in comparative constitutional law it is almost non-existent still and it's a major challenge that we as constitutional scholars have to address. Here we have I'm a scholar of comparative constitutionalism so I picked three leading textbooks in comparative constitutionalism of the last few years and for the sake of full disclosure I'm as responsible for this neglect until recently because my chapters appear in two of those. So here we have a total of more than 130 chapters in these three books stretched over 2500 pages without a single chapter on the constitutional status of cities home to 56 percent of the world's population. This is a gap and it's upon us to close it. Now as some of you in the room know much better than I do because you are the leading scholars on this issue because cities are not represented constitutionally they some cities have taken the lead proactively in what may be called self emancipation human rights cities and so on. We can't go into details but a few leading examples include San Francisco that incorporated the provisions of CEDAW into its municipal laws and other cities in Asia again we can't go into details. I've written what I hope is a significant book on this a couple of years ago that you're welcome to take a look at named city-state and of course Amsterdam as you know very well and perhaps not surprisingly New Amsterdam as in New York City that is just three months ago adopted a significant experiment in so-called urban citizenship allowing legally documented non-citizens to vote at municipal levels. There has been some awakening at the transnational level as some of you know in attempts by cities to turn instead off to apex courts in their own countries to go directly to in this case European Court of Justice where Anne Hidalgo the very proactive mayor of Paris challenged the Airbnb in what she sees as invasive policy and its impact on the cost of housing in Paris and this is a very important decision from less than two years ago by the European Court of Justice so to recap this the fifth challenge that I see is the urban challenge and the place of cities in our constitutional landscape that is only set to increase considerably by 23. The sixth challenge I want to talk about briefly I know that we may be stretching our luck with time here is the inequality challenge and I want to leave as much time for discussion because this I come to you from no position of authority here this is an invitation for conversation so constitutional law has accomplished wonderful and important things over the last half century in eradicating the jury inequality, formal discrimination. It's incomplete but it has done well however it has done very little if anything to address the business of wealth, the dramatic wealth inequality around the world and within countries and of course I could come up with numerous slides and data on this but I thought this one from a couple of months ago is probably telling to be clear the red column here represents holdings by the top 10% of the world population and so the right side is wealth and the left side is income so if you look at the right side that's right over three quarters of the world's wealth is held in the hands of 10% of the people and the bottom 50% I hope you can even see it is so small the bottom 50% that's about 4 billion people hold all together 2% of the world population of the world the wealth and all of this is while we are told that there has been a dramatic increase in the middle classes in places like India and China so this is an increasing problem of plutocracy worldwide that we absolutely must address if we are serious about constitutional democracy and the data here is you know continues to be stunning the world's 2,000 richest people have more wealth than almost 5 billion people combined whatever your views of constitutional democracy may be I'm thinking this is not compatible with our basic understanding of what at least a basically decent and egalitarian society in global community should look like and so far constitutional law has done very little to address that problem the seventh and last constitutional challenge for 2030 that I want to present is the big brother challenge so of course technological monitoring and biometric surveillance social media data collection by government have profound impact on democracy and on politics in general the numbers are absolutely mind boggling there are about six billion people that are internet users worldwide social media users about four billion and growing Americans just to pick one example with social media profiles the numbers have grown from 10% of Americans in 2008 to 86% today and so we begin to see things that are quite mind boggling again in the bottom right I hope you can see it this is entrance immigration control at the Dubai airport there are no officers you go through this tunnel highly technological tunnel and as you go through the tunnel all your evidence and data in personal parameters and information are checked all you have to do is just to present your passport and you go through and all that data is accumulated somewhere of course Europe has been a global leader in that context with initial ideas some of some of which have become law of you know the general data protection regulation new initiatives to regulate AI and most recently the EU Digital Services Act but this is the only thing we have so far in our constitutional scholarship has been lagging well behind all those challenges technological challenges to privacy data collection and it's not merely big state for me personally the more scary element of it all is big big corporations we could argue about that but that that would be my position in any event we are slightly running out of time and I want to leave plenty of time for discussion the seventh challenge that I regard as important for 2030 is the so-called big brother challenge to recap I presented to you what I think are seven important challenges for 2030 for us as a global community of constitutional scholars those are the challenge of let's call it the holistic challenge that is from constitutional law to constitutional studies or the study of constitutional law is a system within a broader social and political context that may not be fully understood without taking into account the context within which it operates and its multiple links and relationship to the to other political institutions into society the second was the comparative challenge and how are we to incorporate some comparative insights into our study and into our constitutional law curriculum so that our students not only know the world better but understand their own system better the third challenge is the global south challenge so that we expand our inquisitive horizons to you know beyond the half a dozen or dozen usual suspect countries that we always look at to explore interesting constitutional innovation in the so-called global south the fourth was the environmental challenge which we all agree in climate change which we all agree is one of the big challenges we face as humanity and if we want to maintain our intellectual leadership we as constitutional scholars we ought to invest I think greater efforts in thinking collectively about the environmental challenge climate change and how are we as experts in constitutional law are to think creatively to address it the fifth challenge I presented to you is what I call the urban challenge the tremendous increase in urban populations around the world I could go on and on talking about that but the challenge is obvious and I think the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide only exacerbated the challenge because cities and urban centers and municipalities have to deliver many of the services it's a critical challenge we face as humanity in very little has been done about it creatively in constitutional law again with some exceptions some of whom sitting in probably in the room right now the sixth challenge I presented is the inequality challenge there is this tendency among constitutional scholars to talk merely about the jury the legal inequality or equality I think we should extend our horizons to think creatively about other dimensions of inequality and accumulation of wealth that go beyond concepts such as the core minimum in economic and social rights and beyond formal the jury equality by law I think that mission is not complete yet but it is nearing its completion of eradicating blatant inequality from the books so to speak the challenge now ought to shift to the next level of uncontrolled accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few and what it means for democracy and then the seventh major challenge I see for 2030 is of course the technology challenge and the big brother challenge and we can talk about the state as a threat here and or corporations as the threat here which I view as perhaps more significant threat but then that's a matter of personal threat of personal view in in any event it's up to us to be thinking about this creatively and I want to leave you with the conclusion that the study of constitutionalism has witnessed the considerable renaissance in the last few decades but the times are changing as Bob Dylan once saying and so in order to remain relevant and to continue the scholarly momentum that constitutional law has seen over the last few decades closer engagement with some of some of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century is the call of the hour thank you thank you Ren I don't know whether you heard it but there was a big applause in the room before I open the floor to questions you have shown us seven very problematic situations but rather than just stating that they are very problematic you reframe them as challenges challenges to the constitutional scholars here in the room and also to everybody listening and that's that's good because challenges are things we can take up and we can do something about


Yeah, and you also mentioned working on a laptop. Well, obviously everybody has a laptop right and we tend to work on a laptop But what we would also recommend apart from a laptop is getting an external screen, right? Sure, an external screen can help you with a few things. So let's unwrap that. So the first advantage is the generally studies show that having an extra screen having more space Increases your productivity. So if you have a laptop and you add an additional screen, it will just help you work faster especially if you have lots of windows open up and that's the case for subtiting. So having one screen for a subtitling tool and maybe another screen for For your browser to Google things, the research things or for the dialogue list or for some other reference materials that you want to have open up Yeah, but it's also better for your eyes. This is actually a bigger screen with larger better resolution, right? Yes, what's also better, maybe not for the eyes only but also for your spine for your body for your posture Is that with an external screen you can put it a little bit higher up So the ideal sitting position would be for you to have the top Of your screen more or less at the level of your eyes and usually when we work with laptops What happens is that the screen is in a much lower position and you have to look down as you look down Of course, we start to slouch. This is not bad for our posture and ultimately you start to get pain in In your spine. So having an external keyboard an external screen Sorry allows and a keyboard higher and I have a better posture when sub-sizing if you cannot have a second Screen because maybe you're traveling. You don't have the space Just getting an external keyboard can be helpful because it means you can sit a little bit further from the laptop And you can put your laptop even on maybe a little pile of books or you might have some dictionaries That's what I guess I would just want to Paper dictionaries because you use electronic resources. So these paper lexicons and dictionaries can be now used as a Basis for your laptop to put a little bit higher


Accessibility and inclusion were among the key issues discussed at a high-level meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development at the Yale Club in New York this week, where leaders of government, UN officials and members of civil society and the private sector came together to talk about the state of broadband in 2013 and how to universalize access. Our message has never been more urgent than right now. All reports point in the same direction. We need accelerators and cross-cutting multipliers to achieve progress across all the millennium development goals. Broadband networks, the arteries of our digital economy, are today vital and indispensable to nations' economic competitiveness. So we hope that the UN Secretary General's high-level panel of eminent persons can take this message on board. More than 20 years after the global launch of the Internet, broadband access has made a tremendous difference in the advancements of education, economic development, access to urgent care and cultural exchange. But the high-powered group of industry executives and key policy engineers that met in New York this week acknowledge that more work is still to be done. It is one thing to have the infrastructure and the tools in place. It is another to use them in a profitable manner. We need organization, financing, support to turn nice ideas into reality. When world experts come to you, begging that at very low cost big things can be done, I really expect the industry to hear it. It's a lightning rod. Every time a lightning strikes, this industry takes it first. But I tell you, this industry also has a limit how much it can absorb. And when we have taken a decision that this particular industry, the broadband in particular, the future, mobile Internet, can empower people, can transform lives, then this needs to be seen as a goose which will lay golden eggs in the form of massive development of societies. And let's not, therefore, slaughter these goose just to get one big egg out of it. The MDGs should be a strong partnership to direct actions at the national, international levels. And they should be a shared responsibility. It is certain that the broadband can make a tremendous contribution towards their attainment. Marginalized groups, women and rural communities are still lagging behind when it comes to broadband access and the information stream that it brings. Recently, the commission's working group on broadband and women issued a report on how to enhance the inclusion of women and girls in the information society. Gender does matter and it is very important to address the digital gender gaps along with other gaps. Women having less opportunity to go to school and be literate, the lack of ICT skills, the lack of access to broadband, you are holding women and their families back. And I say women and their families because the report notes that women invest an average of 90%, 90% of their earnings back into their families and communities. So women doing well has a significant multiplier effect. If women were to be able to have easy access to affordable ICTs, then they can use ICTs in the same way that you use transports to get you to a point. Spearheading the quest for development through new technology and innovation in broadband are youth. The UN representative for youth, Ahmad Al-Hindawi, urged that policy has to be adapted to the needs of the youth. And further investment is needed to propel the largest group of youth the world has ever seen forward in the development of new ICT solutions. One of the most important investments we can make is securing access to broadband ICTs. Youth can act as both beneficiaries and full partners for wider and improved access with your support. In the developed countries today you have youth unemployment which is a real issue and through ICT those can be solved. But at the same time you have job creation capabilities also for youth in the developing world as well. Overcoming the obstacle of accessibility and affordability will create new intellectual and innovative empowerment for rural communities and marginalized groups. Public-private partnerships between government and broadband facilitators are expected to speed up the process of inclusion. To connect these societies with the mainstream of broadband, adapting existing technology to a variety of uses across all platforms is a requirement. A better model is one that presents broadband as an efficiently built and shared utility. We cannot just build technology onto learning. It must be integrated into learning. Empowerment doesn't come from technology. It comes from skills and opportunities to use them. It comes from trained teachers. It comes from open education resources. What we need to do is to make sure that we are providing more access to young people to information technologies, to internet, to broadband internet and make sure as well that it's available and it's affordable. Facilitating a global ICT community that includes minorities, women and disadvantaged groups was at the center of today's broadband meeting and speakers agreed that it takes continued dedication and investment to make technology accessible and affordable to all. This is Shari Naiman reporting from New York City for South South News.


Food structure, not just nutrient composition, may be critical for optimal health. It should come as no surprise that cornflakes, rice, crispies, cause a much greater spike in blood sugars than rice or corn on the cob, but it's not just the added sugar. Even with identical ingredients, food structure can make a major difference. For example, if you compare the absorption of fat from peanuts, compared to the exact same number of peanuts ground into peanut butter, you'll flush more than twice the amount of fat down the toilet when you eat the peanuts themselves, since no matter how well you chew, small bits of peanuts trapping some of that oil makes it down to your colon. And the physical form of food not only alters fat absorption, but carbohydrate absorption as well. For example, rolled oats have a significantly lower glycemic index than instant oatmeal, which is just oats, but in thinner flakes. And oat flakes cause lower blood sugar and insulin spikes than powdered oats, same single ingredient oats, but in different forms can have different effects. Why do we care? Well, the overly rapid absorption of carbohydrates after eating a high-glycemic index meal can trigger a sequence of hormonal and metabolic changes that may promote excessive eating. They took a dozen obese teen boys and fed them different meals each with the same number of calories, and just followed them for the next five hours to measure their subsequent food intake. And those that got the instant oatmeal went on to eat 53% more than after eating the same number of calories of steel-cut oatmeal. The instant oatmeal group was snacking within an hour after the meal, and goes on to accumulate significantly more calories throughout the rest of the day. Same food, but different form, different effects. Instant oatmeal isn't as bad as some breakfast seals, though which can get up into the 80s or 90s. Even a zero with zero sugar, like shredded wheat. The new industrial methods used to create breakfast cereals, such as extrusion cooking and explosive puffing, accelerate starch digestion and absorption, causing an exaggerated blood sugar response, added sugar or not. A shredded wheat has the same ingredients as spaghetti and just wheat, but has twice the glycemic index. When you eat spaghetti, you get a gentle rise in blood sugars. If you eat the exact same ingredients made into bread form, though, all the little bubbles in bread allow your body to break down quicker so you get a big spike in blood sugars, which causes our bodies to overreact with an exaggerated insulin spike, and that actually ends up driving our blood sugars below fasting levels, and that can trigger hunger. Experimentally, if you infuse some with insulin so their blood sugars dip, you can cause their hunger to spike, and in particular, hunger cravings for high-calorie foods. In short, lower glycemic index foods may help one feel fuller, longer than equivalent, higher glycemic index foods. Researchers randomized individuals into one of three breakfast conditions, oatmeal made from quick oats, the same number of calories of frosted flakes or just plain water, and then measured how much people ate for lunch three hours later. Not only did those who ate the oatmeal feel significantly fuller and less hungry, they indeed then want to eat significantly less lunch. Overweight participants ate less than half as many calories at lunch after eating the oatmeal for breakfast. Hundreds and hundreds of calories less. In fact, if you notice, the breakfast cereal was so unsatiating that the cornflakes group ate as much as the breakfast skipping water-only group. It's as if the cereal group hadn't eaten breakfast at all. Feed people honey-nut Cheerios, and hours later they feel significantly less full, less satisfied, and more hungry than those fed the same number of calories of oatmeal. Though both breakfasts were oat-based, the higher glycemic index reduced intake starch and reduced intake fiber in the Cheerios seemed to have all conspired to diminish appetite control. The trial was funded by the Pepsi Corporation, makers of the Quaker oatmeal pitted against the Cheerios from rival General Mills, and an expose on industry-funded study manipulation later revealed that the study originally included another arm, Quaker Oatmeal Squares. I'm sorry that the oat squares did not perform as well as hoped, the researcher told Pepsi, which decided to publish only the results about its oatmeal.