This is from Badria Hulia, and this is for Ellen. How are we going to empower young women so that they can claim working woman identity besides potential mom identity? I'm not sure which country that's from, but I'm sure it's a local tweet. Well, I mean, that's a global phenomena in terms of women. How do you balance the two, your children? How do you balance? There is no balance in life, is there? Especially if you have three children, as which I have.  My family is my passion as well, and so somehow you make it work out. I think more importantly, what I didn't realize is I, in the workforce, is what great role models women are for our young women. They look to the engineers, my women engineers, or my women that are in finance. And they're great role models, and we spend time out in schools. I personally go out to some of the inner city schools in the city where I live and talk to 14 year olds around what they want to do. And I think as a woman, as an engineer, and as the CEO of a company, I just really feel it's part of my role to help in that process of continuing that development of women. A candid American question.  Oh, totally. There weren't many women engineers when I graduated. I can tell you that.


Either Jesus is Lord or he isn't. Either Jesus spoke truth or he didn't. Either the Bible is the Word of God or it's not, and we have to stop compromising the message in an effort to win people over.   Because even though society has changed, even though people have tried to philosophize their way out of truth, I'm here to declare to you that nothing in the Scripture has changed. Truth is truth.


Let's do another example, just a little bit more complicated in the last one we did, and this will be a last example because the process is the same, right? It's just a four-step method. I'm going to introduce the difference of squares in there as well to get the final answer, to factor it completely, right? And again, if the thing is equal to zero, all you're doing at the end is setting each term equal to zero and solving for dx there. And we've talked a lot about this for solving equations from series 3a. And if you don't know how to do that, the one you should be doing is taking a look at those videos to figure out how to set each term equal to zero to solve for dx, right? Right now what we're concerned about is learning this technique so we can add, you know, the complex trinomial factoring, the factor complex trinomials, basically the four-step method into our arsenal, into the techniques that we know to be able to break down polynomials, factor polynomials, solve equations, right? So it'll just be one more thing that we know to use, one more tool that we have in our box to be able to, you know, deal with problems with polynomials, right? Deal with questions that come to us in the form of polynomials. So what we have right now is negative x to the fourth minus 3x squared plus 2. And remember, when it comes to factoring trinomials, right? The simple trinomial and the complex trinomial, what you need is your first term with the x, that power there has to be double the second term power, right? And they have to be, they have to be whole numbers, right? We can't have decimals up top because those are not considered to be polynomials, right? Definition of polynomials, again from series 3a, we did, you know, I think it's videos number 89 to 90 or 91 or something like this. We talked about what the definition of a polynomial is, right? So what we want to do is have that power twice as much as that one or basically this power half that power for us to be able to do it, right? So what we want, what we want to do right now is going to grab the first term, the negative five and the sign in front of the number always goes with the number. So we're going to grab the negative five and multiply by the two. So what we got right now is going to be x to the power of four minus 3x squared minus 10 and we dropped the five from the beginning, from the coefficient, from in front of the x to the power of four. And that number, whatever we multiply the numbers by, a and c replaces c. Now what we're going to do is just factor that term right there.  So two numbers that multiply to give you negative 10 and have to give you negative three, it'll be negative five and positive two. So we've got x squared minus five, x squared plus two. And what we're going to do is drop the five, negative five in front of those x squared terms and that's our, the first step is that, the second step is factoring it, that's our third step. We're going to bring the negative five back in, right? So we've got negative five, x squared minus five, negative five, x squared plus two. And we're going to look at both these terms and take out the GCF and dump it. So in the first one, the GCF is going to be, you know, you could take out a five, but you don't want to do that. You want to take out a negative five, right? You want to take out as much as you can from the terms to simply, you know, because that simplifies them as far as you can go, right? So what you're going to do is take out a negative five from the first one. And the second one, there is no GCF, so you're going to leave it alone. So negative five comes out and you dump it. Yeah? Yeah, when it rains, you just wash it up, that's it. I was going to do more, but I'm going to walk away. I'll finish this one and walk away. It's going to take me 30 seconds. I just got to write two more lines, that's it. For sure, I'll come back. Yeah, yeah, I'll come back with one. Does that have to mean someone to clean it up? No, no. So we've got the, what are we, yeah. People don't like chalk. We've got negative, we're going to take out the negative five, right? We're going to put it out front and dump it. So it's going to be negative five. And when you take out the negative five, there's a negative five there. The negative, when you take out a negative five from negative five, it turns into a positive, right? It's positive one. So we take out negative five from there and negative, x squared plus one. It becomes x squared plus one and the other one just stays the same. Now, we talked about this. This is that guy factored, but you haven't gone all the way yet. Because as we talked about before, any two things subtracted from each other, you can factor. So you can factor that term further because what it is, if you rewrite that, it becomes two minus x squared, right? So what you want to do is rewrite that term as two minus x squared and it becomes two things subtracted from each other and you can factor that further. So right now, what we have is x squared plus one and two minus five x squared. What we're going to do is move on to a different wall because I'm getting kicked off this wall. So we're going to move off to another wall and solve that equation, okay? So keep this in mind. I'm going to rewrite this on another wall and solve it, okay? I can't believe I've gone through it twice so far. I forgot to turn on the camera because I'm rushing through it. Kiko, working hard to teach mathematics. So what we're going to do is just set it equal to zero on solve work. The first one we can't factor anymore, that one we're going to rewrite as two minus five x squared because it looks better that way. It's the difference of squares and then we're going to take the square root of both terms, right? So right now that becomes a little bit more obvious that it's the difference of two things. So we're going to factor that and leave that one alone. So the square root of two is just going to be two. Square root of two, square root of two. Square root of five x squared, well five is a prime number so you're just going to leave it as the square root of five. It stays inside the root symbol. Square root of x squared is just going to be x so the x squared comes out as a single x, right? And again, if you don't know how to do your radicals, it's second series and you should know how to do this, right? So again, as we talked about, if you have, you know, if you don't understand a certain principle and we're just going to continue to build on it, then everything's going to collapse, right? Because you're going to get stuck here if you don't know how to deal with your radicals. So if you don't know your radicals, you definitely have to pay attention to the series two and practice that stuff, right? So what we're going to do now, all these three terms, multiply it to give you zero, we're going to use the property of zero, the very useful property of zero, where it says if you have multiple things multiplied together to give you zero, then the only way that can happen is, is if at least one of us is equal to zero. Now we don't know which one's equal to zero, so we're going to set each of them equal to zero and then solve them there, right? And we've done a lot of examples like this and again, that's from series three, right? So we're going to grab, what we're going to do is, I'm going to grab, because I don't like the negative x, right? So I'm going to grab the negative x squared five and move her over to the other side and then divide by the square root of five. That one I'm just going to grab the square root of two and take it over and then divide by negative by square root of five. And that one I'm going to grab the one and bring it over, it's just negative one. So what we've got here is x squared is equal to negative one, this one doesn't have an answer because if you take the square root of both sides, you can't have a square root of a negative number. So this one doesn't give you an answer. Over there we can divide by the square root of five so the answer over here, so x is equal to the square root of two over square root of five and over there, that one should be a negative square root. So that one is actually negative square root two when it came over because the sign changes when it comes over, so you divide over here, divide by square root of five, over there you divide by square root. So your final solution to this, that one is not going to have an answer. This one is just going to be x is equal to square root of two over the square root of five and that one is just going to be x is equal to negative square root of two over square root of five. Now, if you remember from series two, we have to rationalize the denominator, but I'm not gonna go ahead and do that right now. Cause we're running out of walls and we're getting busted, drying on walls. So we're gonna end it for today. And this is basically the factoring complex trinomials and continuing it and brought in a difference of squares. From here, when we get into the polynomials, graphing polynomials, we're gonna start graphing them, solving them, trying to figure out what the stuff means, what it's giving us. And we've talked with us before. It's just basically giving the x-intercepts, the solutions, the factors, the roots. The guy's response was, how come you do this on walls?  It's very strange. You just couldn't comprehend why you would do math outside on pretty colored walls with pretty chalk and have fun doing it. But that's life. I guess everyone has to walk through life in their own little form, right? So anyway, it comes up quite easy now. Simple as that?


Hello, hello, writers. I'm Christine Kiefer, author of fantasy fiction and creative writing resources, and you are listening to the Well-Storied Podcast, where I share insights, encouragement, and actionable advice designed to help you craft sensational novels and build your best writing life. Always in 30 minutes or less, so you can get back to writing, of course. Ready for the show? Let's get talking. Hello again, writers, and welcome back to the Well-Storied Podcast. I'm your host, Christine Kiefer, and today is June 27, 2019. Today's episode is titled How to Craft Compelling Character Backstories, and if you'd like to read along as you listen in, you can find the episode transcript at www.well-storied.com-backstory. Now let's get started. Part of crafting characters involves exploring their history. Just as your lived experiences have shaped the person you are today, a character's backstory has the power to provide depth and understanding to their characterization. It can even lend context to the conflicts taking place in your present story. Without that history, your characters' attitudes and actions have little foundation on which to stand. But crafting a rich and compelling character backstory is far from simple. What elements should you consider when weaving your character's history? Better yet, how do you translate that history onto the page without bogging down your story? Let's answer both of these questions and more in today's episode. Understanding the Vital Importance of Backstory Backstory consists of the series of past experiences that mark a character's life, giving that character a sense of history. It can also deepen readers' understanding of the character, highlighting the causes of their attitudes and beliefs, explaining their present day actions and motivations, and lending context to the inner and outer conflicts in which they're involved. Crafting rich and compelling backstories can be a world of fun for some writers, but others find themselves overwhelmed by the amount of detail seemingly involved in crafting years worth of history. If you're one such writer, have no fear. There's no need to detail every last moment in your character's history. Instead, here are 10 key questions to ask about your character. 1. What circumstances defined my character's upbringing and early adulthood? 2. How was my character raised to act and believe? Did they accept or rebel against their upbringing? 3. What three relationships, healthy or unhealthy, have had the biggest impact on my character? 4. What are three of my character's happiest memories? 5. What are three of my character's most upsetting memories? 6. When did my character first experience grief? 7. What memories would my character most like to forget? 8. What memories would my character most like to relive? 9. What lessons has my character learned from memorable events in their past? 10. In what way has each of these events impacted the person my character is when their story begins? You can find all of these questions written down in today's episode transcript at well-storied.com-backstory. How to weave backstory into your narrative? Backstory can be tricky to reveal on the page. If you share too little, your character may feel one-dimensional. If you share too much, you run the risk of boring readers or breaking up the pacing of a scene. And if you share without finesse, backstory can feel contrived. A sure hallmark of lazy or underdeveloped writing. To seamlessly weave a character's backstory into your narrative, consider the following tips. Tip number one, share backstory with purpose. You may love knowing every last detail of your character's history, but that doesn't mean those details should show up on the page. Remember, readers didn't pick up your book to consume your character's biography. They're looking for a story that feels immediate and engaging, and backstory is of the past. When writing or revising, consider the purpose in any backstory you share. Does it fulfill one of the purposes we discussed a moment ago? If not, consider cutting that backstory from your manuscript. If readers no longer have the context they need to understand your story, you'll know the backstory served a purpose. Tip number two, stagger backstory throughout your novel. Readers don't need to know everything about your characters by the end of the first chapter, or even the first half of your book. To avoid bogging down your story with info dumps, contrived explanations and excessive flashbacks, reveal backstory only when it is natural or necessary to do so. It's okay if waiting to reveal backstory leaves readers with questions. Nothing turns pages like curiosity after all. Just make sure to answer those questions before you reach the end. Tip number three, avoid info dumping whenever possible. An info dump is any large block of information shared in a story. Because they disrupt the natural flow of a scene, info dumps are often considered a sign of poor writing. The larger the block, the bigger the hurdle readers must overcome before they can return to the story at hand. Even info dumps designed to read as part of the narrative can prove disrupting. Backstory dumped via dialogue can feel contrived because people rarely monologue their own histories, while info dumping in a character's inner narrative can weigh your story down if the information is too detailed or lacks purpose. Tip number four, keep backstory brief. Backstory is bygone information. Though it informs the present, it isn't part of the present story. Relying backstory in too much detail will almost certainly disrupt the pacing of a scene. Even if you aren't info dumping, keep your backstory as trim as possible, sharing only the information readers need to know to better understand your characters and conflict. How can you weave backstory into your novel? You can use three main narrative elements to relay backstory, dialogue, inner dialogue, and flashbacks. When working with any of these elements, here are a few tips you'll want to bear in mind. Element number one, dialogue. As your characters interact, they're likely to share information about themselves, making dialogue a great place to relay backstory. However, it's important that any dialogue you craft feels natural and remains true to your character's voices. Forcing dialogue as a cheap way to share information will always feel contrived. Hey, Jim, did you know I was once jilted at the altar? Let me tell you the story. Icky, right? Instead, consider your character's voices and craft a conversation that naturally allows for a bit of backstory. For example, Bob whistled. You've got their aim, girl. Who taught you to shoot so well? Your daddy? My mama, she replied with a smirk. Bob raised a curious brow. Her daddy was a drunk sea, so she learned to fend for herself growing up. Said she'd be damned if any daughter of hers couldn't do the same. Daddy or no daddy? In this example, I staged an action that prompted curiosity in one character, Bob, creating a prime opportunity to share a few simple lines of dialogue that reveal insights into our sharpshooter's history. Element number two, inner dialogue. Inner dialogue consists of your point of view characters' intimate thoughts and experiences. If you're writing in deep point of view, a common technique used to immerse readers in modern novels, inner dialogue is nearly any part of your narrative that doesn't include verbal dialogue or action. Inner dialogue can be an effective way to share backstory, because backstory is, in effect, memory. What better way to weave memory into a narrative than throughout a character's thoughts? Take care to do so only when a scene presents the opportunity, and your backstory will flow seamlessly. For example, I set the rifle aside and grinned. My aim was true, and I knew mama would be proud. It was she who taught me after all. I was no more than a sapling when she first set three tin cans atop the tree stump in our backyard in Virginia and showed me how to raise my rifle high. I moved to inspect my target, feeling hopeful about my chances in the upcoming competition. In this example, I used a quick line of backstory to explain why our character grinned after lowering their rifle. Returning just as quickly to the present narrative ensures the backstory doesn't disrupt the pacing of my scene. Element number three, flashback. A flashback is a scene that breaks from the chronological timeline of a story to relay a past event. This may seem like a great way to share backstory, but as I explained in last week's episode, flashbacks often disrupt the pacing of a scene. If you're going to use this method, craft your flashback with care, keeping it as in line with the present narrative as possible. For example, the butt of the rifle sat firm and sure in the crook of my shoulder, just as it first had all those years ago in the backwoods of Virginia. There you are, sweet pea, mama said, readjusting the stock a little so it didn't dig into my shoulder. Heavy ain't it. You'll have to practice often, get good and strong. But how do I shoot? I asked, enthusiasm spilling into impatience. Ever since I'd first read that dime novel about Annie Oakley, I yearned to be the next great female sharpshooter. Mama laughed. You can't shoot if you don't know how to hold the thing, darling. Now let's adjust your grip.  Never seen you take so long to aim. Billy's voice jolted me from my reverie. I swallowed, cursing my lack of focus. Thinking of mama had made my knuckles go white around the barrel of my gun. I clucked my tongue and did as mama said, adjusting my grip. In this example, I drew upon some of my advice from last week's episode, keeping the flashback brief, using triggers to pull readers in and out of the past, and ensuring the flashback had consequences in the present. Crafting compelling backstories can add incredible depth to your characters, helping bring them to life on the page. But like so many elements of the craft, mastering backstory is no easy task. As you begin exploring your character's histories, be patient with yourself. Consider the most impactful events in your character's pasts and work to weave them into your story when natural opportunities arise or when need demands. As always, practice makes perfect. Ask us studying how your favorite authors weave backstory into their own work. Take time to study the craft and review effective examples, then get to work. It's time to give your characters the rich and compelling histories they deserve. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Podcast Writer. I hope you found it helpful to your writing journey. If so, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode and to give the podcast a quick rating or review. Doing so goes a long way toward helping the podcast reach new writers and lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm creating. You can also give me a shout-out directly on Instagram at Kristen underscore keeper. For additional guidance as you work to craft sensational novels and build your best writing life, be sure to head on over to www.well-storied.com where I share blog posts, workbooks, e-courses, and other helpful resources for writers. Again, that's W-E-L-L-S-T-O-R-I-E-D dot com. Thank you again for tuning into today's episode, my friend. Until next time, happy writing!


by RichTVLive. Hey guys, this is Rich from RichTVLive. We are at the Lyft Cannabis Conference Saturday, January 12th. Let's see what the conference has to offer today. OK, fair enough, yeah. I'll show you guys the smoking section. It's been very popular since we've been here. Smoking section here. Day in smoking cigarettes. We're lucky enough to get the media, so we'll walk right in. I'll show you how it looks. Saw no yesterday for two seconds, but I really am like welcome for a year. Starts again. Yeah, so when should I come over? When should I stand here at the table stage? When should I come over? Welcome, Chef, Cody Lindsey, the Romance soldier, to come on stage. OK, cool. OK. I'm Chef Cody Lindsey. I am a chef by trade. I was in the military for seven years. And while I was in the military, I was a cook off of all. And I did one trip to Afghanistan. I was going off-archer. And when I returned from Afghanistan, talked to, I go to talk to military doctors, go to talk to psychiatrists, and stuff like that. They always recommended, you know, all the hard work. There are people in the military. I saw some of my friends. I saw some of my family members taking these medications. And I was nervous about it. I was scared. I was just that. I was very scared just to see the change in their personality. And I didn't want that. So I opted to use cannabis at the time. And ultimately, I lost my career because of it. I got a lot bigger trails to dismiss all back then, so it hurts. But from then on. What do you guys do here? Well, we are a 25-year-old physical and animal glass. Glass? We also deal with all manners of smoking accessories. So you wear a nice vaporized hearse and all kinds of things. Anything that has to do with cannabis that isn't exactly cannabis, that is our specialty. Huff. Yeah, puff wipes. Huff wipes. Yes, puff wipes. Very nice. You guys enjoying the conference? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. Awesome. Great to see you. What kind of t-shirts would you like? I want any of them. I want any of them. I want any of them. Let us know how it goes. Yeah? Yeah. I don't want to go anywhere. What? I don't want to go anywhere. How are you doing? Hi. I got to bed myself. Good. My name is Rich from Rich TV Live. We're part of the media today. We talk about cannabis stocks on our show. Are you guys public? Yes, we are. You are. Do you know the symbol? We are under Vivo. Vivo. OK, so Vivo acquired you guys. Yes. Very good. Very good. And what are you guys doing here today? We are voting up both our med and rec market, trying to get clients signed up to join. Awesome. And you're giving away t-shirts? So you've got to sign up to get a t-shirt? How does it work? So our spiel is, yeah, sign up. We are in Junction with Beacon as well as harvest medicine. OK. And we're sending you that direction with the shirt and you sign up with them. Nice. Very good. Yeah. Let me see the shirts. Can we do a little bit? So the front? So what the shirt looks like, guys? The front. Sport Canapar. Very nice. Sport BC's finest. And of course, being in BC, you got to love BC 5. Oh, very good. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I wish you guys the best of luck. Thanks you as well. Cheers. The t-shirt? Sure. I would love one. There you go. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Beautiful shots. Yep. So those are actually our beneficial bucks that we use within our facility to combat any infestations that are awesome. It's OK, sir. Go ahead. Don't worry about it. We do not like to infest inside at all. We use two.


The spice fenugreek is considered to be one of humanity's oldest medicinal plants. What can it do? In my last video on fenugreek, I explored the evidence showing you can improve sexual function in both men and women, decrease menstrual pain, and boost milk production in lactating mothers. And what are the side effects? 15 randomized controlled trials show, on average, a significant improvement in cholesterol levels. And a dozen other studies show significant improvements in both long- and short-term blood sugar control in diabetics and prediabetics, using an average of about a half teaspoon a day over a period of an average of two months. Results clearly indicate that fenugreek is an inexpensive, low-risk dietary supplement that has potential to improve blood sugar control in diabetes. What exactly is the mechanism by which it lowers blood sugars? There is a peculiar amino acid in fenugreek that increases insulin release from the pancreas. The peculiar phorehydroxy isoleucine has been described as an efficient compound in the regulation of insulin secretion. Due to the fact that it acts as a secretagogue in the presence of elevated blood glucose concentrations, it has been proposed for the potential treatment of insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. So there's a class of diabetes drugs that does the same thing, sulfonereas sold as like glucotrol, gliburide, and micronase, gliposide. The problem is that the increased insulin secretion, whether you need it or not, and so there's a risk of severe hypoglycemia driving your blood sugars too low. The funky fenugreek amino acid, on the other hand, only boosts it when you need it. When your blood sugars are normal, it has no effect. It only seems to stimulate extra insulin release when you need it most when your blood sugars are high. What these researchers did was after consent was obtained from family members, pancreas's were obtained from brain-dead organ donors. Put the insulin-secreting cells in a Petri dish at a low blood sugar concentration, and they release a little insulin. And at high blood sugar levels, they release more insulin. That makes sense. That's what they're supposed to do, since insulin is the hormone your body releases when trying to bring down your blood sugars. Add in some of that fenugreek amino acid, though, and you can boost insulin production. Great! But if that happened even at the low blood sugar concentration too, it would be like the drugs, and you could dip too low. But no, when you don't need extra insulin, no fenugreek effect. What about the role of fenugreek in the prevention of type 2 diabetes? A 3-year randomized controlled study of the efficacy of fenugreek on men and women diagnosed with prediabetes. Those randomized to fenugreek were told to take one-third teaspoons of fenugreek powder twice a day before meals, and both the fenugreek and control groups that didn't get any fenugreek were both given identical diet and lifestyle advice. And by the end of the study, the cumulative incidence rate of diabetes was reduced significantly in the fenugreek group. Check it out. Those who didn't get the fenugreek had a four times higher chance of developing diabetes, and you could already see the group starting to diverge within six months and all from just a few cents worth of a spice every day. If you yourself want to intimately support this kind of amazing research in the future, be sure to register at organ-donor.gov.


Okay well good afternoon everyone my name is Colonel Bill Ryerson from the Marine Corps University and it's my honor to be hosting this combined naval address on climate energy and environment. Really appreciate your interest and participation today and I think we have a great one-hour program. Today's topic is climate challenges in the Caribbean and we have a couple of fantastic speakers and on behalf of our consortium of Climate Interested Educational Institutions, as I mentioned I'm from Marine Corps University and on behalf of Naval Postgraduate School, Naval War College, the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Community College it's exciting to to bring this topic to light. We're going to start things off with some opening remarks by the Honorable Meredith Berger who is the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy Installations and Environment. Ms. Berger was appointed to this role in on July 28th, 2021 and among her many duties are to provide oversight and policy for Navy and Marine Corps energy and climate resilience, infrastructure sustainment, military construction, acquisition, environmental protection and safety and occupational health. With a background in policy and senior leadership roles in government and the private sector, Ms. Berger previously managed the defending democracy project at Microsoft and served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. She holds a master's degree from the Harvard County School, a Juris Doctor from Nova Southeastern University and a Bachelor of Arts from Vanderbilt University and has earned multiple prestigious service medals. Ms. Berger thank you for joining us ma'am and we look forward to your opening remarks. Colonel Ryerson thank you so much for the kind introduction and it's a pleasure to be back here with the combined naval address on issues that I think are so critically important. I am so glad that we have a consortium like this among our educational opportunities and such a robust attendance because this is the stuff that is on the margin of how we succeed and every little bit counts and so to be considering this as a threat to the way that we operate and enable our permission success if we do it right is just so critically important and I know that we have two speakers here today in Colonel Benjamin and also in Ramo, we miss Gorman. Thank you both for joining us today. It is exciting to have your perspective and have you present for this conversation. Bringing together this group here today shows a shared priority that we have in the region and it is making sure that we are building up our resilience together. The impacts of climate change are undeniable. We are seeing too much and too little water. We are seeing single storms wipe out installations and whole economies. This is impactful. It is takes us as the military first responders to be able to make sure that the community is holding that we stay with our sights on mission and making sure that we are executing all that we need to do. It puts a strain on mission. It adds to what we are required to do. It adds cost. It adds time. It adds all sorts of requirements to the many faceted roles that we already take on. And so I am proud to keep this focus where it rightly should be in a place that we see tremendous impact and tremendous opportunity. Vice President Harris earlier this year, excuse me, it was last year. I forgot we changed years in 2022 set out our collaboration PAC 2030. This is the United States Caribbean partnership to address the climate crisis.  And so we are going to spend time today to make sure that we are educated to make sure that we are focused. And I wanted to orient you before turning it over to the experts and feature of our conversation here today, that this is part of a very focused effort in the Department of Navy and in support of Department of Defense objectives and partnership with these critical partners in the region. So we are very excited for robust 2024. Today we gather in this forum to hear from experts and engage in conversation February, March and April. We will be engaging with our Caribbean partners in specific workshops that are focused on areas that are of critical importance around health and safety around tech and data sharing. And then lastly around resilience and infrastructure strengthening and hardening will culminate in May with a tabletop exercise that exercises all of the things that we discussed that we try out in our workshops. And all of this will be in advance of our next Atlantic hurricane season, which as we all know, presses upon that urgency and is that mission stretcher that we face so often. So I am thrilled for the partnership that we are recognizing today eager to hear the perspectives of our esteemed speakers and grateful to all of you for the attention that you are putting towards this critical focus area for the Department of Navy and the way that we fight and the way that we win. So with that, I will turn it back over to the Colonel. Thank you very much for letting me kick off and very eager for the conversation today. Thank you, Miss Berger for setting the stage and for those opening remarks. As we transition to our speakers, as you all know, we have we have quite a lineup. We're honored by two Chiefs of Defense staff from Caribbean Nation. So getting their perspective on the impacts to their region that they feel firsthand on a regular basis. I think we're in for quite a treat. And so our first speaker this afternoon is going to be Colonel Telbert LA Benjamin. Colonel Benjamin is the Chief of Defense staff for the Antigua and Barbuda Defense Force. He enlisted in 1995, was commissioned in 1997, and has supported multiple regional security missions, including deployments to Granada in 2004, Barbados in 2005, St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2009, Haiti in 2010, and Dominica in 2015. Colonel Benjamin served as a liaison officer to the Conference of the Armies of the Americas, and liaison officer to the Conference of Defense ministers of the Americas. He's a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of the West Indies and a Master of Arts degree from Webster University. Colonel Benjamin embodies the Antigua and Barbuda Defense Forces motto ready to serve. And we are thrilled to have him share his perspective with our group today. Colonel Benjamin, thank you for your remarks today. Over to you, sir. Good afternoon and thank you very much, Colonel Ryerson. It's confirmed everyone can hear me. We can. Let me begin by saying thank you for the invitation to speak this afternoon to the leadership of Marine Corps University as well as to the NEC for this invitation. I would like to extend a warm Caribbean greetings to all of you in this forum today. The issues of climate change and its implications on small island states such as mine are of the highest importance to the Antigua Barbuda Defense Force and therefore receives the greatest consideration. For Antigua Barbuda, climate change and climate-related issues are considered as existential threats to the survival of our nation states. Antigua Barbuda is a small island in the eastern Caribbean and this is just to give perspective to those of you who may not know where we are. We are a multi-island state with a population of approximately 100,000 people and a total area of approximately 170 square miles. For comparison, we're about twice the size, a little bit more than twice the size of Washington DC. The island is approximately three hours like from Miami and 40 minutes away from Puerto Rico, nearest US territories. On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma impacted the island of Barbuda as a category five storm on the Sapphire Simpson wind scale. With sustained winds in excess of 160 miles per hour and gusts as high as 180 miles per hour. As a result, as much as 95% of the structures on the island of Barbuda were either damaged or destroyed. The island of Antigua escaped any significant damage and was poised to support not only Barbuda, but other islands that were being impacted by Hurricane Irma. On September 9, 2017, Hurricane Jose approached the island once again as a category four storm with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. Anticipating the possible worsening of conditions, the Government of Antigua Barbuda issued a mandatory evacuation order for the island of Barbuda. On September 18, 2017, Hurricane Irma, the third hurricane in less than two weeks, became a category five hurricane once again, threatening the island and causing demonstration on the neighboring island of Dominica, with winds in excess of 175 miles per hour. Maria left a line of demonstration across the eastern Caribbean before continuing north just missing the Bahamas. The 2017 storm season and the subsequent years marked a turning point for the Antigua Barbuda Defence Force and the people of Antigua Barbuda, obviously. The storms that impacted my island were not simply the most powerful that we had experienced in recent history, but the effects forced us to review our capability requirements to operate and achieve mission success. Coupled with that, in recent years we have been impacted by other extremes in climatic conditions, including rising temperatures, rising sea levels and coastal erosion, and periods of prolonged drought. I do not have enough time, obviously, to talk about the obvious implications of the latter issues. Suffice it to say, as a result of the continued deficit in rainfall, Antigua Barbuda is probably the country most dependent on desalination of seawater for domestic use in the eastern Caribbean. I would like to focus for the next few minutes on the direction the ABDF is pursuing, in light of the climate-related challenges that confront us. As you would appreciate, the ABDF is a small organisation designed and built specifically to support the defence of the nation state. The force has an infantry battalion which includes an infantry company, a services company, and a reserve company. Additionally, there is a Coast Guard unit which employs a fleet of intercepted type vessels. We also have an air wing that includes two aircraft, and finally we are responsible for the National Cadet Programme, which is a youth programme, not dissimilar from your ROTC programme running your high schools in the US. Further, as a nation, Antigua Barbuda is a focal point in the regional response system with responsibility to support the islands of St. Gislevis, the British dependencies of Montserrat, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands, and also the island of St. Martin during HADR-related events. In this regard, we manage on behalf of the regional mechanism the storage of resources provided by the international community. Additionally, we play a leading role in coordinating responses in the event of major regional incidents. The 2017 hurricane season highlighted the need for a more outward-looking defence force. The forces department in response to the storms of 2017 season and subsequent years suggest that greater emphasis needed to be directed towards building, one, our engineering capability, secondly, the development of an outward-looking emergency medical capability, enhancing our search and rescue capability in the maritime and urban domains, the development of aerial surveillance capability, and finally the development of what we refer to as a robust public appearance arrangement. In the defence white paper issued in January of 2023, a five-killer capability framework was presented outlining the way forward for the APDM, in light of the impacts that we would have had based on climate-related issues. Those five pillars include one, maritime domain awareness and enhancement of that, two, disaster response and climate change capabilities, three, support to law enforcement, four, greater efforts at national development, and five, support to regional peace and stability. Of the five pillars identified, three were directly related to the national effort of mitigating against climate-related scenarios. The third pillar, which highlights the issues of responding to and mitigating the risks related to climate, climatic and other events, places emphasis on partnerships. In this regard, the Antigua Barbuda Defence Force now provides direct support to our disaster management agency here in Antigua Barbuda, similar to your FEMA. We also support the regional security system and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Those are regional entities that support emergency and disaster response. Additionally, there is the implied tasks to the Defence Force of reinforcing national systems such as our ports and our health infrastructure. In reorganizing to satisfy those areas mentioned above within the framework, extensive efforts are ongoing to do the following things. Firstly, train personnel and acquire resources to support the development of damage assessment and response teams capable of operating at the national as well as the regional level. Secondly, developing an emergency medical capability that can support national emergencies. This concept was tested and proven during the national fight against COVID-19 between the periods of 2020 to 2022. This effort was boosted by the acquisition of two field hospitals in 2022 through the United States Southern Command. Thirdly, enhancing the forces search and rescue capability. Beyond our responsibility for maritime search and rescue, we have expanded to address aviation responses to the same in addition to playing an enhanced role in the national as well as regional urban search and rescue efforts. Fourthly, an effort is ongoing to harden the forces facilities in response to the current and future effects of climate change and climate change related events. In doing this, we are pursuing the acquisition and installation or integration of off-grid concepts such as rainwater harvesting and the use of solar energy. Those being tested currently are potential use across all ABDF facilities. Additionally, consideration is being given to relocate some critical infrastructure from coastal areas that may be susceptible to future sea level rises. Finally, the ABDF is pursuing partnerships in an effort to strengthen our ability to identify risks and mitigate against the potential impact of those risks on all. Colonel Benjamin, sir, I think your video and audio froze up about 30 seconds ago. Can you hear us? I think you're back now. All right, I think we probably lost about the last 30 to 60 seconds. Okay, let me begin. Let me return to the defense white paper that was issued in January of 2023. Yes, sir. The five pillars covered by that review. Of the five pillars identified, three were directly related to the national effort of mitigating against climate related scenarios. The third pillar, that of disaster response and climate change, highlights the issue of responding to and mitigating of risks related to climatic and other events placing emphasis on partnerships. In this regard, the ABDF now provides direct support to our management or disaster management agency similar to your FEMA. We also support the regional security system and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Two regional entities gave to our disaster response within the eastern Caribbean. Additionally, there is an implied task for reinforcing national systems such as the ports and our health system here in Antigua and Barbuda. In reorganizing to satisfy the above mentioned framework, extensive efforts are ongoing to do the following. Firstly, train personnel and acquire resources to support the development of damage assessment and response teams capable of operating at the national and regional level. Secondly, developing an emergency medical capability that can support the national emergencies. This concept was tested and proven during the national fight against COVID-19 between the years 2020 and 2022. This effort was boosted by the acquisition of two field hospitals in 2022 through the U.S. Southern Command. Thirdly, enhancing the forces' surge in rescue capability. Beyond our responsibility for maritime sudden rescue, we have expanded to address aviation-related responses in addition to playing a leading role in the national and regional urban surge in rescue efforts. An effort is ongoing to harden the forces' facilities in response to the current and future defects of climate change related events. Off-grid concepts such as rainwater harvesting and the use of solar energy are currently being assessed for use. Additionally, consideration is being given to relocate some critical infrastructure from coastal areas that may be susceptible to future sea level rise. Finally, the AVDF is pursuing partnerships in an effort to strengthen our ability to identify risks and mitigate against the potential impact of those risks on our personnel, our facilities, and our country. Interoperability is a central tenet in this effort. We recognize that in a resource-based environment, building partnerships and enhancing our ability to work with those partners can and will reap tremendous benefits. We therefore partner with all stakeholders at the domestic as well as regional levels and we pursue international partnerships as well. I conclude by quoting from my Prime Minister the Honourable Gaston Brown in his presentation at the recently concluded COP28 held in Dubai and I quote, the irony is that small states that contribute the least to global CO2 emissions are its greatest victims, unquote. He goes on to say that, and I quote, the future weapons of mass destruction will not be bombs or guns. They will be scorching temperatures, persistent droughts, rising tides, and ferocious winds. End of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, might I suggest to those of you listening to me today, Ween and Tien Barbida at the islands of my region are already living this reality. Once again, thank you to the organizers of this event for the invitation to speak and I do look forward to any questions that might occur or might come forward at the end of this presentation. Thank you very much. Colonel Benjamin, thank you. That was a fantastic overview and to hear firsthand the challenges that your nation and in your role as a military leader faces really brings it home. I remember Hurricane Irma and the devastation to hear you describe it is heart breaking and your relationship with Southcom is obviously very important. Sir, thank you for that. We will do question and answer after our second speaker and so we look forward to to that portion of the program. At this time it's my pleasure to introduce our second speaker and that's Rear Admiral Antoinette Weems-Gorman. She is the Chief of Defense Staff for the Jamaican Defense Force. She has a 31 year career that includes groundbreaking achievements to include becoming the second woman in history to lead a national army when she was appointed to her current role on 20 January 2022. Prior to that, as force executive officer beginning in January 2020, she provided strategic guidance and directed force policies for the previous Chief of Defense playing a key role in transformational change in the Jamaican Defense Force. Additionally, Rear Admiral Weems-Gorman has held roles as brigade commander, maritime air and cyber command and commanding officer of the Coast Guard and as a subject matter expert in regional maritime security. Admiral Weems-Gorman is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and holds a master's degree with distinction in national security and strategic studies from the University of the West Indies in Mono. Rear Admiral Weems-Gorman, thank you for joining us today and we look forward to your perspective on climate-related challenges in the Caribbean. Over to you ma'am. Thank you Colonel Ryerson. Confirm I'm being heard. Yes ma'am we hear you loud and clear. See my staff officer is sharing some slides there once he gets it into presentation mode. I will just proceed. Let me start with the salutations honourable Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary to the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, yourself Colonel Ryerson, my colleague CDS from the Antigua and Barbuda Defense Force and the participants. Good morning and thank you very much for including me in this discussion. I think it's very important issue and as my colleague indicated it is a stark reality for us in the Caribbean region. I will be speaking generally about how the Caribbean region is affected these challenge by climate change. So these challenges directly affect the livelihoods of our already vulnerable population. Most of our population depends on agriculture, fisheries and specifically tourism. So the outcome of these climate-related events significantly negatively impact welfare, public health, food security and of course ultimately national security which is why we are having this conversation as military organizations. So JDF then as the military force for Jamaica we have 10 main rules and four of those rules are specific and directly related to climate related challenges and like Antigua and Barbuda we support other government agencies most prominently the Office of Disaster Management which is also our equivalent of FEMA, search and rescue, disaster relief is a main role and of course in regional cooperation we support our brothers and sisters in the other islands. So as I go through I will compliment what Colonel Benjamin spoke about in a broader Caribbean context. He spoke more specifically about Antigua and I will go through speaking a bit broader. So let me start with some data and some specifics about the Caribbean. We have two distinct wet seasons and these are primarily aligned with the Atlantic hurricane season and that season you may all know traditionally spans between 1st of June to the 30th of November every year but what we have seen as climate change, the challenge of climate change evolves that we are having systems that are forming outside of this band and so it's less predictable and so you know when I just joined some time ago you know we were specifically gearing up for you know events hurricanes and storm events within that band now we're seeing events occurring before and after the traditional or the traditional hurricane season. We're also seeing that the wet and dry season have moved they sometimes don't even occur at all and as Colonel Benjamin also mentioned a significant difference in temperatures throughout the year. So historically climate-related devastation in the Caribbean has had significant impact on our economies and infrastructure and IMF reports quoted by UNDP said that natural disasters occur more frequently and cost more on average in the Caribbean than anywhere else and even in comparison to smaller states. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean conducted an analysis of of these events in the Caribbean over the period 1990 to 2008 and that analysis found that Caribbean countries under review experienced 165 natural disasters of which 61% were windstorm related events that is hurricane floods and tropical storms. Unfortunately Haiti the Dominican Republic and Jamaica which are located in the northern part of the Caribbean were the most affected by these natural disasters over the period having experienced 49, 34 and 21 natural events specifically and that estimated affected some 2.5 million people over the period of the study. Some more data here total damage the economic sector 63 billion dollars your impact on social sector 57 billion dollars total damage infrastructure 12 billion and this is us dollars and the impact on the environment 3.5 billion dollars not these kinds of figures you're talking about exceeding just the budget of a small a small country the overall budget of a small country in the Caribbean so you see the impact being very significant UNDP also said that between 1963 and 2017 on average countries within the Caribbean suffered a yearly losses due to storm damage equivalent to up to 17% of their gross domestic product so added to that is the impact of rising sea levels. Colonel Benjamin also referenced that some of our islands are very low lying islands and climate related challenges lead to rising sea levels rising atmospheric temperatures more earthquakes and of course the extreme flood and drought events and coastal erosion this impacts our ability or our country's ability to earn the the most coveted foreign exchange that our economy runs on because most of the countries in the Caribbean their economy is highly dependent on tourism as I mentioned before. Ma'am I apologize for interrupting the the slides are are not advancing so I wonder if we're having a quick glitch I apologize ma'am oh thank you um pass I'm not sure which slide you are on so we're still on slide one so it hasn't it hasn't advanced um yet on the screen major James are you is it showing on your computer that you're advancing uh yes sir it is actually um maybe if you stop I am sharing as well he stopped sharing and and share again apologies it's not so on our on the zoom it's not in presentation mode I wonder if it's not it's you're sharing it you're not sharing the screen that you think you're sharing maybe let me have a quick look at that sir okay or yeah maybe just close it and then reopen it rear admiral I apologize oh there okay now it's now it's uh now it's advancing thank you very much I'm sorry to interrupt you ma'am that's all right I'm on slide nine major James okay okay now we yes now we uh now we can see it slide again I'm having some challenges though and making it a full screen I'm not sure if you'll be okay with with showing this portion of it here I think um yeah I think this is still okay it's it's uh it's still large enough it's covering most of the screen hi ma'am this is Bayou Arman okay so if I will continue then um in 2019 I studied on the Caribbean climate change vulnerability indicated that by 2100 sea levels in the Caribbean are expected to rise to one point by by one point four meters and this uh this amount of sea level rise would translate into about 70 percent of our freshwater marshes and our brackish and sea land wet land wetlands being destroyed or lost um and you imagine the the impact of that on fisheries and uh these are the areas that protect our coastline as well and our nurseries for our fishing population and birds and so on and so this study also indicated that the annual economic losses if that should occur would be 63 million us dollars for the region so not only would we be losing uh having economic loss but most of our population live within three three nautical miles of the of the coastline in the Caribbean and so there will also be displacement of our population the loss of coral reefs um and increasing in drought will cause a decrease in food security it will lead to higher fuel consumption and so those challenges now lead us to having to have a military perspective on on on how we approach these challenges so the amount of effects of climate related challenges um continue to worsen and it could potentially discursive of resources could potentially cause worsen existing um geopolitical tensions and contribute to conflicts so as we look at it from a military perspective we recognize that climate related disruptions can cause a variety of issues you know population displacement risk to public health impact on our food security and the increased vulnerability to our critical infrastructures there's also illegal migration human trafficking can can get into the the fray as a tangential effect of these events as displaced individuals seek refuge and currently in in the Caribbean in the Caribbean region we we are already struggling with issues of illegal migration and persons seeking refugee status from countries that already are in vulnerable positions that can be significantly exacerbated or in or increased with the advent of of things like hurricanes and droughts and food insecurity so JDF then looked at this when we did our strategic defense review and um and we we have had to adjust our strategies and how we operate and how we build our own resilience and so we have to look to partners to achieve some of it because of course um small defense forces we are not able to do all of that on our own and so one of the ways that the JDF decided that we would um address it is to establish what we call a disaster assistance response team and this darts um we constitute we have the capacity to constitute three darts and they are the these persons are all are multidisciplinary and they are constituted before the Atlantic hurricane season and they are in a constant state of readiness to deploy at short notice to locations that are impacted by natural disasters um in the past couple of years we have deployed the darts to Dominico to the Bahamas um we have deployed the darts to to Haiti as well and and so um this is a 120 man strong team with all the different disciplines as I indicated and we have them on different um notices to move once the hurricane season is set up so they're all vaccinated together um the the the um the priority one group does not uh get leave during that period so they have all their their um personal affairs in order should an event occur and we have to deploy them we do that in support of course to regional setups such as Sedema the Caribbean disaster emergency management um regional response mechanism and we acknowledge that um this is it is also important to build our resilience and so in our defense review we consider the climate resilience when developing as we are growing the force and it is mandated there are various mandates within our our planning that we have to develop our infrastructure um and build in resilience there so not unlike my colleague in Antigua we we have looked to partners to achieve that and we also seek to implement sustainable initiatives for for climate resilience um we have environmental protection policies that mandate the use of renewable energy sustainable building designs recycling of resources and the use of technology for water and energy conservation and in fact currently um I have a pilot project to look at our fleet um transitioning our fleet to electronic um to EV EVs uh where we as we know that's the the future and to reduce our fuel consumption and our carbon footprint as a force all our new buildings have rainwater harvesting and um rain water reuse um and recycling of of that to ensure that we are reducing our own carbon footprint and management vehicle fleet management systems to ensure um minimal use of of the of our fleet and therefore less um energy consumption and of course all the energy consumption and renewable energies we put solar um into our buildings we are also um ensuring that the they are smart buildings so to speak so that you know when you leave a room their conditioning goes off and so on and so forth so the JDF response and resilience strategies are also in keeping with regional efforts um we are responsible for the northwestern sub-region of the Caribbean under Siddhima and that region consists of Bahamas, Belize, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos um we collaborate of course with the U.S. Southcom and our U.S. and Canadian partners and there we we are participating regional systems such as the system of cooperation among American Air Forces, CECOFA, which who have implemented a climate resilience and response mechanism amongst their membership and in the case of CECOFA it has created Savico which is a virtual room for coordination as part of its consolidated human aid of humanitarian aid operations and we are able to participate there. Regional efforts towards climate resilience and response are also further strengthened through our regional and international security cooperation agreements and these provide for us to help or to do training with um our partners in fact as we speak we the Jamaica is leading uh an exercise event horizon that the maritime air and cyber command currently engage with other Caribbean participants from the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Cayman Islands, Canada, Haiti and Kingdom of the Netherlands and Turks and Caicos um through a partnership with the UNODC to to really exercise and go through our steps and various workshops, tabletop exercises and real deployment for HADR or HADR mission. So what is the way forward then? We have to develop sustainable solutions and resilient strategies to protect the Caribbean's unique biodiversity, cultural heritage and socioeconomic well-being. The regional resilience efforts will require knowledge and understanding of climate-related challenges and how they impact the Caribbean and so the way forward really should include integration of climate-related studies into military education like we're currently engaged in. Building awareness is also critical in um addressing this as a threat to us all um and of course discussions like this very important that we integrate climate-related studies into um all that we do um in military education so that the future leaders of the military organizations are seized with the importance, the impact the effect it can have and some of the ways that we can mitigate and build our resilience by sharing knowledge as we face this what was called a non-traditional threats I think whether I was perhaps could have been a participant in this course we were looking at climate um climate challenges as as an emergent threat but as as I'll tell Bert said you know for us in the Caribbean it isn't emergent it is clear and present. As militaries we have to continue to strategize and build our resilience and position ourselves to respond to our population recognizing what the vulnerabilities are and making the plans to to mitigate them as certainly coastal installations such as our naval bases and so on we have to consider what the impact will be on that and how we we we we maintain business continuity to continue to serve um and respond after these events occur. So as I wrap up I want to reiterate that climate-related challenges have a significant impact on the Caribbean social economic stability and it can result in significant infrastructure damage population disruption and have negative impact on not only forward security but national security and global security. The JDF and other regional militaries we have sought to develop response capabilities and frameworks within our very finite and small resources and these efforts can only work with cooperation and partnerships regional and international partnerships. So the success of climate resilience in the Caribbean and other developing nations is really contingent on each person playing each country and and and even each individual playing their part and developed countries I must say are responsible for 79% of the historical carbon emissions and one third of current emissions which is a major cause of global greenhouse gases resulting in the climate-related challenges we face today. It may also be interesting to note that coal farming releases so much methane into the atmosphere. I think the the United States environmental protection agency says one single coal produces 154 to 264 pounds of methane gas per year. This is as a direct result of of of human eating habits really so we have to look at all those things there are 1.5 billion heads of cattle raised specifically for meat production in the world and that in we totally emit about approximately 231 billion pounds of methane into the atmosphere and so these are some of the things that we have to consider as we look to addressing the challenges climate change brings. It is my hope that we will focus on building the resilience within even as we enhance our capabilities and adjust our climate unfriendly practices as an interconnected world climate challenges have a global impact with the more vulnerable and less resilient economies facing devastating outcomes. It is therefore critical to address climate-related challenges as a collaborative effort and the JDF remains committed to fulfilling its responsibility to the region and by extension contributing to global peace and stability. I remain committed to the ongoing collaboration and information sharing on climate change and resilience in the region and internationally. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. I hope some of what I said made sense and I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Rear Admiral Weems-Gorman thank you so much for those very very helpful perspective from from another defense leader in the Caribbean. Your slide about the need to build education and build awareness that really goes to the heart of what this forum is all about bringing awareness to the to the climate challenges not just across the globe but specific to to the Caribbean region and and your nation in particular as well as Antigua and Barbuda. Thank you so much ma'am. Colonel Benjamin and Rear Admiral Weems-Gorman thank you so much for taking your time to to prepare those comments and for answering our questions. I think this was very helpful to bring to light what Caribbean nation's unique challenges for climate change something that maybe we haven't thought of in the bigger climate picture writ large but neighbors so close to us and the unique challenges that you face not only as island nations but also as military leaders and so thank you for your your very senior level perspective on this particular issue. I'm giving a virtual round of applause right now I'm not actually going to applause or probably break Zoom but on behalf of all of us thank you for participating in this thank you for for bringing this issue to light and for educating. At one time I saw close to 80 participants online and as you know this will be made available for those that weren't able to join us live so your perspective and comments will go towards that goal of educating the students here at our Naval institutions. So on behalf of of all the hosts here and all the students once again thank you and we look forward to continuing to address these challenges with your nations. Thank you very much my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for all who joined and I have a great rest of the afternoon.


A service called, well, APP for short, APP standing for Advocates for Personal Potential. And what they do, well, it's training services for people with an Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD and Mental Health Challenges and the aim is to help them to achieve their personal goals. So the mission of APP is to offer advice and guidance and support to help their members and also their families. So to tell us a little bit more about this service, I'm joined now in the studio by co-founder and managing director, John Joe McBride and service manager Fiona Daugherty. And good afternoon to you both. Good afternoon. How are you doing? Just saying they're off air, it's a long time since we sat on the school bus together and going to doke and nearly nothing at school. Quite a number of years ago. I didn't realise that you and Fiona were that close now. Yes. You're really very careful here. That depends how it goes. We could have a little bit of history lessons. By the way, John is John James McBride, not John Joe. Oh, I beg your pardon. Yes. OK. Anyhow, leaving our school going history aside, Fiona, John Joe, I'll start with you. I gave a very brief overview. Maybe you could do it a little bit better, just to tell us exactly what APP's all about. Well, we started out in 2004. I worked on the mental health service for years for youngs and I decided when I retired to set up a different type of service, a community-based service, a service that went out and reached out into the people out into the community. And at that stage, we focus very much on mental health and we were based in Balai Shanan. And Balai Shanan, the reason for Balai Shanan was because it was in between the services, the letter Kenny-based services and this legal-based service. So we were asked to set up a support service there in Balai Shanan and it took off. It was very, I have to say, it was successful and we were providing support to individuals that lived at home, lived in the community and were attending the mental health clinical services and we were asked to provide a social support type service to them. So we started off in Balai Shanan and in 2006, we were then asked to move to letter Kenny and provide the same type of service for young men and young women on the autism spectrum. So we set up a letter Kenny in 2006 and as they all say and as the rest is history. Now, I'm sure Fiona, you could take them through the type of support and the type of service that we provide, but it's very much outreach, John, and it's very much in the community and it's very person-centered. And we like to think that it's appropriate at this day and age because it's not center-based, it's out there where the people live and that's to us the main aspect of the whole thing. And Fiona, as John James says there, people-centered and in the community. So both of those things are very important. They are because, I guess, what, you know, we're working with young adults. They're transitioning into various areas in their lives or they have goals or the potential to move in, but they need those very definite support. So we are in the background. You know, we take time to listen to the person, to listen to those around them, to find out what they perceive as challenges, to break it down, to meet the services out in the community that will be there to link in and work with us and them for them to achieve what it is that they're aiming for. Yes, it's quite rewarding when you see the end result because, no doubt, when you kind of build up that relationship and staff do that very well in respect to meeting the needs of the individual, they come along that journey with you. It lessens any barriers. It lessens any major issues because they're going that journey along with you and then you tailor whatever required supports they feel they need. So, yeah, it could be anything as simple as getting into a morning routine. It could be from that right through to supporting them into employment or supporting them within the educational third level fields in that sense. It's a broad spectrum. Very much so. And hence, that's why we sort of very much tailor it to the individual. We have quite a number of, we've up to 100 program members as we call them throughout our service region, which is Donegal, Kevin, or sorry, excuse me, Donegal, Leetrim, Sligo, Kevin, Monaghan areas. So across that region, so, and they're very different in respect to what each person are doing. And that suits them. John James, I suppose it's a big part of this. It's about people achieving their goals and helping them to do that. And for everybody, that's going to be different. But for the young adults that you help out, then, you know, they, they have particular challenges. So I have extra tough. Yes, they have particular challenges. And if I go back in history to my own years in St. Connell's Hospital, that's where all those young adults, a lot of them finished up on in St. Connell's Hospital. A lot of young men, a lot of young girls that were on the spectrum, but we didn't know a word at the time. We weren't aware of it. And it was only later that we started dealing with it in a different way. And that has been a successful way, but they are very complex issues and the very complex ways of dealing with them. And I would have to say that the staff that we have are very professional. We have something in the region of 25, 27, full-time professional staff, including occupational therapists, including behavioral therapists, and support staff who are all very focused and very open to that type of service that we've provided. So yes, it's a complex area, but as Fiona had said, it's a rewarding area. And when you see the things that can be achieved by young men and by young women, it's exceptionally rewarding. But I have to say too that we work very closely with families, not just the individual, but we work very closely with families too. And Fiona, I presume that you work closely with other services? Yes, indeed. We take the guys on a journey out in the community like you and I would do, and we offer up the capacity for them to learn the ups and downs out in the community, be it liaising with people, which is very important, giving them the skills to be able to open up the forms of communication that's necessary in respect to engaging with services. So when you talk about services, they have their own, some would have their own links to the medical profession for obvious reasons. Some are with the educational sector. They're with the ETBs, third level colleges. They're with local hobbies, groups, gyms, societies, youth centers, sporting agencies. You know, it's very broad. It's not specific, so. And in a way you have to liaise with them all? With what it is they come to us with, yes, in respect to what they'd like to sample, see, maybe have been yearning to be able to go into an actual service and see what it's like, be it a retail space, be it, you know, managing their own monies, be it going to a bank, be it a post office, be it even taking a bus on their own or to go move into another town or another area, such like at libraries. You know, it's, yeah, it can be very broad. So you have to keep yourself on your toes, in that sense, and be able to network out there as well and research what's available so that staff and the members... And you have a programme called Making Connections, so it's well named. It is, it is, yes. It's a broad outline. There's specifics within it that, you know, we have to follow as a recognised programme in that sense, but within that it allows the person, the scope, to be able to achieve, explore, build their capacity in areas through early years with staff and in times of need as well. We may have to, as John spoke about, the additional therapeutic support staff that we bring on board, be it a behavioural therapist or an occupational therapist, who again can help and manage situations and that in a self-educates ourselves, staff and the communities and persons that we may have to link in with as well too, and even some families as well, that, you know, we may as well ask them for their advice because they know the person well and at the same time they can take that journey with us as well and support the individual to learn and adapt and open up new ideas and things in the future. Sorry, Sean. I was just going to say that in 2004 Fiona came with us. She had been previously working in the educational sector before that, but she came with us and she's with us ever since. I would also like to, maybe it's an opportunity for me to acknowledge, we just didn't do this on our own. You know, there was a lot of other people and particularly with the HSE, because the HSE at the time needed an alternative. Yeah. They were very much centre-based, a lot of centre-based activity, so they saw the need for this concept and they gave us the support that we needed to set it up and develop and take it forward. But being community, totally community-based and covering an area as large as you do, there's a lot of challenges there. There's a lot of challenges there, even in the travel from, I mean, you know, our support staff are based in Little Kenny, our support staff are based in Donegal Town, Slego, Carrick and Shannon and in Caventown and we have to outreach to all of those areas. I mean, Donegal and the South is a huge, huge county to travel from Little Kenny to Ghidor to Falkara. Wherever the need is, that's what we have to do. Now it's demanding, but our staff generally, I have to say, are very focused and very much involved in the type of concept, I suppose. So Fiona, finally, if someone's listening in and thinks, you know what, I'd like to reach out to APP and I think it could help us in our situation. Where should they go? What would be the first step? Yeah, well, I guess it's an adult service, so we'll be working with those young people from 18 upwards. They may have connections with their HSE personnel anyway, who would be aware of us, but if they haven't, we can kindly give an email address info at appts.ie and if anyone has any queries, we can deal with them and point them in the right direction in regards to making the initial steps if deemed suitable to be and connected to our service. Okay, as simple as that. Info at appts.ie. Perfect, okay. Fiona, John James, thank you both very much.  Thank you. And continued success and the best luck going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. There's never been a better time to go full-leadal. Let's hear.


Welcome to the sixth meeting of the 2023 of the Delegate Powers and Law Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone present to switch their mobile phones to silent. The next item of business is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Is the committee content to take these items in private? Under agenda item number two, we are considering four instruments subject to the affirmative procedure. An issue has been raised on one of the instruments. The draft Social Security, Halbrating, Miscellaneous Amendments Scotland Regulations 2020-23. The instrument provides for an increase in various benefit payments and associated earnings thresholds. The Scottish ministers failed to lay the response to the Scottish Commission on Social Security's proposals with the instrument as is required by section 87 of the Social Security Scotland Act 2018. The Scottish Government subsequently laid the response on 3 February 2023 and apologised for the oversight. Does the committee wish to draw the instrument to the attention of the Parliament on the general reporting ground in that the response to the Scottish Commission on Social Security proposals was not laid at the same time as the instrument? Is the committee content to note the apology received from the Scottish Government before this oversight? Does the committee wish to ask the Scottish Government to ensure that all required documentation is laid at the same time as an instrument is laid before the Parliament? Also under this agenda item, no points have been raised on the draft Non-Dimestic Rates Miscellaneous Anti-Avoidance Measures Scotland Regulations 2023. The draft Social Security, Halbrating, Scotland Order 2023. The draft Budget Scotland Act 2022, amendment number two, Regulations 2023. Is the committee content with these instruments? Under agenda item number three, we are considering five instruments subject to the negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2023, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 34. Is the committee content with these instruments? Yes. Thank you and with that I move the committee into private.


I'm going to steal a page from my friend Jordy, and the tool he showed last week, 14.10, and show you my module. Let me just give me a few seconds to type this out. There we go. I cheated this week. It's not a module per se. Well, it is a module. Everything in Python is more command line tool written in Python. It's really handy. It's going to be like a UNIX bearded guy in the corner. You can do all this with AUK and base UNIX tools, and you absolutely can. The problem is I program a lot more in Python than in bash or AUK, so I never remember how to do those things. This tool lets you do it in Python. Let me show you the first example. Let's take a UNIX command. Who here has used UNIX and Linux? You're all pretty much familiar. The point of UNIX and Linux, everything is text. I did an LS-L, but this is just a block of characters of text that I then use command line tools to chop and do what I want with it. Well, there's a command line tool called pip, so I'm going to pipe my LS-L into this pip command, and then I'm going to give it a piece of Python code to execute on that text line. So here it's going to be P0. The P variable is initialized through contents of every line in a loop, right? And here, it's the line as a string, and P0, if P is a Python string, this will give me the first character of each line, and so it does, the tz, dot, dot, dash, dash, and the d. But these are straight up Python commands, right? So I can do P0 to 10, like in any Python command, and I get the first 10 characters, or because they're real Python strings that take all the methods on Python strings, I can do something a lot more complicated, like let's split on white space, give me the second element, and uppercase it. Boom. And this is exactly what you do with strings in your Python commands. You don't have to remember some awkward awk command written in 1970. This is Python 2.7, and everything works fine, right? PIP has some extensions to the language. It's built into its command. One of the handiest ones is what they call a pipe. So here I have ls-l in my shell piping the pipe, a bit complex. I open my single quote to give my PIP command, and in it, I give one command, so my split to an upper, and then inside the single quote, so this is I'm giving it to PIP as an argument, a pipe, right? And what that does is it takes whatever you did in the last command and sets it as a new value of P, so you can do something else, like, and percent P, and boom, and it does that for every line ad nauseum, right? So now the P variable is whatever was piped in, so you can build your commands piece by piece through trial and error, right? So also there's a helpful extension to the language that if you decide to return a Python list, so here I just do my split, it will show every element of the list. So the first line has two elements, zero is total and one is 400, ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad nauseum, and because it's Python, I can split on whatever I want, right? So if I want to split it on the R, it gives me a different sequence of lists. With true trial and error, you can just type your commands bit by bit, see what works, oh, this doesn't work, erase a bit, try again. You can do filtering, so if at any point in the, so here we showed you split, so let me take the last element of each line, right? So this turns out to be for Alice dash L, mostly the file name. If at any point in the pipe, instead of returning a string, so p dot split minus one returns a string, it returns a true or a false, a Python Boolean, it acts as a filter. So if I do a split and then I pipe it into my starts with 2014, I only get the lines where it starts with 2014, so I don't get true and false, it just filters out anything that is equal to false. But however, if I re-pipe it in to something else, it takes the original value of the string or the p value and gives it to you, so you can then manipulate it as you want, as I did here. So it's not to true or false, it gets piped in as still the string as it was. And finally, this is a very short overview of pip, just to really, the fastest commands. What I'm going to show you is the very aptly titled pp command. So p was each line in a loop, the pp command is all your lines as a Python list. So it's a Python list of strings, I want element 1 to 5, and it gives me those elements, 0, 1, 2, 3, the element is 1 to 5 in my ls-l. But if I pipe that and then I use the p variable, it then loops back over each line of input as if it was. So I can do a filter to get all the ones that start with 20, right? And then a pp.sort, so then I go back to the pp, I can then sort it, right? And I can use, it's a Python sort, like the Python list supports, and I can just type in my fancy Python, and it'll then sort on the numeric value of that fourth column. And that's about it, because I'm running out of time. Thank you very much.


Did you know that more women are migrating on their own than ever before? In this video, we'll tell you a little bit more. Migration can have a positive or negative impact on a migrant, depending on the context and the situations they face. Migrant women in particular face situations of vulnerability that are related to gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence. Women face what is called an intersectional discrimination. They are discriminated against as migrants and as women. They may be victims of violence that is based on their gender, such as sexual and physical violence. In Latin America and the Caribbean, there are other forms of discrimination in addition to the structural gender inequalities.  At the same time, migration can be very positive for women, giving them access to education, to jobs, to participating in the political and public life, and sometimes to live independently in ways they never have before in their lives. We also know that migration can be a way for migrant women and girls to escape gender-based violence in their families or their communities. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in our next One Minute on Migration.


What's up everybody? Jason for jazby's case breaks calm 2020 pinini national treasures football just sold out This is a two box half case break random teams number 40 and again guys 32 total spots everybody gets a random team in the NFL. This is the second half of a case as Joe wrote down right here Number 40 on both these boxes So again, thank you guys for buying in straight up from Andrew down to Scott And then from Kobe down to Matthew got those in prism cello number 85 86 and 87 There is the teams. So let's roll the dice To and a for the two six times good luck one two three Four five and it was a six Mark down into hun six times one two three four five six Chicago Bears down to this Cleveland Cavalry Cleveland Brown not Cavaliers So mark gave the Chicago Bears Travis with the Rams Raymond with the 49ers Kobe with the Raiders Travis with the Titans Raymond with the Bucks Andrew with the Washington football team James Alex with the Broncos Scott Blackwell with the Panthers as well as the Steelers Matthew with the Chiefs James With the Jaguars Matthew with my Eagles as well as the Detroit Lions Kobe with the Patriots and the Chargers PJ with the Dolphins Matthew with the Cowboys Matthew the Giants and Jets Steve with the Texans Matthew the Bills Andrew with the Ravens PJ with the Vikings Matthew with the Packers and Colts Sean with the Seahawks Mark with the Bengals Josea there's on a Cardinals Travis with the Falcon Saints and the hun with the Cleveland Browns So if anybody wants to trade, I'll give you guys a quick minute He won those in Prism cellos Maybe refresh right there Falcon's Ram Saints Titans All right guys, I think I'm gonna close it Let's FSU and the life of DJ Mamba want to trade against with the Raiders and Cardinals. I'm gonna close it Rex the only thing I'm thinking that we can fill up before I head off is that a leaf pro sport that has four left All right guys try to make it proposed trade or not. I'm closing it. It's been a little too long already All right confirm trade. Let me know confirm both of you guys and I'll allow that one Perfect. All right, there you go Oh Travis the other Raiders There we go. One trade guys Travis now the Raiders Coby knows the Rams Again, Joe. I wrote 40 on these I don't know if we have more, but if we do 41 will be from a fresh case. All right, first one is Nick Chubb at 35 Cleveland done and Devontae Parker to 99 Dolphins on the PJ Marshall Falk to 99 Rams trade Mosher mojo Marshall Falk Coby without enough Two-color patch with the Vikings 46 out of 49 That is Chris Carter We have Chase Claypool to 99 and we have a one-of-one Nike swoosh late in van der Esch Like smaller ding right there But a little one-of-one Nike swoosh for the Cowboys Matthew without one You go Xavier McKinney to 35 for the Giants Matthew the Giants You have a quiche on Vaughan two-color patch and autograph 10 out of 99 Bucks that's going to Raymond their redemption and A JK Dobbins 14 out of 25 little smaller thing right there one two three four color patch Who has the Baltimore Ravens Andrew Robb with that one? You go and we got a redemption Sinked signatures card number three.  So that's why he said Giants or Rams But that's gonna go both to Cincinnati though mark with the bangles Very nice. All right last box. Whoa, there's an autograph right at the top That's weird. I got Taylor Luan for the Tennessee Titans. That's going to Travis a 28 out of 49 Immortality Jim Plunkett for the Raiders Super Bowl immortality. That's pretty cool Raiders it's going to Travis back-to-back hits Coming cool, there's no number into this Cool base card though We have Matthew Stafford tonight and I'm for the Lions and a triple relic here trios Darnold Mims and la Michael pure Five out of five William Perry for the Bears through color patch Bears it's going to mark. We have for the Cincinnati bangles T. Higgins 23 out of 50 Another one there for the bangles and mark Cooper Cup For the Rams trade mojo Kobe we have a NFL gear two-color patch and piece of the pigs again 17 one off the jersey number out of 25 Jalen Rager For my angles one of Matthew two of them left Let's go to Redemption first I guess Jumbo Prime signature booklets Part number 27 chase Klaipel for the Steelers Scott Blackwell. There you go and last one here It is an RPA To 99 97 out of 99 chase young And I think this is that jersey number parallel green So it's to the jersey number Very nice rpa right there Washington football team Andrew Roth Nice rpa and there you go guys Oh That was National treasure football two blocks half case break random teams number 40 on jazby's case breaks.com Really nice hits popping out of here that nice chase Klaipel chase young jalen rager Um, and in the first box we had a little redemption here of joe, uh, aj green joe burrow Uh, jk dobbins, and we had a one-on-one late in van der ash Nike swoosh patch. So appreciate it guys jazby's case breaks.com