Welcome to Shankarayesh Academy's Hindu News Analysis, an announcement to aspirants and viewers regarding Prillams 2020 current affairs tests for the months of April 2020 till August 2020. One of the most common concerns among aspirants appearing for Prillams this year is how to cover current affairs for the months of April 2020 to August 2020, that is during the lockdown period, how to revise the topics relevant for these months, and how to check the ability to solve questions that may come from issues relevant to this particular timeline that is during the lockdown period. This is the biggest worry among many aspirants and having command over current affairs will play a very important role and will help the aspirants to sail through the Prillams exam easily because on an average 35 plus questions do come from current affairs. So this has prompted us to create a limited test plan that covers current affairs for the duration of April 2020 to August 2020 and this program will include five exclusive current affairs tests one for each month and this will help you to assess your preparedness on current affairs for each month. Each of these tests will be followed by a very detailed discussion that will help you to understand each question and concept thoroughly. For the benefit of the aspirants, Shankarayesh Academy is offering this module at Rs.999 and not just that along with five current affairs tests aspirants will also get free access to two more exclusive current affairs tests covering issues from June 2019 till March 2020. Additionally aspirants will get access to six GS full mock tests and two CSAT tests. Now these tests can be used to do a final revision of all subject areas before appearing for the Prillams examination. These tests will be provided as a set upon subscription which will allow you to create a flexible schedule as per your need and convenience. The five current affairs tests will be conducted from 22nd of this month. Aspirants who secure top three ranks in each test will get course fees completely reimbursed. So a total of 15 candidates will be reimbursed based on the performance in the current affairs test. The registration link for the test series is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Now let's proceed to our Hindu news analysis. These are the list of news articles taken from different editions of the newspaper and it has been given along with the page numbers in different editions. Now let's move on to the analysis of first news article. This editorial article discusses about the maritime tensions that has recently brewed up in Mediterranean Sea that has made Mediterranean waters as troubled waters. Last week Turkey has sent an exploration ship along with its navy to the disputed waters in Greece. To counter this France sent its warships to assist Greece. Now the main reason for this ongoing dispute is that natural gas deposits have been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea in the last decade. Let us see the background of this issue and then we will discuss this editorial. The syllabus relevant for the analysis of this editorial is highlighted here for your reference. See around the year 2010 a pair of United States Israeli consortiums they explored the sea bed near Haifa of Israel. During the exploration they discovered Tamar and Leviathan fields which were found to be rich in natural gas. Since then many countries are trying to access this gas through packs with Israel and they are trying to construct gas pipeline projects through sea. One such important gas pipeline project is East Med pipeline project. East Med stands for East Mediterranean. Now here the plan is to transport gas through pipeline from Israel waters through Cyprus waters till Greece and from Greece it would be transported to the rest of Europe that is especially to the European Union countries through land. Now a deal to build this project was signed in January 2020 between Israel, Greece and Cyprus. Now apart from this there was one more development which is the formation of East Mediterranean gas forum which also happened in January 2020. Now we have to take a careful look at the members of this forum which are Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and Palestine. Now it will be a regional cooperation platform for developing the natural gas fields in the Mediterranean area. Now you can observe the problem here is Turkey which shares a major maritime boundary and a long coastline with Mediterranean Sea has been left out in both these ventures. So this is the background behind this issue. So when the East Med pipeline project was announced without Turkey, obviously Turkey was angered by this move. So to counter this Turkey challenged this pipeline project and it reached an agreement with Libya and we know that Libya is currently in crisis. There is conflicts going on between the present government and the rebels but the government in Libya is backed by Turkey. Now here Turkey's plan is to form an exclusive economic zone from the southern coast of Turkey till the northern coast of Libya. For this Greece claimed that the Turkish exclusive economic zone violated the maritime sovereignty of Greece. Now this is because Turkey and Greece they have overlapping maritime claims because of the presence of numerous small islands in this region. We can find some of the islands of Greece were very close to Turkey and Greece came up with an exclusive economic zone deal with Egypt and yesterday that is on 18th August 2020 Egypt has ratified this exclusive economic zone deal with Greece. Now as you can observe from both the pictures both the claims of exclusive economic zones from the side of Turkey and from the side of Greece they are overlapping. Following this Turkey sent its exploration ship to the Mediterranean waters which we saw during the beginning of this discussion. Now the problem here is that Turkey has planned its exploration activities around Crete island of Greece. Now this region lies just outside the Turkish Libya exclusive economic zone. So Greece and Cyprus have called this action as a violation of sovereignty. Now this is the reason why France sent its warships to assist Greece. So now an alliance is emerging among Greece Cyprus Italy and France that is backed by Egypt Israel and United Arab Emirates. Turkey is almost isolated but we should note that it remains as a key power in Mediterranean area and it is trying to flex its muscles and to assert its power. So we can see that this issue has now become more complicated as it has the potential to involve more countries from Europe, West Asia and North Africa especially the European Union. And with respect to European Union it has invested around 40 million dollars for the planning works in this East Med Pipeline project. This is because European Union is going to be a major beneficiary because of this project as it will reduce its oil dependence on Russia. So the author states that the tensions have to be reduced so as to avoid an open conflict in this region and a diplomatic and mutually acceptable solution should be found out. See Turkey has a long Mediterranean coast so excluding Turkey is not a wise move. However at the same time Turkey should not be allowed to bully and take advantage of smaller countries in the region. The author states that this task has to be ensured by the European Union. Now other than this you know that Turkey while it is a member of NATO it is not a member of European Union and recently issues are building between Turkey and France as well with respect to clandestine support of weapons through commercial merchant ships from Turkey to Libya. So this is the matter with reference to gas contest in the Mediterranean Sea. Now there is another news article today which state that the UN recognized Libya's government called as Government of National Accord has signed a military accord with Qatar and Turkey. As per this trilateral military cooperation Turkey and Qatar will send military advisors to Libyan armed forces and they will provide training to Libyan cadets. So this is a three-way military cooperation know about this development. Also know that Turkey is aspiring to become a protectorate of Islam to shift the focus from Arab Islamic world to Turkic Islamic world. Last year along with Malaysia and Pakistan Turkey even attempted to establish a counter to organization of Islamic cooperation and with respect to India we should note that Turkey is not on same pages with India on the Kashmir issue. So that means it favors the Pakistan's narrative of Kashmir. So these are few other information with respect to Turkey and with this we come to the end of analysis of this editorial. In this analysis we had a major discussion about gas contest in Mediterranean Sea. We saw about east med pipeline project and the overlapping claims in the Mediterranean waters making it troubled waters. Now let us move on to the analysis of next news article. This news article talks about the recent initiative of forest department of Tamil Nadu wherein they started aerial surveillance of elephants using drones. This comes at the backdrop of reports on continuing deaths of wild elephants in forests and through this initiative weak or immobile elephants could be identified and aerial surveillance is special as it is free from risks involved in patrolling through the forest. And in the last fortnight we have been hearing a lot of news with respect to Asian elephants. On 12th August we also remembered World Elephant Day and on the eve of World Elephant Day government of India also launched compendium on best practices of human elephant conflict management in India. In this regard let us have a brief discussion on Asian elephants or Indian elephant. See Asian elephants inhabit dry to wet forest habitats and grassland habitats in 13 range countries spanning Asia. The world population is around 50,000 to 60,000. They are divided into some major subspecies that includes Bornean elephant, Sri Lankan elephant, Sumatran elephant and Indian elephant. Conservationists do say that these subspecies may not be treated as distinct species and can be generally called as Asian elephants. Know that these elephants are sociable, they form groups of six to seven related females that are led by oldest female who is the matriarch. They are herbivorous animals, they love bamboo shoots and they also live close to a source of freshwater because they need to drink at least once a day. Now coming to the threats faced by them mainly they are poached for ivory and other body parts which are traded for heavy profit, illegal profit and threat also include continuous decline in their habitat and also decline in quality of habitat mainly because of interaction with human beings who carry out unplanned and sustainable development activities. Know that in India around 500 people and 100 elephants die in every year because of conflict with each other. Elephants come to human habitations also for fodder. In this regard a recent conservation practice was held particularly we saw this information with reference to the state of Odisha where they have started throwing seed balls of bamboo into the forest and this practice avoids humans to enter into forest for promoting fodder for elephants and at the same time it will prevent elephants straying out of forests and it will prevent elephants raiding human habitations. Now let's see their conservation status say it is listed as endangered under the IUCN red list and in sites they are protected under appendix one and with reference to UN convention on migratory species we know that with the approval of India's proposal to include great Indian buster Asian elephant and Bengal Florican to appendix one of CMS at the 13th conference of parties to convention on migratory species in Gandhinagar Asian elephant or Indian elephant is added or is at present in appendix one of convention on migratory species. Now with respect to wildlife protection act it is listed in schedule one. Now coming to India they can be seen in central and southern western guards, northeast India, eastern India, northern India and also in some parts of southern peninsular India. Their population in India is around 30,000 as per census conducted in 2017 and out of around 50,000 to 60,000 Asian elephants 60% are in India. Now there is an important program that India has launched way back in 1992 for the protection of elephants called as project elephant. It was launched in 1992 as a centrally sponsored scheme. It also aims to address issues of conflict and also to address the welfare of captive elephants as well. The project is mainly implemented in 16 states or union territories which are elephant range states in India and till now there are around 28 elephant reserves which have been formally notified by various state governments. In project elephant ministry of environment forest and climate change provides financial and technical support to the major elephant range states in the country. So these are some of the important information with reference to the analysis of this news article. In this analysis we saw about Asian elephants or Indian elephant, then we saw about the threats faced by them, we saw their protection status, we saw few best practices when we saw few information about project elephant. Now let us move on to next news article. This news article is about a framework that was released by the banking regulator reserve bank of India. It aims to set up a pan India umbrella entity or entities that focus on retail payment systems. In this context let us discuss about this framework for retail payments entity. The syllabus relevant for the analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Now as we said it is a framework for authorization of pan India umbrella entity for retail payments. Such an entity shall be a company that is incorporated in India under the Companies Act of 2013. It may also be a for-profit company or it may be a Section 8 company as may be decided by the Reserve Bank of India. Now what do we mean by Section 8 company? This is as per Section 8 of the Companies Act of 2013 which deals with formation of companies with charitable objects. For example a company which has objects to promote commerce or art, science, sports, education, research, social welfare, religion, charity, no protection of environment or any such other object. Now such a company intends to apply its profits or other income in promoting the objects and these are companies that intends to prohibit the payment of any dividend to its members. Such companies are called by Section 8 of the Act as companies with charitable objects. Now coming to the umbrella entity see it shall be authorized by the Reserve Bank of India under the legislation called as Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007. The entity will also be governed by the provisions of this Act and other relevant statutes and directors. Now let us see the eligibility to apply as a promoter or a promoter group for this umbrella entity. Here any entity holding more than 25% of the paid up capital of this umbrella entity shall be deemed to be a promoter. The promoter entity shall be owned and controlled by resident Indian citizens as defined in the rules framed under Foreign Exchange Management Act of 1999 and its subsequent amendments. Now such an aspirant shall be having three years experience in payments ecosystem as payment system operator or payment service provider or technology service provider. Now when we say payment service provider it includes banks or non-banks that provide payment services or that participate in a payment transaction. Now when we say technology service provider it refers to those entities that provide only technology platform or only technology support for example software or hardware related to bank payment gateway. Now since they are purely technology service providers at any point of time they do not hold the monies that are transacted between the customer and the merchant. Now if the promoter entity has a foreign direct investment or foreign portfolio investment then it shall fulfill the requirements under the rules framed under the format. In addition to this the promoter group shall conform to RBI's fit and proper criteria for example the person shall have a record of financial integrity good reputation the person shall be financially sound and should not be declared insolvent. Now when it comes to capital the umbrella entity shall have a minimum paid up capital of rupees 500 crore and know that no single promoter or promoter group shall have more than 40% investment in the capital of this entity. Now when it comes to governance RBI retains the right to approve the appointment of directors RBI could also nominate a member on the board of this umbrella entity. Now finally let us discuss the scope of activities to be performed by this umbrella entity very importantly and first and foremost it shall set up new payment systems in the retail space and it shall manage such new payment systems and operate them and here in the retail space we can say it comprises of automatic teller machines, ATMs, white label point of sale, Aadhaar based payments, remittance services, it includes newer payment methods, standards and technologies then the entity shall operate clearing and settlement systems for participating banks and non-banks. It has to identify and manage relevant risks like risks in settlement, credit risk, liquidity risk, operational risk and it shall preserve the integrity of the system. The entity shall monitor retail payment system developments and related issues in the country and also at the international level so as to avoid shocks and frauds that may adversely affect the economy then it shall ensure that principles of fairness, equity and competitive neutrality are applied in determining participation in the system and this entity can also carry on any other business as suitable to further strengthen the retail payments ecosystem in the country. Now know that this umbrella entity may participate in RBI's payment and settlement systems now this includes having a current account with RBI if required finally it is also expected to interact and to be interoperable with the systems that are operated by National Payments Corporation of India. So these are some of the important information with reference to the framework for authorization of PAN India umbrella entity for retail payments which was announced by RBI yesterday. Now let us move on to the analysis of next news article. This news article talks about findings of a global study on the quality of digital well-being in around 85 countries. The article also mentions digital quality of life index 2020. In this context it is important for us to know who releases this index then what are the core pillars that determine the digital quality of life and also India's position in this index. See this index is released by surf shark. Now it is a virtual private network service provider or VPN service provider when we say virtual private network it is a service that allows us to connect to the internet through an encrypted tunnel that ensures online privacy and also protects sensitive data. A virtual private network is commonly used to secure connection to public wi-fi hotspots to hide IP address and also to make browsing activity private. Now these are the five core pillars that determine the digital quality of life and overall if you see India is ranked at 57th position out of 85 countries. Now here we have given the country profile for India. You can observe that while India has performed well with respect to internet affordability and electronic government it is certainly lagging in three core pillars internet quality, electronic infrastructure and in electronic security. So these are the three areas with reference to digital well-being India has to improve upon. Some of the other key takeaways from the findings of the study and the leaders in each of the pillars is provided here for your reference. The purpose of providing the leaders is to take best practices from these leaders on relevant core pillars where we are lagging behind. With this we come to the end of analysis of this article. Now let us move on to next part of the discussion. This article states that Asok Lavasa one of the election commissioners is said to join Asian Development Bank. So in this context let us see few important points with reference to Asian Development Bank. See this bank was conceived in early 1960s as a financial institution that would be Asian in character and this institution is to promote or encourage economic growth and cooperation in Asia-Pacific region one of the poorest regions in the world. Despite several successes if you see the current scenario in Asia-Pacific region it's still home to a large share of world's poor population around 26 crore people are living on less than 1.9 dollar per day and around 110 crore population are living on less than 3.2 dollars per day. Now the vision of this Asian Development Bank is to make Asia-Pacific region as a prosperous region inclusive resilient and also a sustainable region where its efforts will be focused on to eradicating extreme poverty in the region. Now to achieve this objective the bank assists its members and partners by providing loans, technical assistance, grants and equity investments. These are aimed to promote social and economic development in the region and ADB also maximizes the development impact of its assistance by facilitating policy dialogues and also by providing advisory services. It also helps in mobilizing financial resources through co-financing operations that will help to tap official credit sources, commercial and export credit sources. Now let's see few important points with reference to ADB from Prillin's perspective. See it was established in the year 1966. It has its headquarters in Manila which is the capital of the Philippines. Now if you come to membership pattern, at present ADB has 68 members, there are regional members and there are non-regional members, 49 are regional members that is from Asia and the Pacific, 19 are non-regional members. If you take non-regional members it includes United States of America, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada etc. India is a member since the year 1966. Also know that China is also a member of ADB but Russia is not a member and none of the African countries are members of this bank. Now if you take the governing structure the highest policy-making body is the Board of Governors. Now this comprises of one representative from each member nation that is 48 from Asia-Pacific region and 19 from Opsid region. These governors they elect 12 members to form Board of Directors. The Board of Directors perform the bank's duties full-time at its headquarters in Manila. The Board of Directors supervise the bank's financial statements, approve the bank's administrative budget, they review and approve all policy documents and all loan, equity and technical assistance operations as well. Now for us from the Pellim's perspective you should also know that Asian Development Outlook is released by Asian Development Bank. So these are some of the important points with reference to Asian Development Bank. Now let's move on to next part of the discussion. This news article states that IIT Madras is ranked as top innovative educational institution in the country under the utter ranking of institutions on innovation achievements. And this is for the second consecutive year that IIT Madras is ranked first. Now we know that government is bringing out major reforms in the education sector. It is also coming out with different schemes to promote innovation, research and development in the country, particularly in the higher education sector. And in the last five years, India has made a considerable progress in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is visible if we see the Global Innovation Index ranking. From 81st position in the year 2015, India has reached 52nd position last year. And this Global Innovation Index is co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organization. And coming to Global Entrepreneurship Index of Global Entrepreneurship Development Institute, India is at the 78th position. So now let us discuss about the utter ranking of institutions on innovation achievements. See, it is an initiative of innovation cell of Union Ministry of Education. It aims to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in India. Ranking is done by considering many major parameters or indicators that are used globally to rank education institutions for innovation output. In addition, this ranking also measures some parameters that are India specific. They will be considering the current scenario within our country and the present status of higher education system in India. But the parameters of this ranking, they are primarily organized in major broad parameters with seven indicators. These indicators are related to innovation and entrepreneurship development among the students and faculties. The first indicator is budget and funding support. Now this parameter captures the budget that is spent or expenses that are incurred exclusively towards promoting and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship development among students, faculties and staff. Now then there is infrastructure and facilities. Now this parameter enlists all dedicated infrastructure related to pre incubation, incubation and advanced lab facilities that are existing in the campus. So this means this infrastructure could be used for promoting and supporting innovation and the infrastructure could also be used for innovation through startups as well. Recently we have been hearing news about IIT Madras joining with startups in promoting innovations. One very recent information is that the health care technology innovation center of IIT Madras and Helixon, a health care startup in IIT Madras Research Park. They have announced successful deployment of remote patient monitoring solutions for COVID-19. They have jointly developed this remote here in patient management system. It means doctors have less risk of contracting the disease and there is also less expenditure for PPE equipment. Now the third parameter is awareness, promotions and support for idea generation and innovation. Now here outputs of various programs and activities in the institute that are related to awareness generation, trainings, idea generation, innovation creation, these are considered. This parameter also includes any achievements and recognitions earned by a particular higher education institute in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. The fourth indicator is promotion and support for entrepreneurship development. Now this parameter captures outputs of various programs and activities related to promoting and supporting startups and entrepreneurship development at the institute. It includes partnership made among higher education institutes to extend incubation support and also to receive incubation support. Now then comes innovative learning methods and courses. Here it considers innovative learning methods and courses that are related to intellectual property rights, innovation, cognitive skill development, startups and entrepreneurship development that are offered by the particular higher education institute. It also captures information about faculty strength of the institute who have experience in innovation, IPR rights, entrepreneurship development and startup. Now then we have intellectual property generation, technology transfer and commercialization. This parameter enlists all intellectual properties that are generated, filed and innovative technologies which are commercialized by the particular institute. And then we have innovation in governance of the institution. Now this allows higher education institute to list maximum of two best innovative solutions that are developed in-house and they will also portray the level of impact created after being adopted. Your innovation can fall in any category for example like water conservation, energy conservation, waste management, knowledge management, security and surveillance. Also know that until ranking of innovations on innovation achievements, this will focus on quality of innovations more than quantity. We'll try to measure the real impact created by the innovations at the national and international level. The ranking will also guide institutions for future development so as to make them globally competitive, particularly in the forefront of innovation. Now let's see few information related to the innovation cell of ministry of education which was earlier called as ministry of human resource and development. The name was changed to give implementation to the recently published national education policy so as to drive focus towards education. Now this innovation cell was established at all India council for technical education. This cell aims to foster or encourage the culture of innovation in all higher education institutions across the country. Some of the major programs of this innovation cell we can see that this ranking then smart India hackathon, then institution innovation councils, then there is national innovation and startup policy for students and faculties. With this we come to the end of analysis of this news article. We discussed about at all ranking of institutions on innovation achievements. It's seven indicators and also the innovation cell of ministry of education. We have come to the last session, the practice questions discussion session. See this question is with reference to Asian Development Bank. They have given five countries and are asking which of the above are members of Asian Development Bank from the given countries. We can say that Russia and South Africa are not members of Asian Development Bank. So the correct answer for this question is option C two, three and four only. This question is with reference to exclusive economic zone. Two statements are given. They are asking which of the following statements are correct. First statement, the exclusive economic zone shall not extend beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea of a coastal state is measured. The statement is correct as per article 57 of unclos. The second statement, the coastal state has sovereign rights in the exclusive economic zone only for the purpose of conserving and managing the natural resources. This statement is incorrect. If you go with article 56 class one a coastal state has sovereign rights for the purpose of even exploring and exploiting the natural resources. So here the second statement is incorrect. So the correct answer for this question is option A one only. Now this question is with reference to Asian Elephants. Two statements are given. We have to select incorrect statements. They are categorized as vulnerable under the UCN Red List. It is incorrect. They are categorized as endangered. Second statement project Elephant was launched by government of India in 2002 with an objective to protect elephants they're habitat and corridors. The objective is correct, but it was launched in 1992. Both the statements are incorrect. Therefore the correct answer is option C both one and two are incorrect. This question is with reference to the framework for authorization of Pan India umbrella entity for retail payments. Two statements are given. They are asking which of the statements are incorrect. First statement the umbrella entity shall be authorized by RISO Bank of India under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007. This statement is correct. Second statement a company with foreign portfolio investment is not eligible to apply as promoter of the umbrella entity. This is incorrect because there is no such restriction. However, if a promoter entity has a foreign direct investment or foreign portfolio investment, it shall fulfill the requirements under the rules framed under the foreign exchange management act of 1999. So here only the second statement is incorrect. Therefore the correct answer is option B two only. This question is with reference to digital quality of life index 2020. It is released by the correct answer is option C serve shark, which is a virtual private network service provider. Now Nailson and Internet and Mobile Association of India. They are part of publishing India Internet report 2019. Now this question is with reference to RTL ranking of institutions on innovation achievements. Two statements are given. They are asking which of the statements are correct. First statement it is a ranking system to rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in India on innovation achievements. The statement is correct. It is an initiative of Nithya Yog. It is incorrect. It is an initiative of innovation cell of ministry of education. Here the correct answer is option A one only because only the first statement is correct. Which of the following statements is correct with reference to AR II a recently seen in news. It stands for RTL ranking of institutions on innovation achievements. The correct answer is option A. It is an initiative of ministry of education to rank all major higher education institutions and universities in India on innovation achievements. In this question option B corresponds to RTL innovation mission of Nithya Yog and that's the wrap up practice question discussion. With this we come to the end of today's the Hindu news analysis. If you like the video, click the like button, comment, share it among your friends and those who are in need of such resources and subscribe to Shankaray's Academy YouTube channel for more updates and content on civil service exam preparation.


Let us look at an example of VCG inaction or the victory park roads mechanism inaction and it'll be a routing transportation problem. So here is a directed network of links. Each link has the cost of the length of it if you wish and the goal is to find a shortest path from A to F. Obviously looking at it, it will be quite obvious that the shortest path is this one. And so this is the path that would be selected by a traveler who wishes to get there from A to F most quickly. Now according to VCG, how much would the owner of the link A F pay? Well, intuitively, he's not part of the path, so we shouldn't have to pay or receive anything. Let's see what VCG says. So the shorter path with AC's declaration of what their cost is is five, right? And so the cost to all the agents is that shortest path totaling five. Had AC not been in the picture and not declared anything there for what would the total cost to the agents have been? Well, it would have been the very same path, so the shortest path. And so the cost would have been five also. And so the amount that AC pays if you wish is the difference between the cost to the agents with him in the picture and the cost without him in the picture, which of course is zero. And this is true for all the other ages, other edges that don't participate in the shortest path. All these edges draw in blue, these edges not participating the shortest path will will neither pay nor seep anything according to VCG. So that's the easy part. What about edges that do participate in the shortest path? So let's look for example at one of them at AB. Well, with the shortest path, as we know, is this one and how much would all agents other than AB itself, what is the cost on the agents on the shortest path? Well, it's one plus one is the cost of two. Had A been not been in the picture, what would have happened? Well, the shortest path would have been this one over here. So this would have been the shortest path of a cost of two plus three plus one. And so the cost to the agent AB is the difference between the cost without them in the picture, which would have been minus six, and the cost with them in the picture, which is minus two, that is the cost to all the other agents, and the difference is minus four. So the cost to AB is minus four. In other words, AB will get a payment of four, making if you wish a profit of one because their cost is three, they'll get a payment of four, and they'll have a benefit of one. So this is for AB. What about BE, for example? Well, it's the same sort of analysis. BE, the cost to all other agents without BE in the picture is minus six. It's still, this would have been the shorter route, had BE not in the picture, and cost would have been minus six. Now the cost to the agents with BE in the picture to the agent other than BE is four. Why is that? It's one plus three, and so the cost to, this is the minus four over here, so the net of it is that the cost imposed on by VCG on the link BE is minus two. In other words, they would get a payment of two, making again a profit of one if you wish. What about EF? Same sort of calculation, although the outcome would be a little different because in their case, they will be getting a payment of three. Why is that? Well, without them in the picture, this would no longer be the shortest path. The shortest path would be a cost of seven, whether it's this one or this one in both cases, the cost of the first path would be seven, so the total cost to the population without them in the picture would be seven. With them, the cost is, again, the one plus three, it's a four, and so they get the difference of three. So the payment would be three, and therefore the net profit, if you wish, it would be three minus one, namely two. So you could ask, why is it the difference? You look at all these links, somehow their net payoff is different, and is that fair? Well, fairness is in the eye of the beholder, but the rationale for it is that they have different market power. The amount of social value they bring is different because without them, the outcome would be different to the population, and that's why they have different sort of payments and different cost structures here. That's an example of VCG in operation.


That depends on the foreskin being a sportsman myself, I've been in locker rooms and I would fully agree. Yes, sometimes you see people with absolutely outrageous foreskins and I could believe that there would be droplets of urine in there. For those people I would definitely recommend to get circumcised but not everybody has a long foreskin.


Okay, just a minute. Next year is going to be a reciting year for me. I'm not going to talk about it today, but this year has been the year that we've each called me Ricky Gervais. So just a minute. I'm not Ricky Gervais. Yeah, but then everybody sees my face. Okay, I'm a programmer most of the time. So it's nice to get the opportunity today to talk about something that's not all technical. It's more about how you can improve websites through very simple actions. It's kind of designed, it's usability, it's logic. It's using your own experience as a web user to improve the experience that you want to visit as well. One of my things I'd love to do, if you don't want to talk about it, is to go to very beautiful places like this. So I've spent a lot of time going up mountains and going to view my site here on that little map to take a look at the photos. And so the particular focus that I've got today is with a few tourist websites. What are you making the website? The first thing you need to do before you even start, and we're not talking technically just in general terms, is you need to have priority. That's the priority of the website that you're going to be making. The first priority that you have is that you need your visitors or you need to allow your visitors to get the information that they're looking for, or to complete your task as quickly as possible. Everybody is stressed. Everybody has no time.  That's the first and primary priority. That's it. That is in fact the only priority when you're making the website. Because what else is a website for? To achieve that, to share information, or to allow people to complete tasks. That's it. It's not difficult to work out what you need to do. The technology is different, so nobody's going to be using WordPress or using something else. Obviously you're using all the back-up and technical problems. That's kind of a tool that you're going to use to achieve those things, but that is your priority. It's very fancy that people come to your website because they like what it looks like and they care what your website looks like. They care how well that they can use it and how they can understand it. You're confused. It doesn't matter that it looks in half a second. It doesn't matter that you've got a slide on the front page. It doesn't matter that you've got a video. It doesn't matter that it works on your mobile phone. What matters is, if you get the website, it's technically perfect. It's the fastest website you've ever seen. It doesn't matter if you can't use it, if you can't look at how to use it, because after a few seconds you'll be like, you know what? I'm just going to go and find another website that works more easily for me. When you're trying to achieve number one, think number four. Everybody here uses the internet aside from their data. What annoys you when you burn information? If you're trying to find out time tables or you want to know what time to shop, then you need to know how to get time. What's the thing that gets in the way of doing that? What's the thing that every day you go, that's so nice? Cookie bangers. Cookie bangers? What?  What? Nobody cares about cookies. That's a fallacy. You're obliged to do it even more and more and more, but that doesn't mean that you need to have a bannier that's blocking you from doing stuff. That better works out for clients at the beginning of the year, and it looks really, really good. It's a really good design. It has lots of heavy videos, but it doesn't matter because their clients are sitting in offices wearing suits and ties. I'm a super fossil internet connection, coming to look at what offerings they have. Too much work. Too much work? No, too much work. What happened was you went on the site, really well designed, we had full topography, I had the gradients in colours and everything, and a cookie banner walked me in the entire head so you couldn't see my face. The cookie banner on it says, this website uses cookies. By using our website, you're accepting that you're going to use those. And the next word is a button that says, accept. What happens if you don't click on that? What happens if you click on little x, or what one of the buttons says, no I don't accept. You go to the next page, and you look in the browser console, there is a cookie set. It doesn't say anything. It's a bad solution. It's not about the technical side, I don't know what I'm talking about today. It gets in the way. So if you're thinking about designing a website, building a website, using a plugin or whatever, look at it and see if you go into that website with it, it doesn't get in the way. Everybody thinks that the cookie banner is a solution. No, it's not. You just need to have someone on the page visible to every user that cookies are being sent. If you don't agree to it, don't use my website. Be clear about what you're trying to communicate. But it doesn't mean that if you need to add things to your website for legal reasons, then it has to get in the way of everything else. Everybody, everybody hates pop-ups. If nobody wants to subscribe to a newsletter, that's the first time you go to a website. No. If you go to a website and you agree to the article, you go, this is really good, and then right inside there's a course of action that says, subscribe to my newsletter, then you fill out how you subscribe to it. That's great. But if you try, if you try and force people to subscribe to the newsletter, all that will achieve is they go to another website. Okay. It comes off some websites. Four websites, three local, one not local, the reason why we're playing together. I'm not a very fan of slides, so we're just going to switch straight into the browser now. And what I'm going to do is just look at these websites that I've got up here to say what works well on their website. What have they done? What have they solved correctly? What did they improve? They have here the website, the tourism website, the full-screen website. Now, I'm not going to go to, let's have a technical approach. I'm just going to go as an Indian user. Sorry, an Indian user. I'm wondering too. Okay. I searched with OBA. You don't know where it is. Don't know how to get there. Click on the link. My browser is set to English. And I see that. Okay. Who can tell me what's bad about that from number one? It's French and English. It's French and English. Yeah. I'm going to the website. I think you want all these other websites that I go to. They automatically switch into English more. Or they're all in French. I can't understand that. I've got somewhere else in the website. You can't always translate every website you make for a small group of people. Here, you've got the trendy thing in Switzerland. There's a little bit of English on your website. You can do it cool. One thing that really bothers me about the website is that very often you cannot, you just cannot find this switch for another language. And you have to search everywhere in the menu. Then you have to scroll all the way down. Yeah. Exactly. So, go. Where's the language that you want to take? In the photo. Scroll down. The problem with the menu is that it's not wide enough. You have things on the left. Okay, 10 seconds. You've lost your phone. You can't find it. You said, right, the menu's too wide. That's going to stay on the website. I think it's good. The browser was wider. The screen that I'm looking at. I don't know that one. I didn't see that. It was a complete page. Okay. Can you see it now? You've got a switch language. Well, I've seen it before. Yeah. What does that mean? French. Yeah. Have you heard of it? You know that as somebody who's involved in the Eastern industry. My mum would know that. What does that mean? French? She'd say, I don't know what it means. Done. Okay. So, I can't look and I can switch to English. Now, any business CMS allows that to happen automatically when you go on the website. It automatically says, this browser is English, so I'll show you the English page. It's not difficult. You don't have to program it. You just do it. It works. So there's no reason why they couldn't consider the amount of visitors that they're likely to receive on the website. It makes sense. Okay. So, I know, I've heard the name, it's all over the, in the press, in the press, there's a complex to go, skiing and everything. This is obviously the right season for skiing. I want to know about skiing for the coming season. How do I get, where is this, what's the point you're going? Okay. So, here on the left-hand side, very, very small as a little button, not even red, this sort of half-red, it says winter. So, we're going to this page, and now on to the page. Okay. I can go and get drunk. That's a good sign. So, this page here, you know, this, it's not bad, but it's kind of the problem with, I think the bootstrap starts with this idea, originally, with a jumbo trunk. It's a, that's three, and they think it's all important information, the first thing you see when you scroll. Now, everybody scrolls. There are lots and lots of reviews and reports and everything that people have analyzed this. They've done AB testing on this kind of stuff. And the simple thing is, when somebody goes on to that website, because every single website has that type of idea, now everybody knows you have to scroll down. But just by my actions scrolling down, that's one action I wouldn't need to do if I could see here a little bit more information rather than this great big image. I don't want to go skiing. I know I'm thinking about going to a vocation. So I don't need a massive photograph of somebody skiing. I know that this is beautiful. Most people will be looking for accommodation levels and prices and all this kind of stuff. Ticket prices is pretty good while it places us in the middle again. It's with that sort of transparency effect. It looks okay. It looks quite modern stuff. It just means it's a little bit more difficult to find when I click on it. That was a short content. I thought it was a little bit more significant than what we were told and not suddenly the searing t-shirt on the ceiling. So we'll go back to the previous page and we'll go down and see what there are. I'll get to know the results back to you every time. See you next time. Now I haven't prepared this. I haven't looked at this website before. I haven't looked at it briefly, but once before. So I'm not being very critical. I'm not saying this even published this first time. Just as an average website for a tourist place in Switzerland. So you've got 10, 15 seconds to load. And again, I've got a great big picture of somebody skiing. Thanks for that. Anybody here hands up who goes mountain biking in winter? Good luck. Once we get past the obvious kind of content problems, which isn't technically real, it's something that you must forget what people are actually looking for. Does that actually make sense? What would make more sense here is to optimise this area and make a priority in the winter because that's what you're looking for. You can have something on the side of the page that says, OK, by the way, there are in the summer in the spring as well. So all this information is further down at the end. So far, I've checked three times. I'm impressed. Oh, this looks nice here. Yeah, that's good. I've got a card. I don't know what that is. Web TV. Maybe. OK. Special offers. Any sign of any special offers here? This looks under our specials. We just take it out. I'm being rude that's not true. But I'm going down here. OK, let's have a look at the clock. I'm assuming that's some sort of discount card. OK, again, the spirit of the image. Tell me the people who have been there. Yeah, OK. That's the fourth time you've told me that. Register online. So when I look at that, we're now clicking. We've got this banner here on the English Web site. Why is it in French? Now, when I look at that, obviously, again, as I've just said, we can scroll down. We can find out more information about the spending space there on the screen to show you the prices. What is that? What is the cost? Best price guarantee. OK, good. Find out roughly in the right area. Different prices, I can choose what I want to go to. I don't have one because I don't see direct access as such. That for me is one of the first things you should see. Telling you, what should I buy and what makes it interesting for you. OK, there should be right at the top of the page. So now I'm going to click on the logo because I've got used to the idea that the logo is on Facebook. And what you suddenly notice is you're not even on the phobia website anymore. You're on a different website. So that is very, very confusing for people. And here again, you've got another navigational problem here. Firstly, you've got red on blue, which is incredibly bad. But the zero is almost invisible to my old middle-aged eyes. How many hands up do you hear German-speaking Swiss people who like the fact that you're using the German flag? To indicate the German, to indicate the French. I didn't think so. Any French Swiss here like the French or French French. What do you use? This Irish man isn't so happy, you know. Yeah. Sent it again. And it's always going to be back. If you want to take one second away from the stage. So ever, ever, ever, use the flags with nothing to do with language. OK. So we'll use the back a bit. We'll use the good old-fashioned back button on the main website. OK. So we'll try a different approach. We'll go back to the home page by clicking on the logo. Hopefully we get to the right place this time. Yes, we do. Resulting useful information. Wow. So much useful information. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to sit down and read all of that immediately. OK. Where is Serbia? destination, what might make one very well hidden. OK. Again, confusing. That's why is it something you want to start? OK. Scientific HTML file. Not bad for performance. Good hearing. Lots of text. Yeah, normal. Yeah. OK. This note now seems to be a video. Great. OK. How do you go by train? Do I have to fly? Do I have to get a bike down? I mean, this is all quite difficult. It's all quite difficult to find out this information. To find out the basic information, obviously, not on this website, but on another website in Germany, Switzerland. I did, I ran a quick test. I know where the place is. You find out how to get there by public transport. It took me 25 minutes. And I've been using the internet as a programmer and concept for 20, 20 years. And it took me half an hour to find out how to get to this place. OK. Imagine that you've never even heard of Switzerland and you just think, oh, people say it's nice, so I want to go and have a look at it. Have you got the patience to try and really say, you know, half an hour, half an hour, just to find out where the phones are? Not a bad idea because it means that you've got immediate links. So once you've been to the website a couple of times, they're very useful. These icons actually make sense. You can probably work out what they are. And if you want to get those icons to the top corner, what they are. Hi. Yeah. They can put tables with a lift. They can put tables with what they want. Yeah. So that's it. Do you make websites? Or less? So, why does it show me a very good place to be? Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing your opinion because you just said off the top of your head what that is. So I need one. I'm going to do that as a boss. So when I play I'm going to see something about a boss. I don't see bosses. I don't see bosses. I don't see bosses. Really annoying. You have to be a little optimistic. This is a kind of French or Swiss romantic way of expression. You want to use the know both the pictures are great. Beautiful. Yeah, that's it. I mean, Switzerland sells it. You don't have to have a reason to come. To spend twice or three times as much on theater as to go to France, which is just as beautiful. Advancing It doesn't cost you a lot, that's a good visiting from abroad. Scroll effect. This is like walking through a minefield, this website. Every time I move to now something else, oh, what's up, what's this? They look awesome. But if you were to use it for this website, it would be so annoying. It's annoying to me, I've kind of flipped this website a little bit, so I'm used to it. But even when I'm used to it, every single time I go anywhere near that menu, it says, here's 40 options of each, if you want to look at next. I don't have 40 options, I just want to know what time the bus is at. Just wait. You've got a webcam here, on the page, and it's telling me what time it is, thanks, but it's telling me it's on the top of it, on the top of it as well, what's the point? It's helpful to know how accurate that picture is. Because I can't count the amount of times I've gone to a webcam, looked at it in the Windsor, and seen a picture from the autumn there, and there's not much smell there. So, enough shooting, verbiage down in flames. The next one, Golden Pass. Who knows the Golden Pass? Nobody? Yes. Yes, or you will sleep? Yes. I've heard that the Golden Pass is a thing to do in Switzerland, I have to go and do that. For those people who don't know what Golden Pass is, anyway, here's the Golden Pass, without reading any details on that thing, watch this one over here on that page. Magic, because you've got the seconds, the second slide, not the first, the second, suddenly showing you a nice golden train. And all this information is within Pass's screen, it's saying for a few seconds and whatever, and I'm looking, they're going, oh, that looks nice. What's that going to, oh. Where did that go? I don't know, I'll put it on again. Okay, I'm going to set it up to do with trains.  What is it though? Go to Lines, and anybody who wants to see on that map that there's an engine that's like a monster. On my page, you have to wait for this website, and then suddenly it goes, that's where you have to come in. Okay. So, again, it's a bit confusing, the logic is that we need to understand. Yeah, exactly. Now, let's assume you don't want to improve the word, you want to see stuff, you want to have a nice slide, a nice new page, that's fine, that's no problem at all. But just think, next time you do it, think that you're using this website, looking at it on screen, that size, and you're trying to read the text, and then all of a sudden it goes, think about it, if you can't do an overlay effect, if you can't fade in and fade out. Because it's usually fine on a little laptop or on your phone, which as we've heard, is today more than 50% of people in sorts will use their phones more often than not. But if you're using a slightly bigger screen, if you're looking at the map or if you're looking at a video, that's constantly reeling in, if that thing suddenly shifts across your iMac screen in what, 300 to 600 milliseconds, that's going to hurt your eyes, especially if you keep doing it. And especially if there's no way of stopping. So if you're going to use one of these, think about princess, stop, pause, is there a way to do an overlay effect or actually make it short, so it won't stop in an hour. Okay? So, apart from that, this website's not bad at all. I would say it needs to say a little bit more than what you've asked. When you scroll down, you've got all these lovely great graphics. It tells you what they are. Chocolate, right? No, yeah, chocolate. Ah! There's no chocolate. Give me chocolate. I can't. I can't click on it. You've got to go somewhere else to search for it. So that's a bit of a shame that it's not my end for you. Okay? View our office. Now, for me, I think that's a little bit more important than that. Because that's just one destination that you could go to, but I'm traveling from Interlochen by train. So that doesn't really interest me that much. You get a lot more tourists that come across the country on the train than want to go up to that place. Because my French is negative, I'm not going to try and pronounce it. Okay? So down here, I've got these offers.  Again, why is it in French when I'm on the English website? If you're going to have a lot of English on the internet, it's going to be a little bit lower. But don't translate off to that because it's just normal. All it is, that's the logo again. Tell me about another place. Passage gallery. Anybody got any opinions on that? Is it 1996? What you've got here is a nice attempt to actually show you how nice it is. All of the train there, but you're looking at big gallery images which are showing how nice it is. It's very nice that they're using their customers' pictures. I'm showing you what we're doing open. We're not just showing our professionally done photos, we're showing real photos. But if you've got a lot you don't need to background it. It's just confusing because it's coming that way.  It's okay. But the fact that there's all this green stuff going on in the menu is really, really confusing. If you were to turn that website with perhaps your different colours, you've got no chance of it. So just think about what different types of people are going to be visiting inside and not think, okay, we're going to show how nice it is by putting a really beautiful picture and then covering this stuff so you can see it. It's a waste of time. Well, maybe on top of that, we'll open up with the network console. The image is caching is off. Don't worry about the JavaScript errors or something else altogether. Okay, that's on that page now, most websites these days have this kind of very heavy image content because they don't get people to come visiting them. Our menu between 10 and 20 megabytes are the ones that I've mentioned. There's no point. You've got two techniques. One, there's so many pictures on the front page, put one on the nice gallery page, put one on the page which is more appropriate to this restaurant or mountain station. Lazy open. So the first one's there. You've got your page up. Half a second, less than half a second if you've got a good caching system. And then maybe a few seconds before it's ready to go to the next slide, then on the picture, when the image is loaded, then change to slide. So you've got massive performance improvement. We'll go to another page quickly. Deals. Again, there's not so much on that page. Sorry, too quick. If I look at this, you've got deals you can interact with it. That's all fine. You've got one, two, three, five, 15, 18, 19 teasers. We'll call them teasers because it's supposed to be a little lighting to come for something else, but that's why they're off the long page. See how heavy that page is? 10 and a half megabytes of images. Just images. The entire page, not much more. So that's not so bad. Now let's try four times slow down. So say we're on a three-G network or a slow, you know, seven seconds are surprisingly not bad, but that's something you need to pay attention to. Now if you're not developing your foot-making and design or if you're making content to this page, that's something you need to perhaps have a good look at as a control. Look at how it's opening on browser data. See, you've got that in Chrome, you've got that in Firefox. Just see what the effect is and how long it takes. Anything as we go down this day, here anything more in one or two seconds is too long. So you need to figure out what's the information back at all to one page. That means that the average side-width of what I see is about ten percent probably ten percent of everything on the page. So it's just too much information. Okay, again, language switch. They use the flag, but we can't play the mic. What's the point? Perhaps the show is in Switzerland? Maybe. Language. Oh, okay. China. China is simply for you. Isn't that great? Anybody else speak Chinese? Should that all be Chinese? Okay. Right, so just as an example now, that's it. I'll just let it iterate before I go into the next bit. This is not, this is not, it is not. This is a website in Germany speaking Switzerland, here where I live. That's their website as it was about a year and a half ago. That's their website as it was sort of three days ago. So not much has changed. At the top, the important things at the top. So if they design again, you don't need to have a background. What's the point in showing two percent of the place. Back then, their idea was all about the summer season, showing how beautiful it is. That's all fine. No problem. You can see that. So some information about a new paper cost system that the people in that region knows things since it's last break. I thought we could go off this page, still the same thing, summer season, and now they're proud of their new paper cost. That's what we thought. Now, again, when I go onto this website, I want to find out, this is just a screen job, by the way, I want to find out information about tickets, find out, I want to buy a voucher as a gift for something I can work out about what's going on in the winter and find out how much it costs and all the different things. So from that point of view, the front page is very well-organized so that you can actually, again, what would make more sense is surely if you go to that page, you can see the information without doing anything. That's better, isn't it? Saves you a click. Saves you this two or three seconds again. You have to wait. You've got two or three seconds to wait in this life. That's not redesigned. It's just moved stuff around from the website and put it there so that when I go to the home page, I've got all the information that impresses me. Oh, that's nice. It's a really lovely view. That's a really lovely view. So yes, we've got more to go there. Where can I go there at the moment? The last game calls are quarter to six this evening, so maybe I'll wait till tomorrow. It also shows me that there are two paper calls, one from each side of that bridge. I'll just go hiking today. Yeah. The two calls are open. I'm going to click on the link and then I can see more information about parking calls. Events that are coming up which are going to say, again, this is free found. That's really cool. I'm going to check to find out more information. As soon as there's upcoming events, which again says come and visit, come and visit. Navigation, again, for the back. I can't remember if that's a drop-down menu or if that's in time. But it's quite limited. Although, we're just moving stuff around. You can pack quite a lot of space into that scenario if you do it properly. Think about it. If you wanted to go there, what would you want to know if we knew about anything else? If you want to go to for example, what's the first thing you want to find out? Is there anything special going on? Can I go on the boat, on the lake? What's the weather like? And all of these most important things are up in the top corner in the navigation. Now, these drop-down menus are very useful for people who like designing menus. That's about the many people that have it. Most people, it's just too much information. They want something simple, tickets, order a ticket. You can use the personal web app. You can do all the reviews so that you don't even have to leave the page to all your tickets and entire process runs on one page. And also, if I look at that page, somebody says, oh, you must look at Mannequin. Why? Yeah, it looks nice. But what about it? You don't just need a picture. You need that. You need to get a text to explain why. What is it? Where is it? How do I get there? And that is literally what three sentences which says, what is it? How do I get there? You're trying to do that with icons and a drop down menu and a lovely, very good map. You just confuse people more. You just use a text. It doesn't really not use text. You'll have to write text. Okay? And again, the thing I said about the live count is, here, without even doing anything, I can see it always a bit greater. I don't need any more updates today. I'll leave it for another day. And I can also see lots of letters today at 10 o'clock. Now, that's a screen. On my laptop, I don't have to touch this. There's only off those very, very small thumbnail images on my sloppy larger image. The circle size of that page is probably about 120 kilo writes if you're optimizing images. So that's between 10 and 50 times smaller than an average but you see what exactly what you need to do. Okay? Mobile version I've run out of time pretty much, I think, so that's just kind of the same idea. Mobile is the same website, but through it because of the design, the structure is different. If I want my phone to be able to see what's going on, quickly expand and close information directly to the navigation to the other information I need. So that's the kind of that's the main thing. Give the people what they're looking for now. Don't wait 10 seconds. Give them what they want now. And then if they need to want no more information, there's few bits as possible. If people have to get more than twice to go and find other information, it's not a good website. It doesn't matter how beautiful it is, it's not working out as intense as it is. That's all for that topic. The WordPress community is very, very strong so I'm very excited to see how many people are on this today. There's all these exciting conversations and discussions going on. We have those kind of things all the time in Slack. WPCH.Stack.com in England because we're English, German, French, Italian, but rather a much worthy life. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much sense it's going to give you an answer. So go by, sign up with your WordPress all-wheel address and if you don't know what it is, go by. It's a great project to have some journey. Thank you. The presentation, I really liked it. I would like to come back to the first website, please follow together. I think you'll agree that you always struggle to find the menu of the languages. You said that it's nice. Bad idea. Drop down this bad idea. Yeah, it's the best. From a user point of view. It's a great project. It's out of the wish for people. Everybody speaks German. The German website now. Writing text. Or at least as a denim if you haven't got much space, then right, Deutsch, France, there's no need to abbreviate. You don't need to abbreviate. Thank you. The presentation, would you have any best practices around the use of menus on websites? I'm going to keep this very short because I have a very strong meaning on this. Most websites don't have menus. Now that sounds quite strange, but that if I'm considering a new website for something like a place like this, I don't think that this website needs more than eight to ten pages in a little previous. If you've got a great big drop down, I'm going to be on the Verbia website. There's too much. Who's going to look through that menu? Nobody. I can see the work. I can see the website with the menu. Who's going to read that? Nobody.  Here's the path. Here's a little map. Here's a PDF. You don't need the menus for that. You just click on the teaser. And there's a website on there. If you want to force your clients to go in a certain direction, then you can do that by placing on other pages very targeted path. Then on the side here, on the side path, I've got a little teaser saying, here's how to buy a ticket to go hiking. Here's a special office for hiking. So you can choose in terms of content what you put on your pages without having an automatic menu, which is the same on every on every single page. All you need is that if you use to spend 15 minutes on your work, some kids have been lost, they don't know how to get back to the these great, great dropdown.  We used to go on side map pages. Never used it to mean why everyone wants to sign up on every single page. Never used those. Everybody's confused because I'm really convinced of that fact. So the smaller than any the better is my best practice on a single page. Thank you. You are waiting for us. And then to the audience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Welcome back, it's over the breakfast and class TV Africa. The economy is our focus at this time around and not so chairing news right now because an adjust import bill has actually grown as our export is still, you know, oil dependent. What do we need to do? What should we be focusing on right now? Because we're having an 8.9 trillionaire deficit in nine months joining us right now to do justice to this particular discussion and to make some sense of all of that is Muqtah Mohammed He-Ee is a financial analyst and economic consultant. Many thanks for joining us on the breakfast and class TV Africa Muqtah. My pleasure this morning. Good morning. Yeah good morning to you too. Indeed Nigeria's import bill has actually grown in the past nine months and we're still you know focusing on you know oil dependent export over time we have talked about economic diversification but were you alarmed when you got a wind of that particular information that we actually spend in so much on importation? The only way you would have been alarmed is if you're not in Nigeria, I think you're not in Nigeria, you know definitely about 80 to 90 percent of what we we even consume, we export it, we import it. So you shouldn't make me so surprised by what the report that we got from the National Health Bureau of Statistics. We've always known this, we've said that there is 20 diversified but I've always said if you don't diversify, who is the colleague? You diversify with competitive advantage and we're not doing that. The only means of revenue still in the oil and like you said during the introduction is an oil dependent economy that does not change and it won't change any times. So I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised at all and if you look at that report it will also bring you to your notice that what we do is that we export crude oil and we import the refined product back to Nigeria. So it's also that when you look at that report you realize that if we start refining our petroleum product rear in this nation then we've solved almost 80 percent of our economic challenges that has to do with forex volatility and then we'll have a lot of money to do with other infrastructural developments. So it's not a surprise but it's just that I will I will ready to do the work. All right it's a good thing that you have mentioned the work and the question now would be what responsibility, what role do we have a government, a different starter to ensure that you know the story changes. So we rather have the fact that we have a growing export and a reduction in import. Well those things are not things that are achieved overnight and they have to come with careful planning and you can look at it the government is trying to do that first and famous it would be another one day and I'm of support of that government. It's not in the business of government to be in business. So they are partnering with Dango Telefinality to make sure that in the coming years I mean coming years I'm not looking at 2022 or 2023 it's going to be the coming years we could see that we're beginning to refine our petroleum product here in Nigeria that is one then secondly you can see that maybe when we are complaining about CDN in a non-conventional in a conventional banking area like trying to make sure that we have stock sufficient, especially in the area of food production. We can see that in the area of rice but if you look at that being now we didn't see rice there now but we saw wheat and CBN has gone up from beginning to encourage wheat farmers by giving them some facilities also to go. So we are doing it but it's not something that can happen overnight and again inconsistency in terms of policy could be another big challenge because sometimes there's already policies this policy so much sought from our own government. All right Mukta let's try and break down some of the highlights of this particular you know development from what we know the value of imported agricultural goods was 21.01 higher than the value recorded in the second quarter of 2021 and 56.74 percent higher than the third quarter of 2020. So the question right now let's stay on that for a bit the question right now is that why are we still important agricultural goods when we could actually you know harness that. We have arable land so we have all that it takes to be a great giant you know in the region african of course the world. And you agree with me when it comes to being a great giant you have like I said you have to be competitive advantage when you talk of cuckoo you talk of Ghana when you talk of you you talk about selling product when you say you need to mention that oh they are they are giant when you talk of rice you talk of island you talk of Malaysia you talk of Indonesia they had to develop those areas so Nigeria need to come to the area whereby we know what we want first of famous we need to begin to see how we can provide food for ourselves here in Nigeria first and that data is telling you that we've not been able to provide food for ourselves. Remember we've not bound the importation of any goods into Nigeria rather we're just hiking the tariff and Nigerians crave for foreign appetite goods is still there so it will continue to be a problem. And then secondly again you need to look at the insecurity in the land also have not had matters so some of the product that would normally would have gotten in Nigeria farmers are beginning to they are afraid of going to their farm so we are beginning to restore back to importation even the government just complained of recent that there are more influx of imported rice through the border you can see and this was an area that we thought we were already beginning to have sufficient intense about 60 to 70 percent so insecurity is one product you talk about infrastructure also it's a major challenge infrastructure we're talking about moving off your goods cost of production moving off your goods from one point another so all these are major challenges and these are no challenges that can be addressed in one of and we have like I said we always have some policies of assault we seem to see this is the way we want to go another administration will come and change the narrative so until we come up with a blueprint on how we want to go in terms of sufficiency food production will not achieve it in 1978 the war had the war food organization was established because of the war was afraid that China with the terrible population group they will not be able to feed themselves so the war came together so that when they come that challenge all of us can contribute to begin to feed China when China saw that they saw it as an opportunity and they begin to look inward and today China is importing exporting more goods in terms of food production to other parts of the world from the people that were trying to save them so you have to come with planning and knowing that look we have a challenger we are not going to play politics with it we need to know who and who is going to help us we don't need to come and begin to defend it we don't need to come and say we are doing what we don't do we need to cry out that we need help in terms of a development in terms of infrastructure and that could just be it okay so we all know that you know the country is administered in local governments you also have wards, councils, villages you have the state government at work I want you to take us through if by all because constantly when we talk about you know development and diversifying the economy the focus is usually on the government I mean the central government so I would like to understand at the local government level at the state level is there a role that can be played are there policies that can be formulated that would encourage you know export because at the end of the day or our less dependence on oil well unfortunately there's little the local government can do because what we have we have the exclusive rights in terms of resources in the last later and as they say the exclusive writers are watching don't even talk about this there's no statement one can begin to export a particular product that is produced in that state it has to go to the federal government in the soul people that can export such good not even the state so it has to go back to the constitution they have to go back to what they have been trying restructuring so it's not something that can be done by any state what states should begin to think of is whether you'll be able to feed yourself inwardly that's what they should be looking at thinking of developing you can see Lagos they were partnering with KV state in the area of rice production then but when the insecurity comes in how much partnership can you do with the level of insecurity in terms of movement of these goods and services that is the major challenge that we are facing there are some problems that we don't need to struggle to begin to produce we can produce rice we can produce curry cassava is there we can produce yam but when you see the food backstreet of the nation which happened to be being wasted have been going a lot of insecurity between the farmers and the hensmen and at the end of the day we're not going to look at the not the not is how to be the food the the way you get all the perishable goods from the tomatoes the but you can't even move them from there because of insecurity so definitely adding to our problems the insecurity and these are not insecurity challenges that have been able to be cemented by this government or but now you can see the government is doing what they have to do to make sure they address that once we are that insecurity then we begin to talk about source of certainty in terms of food production maybe 60 to 60 percent for the time being but for now it's a big challenge all right mokta interestingly uh solid minerals exports value in the third quarter of this year you know increased by 22.7 compared to the second quarter of 2021 and 222.8 compared to the third quarter of last year we seem to have you know made good uh you know in that particular you know sector of the economy why are we not exploring more when it comes to solid minerals it's a new infrastructure um you should look at those solid minerals you do we produce anything gold here in Nigeria we have an industry that is a production of gold we produce our weapon locally made weapon here so what you see that we we we talk about solid mine we are exporting the refined product i mean the the only fine products out of the country so we can begin to see if we'll be able to to develop industries here in Nigeria for those people down there could be an added advantage so what you're seeing there you are happy about it it's just in the area what we are playing in the petroleum sector the same thing we are doing in that sector just exporting our the raw materials and whereby the finished products are seen important in so our country so it's like what you say you know Peter to people all right Mukta you know i saw you smiling there but then again let's talk more you know that our foreign trade deficit you know it's actually uh this the eight consecutive quarter that we've had them this particular negative trend and so far our negative trade balance of 3.02 trillionaire compared to 1.87 trillionaire deficit we recorded in the previous quarter you know we are approaching the end of the year now what can we begin to do differently to ensure that our balance of trade and balance of payment are sort of equitable somehow it's not like i said it's not a short time problem you can give a short time solution to a problem that has been here like forever the pandemic also did not have markets and the government have to begin to concentrate on how to deal with the pandemic instead of thinking of how they can empower the non oil sector so i think that is the major major challenge that's a measure so it's not something that can be addressed in the short term it's something that we could think of palliative and that has to be with government trying to address this and that also affects government revenue so it's something that we have to do gradually like i said the first a water address issue is to measure we deal with the insecurity challenges especially in areas that we know that contribution economically to the nation is very very important when we handle that then we begin to see how we can begin to empower performers like the cba trying to come up with ways that we can have some of our products that have been imported then we can begin to have especially household products for me for children especially the children and then when you look even if you look at federal government policy of feeding of school children you realize that most of the products also are even being imported so it's a big challenge so what we need to do is to begin addressing security challenges first then try to see how we can begin to help farmers grow in terms of giving them loans and then secondly we need to look at the land land use acts it has been like the one of those ancient act that have not been repealed or new under let's begin to see how farmers can use their land to begin to get known to grow the agricultural product that could be one of the game changer and i think government is not looking at it yet all right uh finally before we let you go on mokta you know indeed we need to improve um the security situation in the country but then again don't you think we need to improve on our bilateral relationship uh with other countries abroad and our you know you know our you know export and policy generally because we had a guest just before you came on uh you know on this particular this course uh he talked about uh how they uh they have um lots of bottlenecks when it comes to exporting some you know agricultural produce is such as you know uh cash you know and all of that and then china you know indeed put nigeria on their red list so how do we begin to manage all of this so that we can have an effective you know export policy in nigeria i honestly the first thing we have to do is to see how we can trade within ourselves in africa that's why i'm so happy in the african continental trader group once they begin the volume of trade between africans and african they will not be depending so much on the chinese or going to you know look at the look at the this um theater from the nigerian bureau of statistics you realize that our trading partners are indian they are china they are spain they are they are they are netherland they are france it's just our trading partners united state of america you didn't see any african countries are trading partners so that that is it is a big big challenge so we need to look at how we can build again when you look at our trading partners we look at these countries we are not trading in terms of race sectors in terms of agricultural product the session for china and maybe india all our other trading with this country has to do with uh oil and gas you can find natural gas so and out and then you look at it and then they are the one that imported more into our country also we exported their country then they import the refined product back to us so it's um it's it's it's good beyond the the trade agreement because with the trade agreement what do you bring to the table it's what you have that you bring to the table it's what they had open to the table and so we need to build infrastructure like i'm saying competitive advantage is the way to go you cannot not be jack of all trade master of not if you want to be in agriculture let's think of what land what area do we have that competitive advantage when it comes to agriculture they have been proven that that cassava is the best in the world can we begin to use that as a competitive advantage to begin to grow a product so those are the ways it works no country will just come up one day and just say that i want to be the giant in everything we need to look at your strength so nigerians should look at our strength before we begin to go into ballot agreement you look at all those people that are trading but if you look at the United States it's just use cars in the medium are trading but most of the use cars in nigeria are imported from there so uh so when when those industries cannot just come up your fault cannot just come to Utah cannot just come they try to do that before but infrastructure especially power is deficiency so it's not all about the trade agreement the trade agreement will be there but make sure you have a trade agreement you don't have a product what what what what what what good is the trade agreement a trade agreement is better when you know you have your own product you have something that they are they are in need of and you they also know that you have something that then they cannot be bulldozing you and putting you on your red list because you two also can put them on your red list remember the trade war between america and china and remember anytime china devalue their currency america and panic because if they can chinese good chinese good goes cheaper so it has to be you have to come up with strategy all right mukta i mean i'm afraid that there's as much as we can take care we are completely out of time for this particular discussion mukta Muhammad and he is an economic analyst and we've been looking at the nation to balance of payment balance of trade and deficit indeed nigerians needs to up its game when it comes to you know being uh important dependent and all of that that's the size of the show for uh today i am just then and i am messi bopo if you missed out on any part of the conversation that's all right to follow us on facebook and instagram is at plus cv africa and on youtube at plus cv africa lifestyle you have a great morning


Bryce, player always wants to get his first hit in the season out of the way. Your first hit, a 465 foot home run, your second longest since 2015. What did you like best about it? I mean, personally, what a great game for myself today. But as a team, I mean, unbelievable. I mean, Real Muto getting his home around the way. Franco, I mean, great home by him. Piff came out through the ball well. Bullpick came in through the ball well, and we got another dove. So personally, what a homer. A lot of, you know, a lot of excitement right there. Coming out, current call, things like that.  He only played nine games in spring training. Has it been difficult to find your rhythm? Just got to get my timing, you know, that's about it. You know, new ballpark, new back spot, you know, things like that. But, you know, just try to come out and, you know, have good games. And as long as we're winning, that's all that matters. So, you know, very excited for this team, very excited for this club. We've got a great group of guys that are pulling for each other each and every night. And, you know, another great team win tonight. They've played only two games here, and yet, you've established an incredible connection with the fans. The current call is a thousand right field. What is this reception meant to you? Man, they're blue collars of gets, you know what I'm saying? They work hard. They understand what it is to work hard. They want their players to work hard for them. And, you know, that's what it's all about. You know, they want us to hustle. They want us to play hard. And you want to give them that every single night. You know, I got chills thinking about it right now. You know, it's a great, great fan base, great city, great group of guys in here that are pulling for each other each and every day. And if we can, you know, prolong this all year long and do our thing, play good baseball and, you know, do what we need to do, then we'll be okay. Bryce, thanks very much. JT, two-run homer in the fifth made it 6-3. But I think I have to ask you, which was more fun, your homerun or Bryce's? Oh, that's a tough question. I mean, this place was rocking for both of us. It's obviously fun to hit homerun, but it's just as exciting to watch him hit his first homer here and the way the crowd reacted to it and him getting a curtain call. I mean, couldn't draw it up any better than that. Don't forget, you were part of some pretty good lineups in Miami. Yellich and Stanton and Azuna. What impresses you most about this lineup? I just think how deep it is. I mean, once you're late, there's really no holes.  So, and then you got a guy at seven that gets on base all the stinking time. So it's just a tough lineup and it'll, it'll really wear down a pitching staff and wear down an opposing ball club, having to go through line-ups like that and not having any holes in it. Now, the one thing you definitely didn't have in Miami is the electricity in this ballpark. For a player, what is the difference competing in an atmosphere like this? I mean, the difference is huge. Just getting to come out here where the fans are so excited to watch the game and they're cheering you on the whole time.  So, these fans mean everything to me and they've been super welcoming so far. So it's been great. JT, thanks very much.