Our mentors

Being a John Schofield Trust Senior Fellow is an invaluable opportunity to support the next generation of journalists through direct contact for a year. You will help them with developing skills, both professional and personal, in a structured way based on individual needs, and join a growing community of Fellows and Senior Fellows all with a shared vision to ensure newsrooms are representative of the audiences they serve.

If you are interested in becoming a Senior Fellow/Mentor, please contact the Trust using the contact form.

Alex Jacques

Alex is lead commentator for Channel 4’s Formula One TV coverage. He won Broadcast Sport Commentator of the Year 2022.

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Amar Mehta

Amar is Deputy News Editor at Sky Sports News, working across platforms to support the newsgathering operations.

He was included in MHP’s 30 Under 30 Journalists To Watch (Sports) in 2024 and shortlisted for Sports Journalist of the Year at the Asian Media Awards (2024). 

Amar has a background in local news and legal journalism, as well as experience in business and music journalism. Amar is also an ambassador for the NCTJ.

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Amelia Tait

Amelia is a freelance features writer for publications such as The Guardian, Wired, Vice, the New Statesman, and The New York Times.

In 2023, Amelia won Best Feature at the Freelance Journalism Awards.

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Anna Holligan

Anna is a BBC News correspondent based in the Netherlands.

Creator of Dutch News: from the Cycle Path, and co-founder of the Bike Bureau.

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Ayshah Tull

Ayshah Tull

Ayshah Tull is an award-winning Presenter and Broadcaster currently working at ITV News.  

Presenting and reporting on the biggest stories of our time.  

Her BAFTA nominated news programme that she presented, alongside black colleagues who fronted and worked behind the scenes was described as groundbreaking.  

She’s been a journalist for over 10 years, and started her on screen career presenting BBC Newsround. 

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Belinda Mahon

Belinda is Senior Duty Editor for BBC Sport TV News.

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Beth Colson

Beth is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, working in news for 25 years. Currently freelance after taking a career break from spending many years at the AP as Head of Production, one of the things she likes best is to collaborate to improve skills. 

Recent projects include work for the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, helping to ensure students start their journalism careers able to successfully tell good stories. 

Starting off in domestic broadcast, working on the Big Breakfast News, the News Channel and Channel 4 News at ITN, Beth then moved to the BBC where international news became her focus. 

Always up for a new challenge, Beth moved to Associated Press. During her time as Head of News Production, she found her sweet spot in news – where technology and storytelling come together. While working closely with technical colleagues, she led a 20-strong production team through several iterations of digital transformation. 

During her time at AP, she was also part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team whose work won an award for Public Service journalism for a story that resulted in around 2,000 fishing slaves being freed from captivity in Southeast Asia. 

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Billy Briggs

A former staffer at The Herald, Billy is a founder and co-editor of The Ferret, an investigative website in Scotland. He’s reported from Iraq, Gaza, Pakistan, Russia and Syria, among other places, and freelanced for dozens of media globally including The Guardian, Politico, Al Jazeera, The Sunday Times, and the BBC. Billy has investigated issues such as femicide, human trafficking and far right extremism. A 2017 expose of Scottish Dawn revealed its links to the banned neo-Nazi group, National Action. Scottish Dawn was later proscribed. Billy’s prizes for his journalism​ include four Scottish Press Awards, two Amnesty International Media Awards, and a European Union Journalist Award. He contributed to Routledge’s academic book – Journalism, Power and Investigation.

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Ciaran Jenkins

Ciaran Jenkins

Ciaran Jenkins is Scotland correspondent for Channel 4 News. He can also be seen presenting the programme from London, Leeds and a rooftop spot in Glasgow. Ciaran is a passionate advocate of bringing journalism closer to under-represented communities and has built his career in Wales, the North of England and now Scotland, winning several major awards along the way.

He has had a varied career, with a reputation for unearthing exclusive stories as well as delivering engaging interviews and reporting on major events around the world.

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Dan Hewitt

Daniel is Investigations Editor for ITV News. His award-winning work includes investigations into social housing, end of life care and child poverty.

In 2022 he was named Royal Television Society Specialist Journalist of the Year. Daniel has presented the ITV News podcasts ‘Will Trump Win?’, ‘What You Need to Know’ and ‘Calling Peston.’

He previously worked as a Political Correspondent based in Westminster. In 2018 his reporting on poverty in the North West of England was nominated for The Orwell Prize.

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Daniel Fisher

Daniel is the BBC’s foreign deployment editor, running some of the BBC’s most senior foreign correspondents and field producers. He has been instrumental in leading the change and drive towards a data driven focus to its commissioning and digital first priorities within Foreign news.

Daniel is an experienced editor and regularly runs cross platform, multi team news operations abroad of both breaking news such as the Ukraine war, the Turkey Earthquake, the Paris Attacks in 2015, as well as  large set pieces such Davos and the  World Cup. He has been in the BBC for over 20 years working as a radio and Tv journalist initially in Scotland and then abroad in the Middle east, Africa and several years in Russia.

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Debbie Ramsay

Debbie is currently Editor for Channel 5 News, ITN.

Previous roles include Commissioning Editor at Channel 4, Executive Editor BBC News Commissioning, Editor BBC Radio 1 & 1Xtra Newsbeat.

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Ellen Ellard

Ellen is a freelance football reporter for BBC Radio 5 Live Sport and Final Score, commentator for the WSL world feed and presenter for Manchester City Football Club. She started out at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire aged 18 working across their sport coverage and presenting the stations BBC Music Introducing show which gave her opportunities to present and create content for both Radio 1 and 6 Music.

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Emma Simpson

Emma is a BBC Business Correspondent, reporting widely for television, radio and online. She joined the business unit in 2008 and has more than 30 years’ experience in broadcasting in a variety of roles from the UK and abroad.

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Frankie Mcamley

Frankie is a BBC News Correspondent & Presenter.

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Gamal Fahnbulleh

Gamal is presenter and reporter for national networks including Sky News and ITV.

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Gary Taphouse

Gary is a football commentator at Sky Sports.

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Gwyn Loader

Gwyn is Chief Correspondent for Newyddion S4C.

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Hannah Jones

Hannah is a senior journalist and producer at the BBC News at One and BBC Breakfast – the UK’s most watched morning programe. Hannah is responsible for writing bulletins, producing VTs on the most legally and ethically complex stories, as well as leading a team of journalists whilst the programmes are on air.

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Hardeep Matharu

Hardeep Matharu is a London-based journalist and writer. She is the Editor of Byline Times – the independent investigative news site and monthly print newspaper covering ‘what the papers don’t say’.

Her work focuses on the forces that shape us: identity, politics, and media.

Hardeep started her career as an award-winning local reporter and has more than a decade’s worth of experience working across regional, national and independent media. She trained as a journalist after reading Law at Cambridge University.

She also has extensive experience across policy, politics, justice and communications work. Hardeep is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

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Helena Wilkinson

Helena Wilkinson is a BBC News Correspondent with more 20 years’ experience as a journalist.

She reports for tv, radio and digital platforms across the BBC, both for domestic and world audiences.

Helena is an experienced court reporter and has covered multiple complex high-profile cases.

She also has experience in covering big royal stories, including the death of the Queen and the coronation of King Charles.

Before working at the BBC, Helena worked as a reporter at LBC radio and ITN.

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Hewete Haileselassie

Hewete was born and raised in London but has lived and worked in France, the US and Kenya. She  started her career interning at the U.N and Worldbank.

Hewete was at the BBC in 2008 as a journalism trainee and has spent most of her career in the World Service. She’s produced for BBC Africa both from London and as a field producer across Africa. Hewete left the BBC in March 2023.

From 2016-2018 she was Future Talent Senior Producer for WS Languages running entry-level trainee schemes for bilingual journalists. In this post she developed career workshops for existing staff that she went on to deliver to hundreds of staff within World Service languages and across Africa. She recently spent two years based in Nairobi as Training and Talent Manager for the region and has sat on the steering committee for BBC Global Women in News since 2014. She currently is Senior Journalist Team Manager on the 50:50 Equality Project. 

Hewete is passionate about Diversity & Inclusion. She has recently been appointed a trustee for the Hamlin Fistula Foundation – a charity that aims to eradicate obstetric fistula in Ethiopia. She recognises the importance of both getting diverse voices on air, and ensuring the teams behind the news reflect the diversity of our audiences. Working across Africa with the BBC and in 2014 reporting from a refugee camp on the South Sudanese border, Hewete saw first-hand the importance of a diverse reporting team when women were eager to tell her their stories. It is an experience that will always stay with her.  

Hewete believes ‘we are all responsible for what our industry looks like.’ 

  

Photo credit @sarahhosneyphotographia 

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Holly Jones

Holly has been a radio enthusiast since the age of 4 and a full time Broadcast Journalist for the past 15 years. During this time, Holly worked at a variety of local radio stations, before moving to Global in London in 2013.

Holly is now Deputy Managing Editor, LBC News and Global’s newsroom overseeing brands including LBC News, LBC, Heart, Classic FM, Smooth and Capital. She has worked on major stories like Brexit, the US elections and the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as reporting on Prince Philip’s funeral, the birth of Prince George and several London Marathons.

Having been on the first cohort of John Schofield Trust mentees in 2012, Holly is honoured to be taking on the role of mentor. She looks forward to continuing her work with this incredible organisation.

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Hywel Griffith

Hywel is a Welsh television news correspondent with the BBC Wales.

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Josh Parry

Josh is LGBT & Identity Producer and reporter for BBC News, having previously worked as senior planning producer at BBC Breakfast. Prior to moving into broadcast, he was a senior reporter for the Liverpool ECHO where he won Young Journalist of the Year at the Regional Press Awards. 

During his career he’s covered a variety of different beats – from showbiz and celeb news to politics and social affairs – but it was back in 2017 when he went undercover to shine a light on so-called ‘conversion therapy’ that he discovered his passion for LGBT news. 

Most recently, he produced a documentary ‘Fleeing Afghanistan: Free to Be me” with exclusive access to a group of Afghans who fled their country to escape The Taliban. 

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Laura Goehler

Laura is a Senior Field Producer for the Al Jazeera Media Network. She is responsible for pitching, planning and executing feature and (breaking) news stories in the field across Europe and beyond.

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Lisa Summers

Lisa Summers is the Health & Social Care Correspondent for BBC Scotland.

Lisa has worked at the BBC for over twenty years and has had a varied career across TV, radio and digital output.

She’s made a number of investigative current affairs programmes and has worked in sport, topical & feature programming as well as news.

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Lora Jones

Lora is a Senior Journalist at BBC News.

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Lucy Elliott

To Be updated

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Lucy Adams

Lucy is a Social Affairs Correspondent with the BBC.

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Lucy Middleton

to be updated

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Luke Jacobs

Luke is currently a digital editor at The Guardian.

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Lyall Thomas

Lyall is a news editor at Sky Sports News.

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Madison Marriage

Madison is the FT’s special investigations editor. She leads a team of reporters investigating misconduct and abuse of power across business, politics, housing, education and beyond.

Since joining the FT 12 years ago she has held a number of correspondent positions covering asset management, tax and accounting. She joined the investigations desk in 2019 after delivering two award-winning investigations into sexual harassment at the elite Presidents Club charity dinner and the defenestration of advertising mogul Sir Martin Sorrell.

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Maria Zaccaro

Maris is a senior journalist at BBC.

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Mark Daly

Mark Daly is an award winning investigative journalist for the BBC. He has reported around 30 documentaries on subjects ranging from racism in the police, the Stephen Lawrence case, historic abuse in the Catholic Church and in football, sport doping and corruption, miscarriages of justice, the Paradise Papers and many more.

Mark has been the recipient of many journalism prizes including from BAFTA, the Royal Television Society, and the Foreign Press Association. He lives in Glasgow, is the Investigations Correspondent for BBC Scotland and regularly reports for Panorama.

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Mark Wray

Mark is former Head of Training at the BBC and ex MD of Press Association Training. Mark has worked as a newspaper, TV and radio journalist and was a programme editor at BBC Radio 5 Live. He’s coached several hundred BBC reporters, correspondents and presenters including many household names. Mark is now semi-retired doing some journalism mentoring and development and awards judging. He’s an external examiner for Bournemouth University’s Broadcast Journalism course.

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Maryam Ahmed

Maryam is a data scientist at journalist BBC News. She holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Oxford, and enjoys using her coding skills to find news in messy datasets. Her recent investigations have uncovered algorithmic bias in the passport application process, housing discrimination against benefits claimants, and illegal offers of lip fillers to under-18s. In 2021 she won the Royal Statistical Society Award for Investigative Journalism.

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Matt Brindley

Matt is News Editor on ITV News Home and Foreign desks.

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Maurice Hamilton

[Photo credit to Harper Collins]

Maurice Hamilton has attended more than 500 Formula 1 Grands Prix since 1977 and worked as motor sport correspondent for The Guardian, The Independent and, for 20 years, The Observer. He was commentator and summariser for BBC Radio’s Grand Prix coverage between 1989 and 2010.

The author of more than 30 books on the world of motor racing, Maurice writes for magazines and websites across the world. His recent publications includes ‘Racing Legends’, a series of children’s books on F1 for Pan Macmillan Paperbacks. His latest book on the Greatest Formula 1 Cars will be published by Harper Collins in September 2025.

Maurice’s work also covers editorial consultancy and ghost writing for sports personalities, including Damon Hill, Linford Christie, Eddie Jordan, Martin Brundle, Max Mosley and Bernie Collins.

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Maya Wolfe-Robinson

Maya is an assistant editor at The Guardian

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Meirion Jones

Meirion spent many years running investigations for the BBC at Newsnight and Panorama on everything from vulture funds to US election fraud.
He is now the editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
He won the Daniel Pearl award for his investigation into the dumping of Trafigura’s toxic waste in Africa, the London Press Awards Scoop of the Year for his part in the Jimmy Savile revelations and was nominated for a Royal Television Society award for his investigation into the “fake sheikh”, Mazher Mahmood. He joined the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2016.

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Micah Crook

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Monika Plaha

Monika is an award winning presenter and reporter for BBC News.

She also reports on documentaries including for BBC Panorama, Radio 4 and The World Service.

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Nada Bashir

Nada is an award-winning International Correspondent for CNN, based in London.

In 2024 she was listed on Forbes 30 under 30 list for media this year.

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Nancy Froston

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Nick Blakemore

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Nick Miller

to be updated

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Nina Dos Santos

Nina is an award-winning broadcaster & journalist. Former anchor at CNN.

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Nina Nannar

Nina is a journalist, who has worked for ITN News for more than 20 years.

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Quentin Sommerville

 Quentin Sommerville has spent the last ten years as the BBC’s Middle East correspondent and is based in Beirut. Before that he was in Afghanistan and China.

He started his journalism career at the shipping newspaper Lloyds List. 

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Rich Preston

Rich is a presenter on the BBC World Service and anchor on BBC World News TV, reporting major international stories for the BBC’s global audiences and reacting to live and breaking news.  

Rich previously covered Western Europe, reporting some of the most significant events to shape the continent in generations, including the migrant crisis, the Scottish Independence Referendum, terror attacks in France and Belgium, and the UK’s Brexit vote. 

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Richard Askam

to be updated

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Photo of Rob Osborne on the set of Sharp End

Rob Osborne

From mentee to mentor, Rob was part of the JST scheme a decade ago. Having focused on building a career in Wales, Rob is now the National Correspondent for ITV Cymru Wales and presenter of the weekly programme Sharp End. He has made several long-form programmes on subjects as diverse as male suicide, down syndrome and, more recently, one called ‘King & Cymru.’ 

Rob’s focus on original journalism and distinctive storytelling has helped him win multiple awards, including Welsh TV Journalist of the year on three occasions. 

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Ronke Phillips

Ronke Phillips

Ronke is a Senior Correspondent at ITV London News and has mentored for the Trust numerous times.

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Sam Gelder

Sam Gelder is a news editor and reporter based in London who has worked in national and local news for eight years.

Most recently he was news editor for openDemocracy, and before that news
editor at HuffPost UK and chief reporter at the
Hackney Gazette and Islington Gazette.

He has worked as a
freelance reporter at The Guardian and PA.

He specialises in housing and gentrification, social justice and community journalism.

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Sanya Burgess

Sanya is an investigative journalist specialising in digital spaces.

She currently works for The i Paper as an investigations correspondent and has previous spent 6 years at Sky News.

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Sejal Asar

Sejal is a seasoned journalist and storyteller with extensive experience creating compelling content for iconic BBC platforms such as Radio 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, and BBC Woman’s Hour. From insightful radio programs to thought-provoking podcasts, her passion lies in crafting narratives that inform and inspire. Currently, she brings this expertise to Passion Pictures as a Development Documentary Producer, contributing to impactful, award-winning documentaries that captivate audiences and drive meaningful change.

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Shamim Chowdhury

Shamim is an award-winning foreign correspondent and writer with a demonstrated history of working in the international broadcast media industry.

She is currently Foreign Correspondent for The Associated Press covering major world events including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, the Ukraine War, and the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake.

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Shayma Bakht

Shayma is a news reporter at The Times. She has led undercover investigations from the Middle East and the UK, uncovering the kingdom-wide trafficking of maids from Riyadh, an underground baby trade in Afghanistan and the mass abduction of girls in Tanzania’s gold mining towns. She has secured interviews with Imran Khan and Saudi royalty, and her investigation into the UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme resulted in the government receiving a stark public warning from the UNHCR.

She was named young journalist of the year at the 2023 Press Awards and MHP’s Gold Winner for international affairs as well as one of its 30ToWatch journalists.

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Shingi Mararike

Shingi is North of England correspondent for Sky News, formerly of The Sunday Times.

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Sian Elvin

Sian is an award-winning journalist. She is currently news editor at The Independent, formerly at Metro UK for four years.

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Vicky Gayle

Vicky is a reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Bureau Local team and one of our 2022 mentors. Her career began predominantly with black-led publications in Birmingham before landing a trainee position at the Daily Gazette in Colchester.

Teaching and mentoring has been an unofficial job role for Vicky since her first job in retail and one which came naturally. It also led her to being a learning support assistant at a secondary school, where she was encouraged to pursue teacher training. As someone who struggled to gain mentorship herself, being able to give that support is particularly special.

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Victoria Derbyshire

Victoria is a journalist, newsreader and broadcaster at the BBC.

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Vincent Mcaviney

Vincent is a freelance correspondent & presenter on BBC and Channel 4.

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