title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: There has been an ongoing scientific debate about the extent to which flora and fauna of the zone were affected by the radioactive contamination that followed the accident. As noted by Baker and Wickliffe, one of many issues is differentiating between negative effects of Chernobyl radiation and effects of changes in farming activities resulting from human evacuation.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Near the facility, a dense cloud of radioactive dust killed off a large area of Scots pine trees; the rusty orange color of the dead trees led to the nickname "The Red Forest" ("Рудий ліс"). The Red Forest was among the world's most radioactive places; to reduce the hazard, the Red Forest was bulldozed and the highly radioactive wood was buried, though the soil continues to emit significant radiation. Other species in the same area, such as birch trees, survived, indicating that plant species may vary considerably in their sensitivity to radiation.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Cases of mutant deformity in animals of the zone include partial albinism and other external malformations in swallows and insect mutations. A study of several hundred birds belonging to 48 different species also demonstrated that birds inhabiting highly radioactively contaminated areas had smaller brains compared to birds from clean areas.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: A reduction in the density and the abundance of animals in highly radioactively contaminated areas has been reported for several taxa, including birds, insects, spiders, and mammals. In birds, which are an efficient bioindicator, a negative correlation has been reported between background radiation and bird species richness. Scientists such as Anders Pape Møller (University of Paris-Sud) and Timothy Mousseau (University of South Carolina) report that birds and smaller animals such as voles may be particularly affected by radioactivity.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Møller is the first author on 9 of the 20 most-cited articles relating to the ecology, evolution and non-human biology in the Chernobyl area. However, some of Møller's research has been criticized as flawed. Prior to his work at Chernobyl, Møller was accused of falsifying data in a 1998 paper about asymmetry in oak leaves, which he retracted in 2001. In 2004, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) reported that Møller was guilty of "scientific dishonesty". France's Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) subsequently concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish either guilt or innocence. Strongly held opinions about Møller and his work have contributed to the difficulty of reaching a scientific consensus on the effects of radiation on wildlife in the Exclusion Zone.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: More recently, the populations of large mammals have increased due to significant reduction of human interference. The populations of traditional Polesian animals (such as the gray wolf, badger, wild boar, roe deer, white-tailed eagle, black stork, western marsh harrier, short-eared owl, red deer, moose, great egret, whooper swan, least weasel, common kestrel, and beaver) have multiplied enormously and begun expanding outside the zone. The zone is considered as a classic example of an involuntary park.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The return of wolves and other animals to the area is being studied by scientists such as Marina Shkvyria (Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences), Sergey Gaschak (Chernobyl Centre in Ukraine), and Jim Beasley (University of Georgia). Camera traps have been installed and are used to record the presence of species. Studies of wolves, which are concentrated in higher-radiation areas near the center of the exclusion zone, may enable researchers to better assess relationships between radiation levels, animal health, and population dynamics.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The area also houses herds of wisent (European bison, native to the area) and Przewalski's horses (foreign to the area, as tarpan was the native wild horse) released there after the accident. Some accounts refer to the reappearance of extremely rare native lynx, and there are videos of brown bears and their cubs, an animal not seen in the area for more than a century. Special game warden units are organized to protect and control them. No scientific study has been conducted on the population dynamics of these species.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The rivers and lakes of the zone pose a significant threat of spreading polluted silt during spring floods. They are systematically secured by dikes.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: It is known that fires can make contamination mobile again. In particular, V.I. Yoschenko "et al." reported on the possibility of increased mobility of caesium, strontium, and plutonium due to grass and forest fires. As an experiment, fires were set and the levels of the radioactivity in the air downwind of these fires was measured.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Grass and forest fires have happened inside the contaminated zone, releasing radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. In 1986, a series of fires destroyed 2,336 ha (5,772 acres) of forest, and several other fires have since burned within the zone. A serious fire in early May 1992 affected 500 ha (1,240 acres) of land, including 270 ha (670 acres) of forest. This resulted in a great increase in the levels of caesium-137 in airborne dust.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: In 2010, a series of wildfires affected contaminated areas, specifically the surroundings of Bryansk and border regions with Belarus and Ukraine. The Russian government claimed that there was no discernible increase in radiation levels, while Greenpeace accused the government of denial.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: On 4 April 2020, a fire broke in the Zone on at least 20 hectares of Ukrainian forests. Approximately 90 firefighters were deployed to extinguish the blaze, as well as a helicopter and two aircraft. Radiation is still present in these forests, making firefighting more difficult; authorities stated that there was no danger to the surrounding population. The previous reported fire was in June 2018.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Despite the negative effect of the disaster on human life, many scientists see an overall beneficial effect to the ecosystem. Though the immediate effects of the accident were negative, the area quickly recovered and is today seen as very healthy. The lack of people in the area has increased the biodiversity of the Exclusion Zone in the years since the disaster.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: In the aftermath of the disaster, radioactive contamination in the air had a decidedly negative effect on the fauna, vegetation, rivers, lakes, and groundwater of the area. The radiation resulted in deaths among coniferous plants, soil invertebrates, and mammals, as well as a decline in reproductive numbers among both plants and animals.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The surrounding forest was covered in radioactive particles, resulting in the death of 400 hectares of the most immediate pine trees, though radiation damage can be found in an area of tens of thousands of hectares. An additional concern is that as the dead trees in this Red Forest (named for the color of the dead pines) decay, contamination is leaking into the groundwater.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Despite all this, Professor Nick Beresford, an expert on Chernobyl and ecology, said that "the overall effect was positive" for the wildlife in the area.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The impact of radiation on individual animals has not been studied, but cameras in the area have captured evidence of a resurgence of the mammalian population – including rare animals such as the lynx and the vulnerable European bison.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: Research on the health of Chernobyl's wildlife is ongoing, and there is concern that the wildlife still suffers from some of the negative effects of the radiation exposure. Though it will be years before researchers collect the necessary data to fully understand the effects, for now, the area is essentially one of Europe's largest nature preserves. Overall, an assessment by plant biochemist Stuart Thompson concluded, "the burden brought by radiation at Chernobyl is less severe than the benefits reaped from humans leaving the area." In fact, the ecosystem around the power plant "supports more life than before".


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The industrial, transport, and residential infrastructure has been largely crumbling since the 1986 evacuation. There are at least 800 known "burial grounds" (Ukrainian singular: "mohyl'nyk") for the contaminated vehicles with hundreds of abandoned military vehicles and helicopters. River ships and barges lie in the abandoned port of Chernobyl. The port can easily be seen in satellite images of the area. The Jupiter Factory, one of the largest buildings in the zone, was in use until 1996 but has since been abandoned and its condition is deteriorating.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: However, the infrastructure immediately used by the existing nuclear-related installations is maintained and developed, such as the railway link to the outside world from the Semykhody station used by the power plant.


title: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

text: The Chernobyl-2 site (a.k.a. "The Russian Woodpecker") is a former Soviet military installation relatively close to the power plant, consisting of a gigantic transmitter and receiver belonging to the Duga-1 over-the-horizon radar system. Located from the surface area of Chernobyl-2 is a large underground complex that was used for anti-missile defense, space surveillance and communication, and research. Military units were stationed there.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 – December 13, 2005) was an American gang member and spree killer who co-founded and led the Crips gang in Los Angeles. He and Raymond Washington formed an alliance in 1971 that established the Crips as Los Angeles' first major African-American street gang. During the 1970s, Williams was the "de facto" leader of the Crips and the prominent crime boss in South Los Angeles.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams' activities with the Crips ended in 1979 when he was arrested for the murder of four people during two robberies. Convicted of the murders in 1981 and sentenced to death, he spent over two decades on death row until he was executed by lethal injection in 2005. The highly publicized trial of Williams and extensive appeals for clemency sparked debate on the status of the death penalty in California.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams was born on December 29, 1953, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father abandoned the family when Williams was one year old. In 1959, Williams moved with his mother, Louisiana Williams, to Los Angeles, California and settled in the city's South Central region.


title: Stanley Williams

text: As Williams' mother worked several jobs to support them, Williams was a latchkey kid and often engaged in mischief on the streets. He recalled that, as a child, he would hang out in abandoned houses and vacant lots around his neighborhood in South Central where he would watch adults get drunk, abuse drugs, gamble and engage in dog fights. Williams stated that after the adults finished the dog fighting they would make the children fight each other, including himself. Williams began to participate in these street fights regularly as a child, where adults would bet on him and give him part of the proceeds for winning his fights. Williams was often the target of older bullies and street thugs in his neighborhood and, by the age of twelve, began carrying a switchblade in order to protect himself. By the time Williams was a teenager he had gained a reputation in South Central's West Side as a vicious street fighter. Williams was expelled from George Washington Preparatory High School and was blackballed by several other high schools in the South Central area for fighting, and eventually began doing stints in Central Juvenile Hall.


title: Stanley Williams

text: In the late 1960s, juvenile crime increased in South Central as older gangs disbanded to join the Black Power Movement, most notably as part of the Black Panther Party, initially to protect black people from police brutality and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Increasingly violent youth gangs formed in their place, which Williams initially despised as predatory but because of his viciousness and willingness to fight older youths Williams earned the respect of many gangsters on the West Side. These gangs were mostly small-time neighborhood cliques that operated independently from each other and therefore leadership was not chosen but determined naturally. At age fifteen, Williams was invited into a small West Side clique after he befriended a local teenager, Donald "Doc/Sweetback" Archie. Williams soon earned the clique's respect after beating up one of their members for insulting his mother. Williams became the unofficial leader of this clique as his violent reputation began to spread across South Central.


title: Stanley Williams

text: In 1969, at age sixteen, Williams was arrested in Inglewood for car theft and was sent to the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey. While doing time at the detention center, Williams was introduced to Olympic weightlifting by the facility's gym coach and this experience would spark an interest in bodybuilding. By his release from custody in early 1971, aged seventeen, Williams was physically bigger and stronger. According to Williams, upon his release from custody the review board asked him what he planned to do after being released, to which he replied "being the leader of the biggest gang in the world."


title: Stanley Williams

text: Shortly after his release from prison, Williams was approached by Raymond Washington at Washington Preparatory High School after hearing of Williams through a mutual friend of both young men. The friend had informed Washington of Williams' toughness and his willingness to fight members of larger, more established street gangs such as the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang. According to Williams' account of the meeting, what struck him about Washington was that, besides being incredibly muscular, he and his cohort were dressed similar to Williams and his clique, wearing leather jackets with starched Levi's jeans and suspenders. Washington was from South Central's East Side, where he was a prominent gangster similar to Williams, and proposed they use their influence in their respective regions to form the larger Crips street gang. The purpose for creating the gang initially was to eliminate all street gangs and create a "bull force" neighborhood watch in South Central. Williams said: "We started out—at least my intent was to, in a sense, address all of the so-called neighboring gangs in the area and to put, in a sense—I thought 'I can cleanse the neighborhood of all these, you know, marauding gangs.' But I was totally wrong. And eventually, we morphed into the monster we were addressing." Williams has stated that he founded the Crips not with the intention of eliminating other gangs, but to create a force powerful enough to protect local black people from racism, corruption and brutality at the hands of the police. At the time of the Crips' initial formation there were only three Crip sets: Washington's East Side Crips (later called East Coast Crips), Williams' West Side Crips (later would become the Eight Tray Gangster Crips), and the Compton Crips, led by a teenager named Mac Thomas. Williams formed the West Side Crips using his own influence, having befriended so many clique leaders and street thugs on the West Side. Washington, Williams and Thomas went on an aggressive and violent recruitment campaign throughout the black ghettos of Los Angeles, where they challenged the leaders of other gangs to one-on-one street fights. This process resulted in most gangs agreeing to join the Crips, and they were converted from small independent cliques into subgroups ("sets") of a gang within the larger gang. The Crips quickly became the biggest street gang in South Central by both numbers and territory, however, numerous gangs still resisted losing their independence. These hold-out gangs formed a similar alliance to combat the Crips' influence, branding themselves as the Bloods, and would become their fiercest rivals. Williams' former rivals, the L.A. Brims and the Chain Gang, joined the Blood alliance and became The Brims and The Inglewood Family Bloods, respectively.


title: Stanley Williams

text: As leader of the West Side Crips, Williams became the archetype of the new wave of Los Angeles gang members that would engage in random acts of violence against rival gang members and innocent people alike. Williams and his best friend, Curtis "Buddha" Morrow, would noticeably participate in these activities, striking fear into both street criminals and the residents of South Central, Watts, Inglewood, and Compton. Williams' violent acts became legendary in southern Los Angeles' criminal underworld as on numerous occasions criminal charges brought against him ended in disarray, and prosecutors were unable to convict him due to lack of evidence.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Soon after the foundation of the Crips, other leaders were either murdered or incarcerated and Williams became regarded as the "de facto" leader. In 1974, Raymond Washington was arrested for 2nd degree robbery and served five years in prison in Tracy. Raymond was soon murdered after his release from prison. On February 23, 1973, Curtis "Buddha" Morrow was shot to death in South Central following a petty argument. Mac Thomas was murdered under mysterious circumstances in the mid-1970s. Williams began to live an ironic double life, where he worked in a legal job as an anti-gang youth counselor in Compton while also serving as the overboss for one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles. Williams would work as a counselor and study Sociology at Compton College during working hours, then spend his free time participating in numerous violent attacks against the Bloods.


title: Stanley Williams

text: In 1976, Williams was wounded in a drive-by shooting while sitting on the porch of his house in Compton. The shooting was committed by members of the Bloods, who shot at Williams from their car as he was letting his dog out for a walk in the evening. Attempting to avoid getting hit, Williams dove to the ground from the porch, but was shot in both of his legs. Williams was told by doctors that he would never walk again, but after a nearly year-long process of physical rehabilitation and an intense workout regimen, he ultimately regained his ability to walk. After the shooting, Williams re-developed a substance abuse problem when he began smoking PCP. Williams had begun dabbling in street drugs around the age of twelve, and as a preteen befriended a neighborhood pimp who, in return for performing errands for him, would reward Williams with money and drugs, particularly Quaaludes, barbiturates (then known as "Red Devils") or marijuana. Williams' personal life began to unravel: his maternal grandmother, with whom he was very close, died in 1976. He lost his counseling job in 1977 after being implicated in a robbery that was committed by two youths from a group home that Williams supervised. He was denied an opportunity to compete in an amateur bodybuilding contest after it was discovered that he was a gang leader (Williams would later appear on the 1970s variety show "The Gong Show" performing a posedown routine). Eventually his gangster lifestyle was beginning to take a mental toll on him, which included a brief stay in the psychiatric ward of a hospital after Williams experienced a bad trip while high on PCP. With each of these setbacks Williams increasingly found himself using PCP and supported his drug habit by intimidating and robbing drug dealers in South Central.


title: Stanley Williams

text: In 1981, Williams was convicted of four counts of murder committed in two of three separate incidents. Williams always maintained his innocence, though subsequent court reviews concluded that there was no compelling reason to grant a retrial.


title: Stanley Williams

text: The prosecution stated that Williams met with a man identified in court documents only as "Darryl" late on Tuesday evening, February 28, 1979. Williams introduced Darryl to friends of his, Alfred "Blackie" Coward and to Bernard "Whitie" Trudeau, and a short time after the initial meeting, Darryl, driving a brown station wagon and accompanied by Williams and Coward drove to the home of James Garret. Williams frequently stayed and kept some possessions at Garret's home, including a 12-gauge shotgun, and after about 10 minutes inside, Williams returned with the shotgun. Williams, Darryl and Coward then went to the home of Tony Sims in Pomona, where they discussed possible locations to obtain money through robbery. Afterwards, they went to another residence where Williams left the others and returned with a .22-caliber pistol, and placed it in the station wagon. Darryl and Williams entered the station wagon, Coward and Sims entered another vehicle, and then embarked on the freeway. Both vehicles exited the freeway at California State Route 72 (Whittier Boulevard). The first incident occurred at a nearby Stop-N-Go supermarket, where Darryl and Sims, at the request of Williams, entered the store with the apparent intention of robbing it. Darryl was carrying the .22 pistol that Williams had deposited in the station wagon earlier, and also had a rifle in the trunk of the car, along with two semi-automatic handguns. The clerk at the Stop-N-Go market, Johnny Garcia, had just finished mopping the floor when he observed a station wagon and the four men at the door to the market. Two of the men entered the market and one of the men went down an aisle, while the other approached Garcia asking for a cigarette. Garcia gave the man a cigarette and lit it for him. After approximately three to four minutes, the men left the market without carrying out the planned robbery.


title: Stanley Williams

text: The prosecution stated that next Coward and Sims followed Williams and Darryl to the 7-Eleven market located at 10437 Whittier Boulevard in Whittier. The store clerk, 26-year-old Albert Lewis Owens, was sweeping the store's parking lot at 7:42 p.m. when Darryl and Sims entered the 7-Eleven. Owens put the broom and dustpan he was using on the hood of his car and entered the store to serve them, and was followed in by Williams and Coward. As Darryl and Sims walked to the counter area to take money from the cash register, Williams walked behind Owens, pulled the shotgun from under his jacket and told Owens to "shut up and keep walking". While pointing the shotgun at Owens' back, Williams directed him to a back storage room and ordered him to lie down. Coward said that he next heard the sound of a round being chambered into the shotgun, then heard a shot and glass breaking, followed by two more shots. Williams had shot at a security monitor and then killed Owens, shooting him twice in the back at point-blank range as he lay prone on the storage room floor.


title: Stanley Williams

text: The next incident occurred at the Brookhaven Motel located at 10411 South Vermont Avenue in South Central Los Angeles, which was run by 76-year-old Yen-Yi Yang and his wife, 63-year old Tsai-Shai C. Yang, their daughter, 43-year-old Yu-Chin Yang Lin, and their son, Robert. The Yangs were immigrants from Taiwan, and Yu-Chin had recently joined them in the United States to run the hotel. According to the prosecutors, at approximately 5:00 a.m. on March 11, 1979, Williams entered the Brookhaven Motel lobby and then broke down the door that led to the private office. Inside the office, Williams shot and killed Yen-Yi, Tsai-Shai, and Yu-Chin, after which he emptied the cash register and fled the scene. Robert, asleep with his wife in their bedroom at the motel, was awakened by the sound of somebody breaking down the door to the motel's office. Shortly thereafter he heard a female scream, followed by gunshots. Robert entered the motel office and found that his mother, his sister, and his father had all been shot, and the cash register was empty. The forensic pathologist testified that Yen-Yi Yang suffered two close range shotgun wounds, one to his left arm and abdomen, and one to the lower left chest. Tsai-Shai also received two close range wounds, one to the tailbone, and the other to the front of the abdomen, entering at the navel. Yu-Chin Yang Lin was shot once in the upper left face area at a distance of a few feet. Witnesses testified that Williams referred to the victims in conversations with friends as "Buddha-heads".


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams was convicted in 1981 of all four murders with aggravating circumstances on each count of felony murder (robbery) as well as multiple murder in the case of the Brookhaven event. The jury also convicted him of robbery in both cases, and found that he personally used a firearm in the commission of the crimes. The jury returned a verdict of Guilty, and the judge sentenced him to death.


title: Stanley Williams

text: From the beginning of his sentence, Williams maintained his innocence regarding the four murders, alleging prosecutorial misconduct, exclusion of exculpatory evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, biased jury selection, and the misuse of jailhouse and government informants. Williams claimed that the police found "not a shred of tangible evidence, no fingerprints, no crime scenes of bloody boot prints. They didn't match my boots, nor eyewitnesses. Even the shotgun shells found conveniently at each crime scene didn't match the shotgun shells that I owned." However, the prosecution's firearms expert, a sheriff's deputy, testified during trial that the shotgun shell recovered from the Brookhaven Motel crime scene matched test shells from the shotgun owned by Stanley Williams. No second examiner verified his findings, and the defense claimed this expert's methodology was "junk science at best". Williams' gun was found in the home of a couple with whom he occasionally stayed. According to the District Attorney, the husband was undergoing sentencing for receiving stolen property and tried for extortion. Williams' lawyers have claimed that the District Attorney quashed a murder investigation in exchange for their testimony. The two shells recovered from the 7-Eleven crime scene were consistent with shells fired from this gun, with no exclusionary markings. The shell recovered from the Brookhaven Motel crime scene was conclusively matched to Williams' weapon "to the exclusion of all other firearms."


title: Stanley Williams

text: Critics claim that although he renounced gangs and apologized for his role in co-founding the Crips, Williams continued to associate with Crips members in prison. However, when contacted about Williams' alleged ongoing gang activity, Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman April Harding said there was no evidence of his gang leadership. Opponents also pointed out that he received a significant amount of money from outside sources. They stated that people who appreciate Williams' work sent him money. "It's as simple as that," said Williams' spokeswoman Barbara Becnel.


title: Stanley Williams

text: The prosecution had removed three black people from serving as jurors in Williams' trial. Williams' lawyers claimed that he was convicted by a jury that had no African-Americans, one Latino, one Filipino-American, and 10 White Americans. The District Attorney provided proof, however, in the form of a death certificate and the affidavit of another juror, that juror #12, William James McLurkin, was black. The defense responded that, contrary to the affidavit, McLurkin did not appear black. They maintain that the trial record indicates that none of the lawyers, and particularly the prosecutor, additional evidence in a November 2005 petition for clemency. According to the clemency petition, in his closing arguments, prosecuting District Attorney Robert Martin described Williams as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said that the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat", which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands." In a radio interview, Martin insisted that the analogy was not meant to be racial, and instead was a metaphor to the fact that Williams appeared in court dressed in business attire much like an animal in a zoo appears more docile than it would be in the wild. In the Court of Appeal summary of the case, Williams stated that various jurors misconstrued as a threat a question that he asked defense counsel at the close of the guilt phase. The trial record shows that after the jurors returned their guilty verdicts, Williams said, "Sons of bitches" in a voice sufficiently loud that the court reporter included it in the trial transcript. On the day that the jury began its penalty-phase deliberations, an alternate juror reported to the bailiff that he was going to get all of them.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams became inmate CDC# C29300 at San Quentin State Prison in northern California, and spent 6 years in solitary confinement in the late 1980s for multiple assaults on guards and fellow inmates. According to a classification report found on page 8 of filings by his lawyers during the clemency proceedings dated August 5, 2004, Williams had no violations since that time.


title: Stanley Williams

text: In October 1988, Williams was stabbed in the neck and seriously injured by Tiequon Cox in San Quentin State Prison.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams appealed his conviction in the state courts and filed a petition in the federal courts for "habeas corpus" relief. The State courts affirmed the conviction, and the lower federal court denied the "habeas corpus" petition. In 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard Williams' appeal from the lower federal court, and the appellate court denied Williams' appeal in 2002, but noted that the federal courts were not his only forum for relief and that he could request clemency from the Governor of California. In late 2005, a campaign began to urge Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency for Williams in consideration of his work as an anti-gang activist, with thousands of people signing online petitions calling for Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence. In early November 2005, Williams' attorneys filed his formal petition for executive clemency, as well as a motion to obtain new evidence. (See below for the full text of the documents filed in these proceedings.) California opposed the clemency petition through the office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney, who along with the Los Angeles Police Department and other law enforcement groups, disputed that Williams had reformed. They stated that he refused to inform officials about other gang members or the tactics and communication methods that the gangs used, as Williams said he did not want to be a "snitch". The clemency petition emphasized the theme of Williams' redemption and rehabilitation rather than his claim of actual innocence. The "San Francisco Chronicle" writer Bob Egelko doubted this method, based on the courts handling the appeals, and quoted Austin Sarat, professor of law and politics at Amherst College and author of "Mercy on Trial", a book about compassion: Sarat said that actual innocence is "about the only ground in which governors grant clemency in the modern period... I know of no case in which a death row inmate has been spared (solely) based on post-conviction rehabilitation."


title: Stanley Williams

text: On December 8, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger held a clemency hearing at a one-hour, closed-door meeting, where a crowd consisting of both supporters of Williams and proponents of capital punishment congregated outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger described the decision whether to grant clemency as "the toughest thing when you are governor, dealing with someone's life." While the clemency petition was pending before the governor, Williams filed further appeals in the courts. On November 30, 2005, the California Supreme Court, in a 4–3 decision, refused to reopen Williams' case. On December 11, 2005, the California Supreme Court denied Williams' request for a stay of execution. Supporters of Williams also made another plea directly to Governor Schwarzenegger to stay the execution.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Also during this period, the media, community organizations, and relatives of the victims were speaking out. In mid-November 2005, talk show hosts John and Ken of the, "John and Ken Show" on Clear Channel's KFI radio in Los Angeles started a "Tookie Must Die (For Killing Four Innocent People)" hour on their show daily until the execution of Williams. During the hour, they interviewed advocates of both sides of the issue and expressed their support for the impending execution. Many anti-death penalty and civil rights organizations around the country organized activist campaigns to stop the execution, including the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the NAACP, A.N.S.W.E.R., and others. Williams's friend, co-author, and political collaborator, Barbara Becnel, helped to spearhead much of the organizing. Celebrities also joined to stop the execution, including Snoop Dogg, who appeared at a clemency rally wearing a shirt advertising the Save Tookie website and performed a song he had written for Williams. Jamie Foxx, noting that Williams' execution date was his birthday, publicly stated that the only birthday present he wanted was clemency for Williams. Other prisoners were also involved in activism to save Williams's life, including Tony Ford, whose death sentence in a disputed case was indefinitely stayed, who helped organize a prisoners strike in Texas protesting the execution. On November 29, 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California announced that more than 175,000 Californians had signed a petition requesting the temporary suspension of executions in California until the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice could complete its study, due for December 31, 2007. The "California Moratorium on Executions Act", A.B.1121, was scheduled to have its first hearing in January 2006. Press conferences and rallies in more than a dozen California cities called for a halt to all executions. They asked Governor Schwarzenegger to commute Williams' death sentence to life without parole.


title: Stanley Williams

text: On December 8, 2005, Lora Owens, the stepmother of Albert Owens, made a statement expressing her opinion of Stanley Williams: "I think he [Williams] is the same cold-blooded killer that he was then and he would be now if he had the opportunity again." Owens' two daughters, who were 8 and 5 years old when their father was murdered, also opposed clemency and recalled that they were shocked when they had learned that their father's murderer was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. By contrast, on December 9, 2005, Linda Owens, Albert Owens' widow, stated support of Williams' efforts to bring an end to gang violence and his call for peace between gangs: "I, Linda Owens want to build upon Mr. Williams' peace initiative. I invite Mr. Williams to join me in sending a message to all communities that we should all unite in peace. This position of peace would honor my husband's memory and Mr. Williams' work."


title: Stanley Williams

text: On December 12, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Williams. In his denial, Governor Schwarzenegger cited the following:


title: Stanley Williams

text: Governor Schwarzenegger summarized by basing his denial of clemency on the "totality of circumstances". On the same day that Schwarzenegger denied Williams clemency, Jonathan Harris, a New York counsel with Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, filed a response summarizing new evidence of innocence. It included reference to an affidavit by Gordon Bradbury von Ellerman attesting to belief in Williams' innocence. Dated December 10, it states that he called the NAACP on December 8 after reading in the "Daily Breeze" that his cellmate, George Oglesby, had testified against Williams. He states that he had observed Oglesby receive police reports on Williams and others. Mr. Oglesby told Von Ellerman that he was using the documents to testify against Williams and others "to gain a reduction or eliminate charges against him." Von Ellerman also observed Oglesby copying from samples of Williams' handwriting to "create incriminating documents that would appear to be written by Mr. Williams." Prosecutors had cited handwritten notes written by Williams about an escape plan that involved the killing of a bus driver and another accomplice.


title: Stanley Williams

text: On December 13, 2005, sixteen days away from his 52nd birthday, after exhausting all forms of appeal, Williams was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison. "Newsweek" reported thousands of protesters outside, most of whom were seeking Williams' clemency. He was the 12th person to be executed by the state of California following the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision of "Gregg v. Georgia". Williams provided no last words to the prison warden, but in an interview on WBAI Pacifica radio hours before the execution, he stated:


title: Stanley Williams

text: Witnesses described the mood in the execution chamber as somber, and Williams showed no resistance as he was led into the execution chamber. After Williams was strapped to the gurney, he struggled against the straps holding him down to look up at the press gallery behind him, and to exchange glances with his supporters. Williams's advocate and editor Barbara Becnel was also a witness to his execution. In the epilogue of Williams's reprinted memoir, "Blue Rage, Black Redemption", Becnel reported that prior to Williams's arrival in the death chamber, he had promised her that "he would find a way to lift his head and smile at me at some point during his execution, no matter what was being done to him. And that is exactly what he did." Williams then rested his head on the gurney while medical technicians began inserting needles in his veins, although CNN reported the staff had difficulty inserting the needles and the usually short process took almost 20 minutes. "Contra Costa Times" reporter John Simerman added, "They had some trouble with the second I.V., which was in the left arm… Williams, at one point, grimaced or looked almost out of frustration…at the difficulty there…He had his glasses on the whole time. He kept them on, and he kept looking…" With a look of frustration on his face, Williams angrily asked the technicians, "You guys doing that right?" A female guard whispered to him, and a second guard patted Williams' shoulder as if to comfort him. Williams shed one silent tear but otherwise showed no emotion as he was executed. Members of Albert Owens' family who witnessed the execution were described as stony-faced; however, Lora Owens appeared very upset, according to MSNBC anchor Rita Cosby.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Kevin Fagan, a reporter for the "San Francisco Chronicle", wrote a detailed description of the execution:


title: Stanley Williams

text: This is the sixth one I have seen here at San Quentin, and I have to say this was very different. The most notable thing was that Williams had supporters at the back of the room... Mrs. Becnel was among them, I understand. We could see them, and throughout the last part of the execution—or preparing him when he was still conscious, they gave what looked like black power salutes several times to him, one man and two women. And most strikingly at the end of the execution, as those three were heading out, they yelled, 'The State of California just killed an innocent man!' which is the first time I ever heard any outburst in the death chamber there.


title: Stanley Williams

text: After Williams was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m. PST (08:35 UTC), several reporters who witnessed the execution held a news conference.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams' spokeswoman and co-author Barbara Becnel said shortly after Williams's death that she is "now on a mission" to obtain justice for Stanley Tookie Williams. Williams directed Becnel to receive his body and Becnel began making the funeral arrangements.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Becnel reacted to Williams' execution by saying, "We are going to prove his innocence, and when we do, we are going to show that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is, in fact, himself a cold blooded murderer."


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams' body was laid out for viewing on December 19, 2005 and drew 2,000 mourners. A memorial service was held in Los Angeles on December 20, 2005, where Becnel read his final wishes. Williams' funeral filled the 1,500-seat Bethel AME Church and drew a wide variety of people from current gang members to celebrities and religious leaders. On June 25, 2006, Barbara Becnel and Williams' longtime friend, Shirley Neal, sprinkled his ashes into a lake in Thokoza Park in the city of Soweto, South Africa as Williams had wished.


title: Stanley Williams

text: At his funeral, the last words of Williams echoed from a tape played to mourners, whom he asked to spread a message to loved ones:


title: Stanley Williams

text: Williams-Taylor talked to her ex-husband by phone that day. "He was great. He said he was at peace with himself and proud of his son", according to Leslie Fulbright, a staff writer for the "San Francisco Chronicle". Travon is a married father who owns a home and works for a social services agency in the Los Angeles area, said Barbara Becnel, Stanley Williams' co-author.


title: Stanley Williams

text: Travon was the only family member who spoke at the funeral. He "brought the church to its feet" when he promised to teach Schwarzenegger about redemption. He said, "I feel it's my duty to go on a worldwide campaign to show that redemption is real", he said.


title: Satyadev Kancharana

text: Satyadev Kancharana (born 4 July 1989), known professionally as Satya Dev, is an Indian actor who primarily works in Telugu cinema. Starting with supporting roles, Satyadev established himself as a leading actor. He is better known for his performances in movies such as "Jyothi Lakshmi" (2015)", Kshanam" (2016)", Mana Oori Ramayanam" (2016)"," "Bluff Master" (2018), "Brochevarevarura" (2019), and "Uma Maheswara Ugra Roopasya" (2020)"."


title: Satyadev Kancharana

text: Satya Dev hails from Visakhapatnam. He attended SFS School and Nalanda Talent School in Visakhapatnam. He later graduated in Computer Science Engineering from MVGR College of Engineering, Vijayanagaram. He worked as Virtual Design Architect for IBM and VMware till 2016, post which he quit to focus solely on his film career.


title: Satyadev Kancharana

text: Satya Dev started his career with short films. His first appearance in a feature film was "Mr. Perfect" (2011). He then continued to do minor roles in films like "Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu" and "Mukunda". Satydev's first film in a noticeable role was "Maine Pyar Kiya". Although the film received limited response, a critic from the "Deccan Chronicle" wrote that "Another promising debutant is Satya Dev, who had to perform two characters — one young and the other, in the 40s. The variations in both characters are brought out superbly by Dev".


title: Satyadev Kancharana

text: Satya Dev was selected from over 500 artistes who auditioned for the lead role in "Jyothi Lakshmi". The film, although a moderate box office success, provided him a much needed recognition in the film industry and after that he got an opportunity to work with Prakash Raj in "Mana Oori Ramayanam". He also played an important role of an Indian Sonar Operator in "The Ghazi Attack". He was featured in the music video "Daare Leda" alongside Roopa Kodavayur. It is performed by Roshan Sebastian, composed by Vijay Bulganin, written by KK and produced by Nani.


title: Wiltshire

text: Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the northeast and Berkshire to the east. The county town was originally Wilton, after which the county is named, but Wiltshire Council is now based in the county town of Trowbridge. Within the county's boundary are two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, governed respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council.


title: Wiltshire

text: Wiltshire is characterised by its high downland and wide valleys. Salisbury Plain is noted for being the location of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles (which together are a UNESCO Cultural and World Heritage site) and other ancient landmarks, and as a training area for the British Army. The city of Salisbury is notable for its medieval cathedral. Swindon is the county’s largest town and commercial centre, with a population of 230,000. Large country houses open to the public include Longleat (where there is also a safari park) and the National Trust's Stourhead.


title: Wiltshire

text: The county, in the 9th century written as "Wiltunscir", later "Wiltonshire", is named after the former county town of Wilton.


title: Wiltshire

text: Wiltshire is notable for its pre-Roman archaeology. The Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age people that occupied southern Britain built settlements on the hills and downland that cover Wiltshire. Stonehenge and Avebury are perhaps the most famous Neolithic sites in the UK.


title: Wiltshire

text: In the 6th and 7th centuries Wiltshire was at the western edge of Saxon Britain, as Cranborne Chase and the Somerset Levels prevented the advance to the west. The Battle of Bedwyn was fought in 675 between Escuin, a West Saxon nobleman who had seized the throne of Queen Saxburga, and King Wulfhere of Mercia. In 878 the Danes invaded the county. Following the Norman Conquest in 1066, large areas of the country came into the possession of the crown and the church.


title: Wiltshire

text: At the time of the Domesday Survey, the industry of Wiltshire was largely agricultural; 390 mills are mentioned, and vineyards at Tollard and Lacock. In the succeeding centuries sheep-farming was vigorously pursued, and the Cistercian monastery of Stanley exported wool to the Florentine and Flemish markets in the 13th and 14th centuries.


title: Wiltshire

text: In the 17th century English Civil War Wiltshire was largely Parliamentarian. The Battle of Roundway Down, a Royalist victory, was fought near Devizes.


title: Wiltshire

text: In 1794 it was decided at a meeting at the Bear Inn in Devizes to raise a body of ten independent troops of Yeomanry for the county of Wiltshire, which formed the basis for what would become the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, who served with distinction both at home and abroad, during the Boer War, World War I and World War II. The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry currently lives on as Y (RWY) Squadron, based in Swindon, and B (RWY) Squadron, based in Salisbury, of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry.


title: Wiltshire

text: Around 1800 the Kennet and Avon Canal was built through Wiltshire, providing a route for transporting cargoes from Bristol to London until the development of the Great Western Railway.


title: Wiltshire

text: Information on the 261 civil parishes of Wiltshire is available on Wiltshire Council's Wiltshire Community History website which has maps, demographic data, historic and modern pictures and short histories.


title: Wiltshire

text: The local nickname for Wiltshire natives is "Moonrakers". This originated from a story of smugglers who managed to foil the local Excise men by hiding their alcohol, possibly French brandy in barrels or kegs, in a village pond. When confronted by the excise men they raked the surface to conceal the submerged contraband with ripples, and claimed that they were trying to rake in a large round cheese visible in the pond, really a reflection of the full moon. The officials took them for simple yokels or mad and left them alone, allowing them to continue with their illegal activities. Many villages claim the tale for their own village pond, but the story is most commonly linked with The Crammer in Devizes.


title: Wiltshire

text: Two-thirds of Wiltshire, a mostly rural county, lies on chalk, a kind of soft, white, porous limestone that is resistant to erosion, giving it a high chalk downland landscape. This chalk is part of a system of chalk downlands throughout eastern and southern England formed by the rocks of the Chalk Group and stretching from the Dorset Downs in the west to Dover in the east. The largest area of chalk in Wiltshire is Salisbury Plain, which is used mainly for arable agriculture and by the British Army as training ranges. The highest point in the county is the Tan Hill–Milk Hill ridge in the Pewsey Vale, just to the north of Salisbury Plain, at above sea level.


title: Wiltshire

text: The chalk uplands run northeast into West Berkshire in the Marlborough Downs ridge, and southwest into Dorset as Cranborne Chase. Cranborne Chase, which straddles the border, has, like Salisbury Plain, yielded much Stone Age and Bronze Age archaeology. The Marlborough Downs are part of the North Wessex Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), a conservation area.


title: Wiltshire

text: In the northwest of the county, on the border with South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset, the underlying rock is the resistant oolite limestone of the Cotswolds. Part of the Cotswolds AONB is also in Wiltshire, in the county's northwestern corner.


title: Wiltshire

text: Between the areas of chalk and limestone downland are clay valleys and vales. The largest of these vales is the Avon Vale. The Avon cuts diagonally through the north of the county, flowing through Bradford-on-Avon and into Bath and Bristol. The Vale of Pewsey has been cut through the chalk into Greensand and Oxford Clay in the centre of the county. In the south west of the county is the Vale of Wardour. The southeast of the county lies on the sandy soils of the northernmost area of the New Forest.


title: Wiltshire

text: Chalk is a porous rock, so the chalk hills have little surface water. The main settlements in the county are therefore situated at wet points. Notably, Salisbury is situated between the chalk of Salisbury Plain and marshy flood plains.


title: Wiltshire

text: The county has a green belt mainly along its western fringes as a part of the extensive Avon Green Belt. It reaches as far as the outskirts of Rudloe/Corsham and Trowbridge, preventing urban sprawl particularly from the latter in the direction of Bradford-on-Avon, and affording further protection to surrounding villages and towns from Bath in Somerset.


title: Wiltshire

text: Along with the rest of South West England, Wiltshire has a temperate climate which is generally wetter and milder than counties further east. The annual mean temperature is approximately . Although there is a marked maritime influence, this is generally rather less pronounced, than it is for other south-western counties, which have a greater proximity to the sea. The summer months of July and August are the warmest with mean daily maxima of approximately . In winter mean minimum temperatures of or are usual and air frost normally occurs frequently. In the summer the Azores high pressure affects southwest England; however, convective cloud sometimes forms inland, reducing the number of hours of sunshine. Annual sunshine rates are slightly less than the regional average of 1,600 hours.


title: Wiltshire

text: In December 1998 there were 20 days without sun recorded at Yeovilton (Somerset). Most of the rainfall in the southwest is caused by Atlantic depressions or by convection, though a proportion is caused orographically (uplift over hills). A greater proportion of rainfall is in autumn and winter, caused by the Atlantic depressions, which is when they are most active. Even so, any month can be the wettest or driest in a given year but the wettest is much more likely to be in the winter half-year (Oct-Mar) and the driest in the summer half-year (Apr-Sept). In summer, a greater proportion of the rainfall is caused by sun heating the ground leading to convection and to showers and thunderstorms, though it is often the northern half of the county that sees most of the showers with south-westerly winds, in summer, whereas in the south of the county, the proximity of a relatively cold English Channel, often inhibits the development of showers. In autumn and winter, however, the sea is often relatively warm, compared with the air passing over it and can often lead to a higher rainfall in the south of the county e.g. Salisbury recorded over 200mm of rain in Nov 2009 and January 2014. Average rainfall for the county is around , drier parts averaging 700mm (28ins)and the wettest 900mm (around 35ins). About 8–15 days of snowfall is typical. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, and June to August have the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the southwest.


title: Wiltshire

text: This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added (GVA) of Wiltshire at current basic prices with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.


title: Wiltshire

text: The Wiltshire economy benefits from the "M4 corridor effect", which attracts business, and the attractiveness of its countryside, towns and villages. The northern part of the county is richer than the southern part, particularly since Swindon is home to national and international corporations such as Intel, Motorola, Patheon, Catalent (formerly known as Cardinal Health), Becton-Dickinson, WHSmith, Early Learning Centre and Nationwide, with Dyson located in nearby Malmesbury. Wiltshire's employment structure is distinctive in having a significantly higher number of people in various forms of manufacturing (especially electrical equipment and apparatus, food products, and beverages, furniture, rubber, pharmaceuticals, and plastic goods) than the national average.


title: Wiltshire

text: In addition, there is higher-than-average employment in public administration and defence, due to the military establishments around the county, particularly around Amesbury and Corsham. There are sizeable British Army barracks at Tidworth, Bulford and Warminster, and the Royal School of Artillery is at Larkhill. Further north, RAF Lyneham was home to the RAF's Hercules C130 fleet until 2011; the MoD Lyneham site is now a centre for Army technical training. Wiltshire is also distinctive for the high proportion of its working-age population who are economically active (86.6% in 1999–2000) and its low unemployment rates. The gross domestic product (GDP) level in Wiltshire did not reach the UK average in 1998, and was only marginally above the rate for South West England.


title: Wiltshire

text: Wiltshire has thirty county secondary schools, publicly funded, of which the largest is Warminster Kingdown, and eleven independent secondaries, including Marlborough College, St Mary's Calne, Dauntsey's near Devizes, and Warminster School. The county schools are nearly all comprehensives, with the older pattern of education surviving only in Salisbury, which has two grammar schools (South Wilts Grammar School and Bishop Wordsworth's School) and three non-selective schools.


title: Wiltshire

text: There are four further education colleges, which also provide some higher education: New College (Swindon); Wiltshire College (Chippenham, Trowbridge and Salisbury); Salisbury Sixth Form College; and Swindon College. Wiltshire is also home to a University Technical College, UTC Swindon, specialising in engineering. A second UTC, South Wiltshire UTC, was based in Salisbury but closed in August 2020.


title: Wiltshire

text: Wiltshire is one of the few remaining English counties without a university or university college; the closest university to the county town of Trowbridge is the University of Bath. However, Bath Spa University has a centre at Corsham Court in Corsham, and Oxford Brookes University maintains a minor campus in Swindon (almost 50 km from Oxford). Swindon is the UK's second largest centre of population (after Milton Keynes) without its own university.


title: Wiltshire

text: The county registered a population of 680,137 in the 2011 Census. Wiltshire (outside Swindon) has a low population density of 1.4 persons per hectare, when compared against 4.1 for England as a whole.


title: Wiltshire

text: At the 2019 general election, all seven Wiltshire constituencies (including the two Swindon constituencies) returned Conservative MPs. The two Swindon constituencies are seen as marginal, bellwether constituencies between Labour and the Conservatives. Conversely, the Chippenham constituency is traditionally contested between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, with Liberal Democrat Duncan Hames holding the seat until 2015. The Liberal Democrats also finished second in Devizes, North Wiltshire and Salisbury whereas Labour, in addition to the two Swindon seats, finished second in Wiltshire South West.


title: Wiltshire

text: The 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies' initial proposals recommended wide-ranging changes to Wiltshire's electoral boundaries which would see the North Wiltshire seat extended across the county border into Gloucestershire.


title: Wiltshire

text: The ceremonial county of Wiltshire consists of two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, governed respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. As a result of elections held in 2021, Wiltshire Council comprises 61 Conservatives, 27 Liberal Democrats, seven Independents and three Labour members. Swindon Borough Council has 34 Conservative councillors and 23 Labour members.


title: Wiltshire

text: Until the 2009 structural changes to local government, Wiltshire (apart from Swindon) was a two-level county, divided into four local government districts – Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury and West Wiltshire – which existed alongside Wiltshire County Council, covering the same area and carrying out more strategic tasks, such as education and county roads. However, on 1 April 2009 these five local authorities were merged into a single unitary authority called Wiltshire Council. With the abolition of the District of Salisbury, a new Salisbury City Council was created at the same time to carry out several citywide functions and to hold the city's charter.


title: Wiltshire

text: The county is represented in the Football League by Swindon Town, who play at the County Ground stadium near Swindon town centre. They joined the Football League on the creation of the Third Division in 1920, and have remained in the league ever since. Their most notable achievements include winning the Football League Cup in 1969 and the Anglo-Italian Cup in 1970, two successive promotions in 1986 and 1987 (taking them from the Fourth Division to the Second), promotion to the Premier League as Division One play-off winners in 1993 (as inaugural members), the Division Two title in 1996, and their promotion to League One in 2007 after finishing third in League Two.


title: Wiltshire

text: Chippenham Town is the area's highest-ranked non-league football club; they currently play in the National League South after winning the Southern Premier League in 2016/17, with a league record points tally of 103. After Salisbury City went into liquidation in 2014, a new club, Salisbury, was formed and plays in the Southern Premier League.


title: Wiltshire

text: Swindon Robins Speedway team, who compete in the top national division, the SGB Premiership, have been at their track at the Blunsdon Abbey Stadium near Swindon since 1949. Swindon Wildcats compete in the English Premier Ice Hockey League, the second tier of British ice hockey, and play their home games at Swindon's Link Centre.


title: Wiltshire

text: The county is covered by BBC West and ITV West; however, Swindon and Salisbury receive BBC South and ITV Meridian.


title: Wiltshire

text: Roads running through Wiltshire include The Ridgeway, an ancient route, and Roman roads the Fosse Way, London to Bath road and Ermin Way. National Cycle Route 4 and the Thames Path, a modern long distance footpath, run through the county.


title: Wiltshire

text: The major junction stations are Salisbury and Westbury, and important junctions are also found at Swindon, and Trowbridge.


title: Wiltshire

text: In general, Wiltshire is well served by rail, with 14 stations within its boundaries, although towns not served include Calne, Marlborough and Devizes. Several destinations on bus routes, including the aforementioned three towns, have integrated through ticketing where one ticket may be bought to cover both the bus and rail journey.


title: Wiltshire

text: Airfields in Wiltshire include Old Sarum Airfield and Clench Common Airfield. RAF Lyneham was an air transport hub for British forces until its closure in 2012. Airports with scheduled services near Wiltshire include Bournemouth Airport, Bristol Airport, Cardiff Airport, Exeter Airport, Gloucestershire Airport, Oxford Airport, Heathrow Airport and Southampton Airport.


title: Mamoudou Athie

text: Mamoudou Athie ( ) is a Mauritanian-American actor. He is best known for starring in the 2022 Netflix horror series "Archive 81" and supporting roles in films including "Jurassic World: Dominion" (2022).


title: Mamoudou Athie

text: Athie began his career in theater—making his Broadway debut in 2015—and subsequently had supporting roles in films like "Patti Cake$" (2017), "The Circle" (2017), "Unicorn Store" (2017), "The Front Runner" (2018), and "Underwater" (2020), and in the television series "The Get Down" (2016–2017), "The Detour" (2017), "Sorry for Your Loss" (2018–2019), and the FXX anthology "Cake" (2019). He had first feature film starring roles in 2020, starring in Netflix's "Uncorked" and Amazon's "Black Box".


title: Mamoudou Athie

text: Athie was nominated for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series for his performance in "Cake".


title: Mamoudou Athie

text: Athie was born in Mauritania, the son of a diplomat father who received political asylum in the U.S. when Athie was six months old. Athie grew up in New Carrollton, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C.


title: Mamoudou Athie

text: He studied acting at the William Esper Studio in the Two-Year Professional Actor Training Program; he later received his MFA from the Yale School of Drama, from which he graduated in 2014.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: San Diego Comic-Con International is a comic book convention and nonprofit multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California since 1970. The name, as given on its website, is Comic-Con International: San Diego; but it is commonly known simply as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con or SDCC.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The convention was founded as the Golden State Comic Book Convention in 1970 by a group of San Diegans that included Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, Ken Krueger, Ron Graf, and Mike Towry; later, it was called the "San Diego Comic Book Convention", Dorf said during an interview that he hoped the first Con would bring in 500 attendees. It is a four-day event (Thursday–Sunday) held during the summer (in July since 2003) at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego. On the Wednesday evening prior to the official opening, professionals, exhibitors, and pre-registered guests for all four days can attend a pre-event "Preview Night" to give attendees the opportunity to walk the exhibit hall and see what will be available during the convention.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Comic-Con International also produces WonderCon, held in Anaheim, and SAM: Storytelling Across Media, a conference held in 2016 in San Francisco and beginning in 2018 annually at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego. Since 1974, Comic-Con has bestowed its annual Inkpot Award on guests and persons of interest in the popular arts industries, as well as on members of Comic-Con's board of directors and the Convention committee. It is also the home of the Will Eisner Awards.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Originally showcasing primarily comic books and science fiction/fantasy related film, television, and similar popular arts, the convention has since included a larger range of pop culture and entertainment elements across virtually all genres, including horror, Western animation, anime, manga, toys, collectible card games, video games, webcomics, and fantasy novels. In 2010 and each year subsequently, it filled the San Diego Convention Center to capacity with more than 130,000 attendees. In addition to drawing huge crowds, the event holds several Guinness World Records including the largest annual comic and pop culture festival in the world.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Comic-Con has been canceled twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 marked the first time that the event had been canceled since its establishment. It was rescheduled for July 2021, however, this show was canceled soon after it had been announced. Comic-Con returned later that year with a scaled back version of itself in November 2021, marketed as "Comic-Con Special Edition". Comic-Con, as its former pre-pandemic self, returned to San Diego in July 2022 after a two-year hiatus. The next scheduled Comic-Con will begin on July 20, 2023.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The convention was founded in 1970 by Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, Ken Krueger, Mike Towry, Ron Graf, Barry Alfonso, Bob Sourk, and Greg Bear. Initial comic book and sci-fi club meetings would be held at Krueger's Alert Books in Ocean Beach, where much of the foundation of the early Cons coalesced. In the mid-1960s, Dorf, a Detroit-born comics fan, had mounted the Detroit Triple-Fan Fairs, one of the first commercial comics-fan conventions. When he moved to San Diego, California, in 1970, he organized a one-day convention (Golden State Comic-Minicon) on March 21, 1970, "as a kind of 'dry run' for the larger convention he hoped to stage." Dorf went on to be associated with the convention as president or manager, variously, for years until becoming estranged from the organization. Alf co-chaired the first convention with Krueger and became chairman in 1971.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Following the initial gathering, Dorf's first three-day San Diego comics convention, the Golden State Comic-Con, drew 300 people and the venue was held in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel, having been secured by Graf, from August 1–3, 1970. Other locations in the convention's early years included the El Cortez Hotel, the University of California, San Diego, and Golden Hall, before being moved to the San Diego Convention Center in 1991. Richard Alf, chairman in 1971, has noted an early factor in the Con's growth was an effort "to expand the Comic-Con [organizing] committee base by networking with other fandoms such as the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Mythopoeic Society, among others. (We found a lot of talent and strength through diversity)." In a "Rolling Stone" article about the origins of Comic-Con, it noted the work of Krueger, who handled early business matters, and worked to get the event to be organized by a non-profit organization. By the late 1970s, the show had grown to such an extent that Bob Schreck recalled visiting with his then-boss Gary Berman of Creation Conventions and reflecting, "While [Berman] kept repeating (attempting to convince himself) 'This show's not any bigger than ours!' I was quietly walking the floor stunned and in awe of just how much bigger it really was. I was blown away." From 1984 to c. 1994, a trade fair called the "San Diego Comic Book Expo" was held in association with the San Diego Comic-Con; David Scroggy was the organizer.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: According to "Forbes", the convention is the "largest convention of its kind in the world;" "Publishers Weekly" wrote "Comic-Con International: San Diego is the largest show in North America;" it is also the largest convention held in San Diego. The convention has an estimated annual regional economic impact of more than $140 million. Yet, in 2009, the estimated economic impact was criticized for allegedly negatively impacting seasonal businesses outside of Comic-Con, low individual spending estimates of attendees, that a large number of attendees live in San Diego, and that the impact of the convention was more cultural than financial.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The estimated economic impact of that year's convention was $180 million. In 2014, the estimated impact of that year's convention was $177.8 million. In 2016, the estimated impact of that year's convention was down to $150 million. By 2018, San Diego Comic-Con saw increasing competition from other comic conventions in places such as New York City, and Washington, D.C., which caused it to compete for attendees and companies time and budget; yet San Diego Comic-Con was described by "Publishers Weekly" as "a must-do".


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The convention is organized by a panel of 13 board members, 16 to 20 full-time and part-time workers, and 80 volunteers who assist via committees. Comic-Con International is a non-profit organization, and proceeds of the event go to funding it, as well as SAM: Storytelling Across Media and WonderCon. The convention logo was designed by Richard Bruning and Josh Beatman in 1995. In 2015, working with Lionsgate, a video channel was created to host Comic-Con related content. In 2015, through a limited liability company, Comic-Con International purchased three buildings in Barrio Logan. In 2018 Comic-Con International purchased a office in San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2017, the organization acquired a lease to the Federal Building in Balboa Park, originally built for the California Pacific International Exposition and previously occupied by the San Diego Hall of Champions, with the intention of opening a Comic-Con Museum. By October 2017, the organization began to hire staff for the museum. Nearly a year after acquiring the lease, the museum was not yet open. During the 2018 Comic-Con International, one reason stated for why the museum had not yet opened was the need for additional funds. Organizers are hoping to raise $25 million with a target opening date of late 2020 or 2022.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: On April 17, 2020, the 53rd convention was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in California. It was originally scheduled to occur from July 23 to 26, 2020, to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, which was postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic. An "SDCC@Home" digital streaming event was held during the same time period as a replacement for the 2020 event. Although plans were made for the convention to possibly return in 2021 (with 2020 badge holders given the option to receive a full refund or to roll over their badge to 2021), it was announced on March 1, 2021, that the convention would be cancelled once again. Despite availability of COVID-19 vaccines, the organizers assessed that it was still premature and unsafe to hold an in-person event at SDCC's full scale on the originally-scheduled dates, and that Comic-Con International was exploring the possibility of holding a smaller in-person spin-off event later in the year. SDCC@Home will again be held, but in a downsized form due to reduced financial resources.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Along with panels, seminars, and workshops with comic book professionals, there are previews of upcoming feature films and portfolio review sessions with top comic book and video game companies. The evenings include events such as awards ceremonies, the annual Masquerade costume contest, and the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival, which showcases shorts and feature-length movies that do not have distribution or distribution deals.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Traditional events include an eclectic film program, screening rooms devoted to Japanese animation, gaming, programs such as cartoonist Scott Shaw!'s "Oddball Comics" slide show, Quick Draw! hosted by Mark Evanier with Shaw!, Sergio Aragones and a guest cartoonist responding to improvisational prompts and games (a la "Whose Line Is It Anyway?") and animation expert Jerry Beck's program featuring TV's "worst cartoons ever", as well as over 350 hours of other programming on all aspects of comic books and pop culture.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Like most comic book conventions, Comic-Con features a large floorspace for exhibitors. These include media companies such as movie studios and TV networks, as well as comic-book dealers and collectibles merchants. And like most comics conventions, Comic-Con includes an autograph area, as well as the Artists' Alley where comics artists can sign autographs and sell or do free sketches. Despite the name, artists' alleys can include writers and even models.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Academics and comic industry professionals annually hold the Comics Arts Conference at Comic-Con, presenting scholarly studies on comics as a medium.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In recent years, the number of television shows that are promoted far outnumber films. During the 2011 convention, at least 80 TV shows were represented, compared to about 35 films. The shows not only promote in the exhibit halls, but also use screenings and panels of various actors, writers, producers, and others from their shows.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Premium cable channels HBO and Showtime have used the con to promote programs like "Game of Thrones" (HBO), "Dexter" (Showtime), "Shameless" (Showtime) and "True Blood" (HBO).


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2013, there were 1075 total panels held during the convention, the plurality of which were anime-focused (29%), followed by comic-focused panels (26%). 1036 vendors participated in the convention in 2013.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: There are at least 17 separate rooms in the convention center used for panels and screenings, ranging in size from 280 seats to 6,100 seats. The two biggest are Ballroom 20, which seats approximately 4,900; and Hall H, which seats just over 6,100.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The neighboring Hilton Bayfront is also used, with its main ballroom (Indigo) seating up to 2,600. The other neighboring hotel, the Marriott Marquis & Marina, also hosts a lot of Comic-Con activity. Among other things, the hotel serves as the anime headquarters and is where the nighttime films are shown.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In the 21st century, the convention has drawn toy and collectibles designers who sell "Comic-Con Exclusive" products. Such companies have included Lego, Hasbro, Funko, Gentle Giant LTD, Mattel, NECA, ThinkGeek, Sideshow Collectibles, Entertainment Earth, Bif Bang Pow!, Mezco, Toynami, and Kotobukiya. Most such exclusives are licensed properties of film, comic book and animation characters.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Comic-Con International has served as the setting for Mark Hamill's "", and for an episode of the HBO television series "Entourage", the latter of which, while set at the event, was not filmed there. Comic-Con also served as an excuse for the fictional characters Seth Cohen and Ryan Atwood's trip to Tijuana, Mexico in episode 7 ("The Escape") of the first season of TV series "The O.C." The convention also featured prominently as a setting for the "Numb3rs" episode "". In season 4 of "Beauty and the Geek", an episode was featured where the contestants traveled to Comic-Con 07 and were given a challenge to create their own superheroes. In an episode of "Punk'd", Hilary Swank gets Punk'd after an "attack from talking robot". In season 5, episode six, of the Showtime show "Weeds", attendees from Comic-Con 2009 are seen in Silas and Doug's medicinal marijuana club.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Issue No. 72 of "The Invincible Iron Man" (January 1975) was set at the July–August 1974 Comic-Con at the El Cortez Hotel and featured cameos by a few of the special guests. The fifth Kelly Green graphic novel "The Comic-Con Heist" (1987) written by Leonard Starr and drawn by Stan Drake was set at the 1983 con and depicted such regulars as Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, Burne Hogarth and Jack Kirby along with Shel Dorf; it initially only appeared in French until Classic Comics Press issued a collection of all five volumes of the series in English in 2016. Other comics set at the convention include "Archie" No. 538 (September 2003), Archie Giant Series No. 601 (October 1989) and No. 624 (October 1991), "G.I. Joe" No. 180 (July 2012), "Dazzler" No. 30 (January 1984), "Lobo Convention Special" ([September] 1993) and "Fanboys Vs Zombies". 1992-1995 the Con partnered with Dark Horse Comics for an annual "San Diego Comic Con Comics" giveaway to attendees spotlighting characters published by Dark Horse.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Comic-Con is mentioned in the long-running CBS geek-targeted sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" in several episodes, and in NBC's "Chuck" in the episode "Chuck Versus the Sandworm", as an event the characters enjoy attending. On the "Futurama" episode "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences", the main characters attend the 3010 convention (with it being referred to as "Comic-Con Intergalactic" and the iconic eye logo now sporting multiple eyes), where Fry looks for approval for his own comic while Bender attends a panel from Matt Groening (creator of "Futurama" as well as "The Simpsons") on his new show "Futurella" (a twist on the title of the show and a parody of its cancellation by Fox).


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In "It's My Party and I'll Bang If I Want To", an episode of the 2011 season of "", the cast attends Comic-Con made up as zombies in order to pass out promotional flyers for the House of Blues, where they worked as part of their season work assignment. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock released a 2011 documentary feature film set at the convention, "". Writer Robert Salkowitz also used the 2011 Comic-Con as a backdrop for his book "Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture", an analysis of the comics industry's 21st-century dilemmas and what the future may hold.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Since 2015, Conan O'Brien has recorded a week of live shows from Comic-Con at the nearby Spreckels Theatre.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2015, the Food Network series "Cake Masters" had an episode where Duff Goldman presented a cake at Comic-Con to the cast of "Fantastic Four".


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2020, SiriusXM in association with Stitcher started production on "COMIC-CON BEGINS: Origin Stories of the San Diego Comic-Con and the Rise of Modern Fandom ." The podcast is a six-part mini-series chronicling the birth and evolution of the San Diego Comic-Con, and is told by over 50 of the original contributors. Among the founders there are also interviews with celebrities like Felicia Day, Ho Che Anderson, Jackie Estrada, Scott Aukerman, Trina Robbins, Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman, and Bruce Campbell. Hosted by Brinke Stevens of "Slumber Party Massacre." The podcast was expanded into the book "See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture" by creator Mathew Klickstein and published by Fantagraphics on September 6, 2022. The book includes forewords by cartoonists Stan Sakai and Jeff Smith, and an afterword by Wu-Tang Clan's RZA. The audiobook version was released on the same day by Blackstone Audio.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: "Comic-Con Magazine", formerly known as "Update", is the official magazine of San Diego Comic-Con International, WonderCon, and SAM: Storytelling Across Media, published free by San Diego Comic-Con International in the United States. The seed of the "Comic-Con Magazine" was a short one-shot issue of "The Spirit", based on Comic-Con and sold exclusively in 1976 at the San Diego Comic-Con International. The "Comic-Con Magazine" debuted as "Update" in July 2005 and mainly focused on the winners of the Eisner Awards. The last "Update" issue appeared in July 2008; then it went on hiatus. When it came back, it was as "Comic-Con Magazine", which not only covered San Diego Comic-Con International, but also WonderCon and the Alternative Press Expo, more commonly known as APE (which the con owned through 2014). The new "Comic-Con Magazine" features interviews with Comic-Con attendees and complete coverage of the Comic-Con events. The fourth issue of "Comic-Con Magazine" was a hybrid with Comic-Con's Souvenir Book with cover art by Alex Ross, in full color and exclusive to Comic-Con attendees.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: There are three types of exhibitors at San Diego Comic Con. Inside the convention center, which requires a badge to visit during the convention, includes artists alley and the main exhibitor hall. Artist Alley is for up and coming artists who are new to the pop culture world by selling their new books, comics, toys, and or services. They range from local companies and businesses in Southern California to international ones, but are mainly private endeavors. Artist Alley is usually located in Hall G of the convention center. Spaces for these exhibitors are highly sought after and are on a lottery and need-based system.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The main exhibit hall, which includes larger well-recognized companies, takes up halls F through A. These companies sell or promote new and upcoming movies, television shows, and video games as well as featuring toys and exclusives with many selling for hundreds or even thousands on the secondary markets outside the convention. Some notable recurring companies include Lego, Hasbro, Funko, Hallmark Cards, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, The Walt Disney Company, and Blizzard Entertainment.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The other type of exhibitors include offsite exhibitors, booths and events which are located outside the convention center. These locations are usually within walking distance of the convention center but have been moving into nearby parks in recent years. Some notable examples include Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego, Petco Park, and Children's Park (San Diego). In recent years, these offsite events have no connection to SDCC. In the past, most sites have not required a Comic-Con badge. In 2017, one example was a virtual reality and immersive set based on the movie "Blade Runner 2049". In 2018, these examples included a Taco Bell "Demolition Man" themed pop-up restaurant in the Gaslamp; and a Shake Shack "Bob's Burgers" themed pop-up restaurant in Mission Valley. However, there are some official offsite events that require a badge. In 2018, it was estimated that nearly 200,000 people will be in Downtown San Diego due to Comic-Con related exhibits and events.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Capacity attendance at Comic-Con in 2006 and 2007 has caused crowding issues. Concerns have been raised that the event is possibly too large for the San Diego Convention Center, Comic-Con's home through at least 2022. In 2006, Comic-Con, for the first time, had to close registration for a few hours on Saturday to accommodate crowds. In response, for 2007, Comic-Con introduced a new three-day membership that did not include Saturday. Nevertheless, the 2007 show went on to sell out Saturday, as well as Friday and Sunday for the first time. Additionally, both the four-day and three-day memberships sold out for the first time. For 2008, the three-day memberships were abandoned and the convention decided to sell memberships only in advance, with no on-site registration. In 2008, all memberships were sold out before the convention for the first time. This sellout has given rise to the new phenomenon of Comic-Con memberships being scalped for exorbitant prices on websites such as eBay and Craigslist.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In April 2008, David Glanzer, Comic-Con's director of marketing and public relations, commented on the organization's desire to remain in San Diego:


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Heidi McDonald reported on her blog "The Beat" as of October 7, 2009, Preview Night for the 2010 show had already sold out. Glazner explained the early sell-out:


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: Mark Evanier on his blog "News from ME" noted as of November 9, 2009, that all 4-day passes for the 2010 show had already been sold out. On February 23, 2010, "The Orange County Register" reported that the larger Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim would be making a bid to become the new home of Comic-Con starting in 2013. On September 30, 2010, Comic Con announced that they had extended their stay up to 2015. The "North County Times" reported on July 26, 2010, that 4-day passes with access to Preview night for the 2011 Convention had sold out two hours before the 2010 convention closed. Comic-Con International announced that 4-day passes for the 2014 convention (July 24–27) would no longer be available and only single days would be sold. Due to overcrowding, organizers of the event capped attendance; this cap has been in place since 2007.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: As of October 2013, a $520 million proposed expansion to the San Diego Convention Center received approval from the California Coastal Commission. The proposed expansion would increase the available space within the convention center and had a target completion date of early 2016. The expansion would add approximately 225,000 square feet of exhibit space, an additional 35%; and a brand-new 80,000 square foot ballroom, 20% larger than Hall H. The plan would also add a second tower to the Hilton Bayfront hotel, adding 500 rooms adjacent to the Convention Center. Due to the proposed expansion of the convention center, Comic Con extended its contract for San Diego to 2016. In 2014, convention center expansion was halted due to a lawsuit. As of July 2015, convention center expansion is effectively frozen, partly because the city no longer has financing lined up for it (any financing plan would involve taxpayer money and would have to be approved by a public vote), and partly because the city lost the rights to the only contiguous parcel of land where expansion could occur. Other cities, including Los Angeles, began to seek to have Comic-Con move out of San Diego; In 2015, Comic-Con entered into negotiations with San Diego. As a result of these negotiations, Comic-Con entered into a contract to stay in San Diego through 2018. In 2017 the commitment to San Diego was extended to 2021.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2013, a young woman attempted to jump off the balcony of a local high-rise, but nearby stuntmen prevented it.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2014, multiple pedestrians marching in an off-site ZombieWalk were struck by a car forcing its way through an intersection. A 64-year-old woman sustained serious injuries to her arm; two others had minor injuries.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: The same year, a teenage cosplayer was initially thought to have been sexually assaulted early Sunday morning, and a suspect was arrested on Sunday at the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina. Police later stated that the teenage girl was injured in a fall; the arrested individual was released without any charges.


title: San Diego Comic-Con

text: In 2014, San Diego Comic-Con sent a cease and desist order to the organizers Salt Lake Comic Con, asserting that "Comic-Con" and "Comic-Con International" were registered trademarks of the convention, and that use of the term "comic con" in any form was trademark infringement as it implies an unauthorized association with San Diego Comic-Con. A U.S. court ruled in favor of San Diego Comic-Con and awarded $20,000 in damages (albeit not considering the infringement to be willful). Phoenix Comiccon changed its name to Phoenix Comic Fest as a proactive move to avoid possible legal issues in the wake of this ruling. They then filed a motion in an Arizona Federal Court to strike down San Diego Comic Convention's trademark In 2017, the Salt Lake Comic Con changed its name to FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention (or just FanX). On January 16, 2018, Salt Lake Comic Con filed a motion for a new trial.


title: Toronto FC

text: Toronto Football Club (commonly known as Toronto FC or TFC) is a Canadian professional soccer club based in Toronto. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home matches at BMO Field, located at Exhibition Place on Toronto's shoreline west of Downtown Toronto. Toronto FC joined MLS in 2007 as an expansion team and was the first Canadian-based franchise in the league.


title: Toronto FC

text: The first team is operated by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), which also operates the MLS Next Pro affiliate team Toronto FC II and most other professional sports franchises in the city, like the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL), Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (CFL).


title: Toronto FC

text: In 2017, Toronto FC won the domestic treble with the MLS Cup, Supporters' Shield and Canadian Championship, making them the first and only MLS club to ever do so. They are eight-time winners of the Canadian Championship and were runners-up of the 2018 CONCACAF Champions League, as well as the MLS Cup in 2016 and 2019.


title: Toronto FC

text: , the club has an estimated value of US$395 million, making them the fifth most valuable club behind Atlanta United FC, LA Galaxy, Los Angeles FC, and Seattle Sounders FC, and have the highest player payroll in Major League Soccer.


title: Toronto FC

text: MLS awarded Toronto a team in 2005. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) paid US$10 million for the franchise. The name of the team was announced on May 11, 2006.


title: Toronto FC

text: The announcement followed an online consultation in which the public was invited to vote on the name for a limited period. The voting options were "Toronto Northmen", "Inter Toronto FC", "Toronto Reds", and "Toronto FC". MLSE's strategy in choosing "Toronto FC" following this process was based on two reasons. Firstly, over 40 percent of the online vote supported the simple Toronto FC name during the consultation; secondly, MLSE hoped that the fairly generic name would help the new club earn a more organic nickname from the Toronto fans rather than having one imposed upon the team. The team has been called "TFC" and "the Reds" by the media, the team, and the fans. The "FC" ("Football Club") in the club's name is the conventional initialism for association football teams across Europe and is commonly used among MLS teams to present a more authentic soccer brand.


title: Toronto FC

text: Despite a long scoreless streak to start the club's history, Toronto FC quickly began to establish itself as a club with significant fan support. The club's first win came on May 12, 2007, at BMO Field as Danny Dichio scored the team's first goal in the 24th minute of a 3–1 home win over the Chicago Fire. Though TFC slipped to the bottom of the MLS standings with a record of , the team built a foundation as the first Canadian team in MLS. In the club's second season in 2008, Toronto hosted the 2008 MLS All-Star Game. The club finished last in the Eastern Conference with a record of 9–13–8, but the enthusiastic fan base continued to fill BMO Field to capacity. To determine the Canadian Soccer Association's representative in the CONCACAF Champions League, Toronto FC played in the inaugural Canadian Championship in 2008 competing for the Voyageurs Cup. TFC were the favourites to win the championship in its first year, but the Montreal Impact prevailed.


title: Toronto FC

text: The last-place New York Red Bulls defeated Toronto FC 5–0 in the final 2009 regular season game, leaving TFC one point out of the playoffs. Despite bringing in some high-profile talent, the Reds could not seem to field a consistent side. Dwayne De Rosario became an immediate scoring influence and Amado Guevara was a strong playmaker and established MLS veteran, but the Honduran's future at the Canadian team seemed murky with looming 2010 FIFA World Cup duties. Rookie goalkeeper Stefan Frei quickly replaced Greg Sutton as a regular starter and immediately became a fan favourite. TFC only scored two goals in the final 15 minutes of games all season (last in MLS). During the same 15-minute period, they gave up 16 goals (most in MLS), thus creating a −14 goal differential during the final 15 minutes.


title: Toronto FC

text: In the 2009 Canadian Championship, Toronto FC required a four-goal victory over the Montreal Impact in the final game of the competition to nullify the Vancouver Whitecaps' +4 goal differential. Anything less would result in Vancouver winning the championship. Toronto FC went down 1–0 early but overwhelmed an under-strength Impact side 6–1 on the back of a hat-trick by De Rosario. Guevara added two, scoring in the 69th and 92nd minute. Chad Barrett scored the decisive goal in the 82nd minute, which gave TFC the lead over Vancouver. The unlikely victory was dubbed by fans and media as the "Miracle in Montreal". Toronto FC subsequently participated in the 2009–10 CONCACAF Champions League, but lost 1–0 on aggregate to the Puerto Rico Islanders in the preliminary round of the tournament.


title: Toronto FC

text: After failing to qualify on the final day of the 2009 campaign, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment said anything short of a playoff spot in 2010 would be unacceptable. With that directive, former director of soccer Mo Johnston hired Preki and made wholesale changes to the roster to reflect the U.S. Hall of Fame's plan to play a tough, defensive style. Despite scoring troubles, TFC played well at the start, going undefeated in seven games at one time. The team struggled following the World Cup break. Sensing problems in the locker room and to try to salvage the season, MLSE dismissed both Johnston and Preki on September 14, naming Earl Cochrane interim director of soccer and Nick Dasovic interim coach. The players responded to Dasovic's more open flexible style, but it was not enough as the club was eliminated from playoff contention with three games left in the season. Off-field issues with season-seat holders over the 2011 season ticket package added to the fans' frustrations, forcing MLSE to hold a series of town hall meetings.


title: Toronto FC

text: Toronto FC played Honduran side C.D. Motagua in the preliminary round of the 2010–11 CONCACAF Champions League. TFC won 1–0 in the first leg on a goal by Chad Barrett, and tied 2–2 in the second leg on goals by De Rosario and Barrett, qualifying for the group stage. Toronto FC won their first group stage match 2–1 against Mexican side Cruz Azul on August 17, 2010. However, the team failed to qualify for the championship round after finishing in third place behind group winners Real Salt Lake and second place Cruz Azul.


title: Toronto FC

text: On November 3, 2010, MLSE announced the hiring of former German international and coach Jürgen Klinsmann, and his California-based company, SoccerSolutions, to fix the team's game. Over the next six months, Klinsmann assessed the team, identifying a playing style, and recommended a candidate for the director of soccer position. On January 6, 2011, the new management team for Toronto FC was announced. Aron Winter was hired as head coach with his compatriot Bob de Klerk named first assistant coach. Paul Mariner was named as director of soccer. Winter was selected to bring the Ajax culture, possession and 4–3–3 system to Toronto FC. Management made wholesale changes to the roster before and during the 2011 season, trading numerous players and eventually their captain and Toronto native De Rosario.


title: Toronto FC

text: Toronto FC used its remaining two designated player slots on two notable European players, signing Torsten Frings and Danny Koevermans to 2.5-year contracts. The team went on to set a record for most players used in a MLS season with 39. Despite a strong finish to the season with only two losses in their last 12 games, TFC missed the MLS playoffs for a fifth straight year. Nonetheless, they earned a win in their final group stage match of 2011–12 CONCACAF Champions League visiting the FC Dallas, securing a berth in the knockout stage versus LA Galaxy. After a 2–2 draw in Toronto before 47,658 fans at the Rogers Centre, Toronto FC defeated the Galaxy 2–1 in Los Angeles to reach the CONCACAF Champions League semi-finals, the first Canadian team to do so. They were defeated by Mexican side Santos Laguna in the semi-finals 7–3 on aggregate.


title: Toronto FC

text: On June 7, 2012, Aron Winter resigned from the team upon refusing to be reassigned from his head coaching role after the team started the season with a nine-game losing streak, setting an MLS record for the worst start to a season. Under Winter in 2012, the team's league record was 1–9–0 and in all other competitions was 3–1–4, including a fourth-straight Canadian Championship. He was replaced by Paul Mariner, but TFC continued to struggle finishing with a 4–12–8 record in league play under him. Toronto FC also failed to advance in the CONCACAF Champions League, finishing second in its group with a 2–2–0 record. Overall, they finished the MLS season on a 14-game winless streak and ended up in last place, with five wins and 23 points.


title: Toronto FC

text: It was announced Kevin Payne would be leaving D.C. United for the general manager position at Toronto FC on November 27, 2012. First-time coach Ryan Nelsen replaced Mariner as of January 7, 2013. On April 25, 2013, Payne signed the first young designated player in MLS, Matías Laba. On July 9, Payne controversially traded Luis Silva to D.C. United for an undisclosed amount of allocation money. The team fired Payne on September 4. Following the removal of Payne, recently appointed MLSE president Tim Leiweke reasoned that there were philosophical differences between them as to how Toronto FC should move forward. Leiweke, who brought David Beckham to the LA Galaxy in early 2007, quickly revealed that he intended to make TFC more competitive with similarly ambitious, blockbuster signings. On September 20, Toronto FC announced that the vacant general manager position had been filled by Tim Bezbatchenko.