title: Is This It

text: The group deliberately left out the grammatically correct question mark from the album title because aesthetically, "it did not look right". The booklet insert contains stylized separate portraits of the Strokes, Raphael, Gentles, and Bowersock, all photographed by Lane. For the American market and the October 2001 release, the cover art of "Is This It" was changed to a psychedelic photograph of subatomic particle tracks in a bubble chamber. The same image appears on the cover of "The Scientist as Rebel" by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. A portion of the image also appeared on Prince's 1990 album "Graffiti Bridge". RCA product manager Dave Gottlieb commented that "it was straight up a band decision", while Gentles indicated that Casablancas had wanted it to appear globally. According to the band's manager, the frontman phoned him before the Japan and Europe release and said, "I found something even cooler than the ass picture." At the time, the Lane photograph was already at the presses and was included in the July and August 2001 versions. The Strokes' 2003 biography mentions the fear of objections from America's conservative retail industry and right-wing lobby as reasons for the artwork's alteration.


title: Is This It

text: Following the album's completion, the Strokes performed at Philadelphia music venues every Wednesday of May 2001. The band revealed the track listing of "Is This It" on May 15. A June headlining tour of the UK and Ireland was also confirmed, and almost immediately after the announcement, some venues sold out. "Hard to Explain" was named as the album's first single with a release date of June 25 to coincide with the tour. At the time, Moretti stated, "In Britain, people are much more responsive ... I'm so psyched to be going back, every show we played people were enjoying it. There's a lot of people here in America who think we've had it too easy, but they have never really heard the music."


title: Is This It

text: Following the Strokes' June 20 show in Glasgow, Moretti suffered a fall and was hospitalized with a broken hand. Two of the last five UK gigs were canceled and a friend of the group, Matt Romano, flew to England to replace the injured drummer in the remaining concerts. In a press release, Gentles explained, "They will only carry on if they feel that they are 100% after rehearsing with Matt, as they wouldn't offer anything less to their fans." With Romano as a substitute, the band managed to satisfy the outstanding commitments. Live recorded versions of "Hard to Explain", its B-side "New York City Cops", and "Last Nite" from "The Modern Age" aired on UK music show "Top of the Pops" on July 6, 2001. The Strokes headlined the T in the Park festival in Scotland on July 7 after alternative rock group Weezer pulled out. A large part of the month of July was spent performing in cities in the West Coasts of America and Canada.


title: Is This It

text: "Is This It" was released in Australia on July 30, 2001 to capitalize on the Strokes' recent tour of the country. The record was streamed on Australian websites by the band's distributor BMG and remained available for listening even after the CD release. Geoff Travis, head of the Strokes' UK label Rough Trade, commented that the Australian continent had "special dispensation" and that an export ban was put in place to ensure no interferences with release plans in the rest of the world. The Japanese release date of August 22 was timed to occur after two one-off shows by the band at the Summer Sonic Festival, while the UK release of August 27 coincided with the Reading and Leeds Festivals. The September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City postponed the group's "CMJ" Music Marathon performance, and shifted RCA's US release of "Is This It" from September 25 to October 9. The Strokes chose to replace the song "New York City Cops" on the CD version of the album with a newly recorded song, "When It Started", after they witnessed the "valiant response" of the city's police department during the tragedy. The vinyl release retained the original track list, as a result of its release falling on September 11.


title: Is This It

text: The song "Last Nite" was released as the second single from the album, in November 2001. The single was the group's first to enter the American charts, reaching the top five on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart in late 2001. Meanwhile, the single obtained moderate success in the UK, peaking at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart. The song "Someday" was released as the third single from the album. It peaked at number 17 on the U.S. Alternative Songs chart and at number 27 on the U.K. Singles Chart.


title: Is This It

text: "Is This It" received widespread critical acclaim; aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized rating of 91, based on 26 critical reviews. Joe Levy of "Rolling Stone" explained that the record is "the stuff of which legends are made", and summed it up as "more joyful and intense than anything else I've heard this year". Robert Christgau, writing in "The Village Voice", described the Strokes as "a great groove band", and noted that "the beats implode, clashing/resolving with punky brevity and gnarly faux simplicity". In a perfect 10 review, "NME" reviewer John Robinson indicated that "Is This It" was one of the best debut LPs by a guitar band during the past 20 years. In contrast, Jon Monks of "Stylus" commented that its shallowness prevents it from ever being called a "classic". In his favorable A− review, David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" conceded that he did not know whether the Strokes would have a long-term impact, but noted that, at the time, the record "just feels right, and sometimes that's enough".


title: Is This It

text: Mark Lepage of "Blender" claimed that "Is This It" is similar to the works of 1970s bands the Velvet Underground, Television and the Feelies. "Pitchfork"s Ryan Schreiber suggested that, while the work of the Velvet Underground is an obvious inspiration for the Strokes, the band's only similarity to the other groups is the confidence with which they perform. AllMusic's Heather Phares concluded, "Granted, their high-fashion appeal and faultless influences ... have 'critics' darlings' written all over them. But like the similarly lauded Elastica and Supergrass before them, the Strokes don't rehash the sounds that inspire them—they remake them in their own image."


title: Is This It

text: "Is This It" was named the best album of 2001 by "Billboard", "CMJ", "Entertainment Weekly", "NME", Playlouder, and "Time". "Magnet", "Q", and "The New Yorker" included it in their respective unnumbered shortlists of the best records issued that year. It figured highly in other end-of-year best album lists: at number two by "The Herald", at number three by "Mojo", at number five by "The New York Times", at number eight by "Rolling Stone" and by "USA Today", at number nine by "The Boston Phoenix", and at number ten by "Kludge". The record featured at number two behind Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft" in "The Village Voice"s 2001 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of 621 prominent reviewers. In 2002, "Is This It" was named Best Album at the "NME" Awards and Best International Album at the Meteor Music Awards. It was nominated in the latter category at the Brit Awards, where the Strokes won Best International Newcomer and received a nomination in the Best International Group category. The same year, the quintet won Band of the Year and Best New Act at the "NME Awards" and was nominated in the latter category at the MTV Europe Music Awards.


title: Is This It

text: "Is This It" was a commercial success and entered the UK Albums Chart at number two after first week sales of 48,393 copies. The record was listed at number 71 on the UK Albums Chart for 2001 and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry after charting continuously from its release in August to the end of the year. In the US, "Is This It" entered the "Billboard" 200 at number 74 after selling 16,000 units in the first week. 20,000 copies were shipped in America per week from October 2001 to January 2002, when a performance by the Strokes on nationwide TV show "Saturday Night Live" caused a temporary rise in sales. A 60% increase allowed the album to reach a peak of number 33 on the "Billboard" 200 from its previous high of 63.


title: Is This It

text: "Is This It" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in February 2002 for shipments of 500,000 copies in the US, and by the Canadian Recording Industry Association in April for 50,000 units in Canada. In 2002, the album attained platinum status in the UK and in Australia for sales of 300,000 and 70,000 copies respectively. The average US weekly sales were 7,000 by October 2002, when the reissue of the album with a bonus DVD caused an increase. By October 2003, the record had spent 58 weeks on the "Billboard" 200 since its release two years earlier, selling 900,000 copies in America; two million copies were sold worldwide. "Is This It" was certified platinum in Canada in 2004 after 100,000 units were shipped there. By the start of 2006, the album had sold over 600,000 copies in UK and over one million units in the US.


title: Is This It

text: Gary Mulholland of "The Observer" considers the release of "Is This It" a "world-changing moment" and notes that its impact was "immediate and dramatic" on both music and attire. BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe suggests that the album moved popular opinion from DJs and pop music to "skinny jeans and guitars", "the template for rock 'n' roll in the modern day". Tam Gunn of "FACT" agrees and explains that it "caused a sea change" in mainstream music in the US and the UK, while Anthony Miccio of Stylus points out that the Strokes' success created the commercial context for "other new-wavers" to flourish. "Rolling Stone" writes that "Is This It" inspired "a ragged revolt" in Britain, led by the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys, and continued its influence in the US on the success of bands like Kings of Leon. "The Observer" shares a similar view and concludes that "a fine brood of heirs", like the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, would not have existed and been successful if the Strokes had not reinvigorated "rock's obsession with having a good time". Jared Followill of Kings of Leon notes that the album was one of the main reasons that he wanted to get into a band; he states, "The title track was one of the first basslines I learned ... I was just 15 at the time."


title: Is This It

text: Jed Gottlieb of the "Boston Herald" argues that, although "Is This It" provided substantial musical influence, its biggest success was in revamping the music industry and making A&R delegates scout and promote alternative bands. Gunn links the success of alternative music in British charts throughout the 2000s to the album, but notes that "the copyists" could never match the attention to detail and heartfelt emotion of the Strokes. Mulholland adds that even the pop stars of that decade who rediscovered disco, electro, and synthpop owe a debt to the record, because its commercial success "made every forgotten art-pop experiment of the late 70s and early 80s instantly hip and ripe for reinvention". Hamish MacBain of "NME" writes that "the western world has moved on, and is now swinging to the tune of "Is This It"", while "Pitchfork"s Joe Colly suggests that "you only capture this kind of a lightning in a bottle once". Gunn concludes that, while the status of the album as the 2000s' most influential guitar record may be "a double-edged sword" because of poor quality copyists, its status as the decade's best pop album should not be in doubt.


title: Is This It

text: In 2003, "Is This It" was ranked at number seven in "NME"s editorial staff list of the 100 Best Albums. In 2005, "Spin" placed it at number 100 in its list of the 100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005, while Stylus included it at number four in its list of the Top 50 Albums of 2000–2005. In 2006, "Is This It" was ranked at number 48 by "The Observer" in the publication's list of The 50 Albums That Changed Music, while "Mojo" featured it at number 33 in its list of 100 Modern Classics, 1993–2006. In 2007, "Q" included the record at number 21 in its editorial staff list of the 21 Albums That Changed Music. In 2008, "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it at number 34 in its list of the 100 Best Albums, 1983–2008.


title: Is This It

text: In 2009, "Is This It" was ranked as the best record of the 2000s by "NME", ahead of the Libertines' "Up the Bracket", and at number two by "Rolling Stone", behind Radiohead's "Kid A", in their respective lists decided by the publications' staff and music industry members. "FACT" placed it at number two behind Burial's "Untrue" in its editorial list of the 100 Best: Albums of the Decade, while "Billboard" featured it at number three in its critics' picks of the 20 Best Albums of the 2000s. The same year, "The Observer" included "Is This It" at number four in its Albums of the Decade list, while "Uncut" ranked it at number five in its list of The 150 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century. "The Times" placed it at number six in its list of The 100 Best Pop Albums of the Noughties, while "Pitchfork" featured it at number seven in its staff list of The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s. In 2010, Stylus ranked "Is This It" at number six in its list of the Top Albums of the previous decade. The record is included in both "The Guardian"s "1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die" and the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". In 2019, "Is This It" was ranked second on "The Guardian"s 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. "Rolling Stone" ranked it at number 367 in its 2003 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, significantly raising the album's ranking to number 199 in the 2012 revision. In the 2020 reboot of the list, "Rolling Stone" raised the rank of "Is This It" higher to number 114.


title: Biographical film

text: A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudrama films and historical drama films in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a single person's life story or at least the most historically important years of their lives.


title: Biographical film

text: Biopic scholars include George F. Custen of the College of Staten Island and Dennis P. Bingham of Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. Custen, in "Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History" (1992), regards the genre as having died with the Hollywood studio era, and in particular, Darryl F. Zanuck. On the other hand, Bingham's 2010 study "Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre" shows how it perpetuates as a codified genre using many of the same tropes used in the studio era that has followed a similar trajectory as that shown by Rick Altman in his study, "Film/Genre". Bingham also addresses the male biopic and the female biopic as distinct genres from each other, the former generally dealing with great accomplishments, the latter generally dealing with female victimization. Ellen Cheshire's "Bio-Pics: a life in pictures" (2014) examines UK/US films from the 1990s and 2000s. Each chapter reviews key films linked by profession and concludes with further viewing list. Christopher Robé has also written on the gender norms that underlie the biopic in his article, "Taking Hollywood Back" in the 2009 issue of "Cinema Journal".


title: Biographical film

text: Roger Ebert defended "The Hurricane" and distortions in biographical films in general, stating "those who seek the truth about a man from the film of his life might as well seek it from his loving grandmother. ... "The Hurricane" is not a documentary but a parable."


title: Biographical film

text: Casting can be controversial for biographical films. Casting is often a balance between similarity in looks and ability to portray the characteristics of the person. Anthony Hopkins felt that he should not have played Richard Nixon in "Nixon" because of a lack of resemblance between the two. The casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror" was objected to because of the American Wayne being cast as the Mongol warlord. Egyptian critics criticized the casting of Louis Gossett Jr., an African American actor, as Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in the 1982 TV miniseries "Sadat". Also, some objected to the casting of Jennifer Lopez in "Selena" because she is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent while Selena was Mexican-American.


title: Biographical film

text: Because the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteristics are known to the public (or at least historically documented), biopic roles are considered some of the most demanding of actors and actresses. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Ben Kingsley, Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr, Brad Pitt and Eddie Redmayne all gained new-found respect as dramatic actors after starring in biopics: Beatty and Dunaway as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi in "Gandhi" (1982), Depp as Ed Wood in "Ed Wood" (1994), Carrey as Andy Kaufman in "Man on the Moon" (1999), Downey as Charlie Chaplin in "Chaplin" (1992), Foxx as Ray Charles in "Ray" (2004), and Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" (2014).


title: Biographical film

text: In rare cases, sometimes called auto biopics, the subject of the film plays themself. Examples include Jackie Robinson in "The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950), Muhammad Ali in "The Greatest" (1977), Audie Murphy in "To Hell and Back" (1955), Patty Duke in "Call Me Anna" (1990), Bob Mathias in "The Bob Mathias Story" (1954), Arlo Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant" (1969), Fantasia Barrino in "Life Is Not a Fairytale" (2006), and Howard Stern in "Private Parts" (1997).


title: Biographical film

text: In 2018, the musical biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody", based on the life of Queen singer Freddie Mercury, became the highest-grossing biopic in history.


title: If I Did It

text: If I Did It is a book by O. J. Simpson and Pablo Fenjves, in which Simpson puts forth a hypothetical description of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Simpson's former manager, Norman Pardo, claimed that Simpson was not involved in writing the book, but rather accepted, against Pardo's advice, $600,000 from ReganBooks and News Corporation to say he had written it and to conduct an interview.


title: If I Did It

text: Simpson was acquitted of the murders in a criminal trial ("People v. Simpson") but later was found financially liable in a civil trial. Although the original release of the book was cancelled shortly after it was announced in November 2006, 400,000 physical copies of the original book were printed, and by June 2007, copies of it had been leaked online.


title: If I Did It

text: The book was originally due to be published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, which was headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan. The television network Fox, a sister to HarperCollins via News Corporation at the time, was to also broadcast an interview special with Simpson to promote the book, "O. J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened". However, following objections to the special by several Fox station owners, the special was also canceled. Footage from the interview was aired for the first time during a Fox special, "O. J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?", in March 2018.


title: If I Did It

text: In August 2007, a Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family to partially satisfy the civil judgment. The book's title was changed to


title: If I Did It

text: "If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer", and this version was published by Beaufort Books, a New York City publishing house owned by parent company Kampmann & Company/Midpoint Trade Books. Comments were added to the original manuscript by the Goldman family, Fenjves, and journalist Dominick Dunne. The new cover design printed the word "If" greatly reduced in size compared with the other words, and placed inside the word "I", so unless looked at very closely, the title of the book appears to read "I Did It: Confessions of the Killer".


title: If I Did It

text: Pablo Fenjves, a screenwriter and witness at Simpson's 1995 trial, ghostwrote Simpson's book. Fenjves stated in interviews that Simpson actively collaborated on the manuscript, and that Fenjves "knew" Simpson was "a murderer."


title: If I Did It

text: Norman Pardo, Simpson's former manager, told "The Huffington Post" that the book was written by a ghostwriter without Simpson's involvement. Rather, Simpson had accepted, against Pardo's advice, $600,000 from the publisher ReganBooks and its parent company News Corporation to say he had written the book and to conduct an associated television interview on Fox. Pardo told the "Huffington Post" that Simpson had rationalized:


title: If I Did It

text: "Hey, they directly offered me $600,000 not to dispute that I [wrote] the book." He said, "That's cash." I said, "They're going to think you wrote it." He said, "So? Everybody thinks I'm a murderer anyway. They're not going to change their mind just because of a book."


title: If I Did It

text: Simpson's eldest daughter, Arnelle Simpson, testified in a deposition that she and Van Exel, president of Raffles Entertainment and Music Production, came up with the idea for the book and pitched it to her father in an attempt to make money. She testified her father thought about it and eventually agreed to the book deal. Simpson stated, "I have nothing to confess. This was an opportunity for my kids to get their financial legacy. My kids understand. I made it clear that it's blood money, but it's no different than any of the other writers who did books on this case."


title: If I Did It

text: The first part of the "If I Did It" manuscript contains a detailed description of Simpson's early relationship and marriage with Nicole Brown Simpson. The latter part of the manuscript describes details of the events on June 12, 1994, and about the murders as they could have occurred if Simpson had committed them. However, Simpson's attorney said that there is "only one chapter that deals with their deaths and that chapter, in my understanding, has a disclaimer that it's complete fiction." In Simpson's hypothetical scenario, he has an unwilling accomplice named "Charlie" who tells him to stop the murders, and whom Simpson ignores.


title: If I Did It

text: The book was unofficially announced in the "National Enquirer" in late October 2006, but this was immediately denied by Simpson's lawyer. The book was then formally announced some weeks later in mid-November 2006 for release on November 30. Intense public criticism led to the cancellation of the book's publication and a related television interview, both from divisions of News Corporation (Fox and HarperCollins, of which ReganBooks was an imprint). According to a "Newsweek" story, all 400,000 printed copies were recalled for "pulping", except for one, locked away in a vault at News Corporation. A copy later appeared in an auction listing on eBay in September 2007; it eventually sold for over $250,000. James Wolcott of "Vanity Fair" also obtained a "pristine hardcover" copy of the book for a review published in January 2007.


title: If I Did It

text: The first version's cover, as released by HarperCollins, showed a photograph of Simpson with the words "I Did It" in red and the word "If" in white. The Beaufort version had the words "I Did It" in large type and the word "If" written in a tiny font and placed at the top of the "I". Neither version of the book has Simpson's name on the front cover.


title: If I Did It

text: HarperCollins and ReganBooks had planned to publish the book on November 30, 2006. The "National Enquirer" made unproven claims in October 2006 that Simpson would be paid US$3.5 million for the book. Judith Regan, the editor of ReganBooks and Simpson's interviewer in the planned Fox special, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "This is a historic case, and I consider this his confession." In one portion of an interview to promote the book, taped before the project was canceled, Regan said to Simpson, "You wrote, 'I have never seen so much blood in my life.'" Simpson responded, "I don't think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood."


title: If I Did It

text: "If I Did It" ignited a storm of pre-publication controversy, largely due to the perception that Simpson was trying to profit from the two deaths for which his civil suit verdict had found him liable. "This is not about being heard. This is about trying to cash in, in a pathetic way, on some notoriety," said Sara Nelson, editor-in-chief of "Publishers Weekly". Patricia Schroeder, president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, felt that the book would "stir an awful lot of debate and make the culture take a real look at itself, and that may not be unhealthy".


title: If I Did It

text: Denise Brown, sister of murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson, expressed her hope that the publisher would take "full accountability for promoting the wrongdoing of criminals and leveraging this forum and the actions of Simpson to commercialize abuse." She went on to say that Simpson's two children would be "exposed to [his] inexplicable behavior and we will provide them with our love and support during this time. It's unfortunate that [O.J.] Simpson has decided to awaken a nightmare that we have painfully endured and worked so hard to move beyond." The proposed book also outraged the family of Ron Goldman, who criticized the publisher for "helping a murderer get his voice out there." According to lawyers for the family, they planned to attempt to garnish any earnings Simpson might get from the book. Fred Goldman, Ron's father, was awarded $33.5 million by a jury in 1997 for the wrongful death of his son. However, Simpson never paid this judgment due to a California law that prevents pensions from being used to satisfy judgments, and the fact that the bulk of his income comes from his NFL pension. Goldman described the book and television interview as "an all-time low" and "morally reprehensible to me ... to think you are willing to give somebody airtime about how they would murder two people."


title: If I Did It

text: The day after the announcement of its publication, an online boycott encouraged Americans to ignore the book and complain to publishers and booksellers.


title: If I Did It

text: Within four days of the book's announcement, over 58,394 people had signed an online petition developed by Goldman's family, DontPayOJ.com, declaring their opposition to the book. Bookshops were divided about stocking the title in their stores. Numerous independent stores said either that they would not sell it or would offer limited copies and give away the proceeds. Borders Books and Waldenbooks said they would donate any profits made from the book to charities which would benefit victims of domestic violence, and a Borders spokesperson said they "believe it is the right of customers to decide what they read and what to buy, but we will not discount the title or promote it". Several stores in Canada said they would only order it for customers, but not stock it. In the days following the book's announcement, pre-orders put it in the top 20 of Amazon.com's bestseller list, though it had fallen to #51 when the book's cancellation was announced.


title: If I Did It

text: Legal experts theorized that Simpson might be able to avoid paying the Goldmans or Browns any money. "I think it's going to be difficult if [Simpson] arranges to have [book profits] deposited abroad," said lawyer Tom Mesereau. "It's one thing to enforce a judgment in America, and another to enforce it overseas." Mesereau said Simpson also might have profits "paid into a trust offshore or a corporation in a different name."


title: If I Did It

text: Fox, a U.S. television network that was a sister to HarperCollins via News Corporation at the time, was to air a related, two-part, taped interview with Simpson, conducted by Regan, in which Simpson describes how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of Nicole and Goldman, "if he were the one responsible". As in the book, Simpson also mentions an unwilling accomplice named "Charlie". The interview was scheduled to air on November 27 and November 29, 2006, timed to coincide with the book's release. The program was being produced under Fox's alternative programming department, headed by Mike Darnell, and not under the auspices of Fox News Channel. NBC said that it was approached to air the interview, but declined, saying, "This is not a project appropriate for our network." On November 16, 2006, Regan issued a statement claiming that her reason for recording the interview and releasing the book was an attempt to find closure after having been a battered woman herself. "The men who lied and cheated and beat me – they were all there in the room," she said. "And the people who denied it, they were there, too. And though it might sound a little strange, Nicole and Ron were in my heart. And for them I wanted him to confess his sins, do penance, and to amend his life. Amen."


title: If I Did It

text: Over a dozen Fox affiliates refused to carry the special, or decided to air it, but devote local advertising time to public service announcements. KSFX-TV in Springfield, Missouri, WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh, and WWCP-TV in Johnstown-Altoona-State College, Pennsylvania area were the first to turn down the special on November 17, 2006, along with KAYU-TV in Spokane, Washington, and WDRB in Louisville, Kentucky. Pappas Telecasting also planned to pre-empt the program on their Fox stations in four markets along with Fox affiliates KNDX in Bismarck-Minot, North Dakota; KMPH-TV in Fresno, California; KPTH in Sioux City, Iowa; KTVG-TV in Lincoln, Superior and Grand Island, Nebraska; and KPTM in Omaha, Nebraska. Fox affiliates KCPQ in Seattle—owned by Tribune Company—and XETV in San Diego/Tijuana—were both reportedly undecided, but each indicated that if they aired the special, they would not sell local ad time, instead giving that time to local domestic violence groups to air public service announcements.


title: If I Did It

text: The interview was later aired for the first time in March 2018 as "O. J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?".


title: If I Did It

text: On November 20, 2006, News Corporation issued a statement saying that the book and television special had been cancelled. In the statement, News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said,


title: If I Did It

text: "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson." The Associated Press called the book's cancellation "an astonishing end to a story like no other," noting that a publisher's withdrawing a book for its content "is virtually unheard of."


title: If I Did It

text: On November 21, 2006, Denise Brown accused Fox of trying to stop the Goldman and Brown families from criticizing the project by offering millions of dollars for their silence surrounding the project: "They wanted to offer us millions of dollars. Millions of dollars for, like, 'Oh, I'm sorry' money. But they were still going to air the show," Brown said. "We just thought, 'Oh my God.' What they're trying to do is trying to keep us quiet, trying to make this like hush money, trying to go around the civil verdict, giving us this money to keep our mouths shut."


title: If I Did It

text: Brown told NBC's "Today" that her family's response was: "Absolutely not." Fox confirmed that the Brown and Goldman families were offered profit participation deals for the projects but denies that it was hush money. "Last week, when concerns were raised by the public that we were profiting from this guy's story, we tried to work out some arrangement with the family. Never was there any suggestion of them being barred from talking about it. We would never suggest that," said News Corp spokesman Andrew Butcher.


title: If I Did It

text: Since the interview existed on tape, executives at Fox said it was likely to turn up somewhere or be leaked. Nearly twelve years later, Fox announced that it would air a special entitled "O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?", on March 11, 2018. It featured footage from the interview, as well as analysis and discussion by host Soledad O'Brien and experts. It aired with limited commercial time, which was used to broadcast public service announcements addressing domestic violence. In the decade-old interview, Simpson initially used (subjunctive) phrases like "I would" and "I'd think" in his hypothetical description of the event, but later moved to using first-person (indicative) phrasing with sentences like "I remember I grabbed the knife", "I don't remember except I'm standing there", "I don't recall", and "I must have." Due to the change in phrasing, these comments were interpreted by many as being a form of confession, which stirred strong reactions in print media and the internet.


title: If I Did It

text: On August 14, 2007, it was reported that a literary agent for the Goldman family, Sharlene Martin, had made a deal to publish the book with the new subtitle "Confessions of the Killer". All of the original text was to remain intact, with the addition of "key commentary." This version of the book was released about a month later, on September 13, 2007. Some of the proceeds benefit the Ronald Lyle Goldman Justice Foundation, which was planned in 1995 to fund civil legal action against Simpson.


title: If I Did It

text: In February 2007, a Canadian publisher, Barclay Road Inc., expressed interest in publishing the book. Barclay Road CEO Herbert Becker said that public opinion turned against the book without anybody's really knowing its contents. He said his company would look into obtaining the rights to the book.


title: If I Did It

text: In June 2007, a federal judge ruled that Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman's father, could pursue the publishing rights to Simpson's book. In July 2007, a federal bankruptcy judge awarded the rights to the book to the Goldman family, who receive most of the profits to help satisfy the $33.5 million wrongful death civil suit judgment against Simpson. (The Goldmans were supposed to designate 10 percent of the first $4 million in gross proceeds to be given to a court-appointed trustee.) After Goldman had won the rights to the book, he arranged to publish it under the new title "If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer". The Goldman family's lawyers also announced intentions to pursue new publishing, film, or TV deals in order to receive some of $33.5 million awarded to them in the civil case.


title: If I Did It

text: Fred Goldman sued Lorraine Brooke Associates, a shell corporation, for the publishing rights after it filed for bankruptcy. After Goldman purchased the rights from the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, Nicole's father, Louis H. Brown, sued Goldman, attempting to stop the publication and receive part of the rights, but lost.


title: Lockheed Martin X-44 MANTA

text: The Lockheed Martin X-44 MANTA (Multi-Axis No-Tail Aircraft) was an American conceptual aircraft design by Lockheed Martin that has been studied by NASA and the U.S. Air Force. It was intended to test the feasibility of full yaw, pitch and roll authority without tailplanes (horizontal or vertical). Attitude control relies purely on 3D thrust vectoring. The aircraft design was derived from the F-22 Raptor and featured a stretched delta wing without tail surfaces.


title: Lockheed Martin X-44 MANTA

text: The X-44 was designed by Lockheed Martin to demonstrate the feasibility of an aircraft controlled by vectored thrust alone. The X-44 design had a reduced radar signature (due to lack of tail and vertical stabilizers) and was made more efficient by eliminating the tail and rudder surfaces, and instead using thrust vectors to provide yaw, pitch and roll control.


title: Lockheed Martin X-44 MANTA

text: The X-44 MANTA design was based on the F-22, except without a tail and incorporating a full delta wing. The X-44 MANTA would have a greater fuel capacity than the F-22, due to its larger delta wing design. The MANTA was designed to have reduced mechanical complexity, increased fuel efficiency and greater agility. The X-44 MANTA combined the control and propulsion systems, using thrust vectoring. Funding for the X-44 program ended in 2000.


title: Goitre

text: A goitre, or goiter, is a swelling in the neck resulting from an enlarged thyroid gland. A goitre can be associated with a thyroid that is not functioning properly.


title: Goitre

text: Worldwide, over 90% of goitre cases are caused by iodine deficiency. The term is from the Latin "gutturia", meaning throat. Most goitres are not cancerous (benign), though they may be potentially harmful.


title: Goitre

text: A goitre can present as a palpable or visible enlargement of the thyroid gland at the base of the neck. A goitre, if associated with hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, may be present with symptoms of the underlying disorder. For hyperthyroidism, the most common symptoms are associated with adrenergic stimulation: tachycardia (increased heart rate), palpitations, nervousness, tremor, increased blood pressure and heat intolerance. Clinical manifestations are often related to hypermetabolism, (increased metabolism), excessive thyroid hormone, an increase in oxygen consumption, metabolic changes in protein metabolism, immunologic stimulation of diffuse goitre, and ocular changes (exophthalmos). Hypothyroid people commonly have poor appetite, cold intolerance, constipation, lethargy and may undergo weight gain. However, these symptoms are often non-specific and make diagnosis difficult.


title: Goitre

text: According to the WHO classification of goitre by palpation, the severity of goitre is currently graded as grade 0, grade 1, grade 2.


title: Goitre

text: Worldwide, the most common cause for goitre is iodine deficiency, commonly seen in countries that scarcely use iodized salt. Selenium deficiency is also considered a contributing factor. In countries that use iodized salt, Hashimoto's thyroiditis is the most common cause. Goitre can also result from cyanide poisoning, which is particularly common in tropical countries where people eat the cyanide-rich cassava root as the staple food.


title: Goitre

text: A goitre may be classified either as nodular or diffuse. Nodular goitres are either of one nodule (uninodular) or of multiple nodules (multinodular).


title: Goitre

text: Goitre is treated according to the cause. If the thyroid gland is producing an excess of thyroid hormones (T3 and T4), radioactive iodine is given to the patient to shrink the gland. If goitre is caused by iodine deficiency, small doses of iodide in the form of Lugol's iodine or KI solution are given. If the goitre is associated with an underactive thyroid, thyroid supplements are used as treatment. Sometimes a partial or complete thyroidectomy is required.


title: Goitre

text: Goitre is more common among women, but this includes the many types of goitre caused by autoimmune problems, and not only those caused by simple lack of iodine.


title: Goitre

text: Chinese physicians of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) were the first to successfully treat patients with goitre by using the iodine-rich thyroid gland of animals such as sheep and pigs—in raw, pill, or powdered form. This was outlined in Zhen Quan's (d. 643 AD) book, as well as several others. One Chinese book, "The Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman", asserted that iodine-rich sargassum was used to treat goitre patients by the 1st century BC, but this book was written much later.


title: Goitre

text: In the 12th century, Zayn al-Din al-Jurjani, a Persian physician, provided the first description of Graves' disease after noting the association of goitre and a displacement of the eye known as exophthalmos in his "Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm", the major medical dictionary of its time. The disease was later named after Irish doctor Robert James Graves, who described a case of goitre with exophthalmos in 1835. The German Karl Adolph von Basedow also independently reported the same constellation of symptoms in 1840, while earlier reports of the disease were also published by the Italians Giuseppe Flajani and Antonio Giuseppe Testa, in 1802 and 1810 respectively, and by the English physician Caleb Hillier Parry (a friend of Edward Jenner) in the late 18th century.


title: Goitre

text: Paracelsus (1493–1541) was the first person to propose a relationship between goitre and minerals (particularly lead) in drinking water. Iodine was later discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811 from seaweed ash.


title: Goitre

text: Goitre was previously common in many areas that were deficient in iodine in the soil. For example, in the English Midlands, the condition was known as Derbyshire Neck. In the United States, goitre was found in the Appalachian, Great Lakes, Midwest, and Intermountain regions. The condition is now practically absent in affluent nations, where table salt is supplemented with iodine. However, it is still prevalent in India, China, Central Asia, and Central Africa.


title: Goitre

text: Goitre had been prevalent in the alpine countries for a long time. Switzerland reduced the condition by introducing iodised salt in 1922. The Bavarian tracht in the Miesbach and Salzburg regions, which appeared in the 19th century, includes a choker, dubbed "Kropfband" (struma band) which was used to hide either the goitre or the remnants of goitre surgery.


title: Goitre

text: The coat of arms and crest of Die Kröpfner, of Tyrol showed a man "afflicted with a large goitre", an apparent pun on the German for the word ("Kropf").


title: Real-time operating system

text: A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which manages the sharing of system resources with a scheduler, data buffers, or fixed task prioritization in a multitasking or multiprogramming environment. Processing time requirements need to be fully understood and bound rather than just kept as a minimum. All processing must occur within the defined constraints. Real-time operating systems are event-driven and preemptive, meaning the OS is capable of monitoring the relevant priority of competing tasks, and make changes to the task priority. Event-driven systems switch between tasks based on their priorities, while time-sharing systems switch the task based on clock interrupts.


title: Real-time operating system

text: A key characteristic of an RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is 'jitter'. A 'hard' real-time operating system (hard RTOS) has less jitter than a 'soft' real-time operating system (soft RTOS). A late answer is a wrong answer in a hard RTOS while a late answer is acceptable in a soft RTOS. The chief design goal is not high throughput, but rather a guarantee of a soft or hard performance category. An RTOS that can usually or generally meet a deadline is a soft real-time OS, but if it can meet a deadline deterministically it is a hard real-time OS.


title: Real-time operating system

text: An RTOS has an advanced algorithm for scheduling. Scheduler flexibility enables a wider, computer-system orchestration of process priorities, but a real-time OS is more frequently dedicated to a narrow set of applications. Key factors in a real-time OS are minimal interrupt latency and minimal thread switching latency; a real-time OS is valued more for how quickly or how predictably it can respond than for the amount of work it can perform in a given period of time.


title: Real-time operating system

text: See the comparison of real-time operating systems for a comprehensive list. Also, see the list of operating systems for all types of operating systems.


title: Real-time operating system

text: An RTOS is an operating system in which the time taken to process an input stimulus is less than the time lapsed until the next input stimulus of the same type.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Time sharing designs switch tasks more often than strictly needed, but give smoother multitasking, giving the illusion that a process or user has sole use of a machine.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Early CPU designs needed many cycles to switch tasks during which the CPU could do nothing else useful. Because switching took so long, early OSes tried to minimize wasting CPU time by avoiding unnecessary task switching.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Most tasks are blocked or ready most of the time because generally only one task can run at a time per CPU. The number of items in the ready queue can vary greatly, depending on the number of tasks the system needs to perform and the type of scheduler that the system uses. On simpler non-preemptive but still multitasking systems, a task has to give up its time on the CPU to other tasks, which can cause the ready queue to have a greater number of overall tasks in the ready to be executed state (resource starvation).


title: Real-time operating system

text: Usually, the data structure of the ready list in the scheduler is designed to minimize the worst-case length of time spent in the scheduler's critical section, during which preemption is inhibited, and, in some cases, all interrupts are disabled, but the choice of data structure depends also on the maximum number of tasks that can be on the ready list.


title: Real-time operating system

text: If there are never more than a few tasks on the ready list, then a doubly linked list of ready tasks is likely optimal. If the ready list usually contains only a few tasks but occasionally contains more, then the list should be sorted by priority. That way, finding the highest priority task to run does not require iterating through the entire list. Inserting a task then requires walking the ready list until reaching either the end of the list, or a task of lower priority than that of the task being inserted.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Care must be taken not to inhibit preemption during this search. Longer critical sections should be divided into small pieces. If an interrupt occurs that makes a high priority task ready during the insertion of a low priority task, that high priority task can be inserted and run immediately before the low priority task is inserted.


title: Real-time operating system

text: The critical response time, sometimes called the flyback time, is the time it takes to queue a new ready task and restore the state of the highest priority task to running. In a well-designed RTOS, readying a new task will take 3 to 20 instructions per ready-queue entry, and restoration of the highest-priority ready task will take 5 to 30 instructions.


title: Real-time operating system

text: In more advanced systems, real-time tasks share computing resources with many non-real-time tasks, and the ready list can be arbitrarily long. In such systems, a scheduler ready list implemented as a linked list would be inadequate.


title: Real-time operating system

text: A multitasking operating system like Unix is poor at real-time tasks. The scheduler gives the highest priority to jobs with the lowest demand on the computer, so there is no way to ensure that a time-critical job will have access to enough resources. Multitasking systems must manage sharing data and hardware resources among multiple tasks. It is usually unsafe for two tasks to access the same specific data or hardware resource simultaneously. There are three common approaches to resolve this problem:


title: Real-time operating system

text: General-purpose operating systems usually do not allow user programs to mask (disable) interrupts, because the user program could control the CPU for as long as it wishes. Some modern CPUs do not allow user mode code to disable interrupts as such control is considered a key operating system resource. Many embedded systems and RTOSs, however, allow the application itself to run in kernel mode for greater system call efficiency and also to permit the application to have greater control of the operating environment without requiring OS intervention.


title: Real-time operating system

text: On single-processor systems, an application running in kernel mode and masking interrupts is the lowest overhead method to prevent simultaneous access to a shared resource. While interrupts are masked and the current task does not make a blocking OS call, the current task has "exclusive" use of the CPU since no other task or interrupt can take control, so the critical section is protected. When the task exits its critical section, it must unmask interrupts; pending interrupts, if any, will then execute. Temporarily masking interrupts should only be done when the longest path through the critical section is shorter than the desired maximum interrupt latency. Typically this method of protection is used only when the critical section is just a few instructions and contains no loops. This method is ideal for protecting hardware bit-mapped registers when the bits are controlled by different tasks.


title: Real-time operating system

text: When the shared resource must be reserved without blocking all other tasks (such as waiting for Flash memory to be written), it is better to use mechanisms also available on general-purpose operating systems, such as a mutex and OS-supervised interprocess messaging. Such mechanisms involve system calls, and usually invoke the OS's dispatcher code on exit, so they typically take hundreds of CPU instructions to execute, while masking interrupts may take as few as one instruction on some processors.


title: Real-time operating system

text: A (non-recursive) mutex is either locked or unlocked. When a task has locked the mutex, all other tasks must wait for the mutex to be unlocked by its " owner" - the original thread. A task may set a timeout on its wait for a mutex. There are several well-known problems with mutex based designs such as priority inversion and deadlocks.


title: Real-time operating system

text: In priority inversion a high priority task waits because a low priority task has a mutex, but the lower priority task is not given CPU time to finish its work. A typical solution is to have the task that owns a mutex 'inherit' the priority of the highest waiting task. But this simple approach gets more complex when there are multiple levels of waiting: task "A" waits for a mutex locked by task "B", which waits for a mutex locked by task "C". Handling multiple levels of inheritance causes other code to run in high priority context and thus can cause starvation of medium-priority threads.


title: Real-time operating system

text: In a deadlock, two or more tasks lock mutex without timeouts and then wait forever for the other task's mutex, creating a cyclic dependency. The simplest deadlock scenario occurs when two tasks alternately lock two mutex, but in the opposite order. Deadlock is prevented by careful design.


title: Real-time operating system

text: The other approach to resource sharing is for tasks to send messages in an organized message passing scheme. In this paradigm, the resource is managed directly by only one task. When another task wants to interrogate or manipulate the resource, it sends a message to the managing task. Although their real-time behavior is less crisp than semaphore systems, simple message-based systems avoid most protocol deadlock hazards, and are generally better-behaved than semaphore systems. However, problems like those of semaphores are possible. Priority inversion can occur when a task is working on a low-priority message and ignores a higher-priority message (or a message originating indirectly from a high priority task) in its incoming message queue. Protocol deadlocks can occur when two or more tasks wait for each other to send response messages.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Since an interrupt handler blocks the highest priority task from running, and since real-time operating systems are designed to keep thread latency to a minimum, interrupt handlers are typically kept as short as possible. The interrupt handler defers all interaction with the hardware if possible; typically all that is necessary is to acknowledge or disable the interrupt (so that it won't occur again when the interrupt handler returns) and notify a task that work needs to be done. This can be done by unblocking a driver task through releasing a semaphore, setting a flag or sending a message. A scheduler often provides the ability to unblock a task from interrupt handler context.


title: Real-time operating system

text: An OS maintains catalogues of objects it manages such as threads, mutexes, memory, and so on. Updates to this catalogue must be strictly controlled. For this reason, it can be problematic when an interrupt handler calls an OS function while the application is in the act of also doing so. The OS function called from an interrupt handler could find the object database to be in an inconsistent state because of the application's update. There are two major approaches to deal with this problem: the unified architecture and the segmented architecture. RTOSs implementing the unified architecture solve the problem by simply disabling interrupts while the internal catalogue is updated. The downside of this is that interrupt latency increases, potentially losing interrupts. The segmented architecture does not make direct OS calls but delegates the OS related work to a separate handler. This handler runs at a higher priority than any thread but lower than the interrupt handlers. The advantage of this architecture is that it adds very few cycles to interrupt latency. As a result, OSes which implement the segmented architecture are more predictable and can deal with higher interrupt rates compared to the unified architecture.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Similarly, the System Management Mode on x86 compatible Hardware can take a lot of time before it returns control to the operating system.


title: Real-time operating system

text: First, for stability there cannot be memory leaks (memory that is allocated but not freed after use). The device should work indefinitely, without ever needing a reboot. For this reason, dynamic memory allocation is frowned upon. Whenever possible, all required memory allocation is specified statically at compile time.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Another reason to avoid dynamic memory allocation is memory fragmentation. With frequent allocation and releasing of small chunks of memory, a situation may occur where available memory is divided into several sections and the RTOS is incapable of allocating a large enough continuous block of memory, although there is enough free memory. Secondly, speed of allocation is important. A standard memory allocation scheme scans a linked list of indeterminate length to find a suitable free memory block, which is unacceptable in an RTOS since memory allocation has to occur within a certain amount of time.


title: Real-time operating system

text: Because mechanical disks have much longer and more unpredictable response times, swapping to disk files is not used for the same reasons as RAM allocation discussed above.


title: Real-time operating system

text: The simple fixed-size-blocks algorithm works quite well for simple embedded systems because of its low overhead.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's ethnically Jewish population. Although considered a self-identifying ethnicity, there are distinct ethnic subdivisions among Jews, most of which are primarily the result of geographic branching from an originating Israelite population, mixing with local communities, and subsequent independent evolutions.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: As long ago as Biblical times, cultural and linguistic differences between Jewish communities, even within the area of Ancient Israel and Judea, are observed both within the Bible and archeological remains. In more recent human history, an array of Jewish communities were established by Jewish settlers in various places around the Old World, often at great distances from one another, resulting in significant and often long-term isolation from each other. During the millennia of the Jewish diaspora, the communities would develop under the influence of their local environments; political, cultural, natural and demographic. Today, the manifestation of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, and degrees and sources of genetic admixture.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: The full extent of the cultural, linguistic, religious or other differences among the Israelites in antiquity is unknown. Following the defeat of the Kingdom of Israel in the 720s BCE and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, the Jewish people became dispersed throughout much of the Middle East and Africa, especially in Egypt and North Africa to the west, as well as in Yemen to the south, and in Mesopotamia to the east. The Jewish population in ancient Israel was severely reduced by the Jewish–Roman wars and by the later hostile policies of the Christian emperors against non-Christians, but the Jews always retained a presence in the Levant.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Paul Johnson writes of this time: "Wherever towns survived, or urban communities sprang up, Jews would sooner or later establish themselves. The near-destruction of Palestinian Jewry in the second century turned the survivors of Jewish rural communities into marginal town-dwellers. After the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the large Jewish agricultural communities in Babylonia were progressively wrecked by high taxation, so that there too the Jews drifted into towns and became craftsmen, tradesmen, and dealers. Everywhere these urban Jews, the vast majority literate and numerate, managed to settle, unless penal laws or physical violence made it impossible."


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Jewish communities continued to exist in Palestine in relatively small numbers: during the early Byzantine 6th century there were 43 communities; during the Islamic period and the intervening Crusades there were 50 (including Jerusalem, Tiberias, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Gaza); and during the early Ottoman 14th century there were 30 (including Haifa, Shechem, Hebron, Ramleh, Jaffa, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Safed). The majority of the Jewish population during the High Middle Ages lived in Iberia (what is now Spain and Portugal) and in the region of Mesopotamia and Persia (what is now Iraq and Iran), the former known as the Sefardim and the latter known as the Mizrahim. A substantial population existed also in central Europe, the so-called Ashkenazim. Following the expulsion of Sephardim from Iberia during the 15th century, a mass migration into the Ottoman Empire swelled the size of many eastern communities including those in Palestine; the town of Safed reached 30,000 Jews by end of the 16th century. The 16th century saw many Ashkenazi Kabbalists drawn to the mystical aura and teachings of the Jewish holy city. Johnson notes that in the Arab-Muslim territories, which included most of Spain, all of North Africa, and the Near East south of Anatolia in the Middle Ages, the Jewish condition was easier as a rule, than it was in Europe.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Over the centuries following the Crusades and Inquisition, Jews from around the world began emigrating in increasing numbers. Upon arrival, these Jews adopted the customs of the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities into which they moved.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Following the failure of the second revolt against the Romans and the exile, Jewish communities could be found in nearly every notable center throughout the Roman Empire, as well as scattered communities found in centers beyond the Empire's borders in northern Europe, in eastern Europe, in southwestern Asia, and in Africa. Farther to the east along trade routes, Jewish communities could be found throughout Persia and in empires even farther east including in India and China. In the Early Middle Ages of the 6th to 11th centuries, the Radhanites traded along the overland routes between Europe and Asia earlier established by the Romans, dominated trade between the Christian and the Islamic worlds, and used a trade network that covered most areas of Jewish settlement.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: In the middle Byzantine period, the khan of Khazaria in the northern Caucasus and his court converted to Judaism, partly in order to maintain neutrality between Christian Byzantium and the Islamic world. This event forms the framework for Yehuda Halevi's work "The Kuzari" (c.1140), but how much the traces of Judaism within this group survived the collapse of the Khazar empire is a matter of scholarly debate. Arthur Koestler, in his book "The Thirteenth Tribe" (1976), and more recently Shlomo Sand in his book "The Invention of the Jewish People" (2008) have recently (controversially) theorized that East-European Jews are more ethnically Khazar than they are Semitic. However, numerous genetic studies have not supported this theory.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: In western Europe, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and especially after the re-orientation of trade caused by the Moorish conquest of Iberia in the early 8th century, communications between the Jewish communities in northern parts of the former western empire became sporadic. At the same time, rule under Islam, even with dhimmi status, resulted in freer trade and communications within the Muslim world, and the communities in Iberia remained in frequent contact with Jewry in North Africa and the Middle East, but communities further afield, in central and south Asia and central Africa, remained more isolated, and continued to develop their own unique traditions. For the Sephardim in Spain, it resulted in a "Hebrew Golden Age" in the 10th to 12th centuries. The 1492 expulsion from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs however, made the Sephardic Jews hide and disperse to France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, parts of what is now northwestern Germany, and to other existing communities in Christian Europe, as well as to those within the Ottoman Empire, to the Maghreb in North Africa and smaller numbers to other areas of the Middle East, and eventually to the Americas in the early 17th century.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: In northern and Christian Europe during this period, financial competition developed between the authority of the Pope in Rome and nascent states and empires. In western Europe, the conditions for Jewry differed between the communities within the various countries and over time, depending on background conditions. With both pull and push factors operating, Ashkenazi emigration to the Americas would increase in the early 18th century with German-speaking Ashkenazi Jews, and end with a tidal wave between 1880 and the early 20th century with Yiddish-speaking "Ashkenazim", as conditions in the east deteriorated under the failing Russian Empire. After the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of more than 6 million Jews living in Europe, North America became the place where the majority of Jews live.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Historically, European Jews have been classified as belonging to two major groups: the "Ashkenazim", or "Germanics" ("Ashkenaz" meaning "Germany" in Medieval Hebrew), denoting their Central European base, and the "Sephardim", or "Hispanics" ("Sefarad" meaning "Hispania" or "Iberia" in Hebrew), denoting their Spanish, Portuguese or North African base. A third historic term Mizrahim, or "Easterners" ("Mizrach" being "East" in Hebrew) has been used to describe other non-European Jewish communities which have bases which are located further to the east, but its usage has changed both over time and relative to the location where it was used. One definition is the Jews who never left the Middle East, in contrast to the Sephardim who went west to Spain, Portugal, and North Africa. A similar three-part distinction in the Jewish community of 16th-century Venice is noted by Johnson as being "divided into three nations, the Penentines from Spain, the Levantines who were Turkish subjects, and the Natione Tedesca or Jews of German origin..." The far more recent meaning of the term, to include both Middle Eastern and North African Jews in a single term, developed within Zionism in the mid-1940s, when Jews from these countries were all combined in one category as the target of an immigration plan. According to some sources, the current sense of the term, as an ethnic group which is distinct from European-born Jews, was invented at this time. The term constitutes a third major layer to some, and following the partition of Mandatory Palestine and Israeli independence, the Mizrahim's often-forced migration, led to their re-established communities in Israel.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Smaller Jewish groups include the Georgian Jews and Mountain Jews from the Caucasus; Indian Jews including the Bene Israel, Bnei Menashe, Cochin Jews and Bene Ephraim; the Romaniotes of Greece; the ancient Italian Jewish community; the Teimanim from the Yemen; various African Jews, including most numerously the Beta Israel of Ethiopia; the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia; and Chinese Jews, most notably the Kaifeng Jews, as well as various other distinct but now extinct communities.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: The divisions between all these groups are rough and their boundaries aren't solid. The "Mizrahim" for example, are a heterogeneous collection of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities which are often as unrelated to each other as they are to any of the earlier mentioned Jewish groups. In traditional religious usage and sometimes in modern usage, however, the Mizrahim are also termed "Sephardi" due to similar styles of liturgy, despite independent evolutions from Sephardim proper. Thus, among Mizrahim there are Iranian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Egyptian Jews, Sudanese Jews, Tunisian Jews, Algerian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Lebanese Jews, Kurdish Jews, Libyan Jews, Syrian Jews, and various others. The Yemenite Jews ("Teimanim") from Yemen are sometimes included, although their style of liturgy is unique and they differ in respect to the admixture found among them to that found in Mizrahim. Additionally, there is a difference between the pre-existing Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities as distinct from the descendants of those Sephardi migrants who established themselves in the Middle East and North Africa after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, and in 1497 from the expulsion decreed in Portugal.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Despite this diversity, Ashkenazi Jews represent the bulk of modern Jewry, estimated at between 70% and 80% of all Jews worldwide; prior to World War II and the Holocaust however, it was 90%. Ashkenazim developed in Europe, but underwent massive emigration in search of better opportunities and during periods of civil strife and warfare. As a result of this, they became the overwhelming majority of Jews in the New World continents and countries, which previously were without native European or Jewish populations. These include the United States, Mexico, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, but with Venezuela and Panama being exceptions since Sephardim still compose the majority of the Jewish communities in these two countries. In France, more recent Sephardi Jewish immigrants from North Africa and their descendants now outnumber the pre-existing Ashkenazim.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Despite the evident diversity displayed by the world's distinctive Jewish populations, both culturally and physically, genetic studies have demonstrated most of these to be genetically related to one another, having ultimately originated from a common ancient Israelite population that underwent geographic branching and subsequent independent evolutions.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A study published by the National Academy of Sciences stated that "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." Researchers expressed surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Moreover, DNA tests have demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage in most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions over the last 3,000 years than in other populations. The findings lend support to traditional Jewish accounts accrediting their founding to exiled Israelite populations, and counters theories that many or most of the world's Jewish populations were founded by entirely gentile populations that adopted the Jewish faith, as in the notable case of the historic Khazars. Although groups such as the Khazars could have been absorbed into modern Jewish populations — in the Khazars' case, absorbed into the Ashkenazim — it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews, and much less that they were the genesis of the Ashkenazim.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Previously, the Israelite origin identified in the world's Jewish populations was attributed only to the males who had migrated from the Middle East and then forged the current known communities with "the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism". Research in Ashkenazi Jews has suggested that, in addition to the male founders, significant female founder ancestry might also derive from the Middle East, with about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Points in which Jewish groups differ are the source and proportion of genetic contribution from host populations. For example, the Teimanim differ to a certain extent from other Mizrahim, as well as from Ashkenazim in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. Among Yemenite Jews, the average stands at 5-10%, due to the relative genetic isolation of Yemenite Jews this is only a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample, which can reach 35%. In Ashkenazi Jews, the proportion of male indigenous European genetic admixture amounts to around 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, and a total admixture estimate around 12.5%. The only exception to this among Jewish communities is in the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews); a 1999 genetic study came to the conclusion that "the distinctiveness of the Y-chromosome haplotype distribution of Beta Israel Jews from conventional Jewish populations and their relatively greater similarity in haplotype profile to non-Jewish Ethiopians are consistent with the view that the Beta Israel people descended from ancient inhabitants of Ethiopia who converted to Judaism."


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Another 2001 study did, however, find a possible genetic similarity between 11 Ethiopian Jews and 4 Yemenite Jews from the population samples.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe — "Cohanim" — share a common ancestor dating back about 3,000 years. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world. The researchers estimated that the most recent common ancestor of modern Cohanim lived between 1000 BCE (roughly the time of the Biblical Exodus) and 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple. They found similar results analyzing DNA from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. The scientists estimated the date of the original priest based on genetic mutations, which indicated that the priest lived roughly 106 generations ago, between 2,650 and 3,180 years ago depending whether one counts a generation as 25 or 30 years.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by Richards et al. (2013) suggested that, though Ashkenazi paternal lineages were of Middle Eastern origin, the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, nor recruited in the Caucasus, but were assimilated within Europe. The study estimated that 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, 8 percent from the Near East, and the remainder undetermined. According to the study these findings 'point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities.' Some geneticists, such as Doron Behar, a geneticist at Gene by Gene in Houston, US, and Karl Skorecki, at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, are skeptical of these results.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A study by Haber et al. (2013) noted that while previous studies of the Levant, which had focused mainly on diaspora Jewish populations, showed that the "Jews form a distinctive cluster in the Middle East", these studies did not make clear "whether the factors driving this structure would also involve other groups in the Levant". The authors found strong evidence that modern Levant populations descend from two major apparent ancestral populations. One set of genetic characteristics which is shared with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians is most prominent in the Levant among "Lebanese, Armenians, Cypriots, Druze and Jews, as well as Turks, Iranians and Caucasian populations". The second set of inherited genetic characteristics is shared with populations in other parts of the Middle East as well as some African populations. Levant populations in this category today include "Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, as well as North Africans, Ethiopians, Saudis, and Bedouins". Concerning this second component of ancestry, the authors remark that while it correlates with "the pattern of the Islamic expansion", and that "a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners," they also say that "its presence in Lebanese Christians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Cypriots and Armenians might suggest that its spread to the Levant could also represent an earlier event". The authors also found a strong correlation between religion and apparent ancestry in the Levant: "all Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) cluster in one branch; Druze from Mount Lebanon and Druze from Mount Carmel are depicted on a private branch; and Lebanese Christians form a private branch with the Christian populations of Armenia and Cyprus placing the Lebanese Muslims as an outer group. The predominantly Muslim populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen."


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A 2013 study by Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev et al. using integration of genotypes on newly collected largest data set available to date (1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations) for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins from the regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry:(Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate) concluded that "This most comprehensive study... does not change and in fact reinforces the conclusions of multiple past studies, including ours and those of other groups (Atzmon and others, 2010; Bauchet and others, 2007; Behar and others, 2010; Campbell and others, 2012; Guha and others, 2012; Haber and others; 2013; Henn and others, 2012; Kopelman and others, 2009; Seldin and others, 2006; Tian and others, 2008). We confirm the notion that the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origins."


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A 2014 study by Carmi et al. published by Nature Communications found that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originates from an approximately even mixture of Middle Eastern and European ancestry. According to the authors, that mixing likely occurred some 600–800 years ago, followed by rapid growth and genetic isolation (rate per generation 16–53%;). The study found that all Ashkenazi Jews descent from around 350 individuals, and that the principal component analysis of common variants in the sequenced AJ samples, confirmed previous observations, namely, the proximity of Ashkenazi Jewish cluster to other Jewish, European and Middle Eastern populations".


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Because of the independence of local communities, Jewish ethnic divisions, even when they circumscribe differences in liturgy, language, cuisine and other cultural accoutrements, are more often a reflection of geographic and historical isolation from other communities. It is for this reason that communities are referred to by referencing the historical region in which the community cohered when discussing their practices, regardless of where those practices are found today.The smaller groups number in the hundreds to tens of thousands, with the Georgian Jews (also known as "Gruzinim" or "Qartveli Ebraeli") and Beta Israel being most numerous at somewhat over 100,000 each. Many members of these groups have now emigrated from their traditional homelands, largely to Israel. For example, only about 10 percent of the "Gruzinim" remain in Georgia.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: A brief description of the extant communities, by the geographic regions with which they are associated, is as follows:


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Ashkenazi Jews (plural "Ashkenazim") are the descendants of Jews who migrated into northern France and Germany around 800–1000, and later into Eastern Europe.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Mostly Sephardi Jews and collectively known as Maghrebi Jews and sometime considered part of the wider Mizrahi group:


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Jews originating from West Asia are generally called by the catch-all term Mizrahi Jews, more precise terms for particular groups are:


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Most Jewish communities in the Americas are descendants of Jews who found their way there at different times of modern history. The first Jews to settle in the Americas were of Spanish/Portuguese origin. Today, however, the great majority of recognized Jews on both the North American and South American continents are Ashkenazi, particularly among Jews in the United States. There are also Mizrahim and other diaspora groups represented (as well as mixes of any or all of these) as mentioned above. Some unique communities associated with the Americas include:


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: At the time the State of Israel was proclaimed, the majority of Jews in the state and the region were Ashkenazi. However, by the 1990s, the majority of Israeli Jews were Mizrahi. As of 2005, 61% of Israeli Jews are of Mizrahi ancestry.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Following the declaration of the state, a flood of Jewish migrants and refugees entered Israel from the Arab world and the Muslim world in general. Most were Sephardim and Mizrahim, which included Jews from the Maghreb, Yemenite Jews, Bukharan Jews, Persian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, and smaller communities, principally from Libya, Egypt and Turkey. More recently, other communities have also arrived including Ethiopian Jews and Indian Jews. Because of the relative homogeneity of Ashkenazic Jewry, especially by comparison to the diversity of the many smaller communities, over time in Israel, "all" Jews from Europe came to be called ""Ashkenazi"" in Israel, whether or not they had any connection with Germany, while Jews from Africa and Asia have come to be called "Sephardi", whether or not they had any connection with Spain. One reason is that most African and Asian Jewish communities use the Sephardic prayer ritual and abide by the rulings of Sephardic rabbinic authorities, and therefore consider themselves to be "Sephardim" in the broader sense of "Jews of the Spanish rite", though not in the narrower sense of "Spanish Jews". Similarly "Ashkenazim" has the broader sense of "Jews of the German rite".


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: The founders of modern Israel, mostly Ashkenazi Jews, are often said to have believed themselves superior to these new arrivals. With higher degrees of Western-standard education, they were better positioned to take full advantage of the emerging Western-style liberal democracy and Western mode of living which they themselves had established as the cultural norm in Palestine during the pre-state era.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Cultural or racial biases against the newcomers were compounded by the fledgling state's lack of financial resources and inadequate housing to handle the massive population influx. Thus, hundreds of thousands of new Sephardic immigrants were sent to live in tent cities in outlying areas. Sephardim (in its wider meaning) were often victims of discrimination and were sometimes called "schwartze" (meaning "black" in Yiddish).


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Worse than housing discrimination was the differential treatment accorded the children of these immigrants, many of whom were tracked by the largely European education establishment into dead-end "vocational" schools, without any real assessment of their intellectual capacities. Mizrahi Jews protested their unfair treatment, and even established the Israeli Black Panthers movement with the mission of working for social justice.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: The effects of this early discrimination still linger a half-century later, as documented by the studies of the Adva Center, a think tank on social equality, and by other Israeli academic research (cf., for example, Tel Aviv University Professor Yehuda Shenhav's article in Hebrew documenting the gross underrepresentation of Sephardic Jewry in Israeli high school history textbooks. Every Israeli prime minister has been Ashkenazi, although Sephardim and Mizrahim have attained the (ceremonial) presidency and other high positions. The student bodies of Israel's universities remain overwhelmingly European in origin, despite the fact that roughly half the country's population is non-European. And the tent cities of the 1950s morphed into so-called "development towns". Scattered over border areas of the Negev Desert and the Galilee, far from the bright lights of Israel's major cities, most of these towns never had the critical mass or ingredients to succeed as places to live, and they continue to suffer from high unemployment, inferior schools, and chronic brain drain. Prof. Smadar Lavie, Mizrahi U.S.-Israeli anthropologist, has documented and analyzed the discriminatory treatment Mizrahi single mothers endure from the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli regime, suggesting that Israeli bureaucracy is based on a theological notion that inserts the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship. Lavie connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War in her widely reviewed book, "Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture", and analyzes the racial and gender justice protest movements in the State of Israel from the 2003 Single Mothers’ March to the 2014 New Black Panthers.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: While the Israeli Black Panthers no longer exist, the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition and many other NGOs carry on the struggle for equal access and opportunity in housing, education, and employment for the country's underprivileged populace – still largely composed of Sephardim and Mizrahim, joined now by newer immigrants from Ethiopia and the Caucasus Mountains.


title: Jewish ethnic divisions

text: Intermarriage of all these regathered Jewish ethnic groups was initially uncommon, due in part to distances of each group's settlement in Israel, and cultural or racial biases. In recent generations, however, the barriers were lowered by state-sponsored assimilation of all the Jewish ethnic groups into a common Sabra (native-born Israeli) identity which facilitated extensive mixed-marriages.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Samantha Louise Lewthwaite (; born 5 December 1983), also known as Sherafiyah Lewthwaite or the White Widow, is a British terrorist who is one of the Western world's most wanted terrorism suspects. Lewthwaite, the widow of 7/7 London terrorist bomber Germaine Lindsay, is accused of causing the deaths of more than 400 people. She is a fugitive from justice in Kenya, where she was wanted on charges of possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony and is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice requesting her arrest with a view to extradition.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Lewthwaite was alleged to be a member of the Somalia-based radical Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab. She was accused of orchestrating grenade attacks at non-Muslim places of worship, and is believed to have been behind an attack on those watching football in a bar in Mombasa during Euro 2012. In September 2013, there was speculation over her possible involvement in the Nairobi Westgate shopping mall attack, although other reports cast doubt on this, or said her role had been exaggerated. She was dubbed the "White Widow" by the news media, a play on words referencing her race and the death of her first husband and the practice of referring to Chechen female suicide bombers as "black widows".


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Lewthwaite was born to parents Andrew and Elizabeth Christine ("née" Allen) Lewthwaite in Banbridge, County Down in 1983. Her father is a former British Army soldier who served in the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and had met her mother while he was stationed in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Following her birth the family lived for a short period in Northern Ireland, where her father worked as a lorry driver, before settling in Aylesbury, England. She attended Elmhurst middle school and The Grange secondary school in Aylesbury. She studied for a politics and religion degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, but dropped out.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Lewthwaite's parents separated in 1994, and friends later reported that she was "badly affected by the break-up" and "sought solace from Muslim neighbours who she believed had a stronger family network." Raised as a Christian, by the age of 17 she had converted to Islam. She adopted the name Sherafiyah at the time of her conversion.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: She met Germaine Lindsay on the internet and arranged to meet him at a Stop the War march in Hyde Park, London; they subsequently married in Aylesbury on 30 October 2002, using the Islamic names Asmantara and Jamal. Lewthwaite's parents, who "never came to terms with their daughter's conversion", refused to attend the ceremony.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Three years later, at 8:50 a.m. on 7 July 2005, Lindsay blew himself up on a train travelling between King's Cross and Russell Square tube stations. He killed 26 civilians in his suicide attack. Lewthwaite was eight months pregnant with their second child, a daughter, at the time of his death, and their first child, a son, was 14 months old. Lewthwaite reported her husband missing six days after the bombing by telephoning a helpline set up for families of the victims. She denied prior knowledge of the attacks and said:


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: She was placed in protective custody in a police 'safe house' after her home was firebombed in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. At the inquest into the bombings, it was disclosed that Lewthwaite had associated with Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the London bombers, before the attacks.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: In September 2005, Lewthwaite was widely criticised for selling her story, in which she portrayed herself as a victim and her husband as a "relatively recent [convert]" who had been "tricked into his actions by extremists", to tabloid newspaper "The Sun" for £30,000. "The Independent" reported that Lewthwaite's account conflicted with evidence from Lindsay's sister that he had actually converted to Islam aged 15, and said that families of the victims were "unconvinced by her portrait of the bomber", while her "attempts to share the blame with others obscured the murder of innocent commuters". "The Yorkshire Post" said: "For very good and obvious reasons, there is a law against any criminal profiting from his illegal activities by selling his story to a newspaper. And while the letter of the law has not been broken on this occasionMs Lewthwaite is not a criminalits spirit has clearly been breached."


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: "The Daily Telegraph" reported in September 2013 that Lewthwaite was subsequently believed to have met and married Habib Saleh Ghani, who was born in Hounslow, London in 1985. Ghani, also known as Abu Usama al-Pakistani, first moved to Kenya in 2007, where his mother was born. His father emigrated to Britain from Pakistan. Ghani was a contemporary of Asif Mohammed Hanif at Hounslow Jamia Masjid and Islamic Centre. Hanif killed himself and three others at "Mike's Place", a bar in Tel Aviv, in April 2003, after possibly being recruited by Hamas in Damascus, Syria. Lewthwaite gave birth to a third child in 2009, but the father was not named on the birth certificate. She is reported to have moved to the north of England, then later to have disappeared with her children, and was believed to be in hiding in Tanzania or Somalia.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: A later "Telegraph" report casts doubt on the marriage to Ghani. Quoting anti-terrorist police in Kenya, the newspaper said in October 2013 that there was "no romantic relationship between the two", but that they were linked through their "associates in the same cell in Mombasa, that was intending to set off bombs in December 2011". In May 2014, the "Daily Mirror" reported that Lewthwaite had married Hassan Maalim Ibrahim, a senior commander with the Al-Shabaab militant group.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: In February 2012, anti-terrorist police in Nairobi, Kenya, issued an arrest warrant for a white woman using the false name of Natalie Faye Webb. The white woman was known to have used a fraudulently obtained South African passport. After liaising with Scotland Yard, they said that the woman was known to be using at least three separate identities that included her true identity, Samantha Lewthwaite, and was accompanied by three children. The woman was wanted in connection with links to an Al-Shabaab terrorist cell planning attacks in Kenya in reprisal for anti-terrorism operations being conducted in Somalia. The photograph of the woman in the passport bore "a strong likeness to Samantha Lewthwaite."


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: The police said: "We believe she is not a small fish. She is among several Britons that our intelligence service is aware of in relation to terrorists' plans to attack us." The woman had entered Kenya in November 2011 using the passport and then joined other members of the cell in Mombasa. The real Natalie Webb was discovered to be an English nurse living in the home counties who had been the victim of identity theft. A "large team" of detectives from SO15, the Metropolitan Police Service's Counter Terrorism Command, travelled to Nairobi to assist with the investigation and attempts were launched to locate Lewthwaite in Britain.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: The police initially said that they could not confirm that the woman was definitely Lewthwaite "unless and until she is captured" and said: "Samantha Lewthwaite is one of the names in our records. She had three children with her. She was connected to the terror group." Lewthwaite's father said: "I cannot believe she would be involved in something like this and be there with the children. We have not had any contact with her for some time, I haven't spoken to her for a long time. I don't know if she's in this country or where she is. She has a lot of friends up north but she does not have much to do with us. I don't even know the name of her latest child."


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan Government Spokesperson and Public Communications Secretary, said: "We believe she is a collaborator with terrorists. Our understanding is she was working with people here, al-Qaeda or al-Shabaab people. She is a very big sympathiser with those people. She was not going to carry out an attack, but she helped to fund-raise, helped in the acquisition of weapons, hiding people, transporting people, that kind of thing."


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Examination of the recovered passport showed that the woman first entered Kenya from Tanzania on 26 February 2011, re-entered on 25 August 2011, and again on 21 November 2011. She was placed under surveillance by Kenyan police after moving into an apartment in Mombasa belonging to the former wife of terrorist financier Musa Hussein Abdi. Abdi had been killed along with Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the leader of Al-Qaeda in East Africa, by Somali Armed Forces near Mogadishu, Somalia, in June 2011, and was believed to have been a key player in the funding of Al-Shabaab.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Following renewed publicity about Lewthwaite's activities in 2013, Naledi Pandor, the South African Minister of Home Affairs, issued a statement saying that the passport had been "fraudulently acquired" using birth registration documents in the name of Natalie Faye Webb, and had been issued by the passport agency in Durban. Pandor said that they had determined that Lewthwaite first entered South Africa in July 2008 and "travelled in and out of the country on several occasions". The passport had been cancelled and added to a "stop list" in 2011.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Further investigations revealed that Lewthwaite, using the Natalie Webb identity, had worked as an IT specialist at a halal meat factory in Lenasia, Johannesburg, and had lived in rented properties in the Mayfair and Bromhof suburbs of Johannesburg. Credit records showed that Lewthwaite ran up a number of unpaid debts from bank loans, credit cards and clothing store charge accounts in South Africa, including R28,000 owed to First Rand Bank and R30,000 to Standard Bank.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Lewthwaite gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, at a private birthing centre in Johannesburg in July 2010. "The Daily Telegraph" reported that she registered with the clinic late into her pregnancy, and under the name Asmaa Shahidah Bint-Andrews. She gave birth after attending four prenatal appointments. Anti-terrorism investigators told the newspaper the child's father is believed to be Abdi Wahid, a former Kenyan naval officer who defected to al-Shabaab.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: In December 2011, Kenyan police raided a property in Mombasa and arrested Jermaine Grant, also known as Ali Mohammed Ibrahim, a 29-year-old British Muslim convert of Jamaican origin from Newham, London. Grant, who was using a forged Canadian passport in the name of Peter Joseph, was charged with possession of bomb-making materials and preparing to commit a felony. In January 2012, police raided the apartment where the woman known as Natalie Webb was staying but she had already fled. The terror cell was believed to be planning attacks targeting hotels and tourists in Mombasa during Christmas 2011. When questioned by police Grant identified the woman as the leader of the cell and confirmed that she was Samantha Lewthwaite.


title: Samantha Lewthwaite

text: Kenyan police revealed Grant was already known to them after being arrested in the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya in 2008 while attempting to travel to Somalia disguised as a woman wearing a burqa. He and two other men, also wearing burqas, were allegedly travelling to meet an Al-Qaeda leader. Six hours after their arrest, a group of 20 Al-Shabaab fighters freed all three men after storming the Dadajbula police post where they were being held. One of the other two men is believed to have been Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, later killed by US Navy SEALs in Operation Celestial Balance, an attack against an Al-Qaeda training camp in Somalia in 2009. A woman who was with the group at the time of their arrest but not detained was subsequently identified by Kenyan police as Lewthwaite.