title: Oleg Deripaska

text: Deripaska was married to Polina Yumasheva, the daughter of Boris Yeltsin's top adviser Valentin Yumashev and stepdaughter of Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana. While Yeltsin was president, Deripaska's close ties put him in Yeltsin's inner circle, dubbed "The Family". Deripaska and Yumasheva were married from 2001 to 2018. The Deripaskas have two children: a son, Pyotr (born 2001), and daughter, Maria (born 2003). Deripaska practices yoga, swimming, horseback riding, and hiking. At his home near Moscow, he has seven horses and six dogs.


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: In March 2018, it was reported that Deripaska had successfully purchased Cypriot citizenship in 2017 under Cyprus' "golden visa" that generates billions of revenue for the island nation. According to documents seen by "The Guardian", Deripaska's first attempt to become a citizen of a country in the EU was unsuccessful because of a preliminary inquiry into his activities in Belgium. The inquiry was dismissed in 2016.


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: In 2009, Deripaska's ranking fell to No. 164, with "Forbes" stating: "[H]e may not withstand collapsing markets and heavy debts".


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: In 2010, however, his estimated $10.7 billion fortune allowed him to rise to No. 57 of the World's Billionaires list. According to "Forbes" magazine, he removed the heads of his two largest companies and personally negotiated with the Russian government, banks, and other creditors to restructure his loan obligations. Deripaska himself in 2007 was reported to have consistently said that the estimate of his wealth was exaggerated, that it did not completely account for the amount of debt he incurred, and that he should be ranked far below the top ten on the list of the Russian billionaires.


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: "Forbes" estimated his fortune at $3.3 billion in 2015, $5.2 billion in 2017, and $3.3 billion in 2019.


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: Deripaska's Cypriot registered company Edenfield Investments acquired the Grade II listed Hamstone House in the St George's Hill district of Weybridge, Surrey, in 2001. Deripaska has owned the Haft mansion near Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., through a company incorporated in Delaware since 2006.


title: Oleg Deripaska

text: A 2022 dossier published by the German newspaper Die Zeit accused Deripaska of sexual relations with underage girls in different countries.


title: Fluffer

text: A fluffer is a person employed to keep a porn performer's penis erect on the set. After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to "fluff" the actors for the shot. These duties are considered part of the makeup department. While fluffing does not necessarily involve touching the actors, it could entail sexual acts such as fellatio or non-penetrative sex.


title: Fluffer

text: According to some pornographic actors, including Aurora Snow, James Deen and Keiran Lee, fluffers are no longer needed, saying that the role might have existed in the past, but disappeared due to medical advancements, such as Viagra and implants, and with advancements in prosthetics. Hunter Skott, who has worked as a fluffer, contended in an interview that they "are only used for a gangbang or bukkake, not for regular [porn] movies". Sloane Steel, formerly of Bangbros.com, said much the same.


title: Fluffer

text: Predating the pornographic usage, which came into use in the 1970s, "fluffer" has been used by the real estate industry to refer to a person that stages homes and as a term for a maid who fluffs pillows, or in general cleans and prepares work equipment.


title: Fluffer

text: In the 1998 video game "Fallout 2", it is possible for the player to become a fluffer for a post-apocalyptic studio engaged in the porn industry.


title: Fluffer

text: The 2001 film "The Fluffer" is about a film buff with a crush on a porn star who is straight, for whom he would end up working as a fluffer in gay porn.


title: Fluffer

text: In episode 3 of season 2 of "New Girl" entitled "Fluffer", Nick Miller tells the protagonist Jessica Day that he will not be her "emotional fluffer", after he realises that he is providing her sentimental stimulation which allows her to maintain a more active sex life with a different man with whom she has been having sex.


title: Fluffer

text: The oneiric slasher "Knife+Heart" follows a group of "low grade" gay pornographers in 1970s France. The film depicts a character named Mouth of Gold, or Mouth, who is a fluffer. In the film, he is a middle-aged man who works for free as he lives with his mother.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Florence Foster Jenkins (born Narcissa Florence Foster; July 19, 1868 – November 26, 1944) was an American socialite and amateur soprano who became known, and mocked, for her flamboyant performance costumes and notably poor singing ability. Stephen Pile ranked her "the world's worst opera singer... No one, before or since, has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Despite – or perhaps because of – her technical incompetence she became a prominent musical cult-figure in New York City during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Cole Porter, Gian Carlo Menotti, Lily Pons, Sir Thomas Beecham, and other celebrities were fans. Enrico Caruso reportedly "regarded her with affection and respect".


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: The poet William Meredith wrote that a Jenkins recital "was never exactly an aesthetic experience, or only to the degree that an early Christian among the lions provided aesthetic experience; it was chiefly immolatory, and Madame Jenkins was always eaten, in the end."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Narcissa Florence Foster was born July 19, 1868, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Charles Dorrance Foster (1836–1909), an attorney and scion of a wealthy land-owning Pennsylvania family, and Mary Jane Hoagland Foster (1851–1930). Her only sibling, a younger sister named Lillian, died of diphtheria in 1883 at the age of eight.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Foster said her interest in public performance began when she was seven years old. A pianist, she performed at society functions as "Little Miss Foster", and gave a recital at the White House during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. Miss Foster attended the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pa. from September 1881 to March 1882, where she was among 20 students in the “Fourth Room”. Shortly after 4:00pm on Tuesday, December 20, 1881, F. Foster performed a vocal duet of “Two Merry Alpine Maids” as part of the annual Christmas service. Composed by Stephen Glover (1813-1870), this particular number was described by London’s "Musical Herald" as “a gay duet, with yodel and la la passages…” In a little under a year at the Bethlehem Female Seminary, Florence Foster paid over $100 for music instruction and sheet music (this amounts to almost $2,200 in 2016 dollars). Miss Foster’s interest in music is further evidenced by her purchase of hymnals. Additionally, she purchased books in mythology, elementary algebra, rhetoric, and history. Florence Foster did not graduate from the Bethlehem Female Seminary.After graduating from high school, her hopes of studying music in Europe were dashed when her father refused permission and funding. On July 11, 1883, ten days after the funeral of her sister, and eight days before her 15th birthday, Florence married Dr. Francis Thornton Jenkins, a physician 16 years her senior, in Philadelphia (in 1880, the age of consent for marriage in Pennsylvania was ten years old). The following year, after learning that she had contracted syphilis from her husband, she ended their relationship and reportedly never spoke of him again. Florence Foster Jenkins resided at "The Newport", built in 1897 in Philadelphia at 1530-1532 Spruce Street, on the southeast corner of 16th. The 9-story luxurious high-rise at 1530-1532 Spruce Street is still in operation as of 2016. Years later, she claimed to have been granted a divorce decree on March 24, 1902, although no documentation of any such ruling has been found. She retained the Jenkins surname for the remainder of her life.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: After an arm injury ended her aspirations as a pianist, Jenkins gave piano lessons in Philadelphia to support herself, but around 1900 she moved with her mother to New York City. In 1909, in her early forties, Jenkins met a 33-year-old British actor named St. Clair Bayfield; they began a vaguely defined cohabitation relationship that continued the rest of her life. Upon her father's death later that year, Jenkins became the beneficiary of a sizable trust, and resolved to resume her musical career as a singer with Bayfield as her manager. She began taking voice lessons and immersed herself in wealthy New York City society, joining dozens of social clubs. As the "chairman of music" for many of these organizations, she began producing lavish "tableaux vivants", popular diversions in upper-crust social circles of that era. In each of these productions, Jenkins would cast herself as the main character in the final tableau, wearing an elaborate costume of her own design. In a widely republished photograph, Jenkins poses in a costume, complete with angelic wings, from her tableau inspired by Howard Chandler Christy's painting "Stephen Foster and the Angel of Inspiration".


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Jenkins began giving private vocal recitals in 1912 when she was 44 years old. In 1917, she became founder and President Soprano Hostess of her own social organization, the Verdi Club. Its membership quickly swelled to over 400; honorary members included Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. When Jenkins's mother died in 1930, additional financial resources became available for the expansion and promotion of her singing career.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: According to published reviews and other contemporary accounts, Jenkins's proficiency at the piano did not translate well to her singing. She is described as having great difficulty with such basic vocal skills as pitch, rhythm, and sustaining notes and phrases. In recordings, her accompanist Cosmé McMoon can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her constant tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes, but there was little he could do to conceal her inaccurate intonation. She was consistently flat, sometimes considerably so. Her diction was similarly substandard, particularly with foreign-language lyrics.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: The difficult operatic arias that Jenkins chose to perform—all well beyond her technical ability and vocal range—served only to emphasize these deficiencies. "There's no way to even pedagogically discuss it", said vocal instructor Bill Schuman. "It's amazing that she's even attempting to sing that music." The opera impresario Ira Siff, who dubbed her "the anti-Callas", said, "Jenkins was exquisitely bad, so bad that it added up to quite a good evening of theater ... She would stray from the original music, and do insightful and instinctual things with her voice, but in a terribly distorted way. There was no end to the horribleness ... They say Cole Porter had to bang his cane into his foot in order not to laugh out loud when she sang. She was that bad." Nevertheless, Porter rarely missed a recital.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: The question of whether "Lady Florence"—as she liked to be called, and often signed her autographs—was in on the joke, or honestly believed she had vocal talent, remains a matter of debate. On the one hand, she compared herself favorably with renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and seemed oblivious to the abundant audience laughter during her performances. Her loyal friends endeavored to disguise the laughter with cheers and applause; they often described her technique to curious inquirers in "intentionally ambiguous" terms. For example, "her singing at its finest suggests the untrammeled swoop of some great bird". Favorable articles and bland reviews, published in specialty music publications such as "The Musical Courier", were most likely written by her friends or herself. "I would say that she maybe didn't know [how badly she sang]", said mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. "We can't hear ourselves as others hear us." Nerve damage due to syphilis and its treatment (see below) may have physically compromised her hearing as well.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: On the other hand, Jenkins refused to open her performances to the general public, and was clearly aware of her detractors. "People may say I can't sing", she once remarked to a friend, "but no one can ever say I didn't sing." She dismissed her original accompanist, Edwin McArthur, after catching him giving her audience "a knowing smile" during a performance. She went to great lengths to control access to her private recitals, which took place at her apartment, in small clubs, and each October at the Verdi Club's annual "Ball of the Silver Skylarks" in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel's Grand Ballroom. Attendance, by personal invitation only, was restricted to her loyal clubwomen and a select few others. Jenkins handled distribution of the coveted tickets herself, carefully excluding strangers, particularly music critics. "There's no way she could "not" have known", said Schuman. "No one is that unaware ... she loved the audience reaction and she loved singing. But she knew."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Despite her careful efforts to insulate her singing from public exposure, a preponderance of contemporaneous opinion favored the view that Jenkins's self-delusion was genuine. "At that time Frank Sinatra had started to sing, and the teenagers used to faint during his notes and scream", McMoon told an interviewer. "So she thought she was producing the same kind of an effect." "Florence didn't think she was pulling anyone's leg", said opera historian Albert Innaurato. "She was compos mentis, not a lunatic. She was a very proper, complex individual." As an anonymous obituary writer later put it, "Her ears, schooled in constant introversion, heard only the radiant tones which never issued forth to quell the mirth of her audiences."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Her recitals featured arias from the standard operatic repertoire by Mozart, Verdi, and Johann Strauss; lieder by Brahms; Valverde's Spanish waltz "Clavelitos" ("Little Carnations"); and songs composed by herself and McMoon. As in her tableaux, she complemented her performances with elaborate costumes of her own design, often involving wings, tinsel, and flowers. She would perform "Clavelitos" dressed as Carmen, complete with castanets and a wicker basket of flowers, clicking the castanets and tossing the flowers one by one. When she ran out of flowers, she flung the basket too—and then the castanets. Her fans, aware that "Clavelitos" was her favorite song, would usually demand an encore, prompting her to send McMoon into the audience to retrieve flowers, basket, and castanets so that she could sing the number again.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Once when a taxi in which she was riding collided with another car, Jenkins let out a high-pitched scream. Upon arriving home, she went immediately to her piano and confirmed (at least to herself) that the note she had screamed was the fabled F above high C, a pitch she had never before been able to reach. Overjoyed, she refused to press charges against either involved party, and even sent the taxi driver a box of expensive cigars. McMoon said neither he "nor anyone else" ever heard her actually sing a high F, however.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: At the age of 76, Jenkins finally yielded to public demand and booked Carnegie Hall for a general-admission performance that took place on October 25, 1944. Tickets for the event sold out weeks in advance; the demand was such that an estimated 2,000 people were turned away at the door of the 2,800-seat venue. Numerous celebrities attended, including Porter, Marge Champion, Gian Carlo Menotti, Kitty Carlisle, and Lily Pons with her husband, Andre Kostelanetz, who composed a song for the recital. McMoon later recalled a moment: "[When she sang] 'If my silhouette does not convince you yet/My figure surely will' [from Adele's aria in "Die Fledermaus"], she put her hands righteously to her hips and went into a circular dance that was the most ludicrous thing I have ever seen. And created a pandemonium in the place. One famous actress had to be carried out of her box because she became so hysterical."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Since ticket distribution was out of Jenkins's control for the first time, mockers, scoffers, and critics could no longer be kept at bay. The following morning's newspapers were filled with scathing, sarcastic reviews that devastated Jenkins, according to Bayfield. "[Mrs. Jenkins] has a great voice", wrote the "New York Sun" critic. "In fact, she can sing everything except notes ... Much of her singing was hopelessly lacking in a semblance of pitch, but the further a note was from its proper elevation the more the audience laughed and applauded." The "New York Post" was even less charitable: "Lady Florence ... indulged last night in one of the weirdest mass jokes New York has ever seen."


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Five days after the concert, Jenkins suffered a heart attack while shopping at G. Schirmer's music store, and died a month later on November 26, 1944, at her Manhattan residence, the Hotel Seymour. She was buried next to her father in the Foster mausoleum, Hollenback Cemetery, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Some of Jenkins's performance difficulties have been attributed to untreated syphilis, which causes progressive deterioration of the central nervous system in its later stages. Nerve damage and other morbidities caused by the disease may have been compounded by toxic side effects—such as hearing loss—from mercury and arsenic, the prevailing (and largely ineffective) remedies of the pre-antibiotic era. By the time penicillin became generally available in the 1940s, Jenkins's disease had progressed to the tertiary stage, which is unresponsive to antibiotics.


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: The only professional audio recordings of Jenkins consist of nine selections on five 78-rpm records (Melotone Recording Studio, New York City, 1941–1944), produced by Jenkins, at her expense, and sold to her friends at $2.50 a copy. The selections include four coloratura arias from operas by Mozart, Delibes, Johann Strauss II, and Félicien David, and five art songs, two written for Jenkins by her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon. Seven of the selections were released by RCA Victor on a 10-inch LP in 1954, and reissued on a 12-inch LP in 1962, "The Glory () of the Human Voice".


title: Florence Foster Jenkins

text: Jenkins commissioned filming of her performances at the Verdi Club's signature annual event, the "Ball of the Silver Skylarks", held each October at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. All were thought lost until copies of the 1934 through 1939 and 1941 films were discovered in 2009. Jenkins historian Donald Collup has announced plans to feature excerpts from her filmed performances in an upcoming documentary.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The Magic Circle is an informal term describing the five most prestigious London-headquartered multinational law firms, which generally outperform the rest of the London law firms on profitability. The term has also been used to describe the most prestigious barristers' chambers in London. All of the 'Magic Circle' law firms and barristers' chambers specialise primarily in corporate law.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The term was coined by legal reporters in the 1990s and is generally considered to include the following five law firms: Allen & Overy; Clifford Chance; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Linklaters; and Slaughter and May.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The Magic Circle has been termed a "journalistic device, coined by legal reporters in the wake of the break-up of its predecessor, the 'Club of Nine'". The Club of Nine was an informal group of law firms that comprised Allen & Overy; Clifford Chance; Freshfields (now Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer); Herbert Smith (now Herbert Smith Freehills); Linklaters; Lovells (now Hogan Lovells); Norton Rose (now Norton Rose Fulbright); Slaughter and May; and Stephenson Harwood. The members of the Club of Nine had an informal "no-poaching" agreement and the firm's senior partners would meet. In 1996, Stephenson Harwood was asked to leave the Club of Nine due to its stagnant performance, and the Club was disbanded in 2000.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In contrast to the Club of Nine, the Magic Circle is no informal grouping of law firms. Initially, the Magic Circle's membership was described by commentators as comprising the UK firms with strong corporate practices or international work. At the time, these firms were Allen & Overy; Clifford Chance; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Linklaters; and Slaughter and May. Generally, the Magic Circle firms have among the highest earnings-per-partner and earnings-per-lawyer of UK-headquartered law firms.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In 2004, Slaughter and May's then senior partner, Tim Clark, said: "It's a funny concept. I don't know where the term came from or who founded it. It's mainly something that comes up when we talk to journalists or they talk to us. We don't describe ourselves as a Magic Circle firm in any of our marketing material." Linklaters' then head of corporate, David Cheyne, said: "City law firms years ago used to provide information to each other so they could keep in touch with what was going on, but that ended yonks ago... It seems to be a term to describe the leading City firms and there is some truth in it." Then corporate partner at Herbert Smith Freehills and former investment banker Henry Raine said: "The phrase was coined by a legal magazine and referred to firms which were very strong in corporate or international work. At the time, Herbert Smith was languishing in the corporate stakes, and so was consigned to the outer darkness."


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In 2013, "The Lawyer" argued that Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May should no longer form part of the Magic Circle. It argued that Clifford Chance’s profitability does not match the other Magic Circle firms, and that Slaughter and May operates a different (UK-focused) model, with revenue less than half of the other Magic Circle firms. In 2017 "The Lawyer" magazine stated that it no longer considers Slaughter and May to form part of the Magic Circle due to its lower revenues and UK domestic focus. It wrote "Slaughters fits the silver circle bill in every respect. London-centric, sky-high PEP, top-tier work, an aura of prestige: Slaughter and May is far more like Macfarlanes than the Magic Circle quartet it is commonly lumped in with. To put it in the same category as Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters would be inaccurate, and to say it is in a class of its own is frankly showing the firm too much deference." Nonetheless, other commentators still consider Slaughter and May to be a member of the Magic Circle.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: Among the large firms not included in the term are Herbert Smith Freehills; Hogan Lovells; Norton Rose Fulbright; and Stephenson Harwood, which are less profitable.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: Also, at the time the term was coined, the corporate practice at Herbert Smith (as it was known pre-merger) was focused on privatisation work, which had dried up. Arguably for this reason, it was not included in the initial Magic Circle.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The Silver Circle is an informal term for perceived elite corporate law firms headquartered in the United Kingdom that are the main competitors for the Magic Circle in the United Kingdom. The term was coined by "The Lawyer" magazine in 2005 in response to the pre-existing term, Magic Circle. These firms have a lower turnover than the members of the Magic Circle, but consistently have an average profits per equity partner (PEP) and average revenue per lawyer (RPL) far above the UK average (and, in some instances, higher than members of the Magic Circle). Contrary to what the term Silver Circle may suggest, there is no Golden Circle.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: UK law firms, including Magic Circle law firms, have experienced increased competition from US law firms both domestically (from US law firms with a UK presence) and internationally.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In 2013, "The Lawyer" argued that the term Magic Circle would lose its relevance, becoming "outmoded": "It will remain an easy shorthand to denote the UK-heritage firms with the biggest revenues, the most international work and which consistently outperform the rest of the [UK] market on profitability." It was argued that by 2023 global law firms will rather be split between the Global Elite law firms, International Business law firms and Super Boutique law firms.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The Global Elite law firms comprise Allen & Overy; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Clifford Chance; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Herbert Smith Freehills; Kirkland & Ellis; White & Case; Latham & Watkins; Linklaters; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Sidley Austin; and Weil, Gotshal & Manges.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The International Business law firms comprise CMS; Ashurst; Baker McKenzie; DLA Piper; Hogan Lovells; Jones Day; King & Wood Mallesons and Norton Rose Fulbright.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The Super Boutique law firms comprise Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Sullivan & Cromwell; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Slaughter and May; and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In 2014, it was reported that Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer wished to discard its Magic Circle designation in the US in favour of being part of the Global Elite. Similarly, in 2014, Linklaters’ then managing partner, Simon Davies, said "The Magic Circle isn’t what it used to be in the context of the US market or any market. I don’t think it’s going to gain power or momentum and I don’t think it’s a strengthening brand in itself." and "At the end of the day we see ourselves as one of the leading global law firms, not one of the leading Magic Circle firms".


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: The following barristers' chambers in the United Kingdom are occasionally, by analogy, described by commentators as the Bar's Magic Circle:


title: Magic Circle (law firms)

text: In August 2018, research from "The Lawyer", however, showed that South Square Chambers received more instructions from the Magic Circle law firms than any other chambers. Barristers from it worked on 64 matters for the Magic Circle law firms since 2015.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Carlos Joaquín Correa (; born 13 August 1994), nicknamed "El Tucu" (derived from his home province), is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for club Inter Milan and the Argentina national team.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Born in Juan Bautista Alberdi, Tucumán, Correa represented River Plate, Renato Cesarini and Estudiantes as a youth. He made his first team debut with the latter on 19 May 2012, coming on for Duván Zapata in a 0–3 away win against Banfield for the Primera División championship.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa scored his first professional goal on 10 May 2014, netting the first in a 3–0 home win against San Lorenzo. He also featured regularly for the side during the year's Copa Sudamericana, scoring in a 2–1 home win against Peñarol on 15 October.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 16 December 2014, Correa transferred to Serie A club Sampdoria for a US$10 million fee. He signed a four-and-a-half-year contract the following 9 January, receiving the number 8 shirt.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa made his debut for "Samp" on 15 February 2015, starting in a 1–2 loss at Chievo. Rarely used during his first season, he switched his number to 10 ahead of the 2015–16 campaign, and started to feature more regularly.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa scored his first goal abroad on 17 January 2016 in a 1–2 loss at Carpi. In the following two matchdays, he scored back-to-back goals against Napoli (2–4 home loss) and Bologna (2–3 away loss), and finished the season with three goals as his side achieved a disappointing 15th place.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 10 July 2016, Spanish La Liga side Sevilla reached an agreement with Sampdoria for the transfer of Correa for a rumoured €13 million fee. Presented by the club two days later, he made his debut for the club on 17 August, starting in a 0–3 away loss against Barcelona for the second leg of the 2016 Supercopa de España.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa made his debut in the main category of Spanish football on 20 August 2016, replacing compatriot Luciano Vietto in a 6–4 home win against Espanyol. On 22 February 2017, he scored his first UEFA Champions League goal in a 2–1 win over Leicester City in the 2016–17 UEFA Champions League round of 16.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 17 September 2017, he scored the equalizing goal in a 2–2 draw against Liverpool at Anfield in the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League. On 11 April 2018, he committed a horror challenge on Javi Martínez in added time against Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals of the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League season and was shown a straight red.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 1 August 2018, Correa returned to Italy to join Lazio on a five-year contract for a €16 million transfer fee. He made his debut for Lazio on 18 August, in a 1–2 home loss against Napoli. On 26 September 2018, he scored his first goal for Lazio in 2–1 home win against Udinese. In the 2018–19 Coppa Italia, Correa scored the goal that eliminated AC Milan from the competition and allowed Lazio to reach the final. In the final, Correa scored the second goal in a 2–0 win against Atalanta, winning the first trophy with Lazio. In his first season with Lazio, he made 44 appearances, scoring 9 goals.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 10 October 2019, he extended his contract with Lazio until 2024. On 22 December 2019, he started in Lazio's 3–1 win in the 2019 Supercoppa Italiana, winning his second trophy with the club. In his second season, he made 35 appearances, scoring 10 goals.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: On 26 August 2021, Correa joined Inter Milan on a year-long loan deal with an obligation to buy with three-year contract to take effect after the loan period. On 27 August, he made his league debut for Inter Milan in a 3–1 win over Verona where he came on as a substitute and scored twice.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa made his senior international debut for Argentina on 9 June 2017, in a 1–0 win over rivals Brazil held in Melbourne. On 13 June, he scored his first international goal in a 6–0 away friendly win over Singapore. He was a part of the victorious Argentine squad at the 2021 Copa America making 3 appearances at the tournament.


title: Joaquín Correa

text: Correa is primarily deployed as a deep-lying forward or supporting striker, although he is also capable of functioning as a left winger, or as a centre-forward. Among his main strengths are his ball control, dribbling ability, pace, and agility. He has cited the Brazilian former attacking midfielder and playmaker Kaká as an inspiration.


title: Tyrosine

text: -Tyrosine or tyrosine (symbol Tyr or Y) or 4-hydroxyphenylalanine is one of the 20 standard amino acids that are used by cells to synthesize proteins. It is a non-essential amino acid with a polar side group. The word "tyrosine" is from the Greek "tyrós", meaning "cheese", as it was first discovered in 1846 by German chemist Justus von Liebig in the protein casein from cheese. It is called tyrosyl when referred to as a functional group or side chain. While tyrosine is generally classified as a hydrophobic amino acid, it is more hydrophilic than phenylalanine. It is encoded by the codons UAC and UAU in messenger RNA.


title: Tyrosine

text: Aside from being a proteinogenic amino acid, tyrosine has a special role by virtue of the phenol functionality. It occurs in proteins that are part of signal transduction processes and functions as a receiver of phosphate groups that are transferred by way of protein kinases. Phosphorylation of the hydroxyl group can change the activity of the target protein, or may form part of a signaling cascade via SH2 domain binding.


title: Tyrosine

text: A tyrosine residue also plays an important role in photosynthesis. In chloroplasts (photosystem II), it acts as an electron donor in the reduction of oxidized chlorophyll. In this process, it loses the hydrogen atom of its phenolic OH-group. This radical is subsequently reduced in the photosystem II by the four core manganese clusters.


title: Tyrosine

text: The Dietary Reference Intake (recommended dietary allowance, RDA, i.e. level that considered almost sufficient) for phenylalanine and tyrosine is 42 mg per kilogram of body weight (at the ratio 3:2). For a 70 kg person, this is 2.94 g (phenylalanine + tyrosine).


title: Tyrosine

text: Tyrosine, which can also be synthesized in the body from phenylalanine, is found in many high-protein food products such as chicken, turkey, fish, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, peanuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, soy products and lima beans, but also in avocados and bananas. For example, the white of an egg has about 250 mg per egg, while lean beef/lamb/pork/salmon/chicken/turkey contains about 1 g per portion.


title: Tyrosine

text: In plants and most microorganisms, tyrosine is produced via prephenate, an intermediate on the shikimate pathway. Prephenate is oxidatively decarboxylated with retention of the hydroxyl group to give "p"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate, which is transaminated using glutamate as the nitrogen source to give tyrosine and α-ketoglutarate.


title: Tyrosine

text: Mammals synthesize tyrosine from the essential amino acid phenylalanine (Phe), which is derived from food. The conversion of Phe to Tyr is catalyzed by the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase, a monooxygenase. This enzyme catalyzes the reaction causing the addition of a hydroxyl group to the end of the 6-carbon aromatic ring of phenylalanine, such that it becomes tyrosine.


title: Tyrosine

text: Some of the tyrosine residues can be "tagged" (at the hydroxyl group) with a phosphate group (phosphorylated) by protein kinases. In its phosphorylated form, tyrosine is called phosphotyrosine. Tyrosine phosphorylation is considered to be one of the key steps in signal transduction and regulation of enzymatic activity. Phosphotyrosine can be detected through specific antibodies. Tyrosine residues may also be modified by the addition of a sulfate group, a process known as tyrosine sulfation. Tyrosine sulfation is catalyzed by tyrosylprotein sulfotransferase (TPST). Like the phosphotyrosine antibodies mentioned above, antibodies have recently been described that specifically detect sulfotyrosine.


title: Tyrosine

text: In dopaminergic cells in the brain, tyrosine is converted to L-DOPA by the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase (TH). TH is the rate-limiting enzyme involved in the synthesis of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine can then be converted into other catecholamines, such as norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline).


title: Tyrosine

text: The thyroid hormones triiodothyronine (T) and thyroxine (T) in the colloid of the thyroid are also derived from tyrosine.


title: Tyrosine

text: The latex of "Papaver somniferum", the opium poppy, has been shown to convert tyrosine into the alkaloid morphine and the bio-synthetic pathway has been established from tyrosine to morphine by using Carbon-14 radio-labelled tyrosine to trace the in-vivo synthetic route.


title: Tyrosine

text: Tyrosine ammonia lyase (TAL) is an enzyme in the natural phenols biosynthesis pathway. It transforms L-tyrosine into p-coumaric acid.


title: Tyrosine

text: Tyrosine (or its precursor phenylalanine) is needed to synthesize the benzoquinone structure which forms part of coenzyme Q10.


title: Tyrosine

text: The decomposition of L-tyrosine (syn. "para"-hydroxyphenylalanine) begins with an α-ketoglutarate dependent transamination through the tyrosine transaminase to "para"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate. The positional description "para", abbreviated "p", mean that the hydroxyl group and side chain on the phenyl ring are across from each other (see the illustration below).


title: Tyrosine

text: The next oxidation step catalyzes by "p"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase and splitting off CO homogentisate (2,5-dihydroxyphenyl-1-acetate). In order to split the aromatic ring of homogentisate, a further dioxygenase, homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase is required. Thereby, through the incorporation of a further O molecule, maleylacetoacetate is created.


title: Tyrosine

text: Fumarylacetoacetate is created by maleylacetoacetate "cis"-"trans"-isomerase through rotation of the carboxyl group created from the hydroxyl group via oxidation. This "cis-trans"-isomerase contains glutathione as a coenzyme. Fumarylacetoacetate is finally split by the enzyme fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase through the addition of a water molecule.


title: Tyrosine

text: Thereby fumarate (also a metabolite of the citric acid cycle) and acetoacetate (3-ketobutyroate) are liberated. Acetoacetate is a ketone body, which is activated with succinyl-CoA, and thereafter it can be converted into acetyl-CoA, which in turn can be oxidized by the citric acid cycle or be used for fatty acid synthesis.


title: Tyrosine

text: Three structural isomers of L-tyrosine are known. In addition to the common amino acid L-tyrosine, which is the para isomer ("para"-tyr, "p"-tyr or 4-hydroxyphenylalanine), there are two additional regioisomers, namely "meta"-tyrosine (also known as , L-"m"-tyrosine, and "m"-tyr) and "ortho"-tyrosine ("o"-tyr or 2-hydroxyphenylalanine), that occur in nature. The "m"-tyr and "o"-tyr isomers, which are rare, arise through non-enzymatic free-radical hydroxylation of phenylalanine under conditions of oxidative stress.


title: Tyrosine

text: m-Tyrosine and analogues (rare in nature but available synthetically) have shown application in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and arthritis.


title: Tyrosine

text: Tyrosine is a precursor to neurotransmitters and increases plasma neurotransmitter levels (particularly dopamine and norepinephrine), but has little if any effect on mood in normal subjects. A number of studies have found tyrosine is useful during stress, cold, fatigue (in mice), prolonged work and sleep deprivation, with reductions in stress hormone levels, reductions in stress-induced weight loss seen in animal trials, and improvements in cognitive and physical performance seen in human trials.


title: Tyrosine

text: Tyrosine does not seem to have any significant effect on cognitive or physical performance in normal circumstances, but does help sustain working memory better during multitasking.


title: Tyrosine

text: L-tyrosine and its derivatives (L-DOPA, melanin, phenylpropanoids, and others) are used in pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and food additives. Two methods were formerly used to manufacture L-tyrosine. The first involves the extraction of the desired amino acid from protein hydrolysates using a chemical approach. The second utilizes enzymatic synthesis from phenolics, pyruvate, and ammonia through the use of tyrosine phenol-lyase. Advances in genetic engineering and the advent of industrial fermentation have shifted the synthesis of L-tyrosine to the use of engineered strains of "E. coli".


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The first design of a recoil-operated semi-automatic rifle is attributed to Ferdinand Mannlicher, who unveiled the design in 1885 based on work begun in 1883. Other non-gas operated semi-automatic models were the Model 85 and Mannlicher Models 91, 93 and 95 rifles. The designs were deeply flawed and never made past the conceptual/prototype stage due to issues inherent to the black powder used in their cartridges (based around the Austrian 11×58mmR M/77), such as insufficient velocity and excessive fouling; automatic firearms would only become feasible after smokeless powder became widespread. Mannlicher's designs were, nonetheless, the forerunner of automatic rifles and served as a base for a number of future weapons, such as Browning machine guns (M1917, M1919 and M2) and the Lewis gun. Furthermore, from the early 1890s up until his death in 1904, Mannlicher produced smokeless powder versions of his guns.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: In 1903 and 1905, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company introduced the first low-power blowback (non-gas operated) semi-automatic rimfire and centerfire rifles. The Winchester Model 1903 and Winchester Model 1905 operated on the principle of blowback to function semi-automatically. Designed by T.C. Johnson, the Model 1903 achieved commercial success and continued to be manufactured until 1932, when the Winchester Model 63 replaced it.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: By the early 20th century, several manufacturers had introduced semi-automatic .22 rifles, including Winchester, Remington, Fabrique Nationale, and Savage Arms, all using the direct blowback system of operation. Winchester introduced a .351 Winchester Self-Loading semi-automatic rifle, the Model 1907, as an upgrade to the Model 1905, utilizing a blowback system of operation, offering more power than its .22 counterpart. Both the Model 1905 and Model 1907 saw limited military and police use.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: In 1906, Remington Arms introduced the "Remington Auto-loading Repeating Rifle". Remington advertised this rifle, renamed the "Model 8" in 1911, as a sporting rifle. It was sold in Europe by FN Herstal as the "FN Browning 1900". This is a locked-breech, long recoil action designed by John Browning. The rifle was offered in .25, .30, .32, and .35 caliber models, and gained popularity among civilians as well as some law enforcement officials who appreciated the combination of a semi-automatic action and relatively powerful rifle cartridges. In 1936 the Model 81 superseded the Model 8, and was offered in .300 Savage as well as the original Remington calibers.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: In 1908, General Manuel Mondragón patented the world's first gas-operated semi-automatic rifle, the Mondragón rifle, designated the M1908. The rifle was used by Mexican forces in the Mexican Revolution, making Mexico the first nation to use a semi-automatic rifle in battle, in 1911.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Shortly after the Mondragón rifle was produced, France had its own semi-automatic rifle, the Fusil Automatique Modele 1917. This is a locked breech, gas-operated action which is similar in its mechanical principles to the subsequent American M1 Garand. The M1917 was fielded during the latter stages of World War I, where it did not receive a favorable reception among troops. However, its shortened and improved version, the Model 1918, gave complete satisfaction during the Moroccan Rif War from 1920 to 1926. Still, the bolt-action Lebel Model 1886 rifle remained the standard French infantry rifle until replaced in 1936 by the MAS-36, also a bolt action, despite the various semi-automatic rifles designed between 1918 and 1935.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Other nations experimented with self-loading rifles during the interwar period, including the United Kingdom, which had intended to replace the bolt-action Lee–Enfield with a self-loading rifle, but this plan had to be discarded when the Second World War became imminent, shifting its emphasis to speeding up re-armament with existing weapons.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: In 1937, the American M1 Garand was historically significant as it was the first semi automatic service rifle. The gas-operated M1 Garand was developed by Canadian-born John Garand for the U.S. government at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. After years of research and testing, the first production model of the M1 Garand was unveiled in 1937. During World War II, the M1 Garand gave American infantrymen an advantage over their opponents, most of whom were issued slower firing bolt-action rifles. General George S. Patton described the M1 Garand as "the greatest battle implement ever devised."


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The Soviet AVS-36, SVT-38, and SVT-40, as well as the German Gewehr 43, were semi-automatic gas-operated rifles issued during World War II in relatively small numbers. In practice, they did not replace the bolt-action rifle as a standard infantry weapon of their respective nations - Germany produced 402,000 Gewehr 43 rifles, and over 14,000,000 of the Kar98k.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Another gas-operated semi-automatic rifle developed toward the end of World War II was the SKS. Designed by Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov in 1945, it came equipped with a bayonet and could be loaded with ten rounds, using a stripper clip. It was the first widely issued rifle to use the 7.62×39mm cartridge, and the SKS, along with its Chinese copy, the Type 56, is one of the most popular semi-automatic rifles. By the end of World War II, however, semi-automatic rifles had been largely superseded in military usage by their fully automatic counterparts - weapons such as the AK-47, FN FAL and M16 limited the viability of widespread deployment of semi-automatic rifles.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Gradually, military doctrine placed less emphasis on individual marksmanship, as a large volume of fire was deemed more important - during World War II, American ground forces fired approximately 25,000 rounds for each enemy killed. In the Korean War, this was raised to 50,000, and in the Vietnam War it was 200,000. The first fully automatic rifle to see widespread usage was the German StG 44, which was well liked by troops, as the 30-round, selective fire rifle gave them much more flexibility than their service rifle, the bolt action Karabiner 98k. Ultimately, automatic rifles would become standard in military usage, as their firepower was superior to that of a semi-automatic rifle, but both semi-automatics and even bolt actions are still used worldwide in military service in specific roles, such as designated marksman rifles where the greater accuracy compared to automatics is valued. Furthermore, to accommodate for this greater firepower, battle rifles were mostly replaced by assault rifles, whose lighter bullets allowed more to be carried at once, but where semi-automatic rifles continue to be used, they are usually in higher calibers, such as the .50 BMG Barrett M82.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic weapons use gas, blow-forward, blowback or recoil energy to eject the spent cartridge after the round has moved down the barrel, chambering a new cartridge from its magazine, and resetting the action. This enables another round to be fired once the trigger is depressed again.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic rifles can be efficiently fed by an en-bloc clip, external magazine, or stripper clip.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The self-loading design was a successor to earlier rifles that required manual cycling of the weapon after each shot, such as the bolt-action rifle or repeating rifles. The ability to automatically load the next round results in an increase in the rounds per minute the operator can fire.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The primary advantage of self-loading rifles is the possibility of increasing the number of effective shots fired within any given time period by avoiding the necessity for changing the aiming position of the rifle to manually chamber new cartridges. The actual number of hits per unit of time depends upon the magazine capacity and the availability of detachable magazines, but semi-automatic rifles can typically more than double the number of hits from comparable manually-loaded rifles at close range and increase the number of hits by about 50 percent at longer distances which require more precise aiming. Firing for prolonged periods may increase this advantage as the manual-loading process can cause fatigue. The additional weight of springs and fittings using a portion of the cartridge energy to reload self-loading rifles have the additional advantage of reducing recoil.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The self-loading mechanism tuned for cartridges of specified dimensions and power may fail to reload dirty or bent cartridges that will otherwise fire satisfactorily. The self-loading mechanism may fail to extract empty low-power cartridge cases useful for training, and high-power cartridges useful at longer ranges may damage the self-loading mechanism. Some self-loading rifles require externally lubricated cartridges vulnerable to dirt adhesion. Any reliability problems causing failure of the self-loading mechanism to function as designed may eliminate the advantage of increased hits per unit of time, and may actually reduce the comparative rate of fire below what is possible with manually-loaded rifles if the self-loading rifle is not designed for convenient manual-loading. The United Kingdom regarded the reliable rate of fire from manually-loaded rifles to be nearly as high as self-loading rifles as recently as World War II.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic rifles are uniquely susceptible to slamfire malfunctions caused by abrupt cartridge acceleration during self-loading. Slamfire discharges are unlikely to hit the target, and may cause collateral damage.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The time required for changing or reloading magazines can weaken the effectiveness of a rifle, as it imposes an effective duration limit on the continuous rate of fire of any rifle. High-capacity magazines increase the weight of the rifle, and typically reduce feeding reliability due to the varying spring tension from a full to a nearly empty magazine. Detachable magazines in general are usually less durable than internal magazines.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: The complexity of a self-loading mechanism makes self-loading rifles more expensive to manufacture and heavier than manually-loaded rifles. The semi-automatic M1 Garand weighs about 410 grams (0.9 lb) more (seven percent heavier) than the manually-loaded M1903 Springfield it replaced. American development of a self-loading infantry rifle began with the .276 Pedersen cartridge in recognition of the difficulties of producing reliable self-loading mechanisms for more powerful cartridges. Although the M1 Garand was ultimately adapted to fire the .30-06 Springfield cartridge at the insistence of General Douglas MacArthur, most subsequent self-loading rifles for infantry use have been chambered for less powerful cartridges to reduce weight making rifles easier to carry.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic rifles are commonly used by civilians for sport shooting, hunting, and self-defense, as they are cheaper and less heavily regulated than their fully automatic counterparts.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Target shooting has a long history, pre-dating the firearm, as the first example of it would be archery, and as weapons that demanded user accuracy developed, so did their usage in competitions. Today, semi-automatic rifles are one of the more popular firearms in sport shooting. There are various types of sport shooting, ranging from rapid fire shooting, target shooting, which is predominantly accuracy based, and distance shooting. Shooting clubs in America became increasingly commonplace in the 1830s, and have since grown in popularity. Semi-automatic rifles are commonly used in sport shooting events because of their accuracy, versatility, and their light weight- which has invited more people, specifically women and children, to compete as well.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic rifles have grown in status among hunters. Many hunters are adopting semi-automatic rifles, particularly AR-15 style rifles to take advantage of their compact design and modularity. Effectively making it easier to traverse rugged terrain while tracking a target. And providing a large variety of customization ranging from scopes and muzzle devices, to different calibers. Semi-automatic fire greatly assists in maintaining one's sight picture, which is especially important when follow-up shots are required. Due to their demand, the manufacturers of semi-automatic firearms have greatly increased the effective firing distance of their products, compared to the first semi-automatics sold on the civilian market.


title: Semi-automatic rifle

text: Semi-automatic rifles are sometimes used for self-defense. Most semi-automatic rifles are rather lightweight and simple to operate, without compromising accuracy. Semi-automatic rifles are able to quickly dispatch multiple targets in a home invasion. Most semi-automatic rifles also have sights which can be adjusted for range, providing versatility.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Beginning at the age of 14 in 1968, Abu-Jamal became involved with the Black Panther Party and was a member until October 1970, leaving the party at age 16. After leaving, he completed his high school education, and later became a radio reporter. He eventually served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (1978–1980). He supported the Philadelphia organization MOVE and covered the 1978 confrontation in which one police officer was killed. The MOVE Nine were the members who were arrested and convicted of murder in that case.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Since 1982, the murder trial of Abu-Jamal has been seriously criticized for constitutional failings; some have claimed that he is innocent, and many opposed his death sentence. The Faulkner family, politicians, and other groups involved with law enforcement, state and city governments argue that Abu-Jamal's trial was fair, his guilt beyond question, and his death sentence justified.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: When his death sentence was overturned by a Federal court in 2001, he was described as "perhaps the world's best-known death-row inmate" by "The New York Times." During his imprisonment, Abu-Jamal has published books and commentaries on social and political issues; his first book was "Live from Death Row" (1995).


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: He was born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. He has a younger brother named William. They attended local public schools.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave Cook the name "Mumia". According to Abu-Jamal, "Mumia" means "Prince" and was the name of a Kenyan anti-colonial African nationalist who fought against the British before Kenyan independence.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Abu-Jamal has described being "kicked ... into the Black Panther Party" as a teenager of 14, after suffering a beating from "white racists" and a policeman for trying to disrupt a 1968 rally for Independent candidate George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, who was running on a racist platform. From then he helped form the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party with Defense Captain Reggie Schell, and other Panthers. He was appointed as the chapter's "Lieutenant of Information," responsible for writing information and news communications. In an interview in the early years, Abu-Jamal quoted Mao Zedong, saying that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". That same year, he dropped out of Benjamin Franklin High School and began living at the branch's headquarters.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: He spent late 1969 in New York City and early 1970 in Oakland, living and working with BPP colleagues in those cities; the party had been founded in Oakland. He was a party member from May 1969 until October 1970. During this period, he was subject to illegal surveillance as part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO program, with which the Philadelphia police cooperated. The FBI was working to infiltrate black radical groups and to disrupt them by creating internal dissension.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: After leaving the Panthers, Abu-Jamal returned as a student to his former high school. He was suspended for distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power". He led unsuccessful protests to change the school name to Malcolm X High, to honor the major African-American leader who had been killed in New York by political opponents.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: After attaining his GED, Abu-Jamal studied briefly at Goddard College in rural Vermont. He returned to Philadelphia.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Cook adopted the surname Abu-Jamal ("father of Jamal" in Arabic) after the birth of his first child, son Jamal, on July 18, 1971. He married Jamal's mother Biba in 1973, but they did not stay together long. Their daughter, Lateefa, was born shortly after the wedding. The couple divorced.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1977 Abu-Jamal married again, to his second wife, Marilyn (known as "Peachie"). Their son, Mazi, was born in early 1978. By 1981, Abu-Jamal had divorced Peachie and had married his third (and current) wife, Wadiya.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: By 1975 Abu-Jamal was working in radio newscasting, first at Temple University's WRTI and then at commercial enterprises. In 1975, he was employed at radio station WHAT, and he became host of a weekly feature program at WCAU-FM in 1978. He also worked for brief periods at radio station WPEN. He became active in the local chapter of the Marijuana Users Association of America.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: From 1979 to 1981 he worked at National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate WHYY. The management asked him to resign, saying that he did not maintain a sufficiently objective approach in his presentation of news. As a radio journalist, Abu-Jamal was renowned for identifying with and covering the MOVE anarcho-primitivist commune in West Philadelphia's Powelton Village neighborhood. He reported on the 1979–80 trial of certain members (the "MOVE Nine"), who were convicted of the murder of police officer James Ramp. Abu-Jamal had several high-profile interviews, including with Julius Erving, Bob Marley and Alex Haley. He was elected president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Before joining MOVE, Abu-Jamal reported on the organization. When he joined MOVE, he said it was because of his love of the people in the organization. Thinking back on it later, he said he "was probably enraged as well".


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In December 1981, Abu-Jamal was working as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia two nights a week to supplement his income. He had been working part-time as a reporter for WDAS, then an African-American-oriented and minority-owned radio station.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: At 3:55 am on December 9, 1981, in Philadelphia, close to the intersection at 13th and Locust streets, Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle belonging to and driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's younger brother. Faulkner and Cook became engaged in a physical confrontation. Driving his cab in the vicinity, Abu-Jamal observed the altercation, parked, and ran across the street toward Cook's car. Faulkner was shot in the back and face. He shot Abu-Jamal in the stomach. Faulkner died at the scene from the gunshot to his head.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Police arrived and arrested Abu-Jamal, who was found to be wearing a shoulder holster. His revolver, which had five spent cartridges, was beside him. He was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he received treatment for his wound. He was next taken to Police


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Headquarters, where he was charged and held for trial in the first-degree murder of Officer Faulkner.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The prosecution presented four witnesses to the court about the shootings. Robert Chobert, a cab driver who testified he was parked behind Faulkner, identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter. Cynthia White testified that Abu-Jamal emerged from a nearby parking lot and shot Faulkner. Michael Scanlan, a motorist, testified that from two car lengths away he saw a man matching Abu-Jamal's description run across the street from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner. Albert Magilton testified to seeing Faulkner pull over Cook's car. As Abu-Jamal started to cross the street toward them, Magilton turned away and did not see what happened next.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The prosecution presented two witnesses from the hospital where Abu-Jamal was treated. Hospital security guard Priscilla Durham and police officer Garry Bell testified that Abu-Jamal said in the hospital, "I shot the motherfucker, and I hope the motherfucker dies."


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: A .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, belonging to Abu-Jamal, with five spent cartridges, was retrieved beside him at the scene. He was wearing a shoulder holster. Anthony Paul, the Supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Department's firearms identification unit, testified at trial that the cartridge cases and rifling characteristics of the weapon were consistent with bullet fragments taken from Faulkner's body. Tests to confirm that Abu-Jamal had handled and fired the weapon were not performed. Contact with arresting police and other surfaces at the scene could have compromised the forensic value of such tests.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The defense maintained that Abu-Jamal was innocent, and that the prosecution witnesses were unreliable. The defense presented nine character witnesses, including poet Sonia Sanchez, who testified that Abu-Jamal was "viewed by the black community as a creative, articulate, peaceful, genial man". Another defense witness, Dessie Hightower, testified that he saw a man running along the street shortly after the shooting, although he did not see the shooting itself. His testimony contributed to the development of a "running man theory", based on the possibility that a "running man" may have been the shooter. Veronica Jones also testified for the defense, but she did not testify to having seen another man. Other potential defense witnesses refused to appear in court. Abu-Jamal did not testify in his own defense, nor did his brother, William Cook. Cook had repeatedly told investigators at the crime scene: "I ain't got nothing to do with this!".


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In the sentencing phase of the trial, Abu-Jamal read to the jury from a prepared statement. He was cross-examined about issues relevant to the assessment of his character by Joseph McGill, the prosecuting attorney.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In his statement, Abu-Jamal criticized his attorney as a "legal trained lawyer", who was imposed on him against his will and who "knew he was inadequate to the task and chose to follow the directions of this black-robed conspirator [referring to the judge], Albert Sabo, even if it meant ignoring my directions." He claimed that his rights had been "deceitfully stolen" from him by [Judge] Sabo, particularly focusing on the denial of his request to receive defense assistance from John Africa, who was not an attorney, and being prevented from proceeding "pro se". He quoted remarks of John Africa, and said:


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death by the unanimous decision of the jury. Amnesty International has objected to the introduction by the prosecution at the time of his sentencing of statements from when he was an activist as a youth. It also protested the politicization of the trial, noting that there was documented recent history in Philadelphia of police abuse and corruption, including fabricated evidence and use of excessive force. Amnesty International concluded "that the proceedings used to convict and sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death were in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty".


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on March 6, 1989, heard and rejected a direct appeal of his conviction. It subsequently denied rehearing. The Supreme Court of the United States denied his petition for writ of "certiorari" on October 1, 1990, and denied his petition for rehearing twice up to June 10, 1991.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On June 1, 1995, Abu-Jamal's death warrant was signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. Its execution was suspended while Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review. At the post-conviction review hearings, new witnesses were called. William "Dales" Singletary testified that he saw the shooting, and that the gunman was the passenger in Cook's car. Singletary's account contained discrepancies which rendered it "not credible" in the opinion of the court.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled unanimously that all issues raised by Abu-Jamal, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit. The Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for "certiorari" against that decision on October 4, 1999, enabling Ridge to sign a second death warrant on October 13, 1999. Its execution was stayed as Abu-Jamal began to seek federal "habeas corpus" review.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1999, Arnold Beverly claimed that he and an unnamed assailant, not Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot Daniel Faulkner as part of a contract killing because Faulkner was interfering with graft and payoff to corrupt police. As Abu-Jamal's defense team prepared another appeal in 2001, they were divided over use of the Beverly affidavit. Some thought it usable and others rejected Beverly's story as "not credible".


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Private investigator George Newman claimed in 2001 that Chobert had recanted his testimony. Commentators noted that police and news photographs of the crime scene did not show Chobert's taxi, and that Cynthia White, the only witness at the original trial to testify to seeing the taxi, had previously provided crime scene descriptions that omitted it. Cynthia White was declared to be dead by the state of New Jersey in 1992, but Pamela Jenkins claimed that she saw White alive as late as 1997. The Free Mumia Coalition has claimed that White was a police informant and that she falsified her testimony against Abu-Jamal.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Kenneth Pate, who was imprisoned with Abu-Jamal on other charges, has since claimed that his step-sister Priscilla Durham, a hospital security guard, admitted later she had not heard the "hospital confession" to which she had testified at trial. The hospital doctors said that Abu-Jamal was "on the verge of fainting" when brought in, and they did not hear any such confession.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 2008, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania rejected a further request from Abu-Jamal for a hearing into claims that the trial witnesses perjured themselves, on the grounds that he had waited too long before filing the appeal.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On March 26, 2012, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania rejected his appeal for retrial. His defense had asserted, based on a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences, that forensic evidence presented by the prosecution and accepted into evidence in the original trial was unreliable. This was reported as Abu-Jamal's last legal appeal.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On April 30, 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Abu-Jamal would not be immediately granted another appeal and that the proceedings had to continue until August 30 of that year. The defense argued that former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief justice Ronald D. Castille should have recused himself from the 2012 appeals decision after his involvement as Philadelphia District Attorney (DA) in the 1989 appeal. Both sides of the 2018 proceedings repeatedly cited a 1990 letter sent by Castille to then-Governor Bob Casey, urging Casey to sign the execution warrants of those convicted of murdering police. This letter, demanding Casey send "a clear and dramatic message to all cop killers," was claimed one of many reasons to suspect Castille's bias in the case. Philadelphia's current DA Larry Krasner stated he could not find any document supporting the defense's claim. On August 30, 2018, the proceedings to determine another appeal were once again extended and a ruling on the matter was delayed for at least 60 more days.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The Free Mumia Coalition published statements by William Cook and his brother Abu-Jamal in the spring of 2001. Cook, who had been stopped by the police officer, had not made any statement before April 29, 2001, and did not testify at his brother's trial. In 2001 he said that he had not seen who had shot Faulkner. Abu-Jamal did not make any public statements about Faulkner's murder until May 4, 2001. In his version of events, he claimed that he was sitting in his cab across the street when he heard shouting, saw a police vehicle, and heard the sound of gunshots. Upon seeing his brother appearing disoriented across the street, Abu-Jamal ran to him from the parking lot and was shot by a police officer.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 2001 Judge William H. Yohn, Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania upheld the conviction, saying that Abu-Jamal did not have the right to a new trial. He vacated the sentence of death on December 18, 2001, citing irregularities in the penalty phase of the trial and the original process of sentencing. He said that "the jury instructions and verdict sheet in this case involved an unreasonable application of federal law. The charge and verdict form created a reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it was precluded from considering any mitigating circumstance that had not been found unanimously to exist." He ordered the State of Pennsylvania to commence new sentencing proceedings within 180 days, and ruled unconstitutional the requirement that a jury be unanimous in its finding of circumstances mitigating against a sentence of death.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Eliot Grossman and Marlene Kamish, attorneys for Abu-Jamal, criticized the ruling on the grounds that it denied the possibility of a "trial de novo", at which they could introduce evidence that their client had been framed. Prosecutors also criticized the ruling. Officer Faulkner's widow Maureen said the judgment would allow Abu-Jamal, whom she described as a "remorseless, hate-filled killer", to "be permitted to enjoy the pleasures that come from simply being alive". Both parties appealed.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On December 6, 2005, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals admitted four issues for appeal of the ruling of the District Court:


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The Third Circuit Court heard oral arguments in the appeals on May 17, 2007, at the United States Courthouse in Philadelphia. The appeal panel consisted of Chief Judge Anthony Joseph Scirica, Judge Thomas Ambro, and Judge Robert Cowen. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sought to reinstate the sentence of death, on the basis that Yohn's ruling was flawed, as he should have deferred to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which had already ruled on the issue of sentencing. The prosecution said that the "Batson" claim was invalid because Abu-Jamal made no complaints during the original jury selection.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The resulting jury was racially mixed, with 2 blacks and 10 whites at the time of the unanimous conviction, but defense counsel told the Third Circuit Court that Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial because the jury was racially biased, misinformed, and the judge was a racist. He noted that the prosecution used eleven out of fourteen peremptory challenges to eliminate prospective black jurors. Terri Maurer-Carter, a former Philadelphia court stenographer, stated in a 2001 affidavit that she overheard Judge Sabo say "Yeah, and I'm going to help them fry the nigger" in the course of a conversation with three people present regarding Abu-Jamal's case. Sabo denied having made any such comment.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On March 27, 2008, the three-judge panel issued a majority 2–1 opinion upholding Yohn's 2001 opinion but rejecting the bias and "Batson" claims, with Judge Ambro dissenting on the "Batson" issue. On July 22, 2008, Abu-Jamal's formal petition seeking reconsideration of the decision by the full Third Circuit panel of 12 judges was denied. On April 6, 2009, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear Abu-Jamal's appeal, allowing his conviction to stand.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On January 19, 2010, the Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to reconsider its decision to rescind the death penalty. The same three-judge panel convened in Philadelphia on November 9, 2010, to hear oral argument. On April 26, 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its prior decision to vacate the death sentence on the grounds that the jury instructions and verdict form were ambiguous and confusing. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On December 7, 2011, District Attorney of Philadelphia R. Seth Williams announced that prosecutors, with the support of the victim's family, would no longer seek the death penalty for Abu-Jamal and would accept a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. This sentence was reaffirmed by the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on July 9, 2013.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: After the press conference on the sentence, widow Maureen Faulkner said that she did not want to relive the trauma of another trial. She understood that it would be extremely difficult to present the case against Abu-Jamal again, after the passage of 30 years and the deaths of several key witnesses. She also reiterated her belief that Abu-Jamal will be punished further after death.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1991, Abu-Jamal published an essay in the "Yale Law Journal", on the death penalty and his death row experience. In May 1994, Abu-Jamal was engaged by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program to deliver a series of monthly three-minute commentaries on crime and punishment. The broadcast plans and commercial arrangement were canceled following condemnations from, among others, the Fraternal Order of Police and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole. Abu-Jamal sued NPR for not airing his work, but a federal judge dismissed the suit. His commentaries later were published in May 1995 as part of his first book, "Live from Death Row."


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1996, he completed a B.A. degree via correspondence classes at Goddard College, which he had attended for a time as a young man. He has been invited as commencement speaker by a number of colleges, and has participated via recordings. In 1999, Abu-Jamal was invited to record a keynote address for the graduating class at Evergreen State College in Washington State. The event was protested by some. In 2000, he recorded a commencement address for Antioch College. The now defunct New College of California School of Law presented him with an honorary degree "for his struggle to resist the death penalty."


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On October 5, 2014, he gave the commencement speech at Goddard College, via playback of a recording. As before, the choice of Abu-Jamal was controversial. Ten days later the Pennsylvania legislature had passed an addition to the Crime Victims Act called "Revictimization Relief." The new provision is intended to prevent actions that cause "a temporary or permanent state of mental anguish" to those who have previously been victimized by crime. It was signed by Republican governor Tom Corbett five days later. Commentators suggest that the bill was directed to control Abu-Jamal's journalism, book publication, and public speaking, and that it would be challenged on the grounds of free speech.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: With occasional interruptions due to prison disciplinary actions, Abu-Jamal has for many years been a regular commentator on an online broadcast, sponsored by Prison Radio. He also is published as a regular columnist for "Junge Welt," a Marxist newspaper in Germany. For almost a decade, Abu-Jamal taught introductory courses in Georgist economics by correspondence to other prisoners around the world.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In addition, he has written and published several books: "Live From Death Row" (1995), a diary of life on Pennsylvania's death row; "All Things Censored" (2000), a collection of essays examining issues of crime and punishment; "Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience" (2003), in which he explores religious themes; and "" (2004), a history of the Black Panthers that draws on his own experience and research, and discusses the federal government's program known as COINTELPRO, to disrupt black activist organizations.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 1995, Abu-Jamal was punished with solitary confinement for engaging in entrepreneurship contrary to prison regulations. Subsequent to the airing of the 1996 HBO documentary "," which included footage from visitation interviews conducted with him, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections banned outsiders from using any recording equipment in state prisons.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals, in 1998 Abu-Jamal successfully established his right while in prison to write for financial gain. The same litigation also established that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections had illegally opened his mail in an attempt to establish whether he was earning money by his writing.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: When, for a brief time in August 1999, Abu-Jamal began delivering his radio commentaries live on the Pacifica Network's "Democracy Now!" weekday radio newsmagazine, prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone from their mounting in mid-performance. He was later allowed to resume his broadcasts, and hundreds of his broadcasts have been aired on Pacifica Radio.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Following the overturning of his death sentence, Abu-Jamal was sentenced to life in prison in December 2011. At the end of January 2012, he was shifted from the isolation of death row into the general prison population at State Correctional Institution – Mahanoy.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In August 2015, his attorneys filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, alleging that he has not received appropriate medical care for his serious health conditions. In April 2021, he tested positive for COVID-19 and was scheduled for heart surgery to relieve blocked coronary arteries.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 2022, Brown University's John Hay Library acquired Abu-Jamal's personal papers as part of its Voices of Mass Incarceration collecting initiative. According to a Brown University archivist, the Abu-Jamal collection "is the largest and only collection relating to a person who is still incarcerated."


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Labor unions, politicians, advocates, educators, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and human rights advocacy organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have expressed concern about the impartiality of the trial of Abu-Jamal. Amnesty International neither takes a position on the guilt or innocence of Abu-Jamal nor classifies him as a political prisoner.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: The family of Daniel Faulkner, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Philadelphia, politicians, and the Fraternal Order of Police have continued to support the original trial and sentencing of the journalist. In August 1999, the Fraternal Order of Police called for an economic boycott against all individuals and organizations that support Abu-Jamal. Many such groups operate within the Prison-Industrial Complex, a system which Abu-Jamal has frequently criticized.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: Partly based on his own writing, Abu-Jamal and his cause have become widely known internationally, and other groups have classified him as a political prisoner. About 25 cities, including Montreal, Palermo, and Paris, have made him an honorary citizen.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 2001, he received the sixth biennial Erich Mühsam Prize, named after an anarcho-communist essayist, which recognizes activism in line with that of its namesake. In October 2002, he was made an honorary member of the German political organization Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On April 29, 2006, a newly paved road in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis was named Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal in his honor. In protest of the street-naming, U.S. Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick and Senator Rick Santorum, both members of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, introduced resolutions in both Houses of Congress condemning the decision. The House of Representatives voted 368–31 in favor of Fitzpatrick's resolution. In December 2006, the 25th anniversary of the murder, the executive committee of the Republican Party for the 59th Ward of the City of Philadelphia—covering approximately Germantown, Philadelphia—filed two criminal complaints in the French legal system against the city of Paris and the city of Saint-Denis, accusing the municipalities of "glorifying" Abu-Jamal and alleging the offense "apology or denial of crime" in respect of their actions.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In 2007, the widow of Officer Faulkner co-authored a book with Philadelphia radio journalist Michael Smerconish titled "Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Pain, Loss, and Injustice." The book was part memoir of Faulkner's widow, and part discussion in which they chronicled Abu-Jamal's trial and discussed evidence for his conviction. They also discussed support for the death penalty.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: In early 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Debo Adegbile, a former lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department. He had worked on Abu-Jamal's case, and his nomination was rejected by the U.S. Senate on a bipartisan basis because of that.


title: Mumia Abu-Jamal

text: On April 10, 2015, Marylin Zuniga, a teacher at Forest Street Elementary School in Orange, New Jersey, was suspended without pay after asking her students to write cards to Abu-Jamal, who was ill in prison due to complications from diabetes, without approval from the school or parents. Some parents and police leaders denounced her actions. On the other hand, community members, parents, teachers, and professors expressed their support and condemned Zuniga's suspension. Scholars and educators nationwide, including Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and Cornel West among others, signed a letter calling for her immediate reinstatement. On May 13, 2015, the Orange Preparatory Academy board voted to dismiss Marylin Zuniga after hearing from her and several of her supporters.


title: Fran Walsh

text: The partner of filmmaker Peter Jackson, Walsh has contributed to all of their films since 1989: as co-writer since "Meet the Feebles", and as producer since "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy". She has won three Academy Awards for the final film of the trilogy, "".


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh was born into a family of Irish descent in Wellington, New Zealand. She attended Wellington Girls' College intent on becoming a fashion designer, but eventually became interested in music instead. Occasionally taking time off to perform in a punk band named The Wallsockets, she attended Victoria University of Wellington majoring in English literature and graduating in 1981.


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh got her screen break writing material for New Zealand producer Grahame McLean on 1983 television film "A Woman of Good Character (It's Lizzie to those Close)". Later she wrote scripts for his TV show "Worzel Gummidge Down Under".


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh met Peter Jackson in the mid-1980s during the final stages of production on his low-budget movie "Bad Taste", in which aliens serve humans as fast food. Walsh has collaborated with Jackson on the scripts of all his subsequent films, after joining the writing quartet on his next film, the dark comedy "Meet the Feebles" (1989). The couple then reteamed with writer Stephen Sinclair on the horror-comedy film that they had begun writing before Feebles, the zombie movie "Braindead" (retitled "Dead Alive" in the United States, 1992).


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh and Jackson have not married (2015). They explored new ground with the drama "Heavenly Creatures" (1994). The film was Walsh's idea and was based on the friendship of the Parker-Hulme teenagers, who infamously later killed one of their mothers. The film earned the duo an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Walsh gave birth to Billy in 1995 and Katie in 1996. Walsh and Jackson returned to a more familiar genre with Universal Studios horror-comedy "The Frighteners" (1996), their first film funded by an American studio. They were in talks with Universal to remake "King Kong" until 1998's "Godzilla" and "Mighty Joe Young" were first announced, and Universal decided against the film. Universal feared it would be thrown aside by the two higher budget movies. Wanting to try his hand at fantasy, Jackson turned to Miramax to make a film based on the works of writer J.R.R. Tolkien. In 1998, New Line Cinema provided the necessary financial backing to make a three-part adaptation of Tolkien's classic "The Lord of the Rings".


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh, with Jackson and Philippa Boyens, is credited for writing the screenplays for "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy (2001–2003) (Stephen Sinclair has a writing credit on the second film: "The Two Towers"). They shared many awards, including an Oscar for their adapted screenplay for "". She also was one of the film's producers and co-composer of two songs for "Return of the King", namely "Into the West" and "A Shadow Lies Between Us", earning her one more Oscar that night.


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh, Jackson, and Boyens continued their screenplay work together for the 2005 remake of "King Kong", which was given the green light by Universal after the Rings trilogy's success. The couple collaborated on the adaptation of the novel "The Lovely Bones" and on the three-film adaptation of "The Hobbit".


title: Fran Walsh

text: Walsh prefers to remain more private than Jackson or Boyens; she did not contribute an interview to the bonus features on "The Lord of the Rings" movie DVDs; however, she did feature on the director/writers' commentary (where she and Jackson discussed that they felt one of them should remain a private figure for the good of their family). Her vocals were used as a significant part of the screech of the Nazgûl in the films.


title: Fran Walsh

text: She won three Academy Awards in 2004, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Song, all for "". She has received seven Oscar nominations.


title: Fran Walsh

text: In the 2002 New Year Honours, Walsh was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to film. In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was promoted to Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, also for services to film.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Robert Andrew Berdella Jr. (January 31, 1949October 8, 1992) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least six young men after having forced his victims to endure periods of up to six weeks of captivity. His crimes took place in Kansas City, Missouri, between 1984 and 1987.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Describing his murders as being "some of my darkest fantasies becoming my reality", Berdella pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of one of his victims, Larry Pearson, in August 1988, and would later plead guilty to one further charge of first-degree murder, and four charges of second-degree murder in December 1988. He died of a heart attack while incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary in October 1992.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Berdella became known as the Kansas City Butcher due to his practice of extensively dissecting his victims' bodies, which he would then dispose of in garbage bags, and The Collector due to both the movie which he stated was the basis of the fantasies behind the "modus operandi" of his crimes, and much of the evidence subsequently uncovered by investigators.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Robert Berdella was born on January 31, 1949, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the first of two sons born to Robert Andrew Berdella Sr., a die setter for the Ford Motor Company, and Mary Louise ( Huffman) Berdella. Berdella's father was a devout Roman Catholic of Italian descent. The family regularly attended Mass, and both sons regularly attended religious education courses.


title: Robert Berdella

text: As a child Berdella was intelligent, but a loner who rarely played outside his home, and seldom had friends visit to socialize. He had a speech impediment and wore thick glasses from the age of five because he was severely nearsighted. He was also diagnosed with high blood pressure for which he took several medications. Berdella was largely unathletic, whereas his younger brother, Danielseven years his juniordisplayed an aptitude for various sports from an early age. As Berdella's father valued sports and physical education, he viewed his older son's lack of interest in sports as a sign of failure, and often compared him unfavorably with his younger brother. Occasionally, Berdella's father physically and emotionally abused his children, and beat them with a leather strap.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Berdella performed well academically, though teachers often found him difficult to teach, in part due both to his aloofness, and his being the recipient of bullying by other students. Because of this he seldom socialized with his peers.


title: Robert Berdella

text: When Berdella reached puberty he discovered that he was homosexual; initially, he kept this fact a closely guarded secret, and he did not become open about his sexuality for several years. Nonetheless, in his early teens he briefly had a girlfriend.


title: Robert Berdella

text: By his mid-teens, Berdella had begun to display a degree of self-confidence, which would often manifest itself via his attitude to other individuals in which he would exert a somewhat rude and condescending attitudeparticularly toward women. He learned about cooking and art and developed showmanship. On Christmas Day 1965, the Berdella family drove to Canton, Ohio to visit relatives. That evening, Berdella's father had a heart attack at the age of 39. Two days later, Berdella returned to Cuyahoga Falls by himself. When he arrived home his family told him his father had died. Berdella sought solace in his religionand later read extensively about many faithsbut became cynical about all religion.


title: Robert Berdella

text: In 1965, Berdella saw the film adaptation of the John Fowles novel "The Collector". The plot of the film revolves around a disturbed man who stalks and then abducts a young woman whom he finds attractive, holding her captive in his windowless stone basement, and viewing her as little more than an attractive specimen. After several weeks, the woman dies of a contracted illness despite her captor's efforts to keep her alive. Berdella later stated this movie had formed a lasting impression on him.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Shortly after the death of Berdella's father, his mother remarried. This act was met with resentment by her older son, who viewed the move as a form of betrayal against his father. As a result, Berdella became increasingly withdrawn, and further immersed himself in the solitary activities he had participated in since childhood such as painting, collecting coins and stamps, and writing to foreign pen pals. Berdella would later claim that his hobby of writing to pen pals in countries such as Vietnam and Burma and the fact these pen pals would send him stamps for his collection, and photographs of mythical and historical icons, ancient cultures, and architecture would lead to his developing an avid interest in primitive art, photographs, and antiques. From approximately 1965, he would begin avidly collecting these artifacts; this practice would later inspire him to open his own antiques business in 1982.


title: Robert Berdella

text: In the summer of 1967, Berdella graduated from Cuyahoga Falls High School. Throughout his studies in high school, he had earned such excellent grades and displayed such potential that in 1966, one teacher had placed him in an independent study program. Shortly after graduation, Berdella relocated to Kansas City. There, he enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), with aspirations of becoming a college professor. In his first year at the KCAI, Berdella was considered an attentive and talented student, although by his second year, Berdella became vocally anti-authoritarian. He also became acquainted with a clique of students who supplied him with drugs which he then sold to other students at a profit. In addition, he began regularly abusing alcohol. He also engaged in acts of animal torture on at least two occasions; during one of these instances, he decapitated a duck in the presence of his peers, and in the second instance, he experimented with sedatives and tranquilizers on a dog.


title: Robert Berdella

text: At the age of 19, Berdella was arrested for attempting to sell methamphetamine to an undercover officer; he was released after posting a $3,000 bond (), and would later plead guilty to the offense and was handed a five-year suspended sentence. One month after this first arrest, Berdella and two other students were arrested for possession of marijuana and LSD in Johnson County. On this occasion, Berdella could not post bond, and he spent five days in jail, although the charges against him and one of the other students would be dropped due to a lack of evidence.


title: Robert Berdella

text: In 1969, Berdella voluntarily withdrew from KCAI after receiving harsh criticism from college administrators for killing and cooking a duck for the sake of art. He chose to remain in Kansas City and in September of that year, he moved into an address within the Hyde Park district: 4315 Charlotte Street. By this stage, Berdella had been openly gay for several years. He began spending much of his free time with male prostitutes, drug addicts, petty criminals, and runaways. Berdella would typically befriend these individuals, then try to help free them from their drug addictions or criminal lifestyles, although he was adamant that, throughout much of the 1970s, he had no physical contact whatsoever with any of these individuals.


title: Robert Berdella

text: To several of his neighbors, Berdella stated he gradually almost felt like a foster parent to many of these youths. By the early 1980s, many of his older acquaintances had ceased any form of social contact with him, with Berdella increasingly relying on these young men as a source of companionship and friendship. He would retrospectively claim to have become increasingly frustrated at many of these individuals' ignorance to his efforts to help steer them away from self-destructive behavior.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Despite these later claims to investigators, Berdella would often engage in sexual relations with several of these individuals, and would establish a degree of control over themin part to engage in these sexual relationsvia methods such as loaning them money and allowing them to live rent free at his house for periods of time.


title: Robert Berdella

text: To his neighbors, Berdella was considered a flamboyant, yet helpful and civic-minded individual, despite the generally unkempt state of his property, and his somewhat haughty attitude. Beginning in the late 1970s, Berdella would assist in the organizational activities of the South Hyde Park Crime Prevention and Neighborhood Association, becoming their chairman in the early 1980s and encouraging neighborhood‑watch patrols. He remained active in this association until the mid-1980s, when he relinquished his position within the organization. Berdella would also represent his neighborhood at fundraising events for a local public television station, although he would also disengage himself from these events by the mid-1980s.


title: Robert Berdella

text: Shortly before Berdella had moved into his Charlotte Street address, he began working as a short-order cook in various restaurants around Kansas Cityin part to help pay the lawyer fees and fines accrued from the drug arrests he had endured at age 19. As a means of obtaining additional income, he also sold arcane items of art and antiques he had accrued and collected from contacts he had established in Africa, Asia, South America, and various Pacific Rim countries. He would initially operate this side-business from his home.