title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Most of society's anger for the night's events is directed toward Julia Mikhaylovna. Pyotr Stepanovich is not suspected, and news spreads that Stavrogin has left on the train for Petersburg. The revolutionary crew, however, are alarmed. They are on the point of mutiny until Pyotr Stepanovich shows them Lebyadkin's letter to Von Lembke. He points to their own undeniable involvement and tells them that Shatov is also determined to denounce them. They agree that Shatov will have to be killed and a plan is made to lure him to the isolated location where he has buried the society's printing press. Pyotr Stepanovich explains that Kirillov has agreed to write a note taking responsibility for their crimes before he commits suicide. Shatov himself is preoccupied with the unexpected return of his ex-wife Marie, who has turned up on his doorstep, alone, ill and poverty-stricken. He is overjoyed to see her, and when it turns out that she is going into labour with Stavrogin's child he frantically sets about helping her. The child is born and, reconciled with Marie, he is happy that he is going to be the father. That night the emissary from the revolutionary group—Erkel—arrives to escort Shatov to the isolated part of Skvoreshniki where the printing press is buried. Thinking this will be his final interaction with the society, Shatov agrees to come. As he shows Erkel the spot, the other members of the group jump out and grab him. Pyotr Verkhovensky puts a gun to Shatov's forehead and fires, killing him. As they clumsily weight the body and dump it in the pond, one of the participants in the crime—Lyamshin—completely loses his head and starts shrieking like an animal. He is restrained and eventually quietened, and they go their separate ways. Early the following morning Pyotr Stepanovich proceeds to Kirillov's place. Kirillov has been forewarned and is eagerly awaiting him. However, his aversion to Pyotr Stepanovich and the news of Shatov's death arouse a reluctance to comply, and for some time they parley, both with guns in hand. Eventually Kirillov seems to be overcome by the power of his desire to kill himself and despite his misgivings he hurriedly writes and signs the suicide note taking responsibility for the crimes, and runs into the next room. But there is no shot, and Pyotr Stepanovich cautiously follows him into the darkened room. A strange and harrowing confrontation ends with Pyotr Stepanovich fleeing in a panic. A shot rings out and he returns to find that Kirillov has shot himself through the head.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Meanwhile, Stepan Trofimovich, oblivious to the unfolding horrors, has left town on foot, determined to take the high road to an uncertain future. Wandering along with no real purpose or destination, he is offered a lift by some peasants. They take him to their village where he meets Sofya Matveyevna, a travelling gospel seller, and he firmly attaches himself to her. They set off together but Stepan Trofimovich becomes ill and they are forced to take a room at a large cottage. He tells Sofya Matveyevna a somewhat embellished version of his life story and pleads with her not to leave him. To his horror, Varvara Petrovna suddenly turns up at the cottage. She has been looking for him since his disappearance, and her ferocity greatly frightens both Stepan Trofimovich and Sofya Matveyevna. When she realizes that he is extremely ill and that Sofya Matveyevna has been looking after him, her attitude softens and she sends for her doctor. A difficult reconciliation between the two friends, during which some painful events from the past are recalled, is effected. It becomes apparent that Stepan Trofimovich is dying and a priest is summoned. In his final conscious hours he recognizes the deceit of his life, forgives others, and makes an ecstatic speech expressing his re-kindled love of God.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: When Shatov fails to return, Marie, still exhausted from the birth, seeks out Kirillov. Encountering the terrible scene of the suicide, she grabs her newborn baby and rushes outside into the cold, desperately seeking help. Eventually the authorities are called to the scene. They read Kirillov's note and a short time later Shatov's body is discovered at Skvoreshniki. Marie and the baby become ill, and die a few days later. The crime scene at Skvoreshniki reveals that Kirillov must have been acting with others and the story emerges that there is an organized group of revolutionary conspirators behind all the crimes and disorders. Paranoia grips the town, but all is revealed when Lyamshin, unable to bear it, makes a groveling confession to the authorities. He tells the story of the conspiracy in great detail, and the rest of the crew, with the exception of Pyotr Stepanovich who left for Petersburg after Kirillov's suicide, are arrested.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Varvara Petrovna, returning to her town house after Stepan Trofimovich's death, is greatly shaken by all the terrible news. Darya Pavlovna receives a disturbing letter from Nikolai Vsevolodovich, which she shows to Varvara Petrovna. News arrives from Skvoreshniki that Nikolai Vsevolodovich is there and has locked himself away without saying a word to anyone. They hurry over, and find that Nikolai Vsevolodovich has hanged himself.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: The editor of "The Russian Messenger", Mikhail Katkov, refused to publish the chapter "At Tikhon's". The chapter concerns Stavrogin's visit to the monk Tikhon at the local monastery, during which he confesses, in the form of a lengthy and detailed written document, to taking sexual advantage of a downtrodden and vulnerable 11-year-old girl—Matryosha—and then waiting and listening as she goes through the process of hanging herself. He describes his marriage to Marya Lebyadkina as a deliberate attempt to cripple his own life, largely as a consequence of his inability to forget this episode and the fear he experienced in its aftermath. Dostoevsky considered the chapter to be essential to an understanding of the psychology of Stavrogin, and he tried desperately but unsuccessfully to save it through revisions and concessions to Katkov. He was eventually forced to drop it and rewrite parts of the novel that dealt with its subject matter. He never included the chapter in subsequent publications of the novel, but it is generally included in modern editions as an appendix. It has also been published separately, translated from Russian to English by S.S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf, with an essay on Dostoevsky by Sigmund Freud.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Dostoevsky wrote to Maykov that the chief theme of his novel was "the very one over which, consciously and unconsciously, I have been tormented all my life: it is the existence of God." Much of the plot develops out of the tension between belief and non-belief, and the words and actions of most of the characters seem to be intimately bound to the position they take up within this struggle.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Dostoevsky saw atheism as the root cause of Russia's deepening social problems. He further wrote to Maykov: "a man who loses his people and his national roots also loses the faith of his fathers and his God." It is in this letter that he speaks, referring primarily to Stavrogin and secondarily to Stepan Verkhovensky, of the 'Russian Man' as comparable to the man possessed by demons who is healed by Jesus in the parable of the swine. In "Demons" the Russian man has lost his true national identity (inextricably linked, for Dostoevsky, with the Orthodox Christian faith) and tries to fill the void with ideas derived from Western modes of thought—Catholicism, atheism, scientism, socialism, idealism, etc. As teachers and strong personalities, Stavrogin and Stepan Trofimovich influence those around them, and thus the demons enter the swine. Only at the end, after a heartfelt acknowledgment of their fault, are they given the possibility of redemption—Stavrogin when Tikhon offers him life as a Christian renunciate (an offer that Stavrogin refuses) and Stepan Trofimovich as he approaches death.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Instead of belief in God, Stavrogin has rationality, intellect, self-reliance, and egoism, but the spiritual longing and sensual ardour of his childhood, over-stimulated by his teacher Stepan Trofimovich, has never left him. Unfettered by fear or morality, his life has become a self-centred experiment and a heartless quest to overcome the torment of his growing ennui. The most striking manifestation of his dilemma is in the dialogue with Tikhon, where we find him, perhaps for the only time, truthfully communicating his inner state. In this dialogue there is an alternation in his speech between the stern, worldly voice of rational self-possession and the vulnerable, confessional voice of the lost and suffering soul.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Many of the other characters are deeply affected by one or other of the two aspects of Stavrogin's psyche. The nihilist Pyotr Verkhovensky is in love with the cynical, amoral, power-seeking side, while Shatov is affected by the ardour of the feeling, spiritually-bereft side. Shatov "rose from the dead" after hearing Stavrogin's uncompromising exhortation of Christ as the supreme ideal (an assertion made in a futile effort to convince himself: he succeeds in convincing Shatov but not himself). Conversely, Kirillov was convinced by Stavrogin's exhortation of atheism—the supremacy of Man's will, not God's—and forges a plan to sacrifice himself to free humanity from its bondage to mystical fear. But Stavrogin himself does not even believe in his own atheism, and as Shatov and Tikhon recognize, drives himself further into evil out of a desire to torture himself and avoid the truth. Kirillov sums up Stavrogin's dilemma thus: "If Stavrogin believes, then he doesn't believe that he believes. But if he doesn't believe, then he doesn't believe that he doesn't believe."


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Dostoevsky saw Russia's growing suicide rate as a symptom of the decline of religious faith and the concomitant disintegration of social institutions like the family. Self-destruction as a result of atheism or loss of faith is a major theme in "Demons" and further recalls the metaphor of the demon-possessed swine in the epigraph.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: In addition to a number of extended dialogues on the subject, mostly involving Kirillov, there are four actual suicides described in the novel. The first is in anecdotal form, told by the narrator after the pranksters associated with Julia Mikaylovna pay a visit to the scene of a suicide. Entrusted with a large sum of money by his family, a hitherto quiet and responsible young man deliberately squanders it all on riotous living over a period of several days. Returning to his hotel, he calmly and politely orders a meal and some wine, writes a short note, and shoots himself through the heart.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: The first plot-related suicide is that of Kirillov. Kirillov is a kind of philosopher of suicide and, under questioning from several interlocutors (the narrator, Stavrogin, Pyotr Verkhovensky), expounds his ideas on the subject, mostly as it relates to him personally but also as a general phenomenon. According to him there are two types of people who commit suicide: those who do it suddenly upon being overwhelmed by an unbearable emotion, and those who do it after much thought for good reason. He thinks that everyone could fall into the latter category if it were not for two prejudices: fear of pain, and fear of the next world. "God" he says, "is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God." In his mind he is the man who, by his own intentional death, will demonstrate to humanity the transcendence of pain and fear and free them of the need to invent God.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Stavrogin's suicide at the end of the novel is only fully understood with reference to the censored chapter. The enormity of his crimes, the desolation of his inner being, the madness born of his "sacrilegious, proto-Nietzschean attempt to transcend the boundaries of good and evil", are hidden realities that only become visible in the confession and dialogue with Tikhon. Despite this 'madness', it is 'rationality' that is emphasized in the narrator's description of the suicide itself. The efficiency of the procedure, the brief, precise note, and the subsequent medical opinion of his mental state emphatically ruling out madness, all point to his 'reasonable' state of mind at the time of the act.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: The final suicide is that of the little girl Matryosha, described by Stavrogin in his confessional letter. After her encounter with Stavrogin, she tells her mother that she has "killed God". When she hangs herself Stavrogin is present in the next room and aware of what she is doing.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: A common criticism of "Demons", particularly from Dostoevsky's liberal and radical contemporaries, is that it is exaggerated and unrealistic, a result of the author's over-active imagination and excessive interest in the psycho-pathological. However, despite giving freedom to his imagination, Dostoevsky took great pains to derive the novel's characters and story from real people and real ideas of the time. According to Frank, "the book is almost a compressed encyclopedia of the Russian culture of the period it covers, filtered through a witheringly derisive and often grotesquely funny perspective, and it creates a remarkable 'myth' of the main conflicts of this culture reconstructed on a firm basis of historical personages and events."


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Almost all of the principal characters, or at least their individual guiding ideas, had actually existing contemporary prototypes. Stavrogin was partly based on Dostoevsky's comrade from the Petrashevsky Circle, Nikolay Speshnev, and represented an imagined extreme in practice of an amoral, atheistic philosophy like that of Max Stirner. The darkness of Stavrogin is confronted by the radiance of Bishop Tikhon, a character inspired by Tikhon of Zadonsk.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Of Pyotr Verkhovensky, Dostoevsky said that the character is not a portrait of Nechayev but that "my aroused mind has created by imagination the person, the type, that corresponds to the crime... To my own surprise he half turns out to be a comic figure." Most of the nihilist characters associated with Pyotr Verkhovensky were based on individuals who appeared in the transcripts of the trial of the Nechayevists, which were publicly available and studied by Dostoevsky. The character of Shatov represents a Russian nationalist response to socialist ideas, and was initially based on Nechayev's victim Ivanov, but later on the contemporary slavophile ideas of Danilevsky and to some extent on Dostoevsky's own reformed ideas about Russia.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Stepan Verkhovensky began as a caricature of Granovsky, and retained the latter's neurotic susceptibilities, academic interests, and penchant for writing long confessional letters, but the character was grounded in the idealistic tendencies of many others from the generation of the 1840s, including Herzen, Belinsky, Chaadaev, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky himself. Liberal figures like Stepan Trofimovich, Varvara Petrovna, Liputin, Karmazinov, and the Von Lembkes, and minor authority figures like the old Governor Osip Osipovich and the over-zealous policeman Flibusterov, are parodies of a variety of establishment types that Dostoevsky held partially responsible for the excesses of the radical generation. Karmazinov was an openly hostile parody of Turgenev—his personality and mannerisms, his perceived complicity with nihilism, and, in the Gala reading scene, the style of some of his later literary works.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Even the most extreme and unlikely characters, such as Kirillov and Shigalev, were grounded in real people or ideas of the time. Kirillov was initially inspired by a Nechayev associate who spoke openly at the trial of his plan to commit suicide, but the apocalyptic philosophy the character builds around his obsession is grounded in an interpretation of the anthropotheistic ideas of Feuerbach. Shigalev was initially based on the radical critic V.A. Zaitsev who advocated a form of Social Darwinism that included, for example, an argument that without the protection of slavery the black race would become extinct due to its inherent inferiority. Shigalev's notion of human equality, the "earthly paradise" in which nine tenths of humanity are to be deprived of their will and turned into a slave-herd by means of a program of inter-generational 're-education', had a contemporary prototype in the ideas of Petr Tkachev. Tkachev argued that the only biologically possible 'equality' for human beings was "an organic, physiological equality conditioned by the same education and common living conditions" and he saw this as the supreme goal of all historical and social progress.


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Kjetsaa claims that Dostoevsky did not regard "Revelation" as "merely a consolatory epistle to first century Christians during the persecution they suffered", but as a "prophecy being fulfilled in his own time". Dostoevsky wrote that "Communism will conquer one day, irrespective of whether the Communists are right or wrong. But this triumph will stand very far from the Kingdom of Heaven. All the same, we must accept that this triumph will come one day, even though none of those who at present steer the world's fate have any idea about it at all."


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Since the Russian Revolution, many commentators have remarked on the prophetic nature of "Demons". André Gide, writing in the early 1920s, suggested that "the whole of (the novel) prophesies the revolution of which Russia is presently in the throes". In Soviet Russia, a number of dissident authors found a prototype for the Soviet police state in the system expounded by Shigalev at the meeting of Pyotr Verkhovensky's revolutionary society. Boris Pasternak, Igor Shafarevich, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, have called Dostoevsky's description of Shigalevism prophetic, anticipating the systematic politicide which followed the October Revolution. Pasternak often used the term "Shigalevism" ("shigalevshchina") to refer to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. According to Richard Pevear, Dostoevsky even presaged the appearance of Lenin himself with his description of the final reader at the ill-fated literary gala: "a man of about forty, bald front and back, with a grayish little beard, who...keeps raising his fist over his head and bringing it down as if crushing some adversary to dust."


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: Dostoevsky biographer Ronald Hingley described the novel as "an awesome, prophetic warning which humanity, no less possessed of collective and individual devilry in the 1970s than in the 1870s, shows alarmingly few signs of heeding." Robert L. Belknap notes its relevance to the twentieth century in general, "when a few Stavrogins empowered thousands of Pyotr Stepanovichs to drive herds of 'capital', to use Nechayev's term, to slaughter about a hundred million people, the very number Shigalyev and Pyotr hit upon." In his book "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan"


title: Demons (Dostoevsky novel)

text: French philosopher André Glucksmann argued that 'nihilism', as depicted in "Demons", is the underlying idea or 'characteristic form' of modern terrorism.


title: Boomslang

text: The boomslang (, , or ; Dispholidus typus) is a large, highly venomous snake in the family Colubridae.


title: Boomslang

text: Its common name means "tree snake" in Afrikaans and Dutch – "boom" meaning "tree", and "slang" meaning "snake". In Afrikaans, the name is pronounced . The boomslang is thought to be closely related to members of the genera "Thelotornis", "Thrasops", "Rhamnophis", and "Xyelodontophis", with which it forms the taxonomic tribe Dispholidini.


title: Boomslang

text: The trinomial authority in parentheses for "D. t. typus" indicates that the subspecies was originally described in a genus other than "Dispholidus".


title: Boomslang

text: The average adult boomslang is in total length. Some exceed . The eyes are exceptionally large, and the head has a characteristic egg-like shape. Coloration is highly variable. Males are light green with black or blue scale edges, but adult females may be brown. This is known as sexual dimorphism.


title: Boomslang

text: In this species, the head is distinct from the neck and the canthus rostralis is distinct. The pupil of the very large eye is round. The boomslang has excellent eyesight and often moves its head from side to side to get a better view of objects directly in front. The maxillary teeth are small anteriorly, seven or eight in number, followed by three very large, grooved fangs situated below each eye. The mandibular teeth are subequal. The body is slightly compressed. The dorsal scales are very narrow, oblique, strongly keeled, with apical pits, arranged in 19 or 21 rows. The tail is long, and the subcaudal scales are paired. Ventral scales are 164–201; the anal plate is divided; and the subcaudals are 91–131.


title: Boomslang

text: The boomslang is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. It is found in South Africa, Eswatini, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and north through sub-Sahara Africa.


title: Boomslang

text: The boomslang is an excellent climber and is highly arboreal, living mainly in forested areas. D. typus lives in karoo shrubs, savannahs, lowland forests, and in grasslands. Boomslangs are not restricted to trees and can often be found on the ground to hunt, feed, or take shelter. They will occasionally hide underground when the weather is harsh.


title: Boomslang

text: The boomslang is oviparous, and an adult female can produce up to 30 eggs, which are deposited in a hollow tree trunk or rotting log. The eggs have a relatively long (3 months on average) incubation period. Male hatchlings are grey with blue speckles, and female hatchlings are pale brown. They attain their adult coloration after several years. Hatchlings are about in length and pose no threat to humans, but are dangerously venomous by the time they reach a length around and a girth as thick as an adult's smallest finger.


title: Boomslang

text: "D. typus" is diurnal and almost exclusively arboreal. It is reclusive, and moves from branch to branch when pursued by anything too large to eat. Its diet includes chameleons and other arboreal lizards, frogs, and occasionally small mammals, birds, and eggs from nesting birds, all of which it swallows whole. Boomslangs will also feed on other snakes, including cannibalizing members of their own species. During cool weather, boomslangs brumate for short periods, often curling up inside the enclosed nest of a weaverbird.


title: Boomslang

text: Many venomous members of the family Colubridae are harmless to humans because of small venom glands and inefficient fangs. However, the boomslang is a notable exception in that it has a highly potent venom, which it delivers through large fangs located in the back of the jaw. The boomslang is able to open its jaws up to 170° when biting. The venom of the boomslang is primarily a hemotoxin; it works by a process in which so many small clots form in the blood that the victim loses the ability to clot further and the victim may die as a result of internal and external bleeding. The venom has been observed to cause hemorrhaging into tissues such as muscle and the brain while at the same time clogging capillaries with tiny blood clots. Other signs and symptoms include headache, nausea, sleepiness, and mental disorders.


title: Boomslang

text: Because boomslang venom is slow-acting, symptoms may not become apparent until many hours after the bite. Although the absence of symptoms provides sufficient time for procuring antivenom, it can also provide victims with false reassurance, leading to their underestimating the seriousness of the bite. Snakes of any species may sometimes fail to inject venom when they bite (a so-called "dry bite"), so after a few hours without any noticeable effects, victims of boomslang bites may wrongly believe that their injury is not serious or life-threatening. The pathophysiological mechanisms of the venom are different with every snake, resulting in different clinical manifestations with every patient.


title: Boomslang

text: An adult boomslang has 1.6 to 8 mg of venom. Its median lethal dose (LD) in mice is 0.1 mg/kg (intravenously). 0.071 mg/kg (IV) has also been reported. 12.5 mg/kg (subcutaneously) and 1.3-1.8 mg/kg (intraperitoneal). Based on the very low venom quantities produced by "D. typus", and the very serious effects found in a good part of the reported cases, the lethal dosage for a man would be only 2 to 3 mg.


title: Boomslang

text: In 1957, herpetologist Karl Schmidt died after being bitten by a juvenile boomslang, which he had doubted could produce a fatal dose. He made notes on the symptoms he experienced almost to the end. D. S. Chapman reported eight serious envenomations by boomslangs between 1919 and 1962, two of which were lethal.


title: Boomslang

text: Boomslang monovalent antivenom was developed during the 1940s. The South African Vaccine Producers manufactures a monovalent antivenom for use in boomslang envenomations. Treatment of bites may also require complete blood transfusions, especially after 24 to 48 hours without antivenom.


title: Boomslang

text: The boomslang is a timid snake, and bites generally occur only when people attempt to handle, catch, or kill the animal. When confronted and cornered, it inflates its neck and assumes an "S"-shaped striking pose.


title: Call girl

text: A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who (unlike a street walker) does not display her profession to the general public, nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency. The client must make an appointment, usually by calling a telephone number.


title: Call girl

text: Call girls often advertise their services in small ads in magazines and via the Internet, although an intermediary advertiser, such as an escort agency, may be involved in promoting escorts, while, less often, some may be handled by a pimp.


title: Call girl

text: Call girls may work either incall, where the client comes to them, or outcall, where they go to the client. Some porn stars are known to escort as well.


title: Call girl

text: Many call girl agencies and independent call girls have their own websites. The internet has become the main medium through which customers find their desired escort. Generally, a picture of the woman is provided, and sometimes, the type of sexual services she offers.


title: Index case

text: The index case or patient zero is the first documented patient in a disease epidemic within a population, or the first documented patient included in an epidemiological study.


title: Index case

text: It can also refer to the first case of a condition or syndrome (not necessarily contagious) to be described in the medical literature, whether or not the patient is thought to be the first person affected. An index case can achieve the status of a "classic" case study in the literature, as did Phineas Gage, the first known person to exhibit a definitive personality change as a result of a brain injury.


title: Index case

text: The index case may or may not indicate the source of the disease, the possible spread, or which reservoir holds the disease in between outbreaks, but may bring awareness of an emerging outbreak. Earlier cases may or may not be found and are labeled primary or coprimary, secondary, tertiary, etc. The term primary case can only apply to infectious diseases that spread from human to human, and refers to the person who first brings a disease into a group of people. In epidemiology, the term is often used by both scientists and journalists alike to refer to the individual known or believed to have been the first infected or source of the resulting outbreak in a population as the index case, but such would technically refer to the primary case.


title: Index case

text: "Patient zero" was used to refer to the supposed source of HIV outbreak in the United States, flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas in the popular press, but the term's use was based on a misunderstanding (and Dugas was not the index case). In the 1984 study of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of the earliest recorded HIV-patients was code-named "patient O", which stands for "patient out of California". The letter "O", however, was interpreted by some readers of the report as the numeral "0". The designation "patient zero" (for Gaëtan Dugas) was subsequently propagated by the "San Francisco Chronicle" journalist Randy Shilts in his book "And the Band Played On" in 1987. William Darrow, behavioral scientist of CDC responsible to figure out why gay men in Los Angeles were dying of a strange illness, said: "That's correct. I never labeled him Patient Zero".


title: Index case

text: The term has been expanded into general usage to refer to an individual identified as the first carrier of a communicable disease in a population (the primary case) or pandemics, or the first incident in the onset of a catastrophic trend. In some cases, a known or suspected patient zero may be informally referred to as an index case for the purpose of a scientific study, such as the two-year-old boy in a remote village in Guinea who was thought to be the source of the largest Ebola virus outbreak in history., or unknown one, such as the mysterious patient zero of COVID-19.


title: Index case

text: In genetics, the index case is the case of the original patient (i.e. "propositus" or "proband") that stimulates investigation of other members of the family to discover a possible genetic factor.


title: Index case

text: The term can also be used in non-medical fields to describe the first individual affected by something negative that since propagated to others, such as the first user on a network infected by malware.


title: Index case

text: In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, a "patient zero" transmission scenario was compiled by William Darrow and colleagues at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This epidemiological study showed how patient zero had infected multiple partners with HIV, and they, in turn, transmitted it to others causing rapid spread of the virus to locations all over the world (Auerbach et al., 1984). The CDC identified Gaëtan Dugas as a carrier of the virus from Europe to the United States, who spread it to other men he had sexual contact with at gay bathhouses.


title: Index case

text: Journalist Randy Shilts subsequently wrote about patient zero, based on Darrow's findings, in his 1987 book "And the Band Played On", which identified patient zero as being Gaëtan Dugas. Dugas was a flight attendant who was sexually promiscuous in several North American cities, according to Shilts' book. He was vilified for several years as a "mass spreader" of HIV, and was seen as the original source of the HIV epidemic among homosexual men. Four years later, Darrow repudiated the study's methodology and how Shilts had represented its conclusions.


title: Index case

text: A 2007 study by Michael Worobey and Arthur Pitchenik published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America" claimed that, based on the results of genetic analysis, current North American strains of HIV probably moved from Africa to Haiti before entering the United States around 1969, probably through a single immigrant. However, a teenager named Robert Rayford died in St. Louis, Missouri, possibly of complications from AIDS in 1969, having most likely become infected with the virus "before" 1966. This would imply that there were prior carriers of HIV-strains in North America.


title: Index case

text: The phrase patient zero is now used in the media to refer to the primary case for infectious disease outbreaks, as well as for computer virus outbreaks, and more broadly, as the source of ideas or actions that have far-reaching consequences.


title: Index case

text: David Heymann, professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and formerly with the World Health Organization ("WHO"), has questioned the importance of finding patient zero, stating, "Finding patient zero may be important in some instances, but only if they are still alive and spreading the disease; and more often than not, especially in large disease outbreaks, they're not."


title: Index case

text: The term is used to identify the first computer or user to be infected with malware on a network, which then infected other systems.


title: Index case

text: Monica Lewinsky has described herself as the "patient zero" of online harassment, meaning that she was the first person to receive widespread public harassment via the internet.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Maclura pomifera, commonly known as the Osage orange ( ), is a small deciduous tree or large shrub, native to the south-central United States. It typically grows about tall. The distinctive fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, bumpy, in diameter, and turns bright yellow-green in the fall. The fruits secrete a sticky white latex when cut or damaged. Despite the name "Osage orange", it is not related to the orange. It is a member of the mulberry family, Moraceae. Due to its latex secretions and woody pulp, the fruit is typically not eaten by humans and rarely by foraging animals. Controversial suggestions have been made that it was consumed by extinct Pleistocene megafauna, but these claims have been criticised as lacking empirical evidence.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: "Maclura pomifera" has many names, including mock orange, hedge apple, hedge, horse apple, monkey ball, monkey brains and yellow-wood. The name bois d'arc (from French meaning "bow-wood") has also been corrupted into "bodark" and "bodock".


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The earliest account of the tree in the English language was given by William Dunbar, a Scottish explorer, in his narrative of a journey made in 1804 from St. Catherine's Landing on the Mississippi River to the Ouachita River. Meriwether Lewis sent some slips and cuttings of the curiosity to President Jefferson in March 1804. According to Lewis's letter, the samples were donated by "Mr. Peter Choteau, who resided the greater portion of his time for many years with the Osage Nation". (Note: This referred to Pierre Chouteau, a fur trader from Saint Louis.) Those cuttings did not survive. In 1810, Bradbury relates that he found two "Maclura pomifera" trees growing in the garden of Pierre Chouteau, one of the first settlers of Saint Louis, apparently the same person.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: American settlers used the Osage orange (i.e. "hedge apple") as a hedge to exclude free-range livestock from vegetable gardens and corn fields. Under severe pruning, the hedge apple sprouted abundant adventitious shoots from its base; as these shoots grew, they became interwoven and formed a dense, thorny barrier hedge. The thorny Osage orange tree was widely naturalized throughout the United States until this usage was superseded by the invention of barbed wire in 1874. By providing a barrier that was "horse-high, bull-strong, and pig-tight", Osage orange hedges provided the "crucial stop-gap measure for westward expansion until the introduction of barbed wire a few decades later".


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The trees were named ("bow-wood") by early French settlers who observed the wood being used for war clubs and bow-making by Native Americans. Meriwether Lewis was told that the people of the Osage Nation, "So much ... esteem the wood of this tree for the purpose of making their bows, that they travel many hundreds of miles in quest of it." The trees are also known as "bodark", "bodarc", or "bodock" trees, most likely originating as a transliteration or corruption of .


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The Comanche also used this wood for their bows. They liked the wood because it was strong, flexible and durable, and the bush/tree was common along river bottoms of the Comanchería. Some historians believe that the high value this wood had to Native Americans throughout North America for the making of bows, along with its small natural range, contributed to the great wealth of the Spiroan Mississippian culture that controlled all the land in which these trees grew.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The genus "Maclura" is named in honor of William Maclure (1763–1840), a Scottish-born American geologist. The specific epithet "pomifera" means "fruit-bearing". The common name "Osage" derives from Osage Native Americans from whom young plants were first obtained, as told in the notes of Meriwether Lewis in 1804.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Mature trees range from tall with short trunks and round-topped canopies. The roots are thick, fleshy, and covered with bright orange bark. The tree's mature bark is dark, deeply furrowed and scaly. The plant has significant potential to invade unmanaged habitats.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The wood of "M. pomifera" is golden to bright yellow but fades to medium brown with ultraviolet light exposure. The wood is heavy, hard, strong, and flexible, capable of receiving a fine polish and very durable in contact with the ground. It has a specific gravity of 0.7736 or .


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Leaves are arranged alternately in a slender growing shoot long. In form they are simple, a long oval terminating in a slender point. The leaves are long and wide, and are thick, firm, dark green, shining above, and paler green below when full grown. In autumn they turn bright yellow. The leaf axils contain formidable spines which when mature are about long.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Branchlets are at first bright green and pubescent; during their first winter they become light brown tinged with orange, and later they become a paler orange brown. Branches contain a yellow pith, and are armed with stout, straight, axillary spines. During the winter, the branches bear lateral buds that are depressed-globular, partly immersed in the bark, and pale chestnut brown in color.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: As a dioecious plant, the inconspicuous pistillate (female) and staminate (male) flowers are found on different trees. Staminate flowers are pale green, small, and arranged in racemes borne on long, slender, drooping peduncles developed from the axils of crowded leaves on the spur-like branchlets of the previous year. They feature a hairy, four-lobed calyx; the four stamens are inserted opposite the lobes of calyx, on the margin of a thin disk. Pistillate flowers are borne in a dense spherical many-flowered head which appears on a short stout peduncle from the axils of the current year's growth. Each flower has a hairy four-lobed calyx with thick, concave lobes that invest the ovary and enclose the fruit. Ovaries are superior, ovate, compressed, green, and crowned by a long slender style covered with white stigmatic hairs. The ovule is solitary.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The mature multiple fruit's size and general appearance resembles a large, yellow-green orange (the fruit), about in diameter, with a roughened and tuberculated surface. The compound (or multiple) fruit is a syncarp of numerous small drupes, in which the carpels (ovaries) have grown together; thus, it is classified a multiple-accessory fruit. Each small drupe is oblong, compressed and rounded; they contain a milky latex which oozes when the fruit is damaged or cut. The seeds are oblong. Although the flowering is dioecious, the pistillate tree when isolated will still bear large oranges, perfect to the sight but lacking the seeds. The fruit has a cucumber-like flavor.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Osage orange's pre-Columbian range was largely restricted to a small area in what is now the United States, namely the Red River drainage of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, as well as the Blackland Prairies and post oak savannas. A disjunct population also occurred in the Chisos Mountains of Texas. It has since become widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario, Canada. Osage orange has been planted in all the 48 contiguous states of the United States and in southeastern Canada.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The largest known Osage orange tree is located at the Patrick Henry National Memorial, in Brookneal, Virginia, and is believed to be almost 350 years old. Another historic tree is located on the grounds of Fort Harrod, a Kentucky pioneer settlement in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Because of the limited original range and lack of obvious effective means of propagation, the Osage orange has been the subject of controversial claims by some authors to be an "evolutionary anachronism", whereby one or more now extinct Pleistocene megafauna evolutionary partners, such as the giant ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon or gomphothere, fed on the fruit and aided in seed dispersal. An equine species that became extinct at the same time also has been suggested as the plant's original dispersal agent because modern horses and other livestock will sometimes eat the fruit. However, a 2015 study indicated that Osage orange seeds are not effectively spread by extant horse or elephant species. The claim has been critcised as a "just-so story" that lacks any empirical evidence.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The fruit is not poisonous to humans or livestock, but is not preferred by them, because it is mostly inedible due to a large size (about the diameter of a softball) and hard, dry texture. The edible seeds of the fruit are used by squirrels as food. Large animals such as livestock, which typically would consume fruits and disperse seeds, mainly ignore the fruit.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The fruits are consumed by black-tailed deer in Texas, and white-tailed deer and fox squirrels in the Midwest. Crossbills are said to peck the seeds out. Loggerhead shrikes, a declining species in much of North America, use the tree for nesting and cache prey items upon its thorns.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: "Maclura pomifera" prefers a deep and fertile soil, but is hardy over most of the contiguous United States, where it is used as a hedge. It must be regularly pruned to keep it in bounds, and the shoots of a single year will grow long, making it suitable for coppicing. A neglected hedge will become fruit-bearing. It is remarkably free from insect predators and fungal diseases. A thornless male cultivar of the species exists and is vegetatively reproduced for ornamental use. "M. pomifera" is cultivated in Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, former USSR, and India.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Osajin and pomiferin are isoflavones present in the wood and fruit in an approximately 1:2 ratio by weight, and in turn comprise 4–6% of the weight of dry fruit and wood samples. Primary components of fresh fruit include pectin (46%), resin (17%), fat (5%), and sugar (before hydrolysis, 5%). The moisture content of fresh fruits is about 80%.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The Osage orange is commonly used as a tree row windbreak in prairie states, which gives it one of its colloquial names, "hedge apple". It was one of the primary trees used in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Great Plains Shelterbelt" WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states; by 1942 it resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for . The sharp-thorned trees were also planted as cattle-deterring hedges before the introduction of barbed wire and afterward became an important source of fence posts. In 2001, its wood was used in the construction in Chestertown, Maryland of the schooner "Sultana", a replica of .


title: Maclura pomifera

text: The heavy, close-grained yellow-orange wood is dense and prized for tool handles, treenails, fence posts, and other applications requiring a strong, dimensionally stable wood that withstands rot. Although its wood is commonly knotty and twisted, straight-grained Osage orange timber makes good bows, as used by Native Americans. John Bradbury, a Scottish botanist who had traveled the interior United States extensively in the early 19th century, reported that a bow made of Osage timber could be traded for a horse and a blanket. Additionally, a yellow-orange dye can be extracted from the wood, which can be used as a substitute for fustic and aniline dyes. At present, florists use the fruits of "M. pomifera" for decorative purposes.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: When dried, the wood has the highest heating value of any commonly available North American wood, and burns long and hot.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Osage orange wood is more rot-resistant than most, making good fence posts. They are generally set up green because the dried wood is too hard to reliably accept the staples used to attach the fencing to the posts. Palmer and Fowler's "Fieldbook of Natural History" 2nd edition rates Osage orange wood as being at least twice as hard and strong as white oak ("Quercus alba"). Its dense grain structure makes for good tonal properties. Production of woodwind instruments and waterfowl game calls are common uses for the wood.


title: Maclura pomifera

text: Compounds extracted from the fruit, when concentrated, may repel insects. However, the naturally occurring concentrations of these compounds in the fruit are too low to make the fruit an effective insect repellent. In 2004, the EPA insisted that a website selling "M. pomifera" fruits online remove any mention of their supposed repellent properties as false advertising.


title: Grammar school

text: A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school, differentiated in recent years from less academic secondary modern schools. The main difference is that a grammar school may select pupils based on academic achievement whereas a secondary modern may not.


title: Grammar school

text: The original purpose of medieval grammar schools was the teaching of Latin. Over time the curriculum was broadened, first to include Ancient Greek, and later English and other European languages, natural sciences, mathematics, history, geography, art and other subjects. In the late Victorian era grammar schools were reorganised to provide secondary education throughout England and Wales; Scotland had developed a different system. Grammar schools of these types were also established in British territories overseas, where they have evolved in different ways.


title: Grammar school

text: Grammar schools became one of the three tiers of the Tripartite System of state-funded secondary education operating in England and Wales from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s, and continue as such in Northern Ireland. After most Local Education Authorities moved to non-selective comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s, some grammar schools became fully independent schools and charged fees, while most others were abolished or became comprehensive (or sometimes merged with a secondary modern to form a new comprehensive school). In both cases, some of these schools kept "grammar school" in their names. More recently, a number of state grammar schools still retaining their selective intake gained academy status, meaning that they are independent of the Local Education Authority (LEA). Some parts of England retain forms of the Tripartite System, and a few grammar schools survive in otherwise comprehensive areas. Some of the remaining grammar schools can trace their histories to before the 15th century.


title: Grammar school

text: Although the term "scolae grammaticales" was not widely used until the 14th century, the earliest such schools appeared from the sixth century, e.g. the King's School, Canterbury (founded 597) and the King's School, Rochester (604).


title: Grammar school

text: The schools were attached to cathedrals and monasteries, teaching Latin – the language of the church – to future priests and monks. Other subjects required for religious work were occasionally added, including music and verse (for liturgy), astronomy and mathematics (for the church calendar) and law (for administration).


title: Grammar school

text: With the foundation of the ancient universities from the late 12th century, grammar schools became the entry point to a liberal arts education, with Latin seen as the foundation of the trivium. Pupils were usually educated in grammar schools up to the age of 14, after which they would look to universities and the church for further study. Of the three first schools independent of the church – Winchester College (1382), Oswestry School (1407) and Eton College (1440) – Winchester and Eton were feeder schools to Oxford and Cambridge universities respectively. They were boarding schools, so they could educate pupils from anywhere in the nation.


title: Grammar school

text: An example of an early grammar school, founded by an early modern borough corporation unconnected with church, or university, is Bridgnorth Grammar School, founded in 1503 by Bridgnorth Borough Corporation.


title: Grammar school

text: During the English Reformation in the 16th century, most cathedral schools were closed and replaced by new foundations funded from the dissolution of the monasteries. For example, the oldest extant schools in Wales – Christ College, Brecon (founded 1541) and the Friars School, Bangor (1557) – were established on the sites of former Dominican monasteries. King Edward VI made an important contribution to grammar schools, founding a series of schools during his reign (see King Edward's School). A few grammar schools were also established in the name of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I. King James I founded a series of "Royal Schools" in Ulster, beginning with The Royal School, Armagh. In theory these schools were open to all and offered free tuition to those who could not pay fees; however, few poor children attended school, because their labour was economically valuable to their families.


title: Grammar school

text: In the Scottish Reformation schools such as the Choir School of Glasgow Cathedral (founded 1124) and the Grammar School of the Church of Edinburgh (1128) passed from church control to burgh councils, and the burghs also founded new schools. With the increased emphasis on studying the scriptures after the Reformation, many schools added Greek and, in a few cases, Hebrew. The teaching of these languages was hampered by a shortage of non-Latin type and of teachers fluent in the languages.


title: Grammar school

text: During the 16th and 17th centuries the setting-up of grammar schools became a common act of charity by nobles, wealthy merchants and guilds; for example The Crypt School, Gloucester, founded by John and Joan Cook in 1539, Spalding Grammar School, founded by John Gamlyn and John Blanche in 1588, and Blundell's School, founded in 1604 by wealthy Tiverton merchant Peter Blundell. Many of these are still commemorated in annual "Founder's Day" services and ceremonies at surviving schools. The usual pattern was to create an endowment to pay the wages of a master to instruct local boys in Latin and sometimes Greek without charge.


title: Grammar school

text: The school day typically ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a two-hour break for lunch; in winter, school started at 7 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. Most of the day was spent in the rote learning of Latin. To encourage fluency, some schoolmasters recommended punishing any pupil who spoke in English. The younger boys learned the parts of speech and Latin words in the first year, learned to construct Latin sentences in the second year, and began translating English-Latin and Latin-English passages in the third year. By the end of their studies at age 14, they would be quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Latin drama and rhetoric. Other skills, such as arithmetic and handwriting, were taught in odd moments or by travelling specialist teachers such as scriveners.


title: Grammar school

text: In 1755 Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary" defined a grammar school as "a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught";


title: Grammar school

text: However, by this time demand for these languages had fallen greatly. A new commercial class required modern languages and commercial subjects. Most grammar schools founded in the 18th century also taught arithmetic and English. In Scotland, the burgh councils updated the curricula of their schools so that Scotland no longer has grammar schools in any of the senses discussed here, though some, such as Aberdeen Grammar School, retain the name.


title: Grammar school

text: In England, urban middle-class pressure for a commercial curriculum was often supported by the school's trustees (who would charge the new students fees), but resisted by the schoolmaster, supported by the terms of the original endowment. Very few schools were able to obtain special acts of Parliament to change their statutes; examples are the Macclesfield Grammar School Act 1774 and the Bolton Grammar School Act 1788. Such a dispute between the trustees and master of Leeds Grammar School led to a celebrated case in the Court of Chancery. After 10 years, Lord Eldon, then Lord Chancellor, ruled in 1805, "There is no authority for thus changing the nature of the Charity, and filling a School intended for the purpose of teaching Greek and Latin with Scholars learning the German and French languages, mathematics, and anything except Greek and Latin." Although he offered a compromise by which some subjects might be added to a classical core, the ruling set a restrictive precedent for grammar schools across England; they seemed to be in terminal decline. However it should be borne in mind that the decline of the grammar schools in England and Wales was not uniform and that until the foundation of St Bees Clerical College, in 1817, and St David's College Lampeter, in 1828, specialist grammar schools in the north-west of England and South Wales were in effect providing tertiary education to men in their late teens and early twenties, which enabled them to be ordained as Anglican clergymen without going to university.


title: Grammar school

text: The 19th century saw a series of reforms to grammar schools, culminating in the Endowed Schools Act 1869. Grammar schools were reinvented as academically oriented secondary schools following literary or scientific curricula, while often retaining classical subjects.


title: Grammar school

text: The Grammar Schools Act 1840 made it lawful to apply the income of grammar schools to purposes other than the teaching of classical languages, but change still required the consent of the schoolmaster. At the same time, the national schools were reorganising themselves along the lines of Thomas Arnold's reforms at Rugby School, and the spread of the railways led to new boarding schools teaching a broader curriculum, such as Marlborough College (1843). The first girls' schools targeted at university entrance were North London Collegiate School (1850) and Cheltenham Ladies' College (from the appointment of Dorothea Beale in 1858).


title: Grammar school

text: Modelled on the Clarendon Commission, which led to the Public Schools Act 1868 which restructured the trusts of nine leading schools (including Eton College, Harrow School and Shrewsbury School), the Taunton Commission was appointed to examine the remaining 782 endowed grammar schools. The commission reported that the distribution of schools did not match the current population, and that provision varied greatly in quality, with provision for girls being particularly limited. The commission proposed the creation of a national system of secondary education by restructuring the endowments of these schools for modern purposes. The result was the Endowed Schools Act 1869, which created the Endowed Schools Commission with extensive powers over endowments of individual schools. It was said that the commission "could turn a boys' school in Northumberland into a girls' school in Cornwall". Across England and Wales schools endowed to offer free classical instruction to boys were remodelled as fee-paying schools (with a few competitive scholarships) teaching broad curricula to boys or girls.


title: Grammar school

text: In the Victorian era there was a great emphasis on the importance of self-improvement, and parents keen for their children to receive a decent education organised the creation of new schools with modern curricula, though often retaining a classical core. These newer schools tended to emulate the great public schools, copying their curriculum, ethos and ambitions, and often took the title "grammar school" for historical reasons. A girls' grammar school established in a town with an older boys' grammar school would often be named a "high school".


title: Grammar school

text: Under the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act 1907 all grant-aided secondary schools were required to provide at least 25 percent of their places as free scholarships for students from public elementary schools. Grammar schools thus emerged as one part of the highly varied education system of England and Wales before 1944.


title: Grammar school

text: The 1944 Education Act created the first nationwide system of state-funded secondary education in England and Wales, echoed by the Education (Northern Ireland) Act 1947. One of the three types of school forming the Tripartite System was called the grammar school, which sought to spread the academic ethos of the existing grammar schools. Grammar schools were intended to teach an academic curriculum to the most intellectually able 25 percent of the school population as selected by the 11-plus examination.


title: Grammar school

text: Grammar school pupils were given the best opportunities of any schoolchildren in the state system. Initially, they studied for the School Certificate and Higher School Certificate, replaced in 1951 by General Certificate of Education examinations at O-level (Ordinary level) and A-level (Advanced level). In contrast, very few students at secondary modern schools took public examinations until the introduction of the less academic and less prestigious Certificate of Secondary Education (known as the CSE) in 1965. Until the implementation of the Robbins Report in the 1960's expanding higher education, pupils from public and grammar schools effectively monopolised access to universities. These schools were also the only ones that offered an extra term of school to prepare pupils for the competitive entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge.


title: Grammar school

text: According to Anthony Sampson, in his book "Anatomy of Britain" (1965), there were structural problems within the testing process that underpinned the eleven plus which meant it tended to result in secondary modern schools being overwhelmingly dominated by the children of poor and working-class parents, while grammar schools were dominated by the children of wealthier middle-class parents.


title: Grammar school

text: The Tripartite System was largely abolished in England and Wales between 1965, with the issue of Circular 10/65, and the Education Act 1976. Most maintained grammar schools were amalgamated with a number of other local schools, to form neighbourhood comprehensive schools, though a few were closed. This process proceeded quickly in Wales, with the closure of such schools as Cowbridge Grammar School. In England, implementation was less even, with some counties and individual schools successfully resisting conversion or closure.


title: Grammar school

text: The Direct Grant Grammar Schools (Cessation of Grant) Regulations 1975 required direct grant schools to decide whether to convert into comprehensives under local authority control or become independent schools funded entirely by fees. Of the direct grant schools remaining at that time, 51 became comprehensive, 119 opted for independence, and five were "not accepted for the maintained system and expected to become independent schools or to close". Some of these schools retained the name "grammar" in their title but are no longer free of charge for all but a few pupils. These schools normally select their pupils by an entrance examination and sometimes by interview.


title: Grammar school

text: By the end of the 1980s, all of the grammar schools in Wales and most of those in England had closed or converted. Selection also disappeared from state-funded schools in Scotland in the same period. While many former grammar schools ceased to be selective, many of these also retained the name "grammar". Most of these schools remain comprehensive, though a few became partially selective or fully selective in the 1990s. The tripartite system of grammar and secondary modern schools does survive in a few areas, such as Kent, where the eleven-plus examination to divide children into grammar and secondary modern schools is known as the Kent Test.


title: Grammar school

text: Today, "grammar school" commonly refers to one of the 163 remaining fully selective state-funded schools in England and the 69 remaining in Northern Ireland. The National Grammar Schools Association campaigns in favour of such schools, while Comprehensive Future and the Campaign for State Education campaign against them. A University College London study has shown that UK grammar school pupils gain no significant social or emotional advantages by the age of 14 over similarly gifted pupils in non-selective schools.


title: Grammar school

text: England has a long history of grammar schools. Curricula differ from school to school but generally include literature, mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, art and design, music, drama, design and technology, history, philosophy, civics/citizenship, classical education, religious education, physical education, and several other foreign languages. Most English grammar schools follow the National Curriculum and follow the same broad national exams as other state schools.


title: Grammar school

text: At the 1995 Labour Party conference, David Blunkett, then education spokesman, promised that there would be no selection under a Labour government. However the party's manifesto for the 1997 election promised that "Any changes in the admissions policies of grammar schools will be decided by local parents." Under the Labour government's School Standards and Framework Act 1998, grammar schools were for the first time to be designated by statutory instrument. The Act also defined a procedure by which local communities could petition for a ballot for an end to selection at schools. Petitions were launched in several areas, but only one received the signatures of 20% of eligible parents, the level needed to trigger a ballot. Thus the only ballot held to date was for Ripon Grammar School in 2000, when parents rejected change by a ratio of 2 to 1. These arrangements were condemned by the Select Committee for Education and Skills as being ineffective and a waste of time and resources.


title: Grammar school

text: There remain 163 grammar schools in England (out of some 3,000 state secondaries in total). Only a few areas have kept a formal grammar school system along the lines of the Tripartite System. In these areas, the eleven plus exam is used solely to identify a subset of children (around 25%) considered suitable for grammar education. When a grammar school has too many qualified applicants, other criteria are used to allocate places, such as siblings, distance or faith. Such systems still exist in Buckinghamshire, Rugby and Stratford districts of Warwickshire, the Salisbury district of Wiltshire and most of Lincolnshire, Kent, Reading and Medway. Of metropolitan areas, Trafford and most of Wirral are selective.


title: Grammar school

text: In other areas, grammar schools survive mainly as very highly selective schools in an otherwise comprehensive county, for example in several of the outer boroughs of London. These schools are often heavily oversubscribed, and award places in rank order of performance in their entry tests. In some LEAs, as many as 10–15% of 11-year-olds may attend grammar schools (for example in Gloucestershire), but in other LEAs it is as low as 2%. These very highly selective schools also tend to dominate the top positions in performance tables.


title: Grammar school

text: Further radical change was opposed by both Conservative and Labour governments until September 2016. Although many on the left argue that the existence of selective schools undermines the comprehensive structure, Labour governments have delegated decisions on grammar schools to local processes, which have not yet resulted in any changes. Moreover, government education policy appears to accept the existence of some kind of hierarchy in secondary education, with specialist schools academies and similar initiatives proposed as ways of raising standards. Many grammar schools have featured in these programmes, and a lower level of selection is permitted at specialist schools.


title: Grammar school

text: In September 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May reversed the previous Conservative Party policy against expansion of grammar schools (except to cope with population expansion in wholly selective areas).<ref name="Guardian 9/9/16"></ref>


title: Grammar school

text: The government opened a consultation on proposals to allow existing grammar schools to expand and new ones to be set up. The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties remain opposed to any expansion.


title: Grammar school

text: Attempts to move to a comprehensive system (as in the rest of the United Kingdom) have been delayed by shifts in the administration of Northern Ireland.


title: Grammar school

text: As a result, Northern Ireland still maintains the grammar school system, with many pupils being entered for academic selection exams similar to the 11-plus.


title: Grammar school

text: Since the "open enrolment" reform of 1989, these schools (unlike those in England) have been required to accept pupils up to their capacity, which has also increased. By 2006, the 69 grammar schools took 42% of transferring children, and only 7 of them took all of their intake from the top 30% of the cohort.The 11-plus has long been controversial, and Northern Ireland's political parties have taken opposing positions. Unionists tend to lean towards preserving the grammar schools as they are, with academic selection at the age of 11, whereas nationalist politicians lean towards scrapping the 11-plus, despite vehement protestations from the majority of Catholic Grammar Schools, most notably by the board of governors at Rathmore Grammar School in Finaghy, (a South Belfast suburb) and Lumen Christi (although co-educational) in Derry. The Democratic Unionist Party claimed to have ensured the continuation of the grammar school system in the Province as part of the St Andrews Agreement in October 2006. By contrast, Sinn Féin claims to have secured the abolition of the 11-plus and a veto over any system which might follow it.


title: Grammar school

text: but the Northern Ireland Assembly has not been able to agree on a replacement system for secondary transfer.


title: Grammar school

text: The grammar schools have organised groupings to run their own tests, the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium (mostly Catholic schools) and the Association for Quality Education.


title: Grammar school

text: The Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education has accepted continued selection at Catholic grammar schools as a temporary measure, but wishes them to end the practice by 2012. As of September 2019, the practice continues.


title: Grammar school

text: Grammar schools were established in various British territories, and have developed in different ways since those territories became independent.


title: Grammar school

text: In the mid-19th century, private schools were established in the Australian colonies to spare the wealthy classes from sending their sons to schools in Britain.


title: Grammar school

text: These schools took their inspiration from English public schools, and often called themselves "grammar schools".


title: Grammar school

text: Early examples include Launceston Grammar School (1846), Pulteney Grammar School (1847), Geelong Grammar School (1855), Melbourne Grammar School (1858) and Hale School (1858).


title: Grammar school

text: With the exception of the non-denominational Sydney Grammar School (1857) and Queensland grammar schools, all the grammar schools established in the 19th century were attached to the Church of England (now the Anglican Church of Australia).


title: Grammar school

text: In Queensland, the Grammar Schools Act 1860 provided for the state-assisted foundation of non-denominational grammar schools.


title: Grammar school

text: Beginning with Ipswich Grammar School (1863), ten schools were founded, of which the following eight still exist:


title: Grammar school

text: In the 1920s grammar schools of other denominations were established, including members of the Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria, and the trend has continued to the present day.


title: Grammar school

text: The New South Wales public education system operates 19 selective public schools which resemble the English grammar-school system insofar as they engage in academic selection by way of centralised examination, they do not charge tuition fees and they are recipients of a greater degree of public funding per pupil than is afforded to non-selective government schools.


title: Grammar school

text: The first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, advocated grammar schools for the colony to save the wealthy from sending their sons to the United States to be educated, but he was unable to convince his superiors in London.


title: Grammar school

text: After several abortive attempts to raise funding, the District Schools Act of 1807 provided support for one grammar school teacher in each district, of which there were then eight, but they were then left to their own devices.


title: Grammar school

text: Finding the grammar schools unsuitable as preparation for university, Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne founded Upper Canada College


title: Grammar school

text: Legislation in 1839 allowed for more than one grammar school in a district, triggering a rapid but unstructured growth in numbers over the following two derisin to 86 in 1861. The schools became more independent of the Church of England and began to admit girls However, the schools were unsupervised, often underfunded and of varying standards.


title: Grammar school

text: Some, like Tassie's School, in Galt, provided a traditional classical education, but many provided a basic education of poor quality.


title: Grammar school

text: Chief Superintendent of Education Egerton Ryerson attempted to reform the schools in the 1850s an the 1860ss by moving control of the schools from counties (the former districts) to city authorities, securing their funding and introducing inspectors. However, his efforts to convert the schools into classical schools for only boys were unsuccessful.


title: Grammar school

text: In recognition of the broad curricula offered, grammar schools were redesignated as secondary school by the Act to Improve the Common and Grammar Schools of the Province of Ontario of 1871. Schools that offered classical studies were given additional funding and operated as collegiate institutes. The secondary-school collegiate-institute system was also emulated in several other provinces in Western Canada.


title: Grammar school

text: Mainstream schools in Hong Kong reflect the post-war British grammar system, focusing on a traditional curriculum rather than vocational subjects.


title: Grammar school

text: Education in Ireland has traditionally been organised on denominational lines. Grammar schools along the lines of those in Great Britain were set up for members of the Church of Ireland prior to its disestablishment in 1871. Some schools remain, as private schools catering largely for Protestant students. These are often fee-paying and accommodate boarders, given the scattered nature of the Protestant population in much of Ireland. Such schools include Bandon Grammar School, Drogheda Grammar School, Dundalk Grammar School and Sligo Grammar School. Others are among the many former fee-paying schools absorbed into larger state-funded community schools founded since the introduction of universal secondary education in the Republic by minister Donogh O'Malley in September 1967. Examples include Cork Grammar School, replaced by Ashton Comprehensive School in 1972.


title: Grammar school

text: Malaysia has a number of grammar schools, a majority of which were established when the country was under the British. They are generally not known as "grammar schools" but are similarly selective in their intake. Among the best known being the Penang Free School, the Victoria Institution (Kuala Lumpur), Malay College Kuala Kangsar, the English College (Johor Bahru), King George V School (Seremban) and St George's Institution (Taiping). Mission schools set up by various Christian denominations paralleled the selective state school albeit not with the same degree of selectivity. Notable mission schools include the La Sallian family of schools and those set up by the Marist Brothers and Methodist missionaries. Before the 1970s when Malay was made the medium of instruction, many such selective schools became known for providing excellent English-medium education and have produced many notable alumni, including former Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Tun Razak (St. John's Institution) and all five of his predecessors.


title: Grammar school

text: Singapore was established as a Crown Colony, and the term "grammar school" was used since 1819 among the English community. The English, and later, the Scottish, set up cathedrals, churches, and elite grammar schools for the upper class. Initially, this was a racially segregated colonial system.


title: Grammar school

text: The British then opened up their schools to children from English mixed marriages, or to those with English descent. During the late colonial period, these schools expanded and also schooled descendants of the very few mixed English and Straits-Chinese families, and descendants of some rich Straits-born Chinese merchant class families, who were educated in Oxbridge or had London trade ties. Initially these schools were run exactly like their counterparts in England, and taught by the English.


title: Grammar school

text: The oldest of these, Raffles Institution, was founded in 1823 by Sir Stamford Raffles to educate sons born and living in the Crown Colony, often to fathers in Crown colonial service. Single-sex classes were set up for daughters of the British ruling class in 1844, and later became Raffles Girls' School, officially founded in 1879. After independence it became the Raffles Girls' School (Primary School), distinct from the branch school established by the local government after independence, the Raffles Girls' School (Secondary School).


title: Grammar school

text: The French Roman Catholic Orders later opened up their ministries and boarding schools to children of mixed marriages, and racial segregation was also relaxed to some extent in the English schools. The French Catholic missions and schools, but not the English schools, also accepted orphans, foundlings, and illegitimate children abandoned by mothers ostracized for breaching racial purity laws.


title: Grammar school

text: The CHIJMES building has commemorative plaques for these abandoned babies. The children were termed "children of God" and raised as Catholics. When laws banning polygamy became strictly enforced in Singapore after 1965, these schools extended their English-speaking classes to girls from families of any socio-economic background. The British grammar schools in Singapore imitated much of this education system, with Catholicism replaced by Anglicanism. Later the Anglican High School of Singapore was set up.


title: Grammar school

text: Australian Methodist missionaries started UK-style grammar schools with American and British Methodist church funds. They founded the Anglo-Chinese School (1886) and Methodist Girls' School (1887).


title: Grammar school

text: When Singapore became independent from the United Kingdom, the Singapore government established publicly funded bilingual schools based on the existing grammar school system. Since the 1960s their mission was to provide a high-quality elite education to the top 10% in national annual IQ tests, regardless of socio-economic background. These bilingual schools were influenced by the US educational system, and termed "high schools" rather than "grammar schools". Other, less elitist, state schools were called simply "secondary schools", similar to the UK equivalent of "comprehensive schools". High schools include Dunman High School (co-educational), Nanyang Girls' High School, Maris Stella High School (for boys only) and Catholic High School (all-boys). Within these schools there are academically top classes, the very competitive Scholars' class or "A" class. Graduates tend to become part of the upper class. These schools recruit pupils worldwide, particularly from large emerging Asian economies. Recruitment is carried out under the auspices of the Special Assistant Plan Scholars programme, the ASEAN Scholars programme, and the India and China Scholars programmes. Gifted pupils, such as winners of Mathematical Olympiads, international violin and piano competitions, Physics Olympiads and child inventors are particularly sought after.


title: Grammar school

text: In addition to religious missions and the new high schools, the less selective Singapore Chinese Girls' School was set up by several Peranakan business and community leaders. The Ministry of Education published annual rankings, but discontinued them after criticism of excessive academic stress placed on schoolchildren, some of whom committed suicide in response to perceived failure. After the 1990s all schools were integrated into a unified national school system, but the elite schools distinguished themselves by descriptions such as "independent" or "autonomous".


title: Grammar school

text: Grammar schools on the English and later British models were founded during the colonial period, the first being the Boston Latin School, founded as the Latin Grammar School in 1635.


title: Grammar school

text: In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the Old Deluder Satan Law, requiring any township of at least 100 households to establish a grammar school, and similar laws followed in the other New England colonies. These schools initially taught young men the classical languages as a preparation for university, but by the mid-18th century many had broadened their curricula to include practical subjects. Nevertheless, they declined in popularity owing to competition from the more practical academies.


title: Grammar school

text: The name "grammar school" was adopted by public schools for children from 10 to 14 years of age, following a primary stage from 5 to 9 years of age. These types were gradually combined around 1900 to form elementary schools, which were also known as "grammar schools".


title: Grammar school

text: An analogous concept to the contemporary English grammar school is the magnet school, a state-funded secondary institution that may select students from a given school district according to academic criteria.


title: Grammar school

text: In New Zealand, a small number of schools are named "grammar schools" and follow the academic and cultural traditions established in the United Kingdom. Grammar schools were established only in Auckland and originally came under the authority of the Auckland Grammar Schools' Board. Auckland's grammar schools share a common line of descent from the British grammar school system, with a strong focus on academics and traditional British sports. Originally, the schools used entry assessments and selected academic students from across New Zealand. The schools mentioned below all share the school motto: "Per Angusta Ad Augusta" (Through difficulties to honours). They also share the same icon/logo, the "Auckland Grammar Lion". Today, all grammar schools in New Zealand are non-selective state schools, but they use school donations to supplement their government funding. Within the Ministry of Education, they are regarded as any other secondary institutions.


title: Grammar school

text: New Zealand did not establish a state education system until 1877. The absence of a national education system meant that the first sizable secondary-education providers were grammar schools and other private institutions. The first grammar school in New Zealand, Auckland Grammar School, was established in 1850 and formally recognised as an educational establishment in 1868 by the Auckland Grammar School Appropriation Act. In 1888, Auckland Girls' Grammar School was established. In 1917 Auckland Grammar School's sister school was established, Epsom Girls' Grammar School. In 1922, Mount Albert Grammar School was established as part of Auckland Grammar School. Both schools have since become separate institutions. Takapuna Grammar School was established in 1927 and was the first co-educational grammar school to be established in New Zealand.


title: Revenant

text: In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living. The word "revenant" is derived from the Old French word, "revenant", the "returning" (see also the related French verb "revenir", meaning "to come back").


title: Revenant

text: Revenants are part of the legend of various cultures, including Old Irish Celtic and Norse mythology, and stories of supposed revenant visitations were documented by English historians in the Middle Ages.


title: Revenant

text: The term "revenant" has been used interchangeably with "ghost" by folklorists. While some maintain that vampires derive from Eastern European folklore and revenants derive from Western European folklore, many assert that revenant is a generic term for the undead.


title: Revenant

text: Augustin Calmet conducted extensive research on the topic in his work titled "Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c." (1751) in which he relates the rumors of men at the time: Calmet compares the ideas of the Greek and Egyptian ancients and notes an old belief that magic could not only cause death but also evoke the souls of the deceased as well. Calmet ascribed revenants to sorcerers who sucked the blood of victims and compares instances of revenants mentioned in the twelfth century in England and Denmark as similar to those of Hungary, but "in no history do we read anything so usual or so pronounced, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary, and Moravia."


title: Revenant

text: A possible precursor of the revenant legend appears in Norse mythology, called the draugr or "aptrgangr" (literally "again-walker", meaning one who walks after death). Stories involving the draugr often involve confrontations with the creature. The draugr resists intruders to its burial mound and is often immune to conventional weapons, which renders the destruction of its body a dangerous affair to be undertaken by individual heroes.


title: Revenant

text: In the folklore and ghost stories of Eastern Scandinavia, Finnish "dead-child beings" are described as revenants animated by restless spirits that could be laid to rest by performing baptism or other religious rites.


title: Revenant

text: References to revenant-like beings in Caribbean lore are often referred to as "The soucouyant" or "soucriant" in Dominica, Trinidadian and Guadeloupean folklore, also known as Ole-Higue or Loup-garou elsewhere in the Caribbean.


title: Revenant

text: Belief in souls returning from the dead was common in the 12th century, and "Historia" by William of Newburgh (1136–1198) briefly recounts stories he heard about revenants, as do works by his contemporary, Walter Map.


title: Revenant

text: William wrote that stories of supposed revenants were a "warning to posterity" and so common that, "were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome." According to William, "It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony."


title: Revenant

text: One story involves a man of "evil conduct" absconding from justice, who fled from York and made the ill-fated choice to get married. Becoming jealous of his wife, he hid in the rafters of his bedroom and caught her in an act of infidelity with a local young man, but then accidentally fell to the floor mortally wounding himself, and died a few days later. As Newburgh describes:


title: Revenant

text: A Christian burial, indeed, he received, though unworthy of it; but it did not much benefit him: for issuing, by the handiwork of Satan, from his grave at night-time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster.


title: Revenant

text: Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames...


title: Revenant

text: In another story Newburgh tells of a woman whose husband recently died. The husband revives from the dead and comes to visit her at night in her bedchamber and he "...not only terrified her on awaking, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body." This happens for three nights, and the revenant then repeats these nocturnal visits with other nearby family and neighbours and "...thus become a like serious nuisance," eventually extending his walks in the broad daylight around the village. Eventually the problem was solved by the bishop of Lincoln who wrote a letter of absolution, upon which the man's tomb was opened wherein it was seen his body was still there, the letter was placed on his chest, and the tomb sealed.


title: Revenant

text: The English Abbot of Burton tells the story of two runaway peasants from about 1090 who died suddenly of unknown causes and were buried, but:


title: Revenant

text: the very same day in which they were interred they appeared at evening, while the sun was still up, carrying on their shoulders the wooden coffins in which they had been buried. The whole following night they walked through the paths and fields of the village, now in the shape of men carrying wooden coffins on their shoulders, now in the likeness of bears or dogs or other animals. They spoke to the other peasants, banging on the walls of their houses and shouting "Move quickly, move! Get going! Come!"


title: Revenant

text: The villagers became sick and started dying, but eventually the bodies of the revenants were exhumed, their heads cut off, and their hearts removed, which ended the spread of the sickness.


title: Revenant

text: The chronicler Walter Map, a Welshman writing during the 12th century, tells of a "wicked man" in Hereford who revived from the dead and wandered the streets of his village at night calling out the names of those who would die of sickness within three days. The response by bishop Gilbert Foliot was "Dig up the body and cut off the head with a spade, sprinkle it with holy water and re-inter it".


title: Revenant

text: The lead characters of The Crow comic and movie series such as Eric Draven could be considered Revenants.


title: Jetstar

text: Jetstar Airways Pty Ltd, operating as Jetstar, is an Australian low-cost airline (self-described as "value-based") headquartered in Melbourne. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qantas, created in response to the threat posed by airline Virgin Blue. Jetstar is part of Qantas' two brand strategy of having Qantas Airways for the premium full-service market and Jetstar for the low-cost market. Jetstar carries 8.5% of all passengers travelling in and out of Australia.


title: Jetstar

text: The airline operates an extensive domestic network as well as regional and international services from its main base at Melbourne Airport, using a mixed fleet of the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Like its Qantas parent, Jetstar competes with Virgin Australia.


title: Jetstar

text: Qantas, through the Jetstar Group, also has stakes in sister airlines Jetstar Asia Airways and Jetstar Japan.


title: Jetstar

text: The airline was established by Qantas in 2003 as a low-cost domestic subsidiary, under then-CEO Bruce Buchanan. Qantas had previously acquired Impulse Airlines on 20 November 2001 and operated it under the QantasLink brand, but following the decision to launch a low-cost carrier, re-launched the airline under the Jetstar brand. Domestic passenger services began on 25 May 2004, soon after the sale of tickets for its inaugural flight in February 2004. International services to Christchurch, New Zealand, commenced on 1 December 2005. Although owned by Qantas, its management operates largely independent of Qantas through the company formerly known as Impulse Airlines.


title: Jetstar

text: Originally the airline was headquartered on the grounds of Avalon Airport near Melbourne, and started flying out of Avalon Airport in mid-2004, but has since relocated its registered office to the Melbourne CBD.


title: Jetstar

text: Despite its low-cost ethos, Jetstar currently offers a limited number of connecting services without through baggage checking – though this has changed since international flights commenced in November 2006. Baggage connectivity was added as a service offering for domestic flights connecting with international flights.


title: Jetstar

text: Reserved seating is currently provided on all routes and on 4 October 2006, Jetstar became the first Australian airline to allow customers to select their seat upon booking. Sister airline Jetstar Asia Airways took off from its Singapore hub to Hong Kong on 13 December 2004. This marked Qantas' entry into the Asian low-cost market and signified its intention to battle key competitor Singapore Airlines on its home ground. Qantas has a 49% stake in Jetstar Asia's ownership.


title: Jetstar

text: On 1 December 2005, Jetstar commenced operations from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast to Christchurch in New Zealand. On 7 December 2005, it was announced that Jetstar would establish the world's first global low-cost airline. At the end of 2005, it was announced that Jetstar would fly to Perth, from Avalon Airport.


title: Jetstar

text: In July 2006, Jetstar and Jetstar Asia were brought together under the "Jetstar" brand. Online bookings for both carriers were integrated into Jetstar.com.


title: Jetstar

text: In July 2007, Qantas acquired an 18% stake in Vietnam's Pacific Airlines, to increase to 30% by 2010. The airline was relaunched on 23 May 2008 as "Jetstar Pacific".


title: Jetstar

text: On 1 August 2008, Jetstar announced that it had signed an agreement with the Northern Territory Government to make Darwin International Airport an international hub with plans for seven aircraft to be based in Darwin. Under the agreement, Jetstar would be required to base three aircraft at Darwin by June 2009, with a further four by June 2012, with the Northern Territory Government to provide $5 million to set up the hub and a further $3 million for promotion of the new routes. In December 2013, Jetstar announced that it would be closing the Darwin base in May 2014 and re-positioning the based aircraft to Adelaide. Flights to Tokyo via Manila were to be discontinued while services to Singapore would be operated by Jetstar Asia with Singapore-based aircraft. The base closure was attributed to cost-cutting measures by parent company Qantas as well as increased competition from the re-introduction of flights by Asian carriers into Darwin airport.


title: Jetstar

text: On 28 April 2009, Jetstar commenced daily direct services from Auckland to the Gold Coast and Sydney. On 10 June 2009, Jetstar commenced domestic New Zealand flights between Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown using Airbus A320 aircraft; services to Dunedin commenced later. Jetstar replaced Qantas subsidiary Jetconnect on these routes.


title: Jetstar

text: From 1 February 2011, Jetstar started its co-operation with the oneworld alliance, allowing people booking an itinerary with a full oneworld member to include a Jetstar flight in the itinerary. However, the flight must be sold via Jetstar's corporate parent Qantas, under a QF flight number.


title: Jetstar

text: In August 2011, Jetstar's parent Qantas announced that it would set up a new airline to be called Jetstar Japan, a joint venture of Jetstar, Japan Airlines, and Mitsubishi. The airline was expected to start operating in December 2012, but then launched ahead of schedule on 3 July 2012.


title: Jetstar

text: In March 2012, another Asian Jetstar branded airline was announced, Jetstar Hong Kong, a strategic partnership between Qantas and China Eastern Airlines, which was expected to commence operations in 2013. Although it took delivery of aircraft, Jetstar Hong Kong never commenced operations due to a revoked licence application.


title: Jetstar

text: In November 2013, Jetstar moved its head office from Melbourne's CBD to the suburb of Collingwood. In February 2014, Jetstar signed a codeshare agreement with Emirates Airlines as a continuation of the agreement between Emirates and Qantas, Jetstar's parent airline.


title: Jetstar

text: In mid-2014, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took legal action against Jetstar and competitor Virgin Australia in respect of drip pricing. In November 2015 the Federal Court of Australia found that the ACCC's claims that the two airlines engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct by carrying out drip pricing were proven. In September 2022, The Qantas Group has appointed Stephanie Tully as the new CEO of Jetstar.


title: Jetstar

text: In June 2015, Jetstar announced that it would commence regional services in New Zealand, beginning in December 2015. The new services would be flown by five turboprops Bombardier Dash 8s operated by Eastern Australia Airlines—one of Qantas' subsidiary regional airlines—under the Jetstar brand. At least four new destinations would be served initially, with Hamilton, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Napier, Palmerston North, Nelson and Invercargill named as the cities under consideration. On 31 August 2015, Jetstar announced it had selected the first four regional centres it would serve at the commencement of operations on 1 December; these were Napier, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Palmerston North. All four cities had services to Auckland; Nelson also had services to Wellington.


title: Jetstar

text: Jetstar announced in November 2019 that they would be ceasing all of their regional routes in New Zealand due because the routes were loss-making.


title: Jetstar

text: In mid-March 2020, Jetstar suspended their New Zealand operations in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. On 15 August, Jetstar suspended its domestic operations in New Zealand after the Government implemented social distancing rules in response to a second outbreak in Auckland that month. The airline attracted criticism after it refused to offer cash refunds to passengers whose flights were affected by the cancellation, instead offering travel vouchers or to change dates.


title: Jetstar

text: In mid-September 2020, Jetstar announced that it was resuming domestic flights in New Zealand after the New Zealand Government eliminated physical distancing requirements on aircraft.