title: Gettier problem

text: According to Nozick's view this fulfills all four premises. Therefore this is knowledge, since Jones couldn't have been wrong, since the fake barns cannot be painted red. This is a troubling account however, since it seems the first statement "I see a barn" can be inferred from "I see a red barn"; however by Nozick's view the first belief is "not" knowledge and the second is knowledge.


title: Gettier problem

text: In the first chapter of his book "Pyrronian Reflexions on Truth and Justification", Robert Fogelin gives a diagnosis that leads to a dialogical solution to Gettier's problem. The problem always arises when the given justification has nothing to do with what really makes the proposition true. Now, he notes that in such cases there is always a mismatch between the information disponible to the person who makes the knowledge-claim of some proposition p and the information disponible to the evaluator of this knowledge-claim (even if the evaluator is the same person in a later time). A Gettierian counterexample arises when the justification given by the person who makes the knowledge-claim cannot be accepted by the knowledge evaluator because it does not fit with his wider informational setting. For instance, in the case of the fake barn the evaluator knows that a superficial inspection from someone who does not know the peculiar circumstances involved isn't a justification acceptable as making the proposition p (that it is a real barn) true.


title: Gettier problem

text: Richard Kirkham has proposed that it is best to start with a definition of knowledge so strong that giving a counterexample to it is logically impossible. Whether it can be weakened without becoming subject to a counterexample should then be checked. He concludes that there will always be a counterexample to any definition of knowledge in which the believer's evidence does not logically necessitate the belief. Since in most cases the believer's evidence does not necessitate a belief, Kirkham embraces skepticism about knowledge. He notes that a belief can still be rational even if it is not an item of knowledge. (see also: fallibilism)


title: Gettier problem

text: One might respond to Gettier by finding a way to avoid his conclusion(s) in the first place. However, it can hardly be argued that knowledge is justified true belief if there are cases that are justified true belief without being knowledge; thus, those who want to avoid Gettier's conclusions have to find some way to defuse Gettier's counterexamples. In order to do so, within the parameters of the particular counter-example or exemplar, they must then either accept that


title: Gettier problem

text: or, demonstrate a case in which it is possible to circumvent surrender to the exemplar by eliminating any necessity for it to be considered that JTB apply in just those areas that Gettier has rendered obscure, without thereby lessening the force of JTB to apply in those cases where it actually is crucial.


title: Gettier problem

text: Then, though Gettier's cases "stipulate" that Smith has a certain belief and that his belief is true, it seems that in order to propose (1), one must argue that Gettier, (or, that is, the writer responsible for the particular form of words on this present occasion known as case (1), and who makes assertion's about Smith's "putative" beliefs), goes wrong because he has the wrong notion of "justification." Such an argument often depends on an externalist account on which "justification" is understood in such a way that whether or not a belief is "justified" depends not just on the internal state of the believer, but also on how that internal state is related to the outside world. Externalist accounts typically are constructed such that Smith's putative beliefs in Case I and Case II are not really justified (even though it seems to Smith that they are), because his beliefs are not lined up with the world in the right way, or that it is possible to show that it is invalid to assert that "Smith" has any significant "particular" belief at all, in terms of JTB or otherwise. Such accounts, of course, face the same burden as causalist responses to Gettier: they have to explain what sort of relationship between the world and the believer counts as a justificatory relationship.


title: Gettier problem

text: Those who accept (2) are by far in the minority in analytic philosophy; generally, those who are willing to accept it are those who have independent reasons to say that more things count as knowledge than the intuitions that led to the JTB account would acknowledge. Chief among these is epistemic minimalists, Crispin Sartwell, who hold that all true belief, including both Gettier's cases and lucky guesses, counts as knowledge.


title: Gettier problem

text: Some early work in the field of experimental philosophy suggested that traditional intuitions about Gettier cases might vary cross-culturally. However, subsequent studies have consistently failed to replicate these results, instead finding that participants from different cultures do share the traditional intuition. More recent studies have been providing evidence for the opposite hypothesis, that people from a variety of different cultures have similar intuitions in these cases.


title: Shaurya

text: Shaurya (English: "Gallantry") is a 2008 courtroom drama film directed by Samar Khan, starring Kay Kay Menon, Rahul Bose, Javed Jaffrey, Deepak Dobriyal and Minissha Lamba. The film is inspired by the Hindi play "Court Martial " by Swadesh Deepak and is loosely based on the 1992 courtroom drama "A Few Good Men".


title: Shaurya

text: Set in the context of the Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, The film presents a fictional storyline which revolves around the court-martial of an Indian Army officer Javed Khan for shooting dead his superior officer. During the court-martial, the circumstances leading up to the fratricidal murder are gradually revealed.


title: Shaurya

text: The film opens with a sequence where a group of Indian Army Soldiers cordons off a Village; as a part of Counter-Insurgency Operation; in the Punj Area of Pulwama Dist in Kashmir Valley. After numerous chase sequences, the shot ends with an army officer being shot by his colleague. The offending officer instead of escaping promptly surrenders and is then taken into custody by his colleagues.


title: Shaurya

text: The film then shifts to New Delhi, where we are introduced to best friends and Army Lawyers Major Siddhant Chaudhary and Major Akash Kapoor. While best friends, they both have contrasting personalities, with Akash being a dedicated Army Lawyer and Sidharth being an immature and care-free Army Officer. Siddhant (fondly called Sid), being the son of a highly decorated army officer, often feels compelled to live up to his father's legacy and therefore he reluctantly chooses to join the army. However, he himself has no plans for an army career and is therefore on the lookout for any chance to quit the army for an adventurous life.


title: Shaurya

text: In the present day, Akash is marrying his fiancée Nandini, with Sid as his best man. Post-wedding, Akash informs Sid that their postings are now due; with Akash himself expecting to get posted in Srinagar. A rather excited Siddhant asks Akash to swing his posting too so that they both could be posted together. Akash, despite his misgivings, agrees to Sid's demands and thus makes an official request to the Army HQ, thus ensuring the same posting for Siddhant.


title: Shaurya

text: A week prior to departure, Siddhant becomes aware of him being appointed as a defence lawyer and Akash being appointed the prosecuting lawyer, in a murder case involving two army officers, both belonging to the elite Rashtriya Rifles. On being aware about the nature of his new posting, Siddhant, who had the hopes of a tension-free tenure; throws a childish fit, but ends up getting shut up by an annoyed Akash.


title: Shaurya

text: Meanwhile, a young aspiring Srinagar-based journalist Kavya Shastri, in the hopes of a big story; chances upon the murder case involving two Army Officers. On further research, Kavya gathers that their names were Capt. Javed Khan and Major Virendra Singh Rathore; who, when deployed for a CI operation; got into an argument, which ended with Javed fatally shooting Rathore. An army inquiry deems Javed guilty of insubordination and murder and is then to be subjected to a General Court Martial after a show trial.


title: Shaurya

text: An enthusiastic Kavya attempts to approach Javed, to get his side of story, but her efforts fail as the army authorities flatly refuse her request. Meanwhile, both Akash and Sid arrive in Srinagar, post which the duo get briefed by their CO, about the case. After the briefing, Siddhant heads out to meet Javed, for a better understanding of the case.


title: Shaurya

text: Javed and Sid meet at the Barracks, where Sid makes a poor attempt at interrogation. Javed, unimpressed with Siddhant's immaturity, refuses to acknowledge him and continues maintaining a stoic silence. Javed's behavior angers and frustrates Siddhant, who ends up leaving in a huff.


title: Shaurya

text: Sid later confides his fears and doubts about the case to Akash; who is understanding of Sid's dilemma. Akash advises Sid to just plead guilty on Javed's behalf, while he promises to take care of all the prosecution work. To cheer up Sid, Akash points out the absurdity of the case, terming it open and shut. According to Akash, Javed is the guilty party and the case itself is unsubstantiated, thus making prosecution a cakewalk.


title: Shaurya

text: Meanwhile, Kavya, on hearing about the trial, tries to reach out to Siddhant. Sid, on meeting Kavya, gets attracted to her and relentlessly tries to flirt with her. He even attempts to bluff his way through the case; despite not having any idea himself; just to impress her.


title: Shaurya

text: His efforts however miserably fail as the unimpressed Kavya calls out Sid and exposes his lies about the case. She further points out that as the defence lawyer it's Sid's responsibility to properly analyze the case and present the facts. Before leaving she further tries to make Sid realize the consequences of his decisions and their impact on his life. However while flirting, Sid accidentally mentions a senior army officer Brig Pratap; who happens to be Javed's and Rathore's commanding officer. Kavya gets intrigued and presses for more information but Siddhant hastily covers up, thus prompting a disappointed Kavya to leave.


title: Shaurya

text: After the meeting, however, Kavya heads to her office where she writes and later publishes a slanderous article about Brigadier Pratap in a local daily; with naming Siddhant as the source of information. The article spreads like wildfire and ends up causing huge embarrassment to the Army, thus leading Siddhant to get hauled up by his superiors.


title: Shaurya

text: A furious Siddhant later confronts Kavya and accuses her of betrayal and cheap sensationalism, at the cost of his reputation. Kavya instead hits back and accuses Siddhant of negligence and immaturity. She further tells him to focus on his job rather than worrying about a silly article.


title: Shaurya

text: Siddhant's superiors reprimand him for his actions as Brigadier Pratap is later revealed to be a highly decorated officer with a spotless reputation. Siddhant wishes for a meeting with Brigadier Pratap so as to apologize to him in person. The authorities grant him the permission and Sid heads out to meet Pratap, who is deployed at a forward area near the LOC.


title: Shaurya

text: Sid, on meeting Pratap, gets intimidated. He profusely apologizes for his actions but Pratap simply brushes the incident away. Seeing Pratap's jovial mood, Sid tries to press Pratap for more information regarding the Rathore murder case; but a dismissive Pratap coldly rebuffs him. Sid then tries to get access to the scene of the crime and to his relief Pratap accepts his request. Siddhant analyzes the scene of the crime and suspects something amiss. He tries to reach out to the local populace but he encounters their distrust towards army personnel. Vowing to get to the bottom of the case, Sid heads back to Srinagar. He then meets up with Javed, informing him of his meeting with Brigadier Pratap. Javed, for the first time, speaks; and asks Sid whether he thinks Javed is innocent or guilty. A baffled Sid tells Javed that he will inform his decision to the court along with presenting all the necessary facts.


title: Shaurya

text: Later in the evening Siddhant and Kavya run into each other. Despite a rocky start Sid becomes warm towards Kavya, who herself starts appreciating Sid's honesty and commitment. Kavya informs Sid about a major cover-up regarding the Rathore murder case, involving Brigadier Pratap and cautions him to be careful. Sid privately agrees and tells her about his meeting with Pratap, with Kavya promising to help Siddhant in every way possible. She later hands him several documents crucial for the case. A grateful Sid thanks her and heads back to further analyze the case. After spending the whole night studying the case, Sid concludes that Javed may actually be innocent and instead be a victim of a cover-up.


title: Shaurya

text: A now-matured Siddhant decides to take the case head-on. On the day of the prosecution, Siddhant blatantly goes against Akash's advice and to the surprise of many (including Javed himself), declares Javed as not guilty. His actions earn Akash's ire who calls him irresponsible. Sid however maintains his decision and vows to prove Javed's innocence. This causes a frosty relationship between the two best friends; which lasts for some time.


title: Shaurya

text: Meanwhile, Javed, after witnessing Siddhant's genuine efforts, decides to completely open up. He not only answers all of Siddhant's questions but also provides him with documents that prove Javed's innocence; thus helping him prepare a strong defence. Kavya, meanwhile, pays a visit to Javed's ancestral village, where she meets Javed's mother. Kavya gathers the necessary information and heads back to Srinagar. She then meets up with Siddhant and the duo chalk out a plan to prove Javed's innocence.


title: Shaurya

text: On the day of the trial, Sid presents a credible defense that effectively counters Akash's narrative. While questioning the witnesses who were present at the time of the incident, Sid finds one witness, Capt R.P. Singh, to be suspiciously evasive. However, before he could probe any further, the session ends in a stalemate. Sid later meets up with Kavya and informs her about the day's trial.


title: Shaurya

text: Kavya then suggests paying Maj. Rathore's family a visit. The next day both Sid and Kavya visit Rathore's home and meet his widow Neerja and her son Kshitij. Kavya attempts to press Neerja for valuable information, while Sid snoops around the house for clues, but both end up empty-handed. Sid remarks that it was indeed odd that both Neerja and Kshitij failed to turn up for Maj. Rathore's funeral; but Kavya reveals that their marriage was an abusive one and Rathore's death seems to have sort of liberated her from some sort of bondage. While heading back, Sid comes to startling conclusion that not only proves Javed's innocence all along but also proves Maj Rathore's guilt.


title: Shaurya

text: Kavya comes across evidence of the Indian Army's human rights violations. She, on further analysis, concludes that both Brigadier Pratap and Maj. Rathore; who were known to be very close; also have numerous complaints of human rights abuses against them. Kavya sends the necessary proofs to Siddhant but is arrested for trespassing on army area and trying to access sensitive information without due authorization. Sid tries to bail out Kavya but fails. Kavya conveys her suspicions to Sid and tells him to focus completely on the case.


title: Shaurya

text: One night Javed's mother pays Siddhant a visit. She pleads Sid to fairly judge her son; whereupon Siddhant promises a fair trial for Javed. Meanwhile, Neerja post several documents to Siddhant, after getting his address in his own sent gift to Neerja's son, that were important for the case. Sid on further probing finds a strong connection of the murder case with Brigadier Pratap. He then meets Pratap at his official residence. Pratap reveals that he was friends with Brigadier Shashank Chaudhary, Siddhant's father, for a long time. He further tells Siddhant not to spoil Brigadier Chaudhary's legacy. It's there when Sid becomes aware of his father's valor.


title: Shaurya

text: However, Siddhant's troubles increase when an important witness, Capt. R.P. Singh mysteriously vanishes without a trace. Sid concludes that R.P. Singh is a prime witness as he was the one to arrest Javed, thus it was important that R.P. Singh be found. A few days later, Sid gets carjacked by a masked individual, who later reveals himself to be R.P. Singh. He informs Sid that it was actually Maj. Rathore who was the guilty one while Javed was actually innocent. On further coaxing, R.P. Singh reveals the actual sequence of events of that night of the operation.


title: Shaurya

text: According to R.P. Singh, during the operation, Maj. Rathore brutalized several villagers and charged them of supporting Pakistan and being terrorist sympathizers. He further tortured a young boy in falsely accepting the charge of hoarding weapons. The sadistic Rathore, still not satisfied, shot the boy in cold blood, terrifying the villagers and horrifying the soldiers. Javed, on witnessing the killing, tries to appease an enraged Rathore, who instead accuses Javed of treason and tries to brutalize a young girl. A fed-up Javed promptly shoots down Rathore; thus saving the girl and the villagers. Here, R.P. Singh points out that despite a golden chance of escaping undetected and fully evading capture, Javed instead chose to surrender and accept his punishment.


title: Shaurya

text: Sid, satisfied with R.P. Singh's explanation, asks him to give his confession in the court, but to his great dismay, R.P. Singh refuses and instead runs into hiding, where he then kills himself. Thus with no credible witnesses available, Sid decides to take Brigadier Pratap to court. His decision shocks Akash and Kavya, both of whom caution Sid about the consequences of his actions.


title: Shaurya

text: Sid stands by his decision and on the day of the trial, Pratap makes an entry and heads towards the witness box. The trial begins poorly with Sid fumbling and Pratap getting the upper hand. A frustrated Siddhant decides to beat Pratap at his own game.


title: Shaurya

text: In the guise of a memory quiz, Sid reveals to everybody attending the trial that Brigadier Pratap's eight-year-old daughter and his wife were raped and murdered and his elderly mother burnt alive by their Muslim servant during a communal riot and coaxes Pratap into revealing his involvement in the Rathore murder case. Siddhant calls Pratap a coward and provokes him into launching into a fiery tirade that inadvertently exposes his anger towards Muslims and hatred for democracy.


title: Shaurya

text: Pratap justifies his actions in the name of nationalism and patriotism, but Sid calls out his bluff thus exposing Pratap's lie. In the end the Army Court declares Javed innocent, clearing him of all charges and restoring his rank and honours. They simultaneously order an inquiry against Brigadier Pratap.


title: Shaurya

text: In the final conclusion, a grateful Javed finally acknowledges Siddhant as an officer. Akash and Sid finally make peace and Siddhant later goes to meet Kavya.


title: Shaurya

text: The film was criticized for its simplistic handling of propaganda against Indian army,security issues. However, most critics praised the performances of the lead actors, in particular Rahul Bose and Kay Kay Menon, and acknowledged the film's noble intentions. The film did only average business at the box-office.


title: Moira Harris

text: Harris was born in Pontiac, Illinois and is a Roman Catholic convert. She graduated from Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. During her college years, she met her husband, Gary Sinise, and they have been married since 1981. They have three children.


title: Moira Harris

text: Harris has appeared in such films as "One More Saturday Night", "Of Mice and Men" (directed by and co-starring her husband), and "". She also played the evil trucker's wife in the Kurt Russell movie "Breakdown". She has made a guest appearances on the TV shows "Karen Sisco", "The Equalizer", and "Crime Story". At one time, she was a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company that Gary Sinise was instrumental in establishing. In 1987 she won a Chicago / Midwest Emmy Award for her role in "Murder in Green Meadows". She also starred in Disney's "Tall Tale" in 1995. Harris retired in 2003, although she briefly returned to the stage in 2013, appearing in Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" at Steppenwolf.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah (born David Paul Brown; February 15, 1957 – April 13, 2008) was an American convicted child molester and suspected cannibalistic serial killer who was sentenced to 130 years in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of the kidnapping, aggravated assault, and sexual assault of various children.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: David Paul Brown was born on February 15, 1957 in Worcester, Massachusetts. In late July 1964, a then seven-year-old Brown lured a five-year-old neighbor into his basement, telling her that he had received a Ouija board for his birthday that could predict the future. Once in his basement, Brown attempted to strangle the girl, but her screams attracted the attention of his mother, who came to her rescue.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: In January 1970, at the age of twelve, Brown managed to lure another neighbor, a six-year-old boy, to a nearby hill, claiming he wanted to go sledding with him. Once they arrived, however, Brown sexually assaulted the boy. A few years later, Brown attempted to lure two boys riding their bicycles down his street to a nearby cemetery, where he intended to murder them, but one of the boys grew suspicious and persuaded his friend not to go.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: In late March 1975, a then eighteen-year-old Brown, impersonating a police officer, abducted eight-year-old Richard O'Conner while he was on his way to school, then proceeded to sexually assault and strangle him. A neighbor, looking out of her window, observed the abduction and notified authorities, who began searching for the boy. A patrol car later observed a vehicle matching that used in the abduction parked far away from others in a parking lot, and after calling for backup, ordered Brown out of the car. O'Conner was found in the car bloodied, having defecated and urinated on himself from the sexual assault, and near the point of death.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: A few days before his high school graduation, Brown drove to nearby Hartford, Connecticut, and, again impersonating a police officer, abducted a nine-year-old girl. However, after the child began vomiting and convulsing from the assault, he drove up to a sidewalk and threw the girl out of the car. A nearby witness saw the incident and got Brown's license plate, leading to his arrest. This assault never got back to Brown's probation officer, and he was released from parole in May 1976 for his earlier abduction and sexual assault of O'Conner. When Brown's probationary period was over, he received a letter thanking him for his "cooperation."


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: On September 24, 1977, Brown, claiming to be an undercover FBI agent, convinced two boys coming out of the White City Cinemas in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, to enter his vehicle. He then transported the boys to a secluded area, where he handcuffed and then tortured them. After jumping repeatedly on the chest of one of the boys, the Brown believed he had killed him, then drove off with the other still alive in his trunk. However, the first boy regained consciousness and managed to find help, leading shortly thereafter to Brown's arrest; the other boy was found, still alive, in the trunk. For this crime, Brown was convicted of attempted murder and received the maximum sentence of eighteen to twenty years in prison. Brown was later transferred to the Bridgewater State Hospital.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: On March 22, 1984, Brown changed his name to Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah. He gave several reasons for changing his name: he told friends and relatives that he wanted to know what it was like to be discriminated against and persecuted as a Jew. During a later interview with Dr. Michael Stone for the television show "Most Evil", he claimed he was Jewish and wanted his name to reflect that. In fact, Brown's ethnic ancestry was Scandinavian and his parents were both active in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal movement, and he did not pursue any further connection to Judaism other than the name change.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Later in the same year, Superior Court Judge Walter E. Steele ruled that Massachusetts had failed to prove that Bar-Jonah was dangerous and he was released before moving to Great Falls, Montana. During this time, Bar-Jonah confided in his psychiatrists that he fantasized about abducting, murdering, and cannibalizing children.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: On August 9, 1991, just a month after being released from Bridgewater hospital, Bar-Jonah observed a seven-year-old boy sitting alone in a car outside of a post office in Oxford, Massachusetts. Bar-Jonah, who weighed at the time, entered the vehicle and sat on the boy's chest. Some witnesses, along with the boy's mother, observed the event and ran to the boy's rescue, causing Bar-Jonah to flee. An officer recognized Bar-Jonah's description from over fifteen years earlier, and he was later arrested for the attack. At first, Bar-Jonah claimed that he entered the car to get out of the rain, but later admitted that he intended to kill the boy. For the attack, Bar-Jonah was sentenced to probation in Montana.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: On February 6, 1996, ten-year old Zach Ramsay left his apartment at around 7:34 a.m. to attend school, taking his usual school route through an alleyway near the 400 block of 4th Street N. Ramsay was wearing a blue denim jacket with green sleeves, a blue football jersey with his last name imprinted on the back in gold letters, stonewashed jeans, and black high-top sneakers.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: A family of three who lived in an apartment in the alleyway reported seeing Ramsay there that morning, and also reported seeing an off-white, four-door car nearly run him over. Another witness reported seeing Ramsay standing in the alleyway and that he appeared to be "waiting for someone." Yet another witness, who lived near the end of the alleyway, reported seeing Ramsay distressed with an obese adult male following him a few feet behind at about 7:45 a.m. A witness reported seeing Bar-Jonah standing beside a dumpster in the alleyway at 7:15 a.m. while taking out the trash; he was wearing a navy-blue "police-like" jacket. The same witness also reported seeing Ramsay enter the alleyway later and that Bar-Jonah was still standing beside the dumpster.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Somewhere between where the alleyway cuts into 6th Street and comes out at 7th, Ramsay disappeared and he was never found. Despite the objections of Ramsay's mother, a judge declared him legally dead in 2011.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Police investigations conducted years after Ramsay went missing determined that Bar-Jonah had access to his mother's off-white, four-door 1978 Toyota Corolla the day the boy disappeared, and that his mother and brother were out of town for a funeral. It was moreover determined that Bar-Jonah did not work on February 6 of 1996, nor on the days immediately preceding. While searching Bar-Jonah's apartment, detectives found a list of boys' names which included previous victims and a "Zackery Ramsey," followed by the word "DIED." Furthermore, dozens of newspaper clippings were found in Bar-Jonah's apartment following the Ramsay case. A former roommate of Bar-Jonah described finding clothes in his apartment which appeared to match those Ramsay was wearing the day he disappeared, in addition to bloody gloves. Another roommate and others claimed that Bar-Jonah sometimes spontaneously brought up the boy in conversations. Investigators also found notebooks with seemingly arbitrary characters which were believed to be coded writing. With the help of the FBI, and after months of effort, the writing was decoded; in the notebooks, Bar-Jonah described torturing and eating children; there were also macabre recipes involving children's body parts.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: When detectives sprayed Bar-Jonah's garage with a phosphorus chemical while investigating his involvement in the Ramsay disappearance, the word "Tita" appeared, which led authorities to believe that Bar-Jonah may have been responsible for the abduction of James Teta, a Massachusetts boy who was kidnapped on August 23, 1973. Teta's body was discovered on August 25, 1973, in Rindge, New Hampshire, off of Route 119; an autopsy revealed that he had been raped and strangled.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Bar-Jonah was arrested again in 1999, initially for impersonating a police officer. After searching his home and finding, among other things, many pictures of young children cut out of magazines and a bone that was identified as belonging to an unknown young male, Montana police charged Bar-Jonah with kidnapping and sexual assault, as well as the kidnapping and sexual assault of three other boys, and the murder of Zach Ramsey. Prosecutors announced they would be seeking the death penalty


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Bar-Jonah was prosecuted for the abduction and molestation of three boys and convicted of kidnapping, aggravated assault, and sexual assault, including charges that he had tortured one of the boys and hung him from the ceiling. Zacharay Ramsey's mother was swayed by Bar-Jonah's defense team to testify for them that she believed her son was still alive, which led jurors not to convict Bar-Jonah for his murder, although they were not at all convinced he was not an extreme child predator and dangerous sexual deviant. During Bar-Jonah's trial, 36-year-old Mary Patrone recognized him as the man who had abducted and assaulted her by dressing as a police officer in 1974. However, the statute of limitations had expired, and Bar-Jonah could not be charged with the crime. Investigators also suspected Bar-Jonah in the disappearance of seven-year-old Janice Pockett 10 months earlier. Bar-Jonah was sentenced to 130 years in prison. He maintained his innocence up until his death.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Montana authorities were unaware of Bar-Jonah's criminal record in Massachusetts, a fact that was cited by activists campaigning to force former sex offenders to register. In December 2004, the Montana Supreme Court turned down Bar-Jonah's appeals and upheld the conviction and 130-year prison sentence.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Bar-Jonah was found unresponsive in his prison cell on the morning of April 13, 2008. He had been in poor health. His post mortem found significant levels of LDL in his arteries and myocardial infarction was the determined cause of death.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Bar-Jonah's earliest interest in the taste of human flesh can be traced to his childhood. Beginning at about the age of six, he would pick at his scabs until they bled, then proceed to suck on the blood from the wound. His teachers at Webster Elementary School would call his mother numerous times to notify her that her son's habit was upsetting to the teachers and students. When he was incarcerated in Montana State Prison, many of the guards observed him perform the same habit. One guard reported that once Bar-Jonah had the scab in his mouth that he "appeared to be having sex." While incarcerated at Bridgewater State Hospital, Bar-Jonah confided in his psychiatrists about his murderous and cannibalistic ideations. One of his therapists noted, "Brown's sexual fantasies, bizarre in nature, outline methods of torture [and] extend… to dissection and cannibalism" and again "express a curiosity about the taste of human flesh."


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: Although Bar-Jonah was known to be a voracious eater who weighed in excess of , financial records indicated that he had not made any significant grocery store purchases for nearly a month after Ramsay disappeared. However, he could have also paid for any groceries using cash or have been well-stocked on food and meat. After Ramsay's disappearance, Bar-Jonah also began to hold cookouts in which he was reported to serve burgers, spaghetti, chili, meat pies, casseroles, and the like to guests. At many of these cookouts, a number of persons told Bar-Jonah that the meat had a peculiar taste to it; Bar-Jonah's response was that he had gone deer hunting and used deer meat in the dishes. However, Bar-Jonah did not own a rifle or a hunting license, nor had he been deer hunting at any time. To one woman, who told Bar-Jonah that she found the taste of his meat to be repulsive, he replied that he had personally "hunted, killed, butchered and wrapped the meat" of the deer. He would later be accused of molesting this woman's son.


title: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

text: In Bar-Jonah's apartment, detectives also found a number of recipes using children's body parts with contemptuous titles such as "little boy pot pie," "french fried kid," and phrases such as "lunch is served on the patio with roasted child." In the decoded journals, Bar-Jonah also referenced serving these recipes to neighbors. Also, hair was found inside a meat grinder in his apartment; when the hair was tested for DNA, it was found to belong to an African-American male, but did not belong to Ramsay. The DNA of the hair was also different from the child bone fragments found in Bar-Jonah's garage, which also did not belong to Ramsay.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: "Kiwi" ( ) is a common self-reference used by New Zealanders, though it is also used internationally. Unlike many demographic labels, its usage is not considered offensive; rather, it is generally viewed as a symbol of pride and affection for most people of New Zealand.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: The name derives from the kiwi, a native flightless bird, which is a national symbol of New Zealand. Until the First World War, the kiwi represented the country and not the people; however, by 1917, New Zealanders were also being called "Kiwis", supplanting other nicknames such as "Enzedder".


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: The kiwi has long had a special significance for the indigenous Māori people, who used its skin to make feather cloaks () for chiefs. The bird first came to European attention in 1811 when a skin ended up in the hands of a British Museum zoologist, George Shaw, who classified it as a type of penguin and portrayed it as standing upright. After early sightings by Europeans the kiwi was regarded as a curiosity; in 1835 the missionary William Yate described it as "the most remarkable and curious bird in New Zealand".


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: In the early 1900s cartoonists began to use the kiwi as a representation of New Zealand. For example, in a 1904 "New Zealand Free Lance" cartoon a plucky kiwi is shown growing to a moa after a rugby victory of 9–3 over a British team. The next year, "The Westminster Gazette" printed a cartoon of a kiwi and a kangaroo (representing Australia) going off to a colonial conference. Trevor Lloyd, who worked for "The New Zealand Herald", also used a kiwi to represent the All Blacks rugby team, but he more often drew a moa. Other symbols for New Zealand at this time included the silver fern, a small boy, and a young lion cub. But until the First World War the kiwi was used as a symbol of the country rather than the people of New Zealand.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: In the early-20th century, New Zealanders, especially soldiers and All Blacks players, were referred to internationally as "En Zed(der)s" (derived from the initials of the country's name, N.Z.) or "Maorilanders" (in reference to the Māori people and their historical contribution to the country). These terms were still being used near the end of the First World War of 1914–18. However, although New Zealand soldiers were often described as "Diggers" or as "Pig Islanders", by 1917 they were also being called "Kiwis".


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: The image of the kiwi had appeared on military badges since the South Canterbury Battalion used it in 1886, and several regiments took it up in the First World War. "Kiwis" came to mean the men of New Zealand regiments. The nickname is not thought to have originated as a reference to the physical attributes of the New Zealand servicemen (i.e. implying they were short and stocky or nocturnal like the bird). It was simply that the kiwi was distinct and unique to the country. Its prominent use on the New Zealand regiments' insignia also made for easy association. The nickname eventually became common usage in all war theatres.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: After the end of the First World War in November 1918, many New Zealand troops stayed in Europe for months or years awaiting transport home. At Sling Camp, near Bulford on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, New Zealand soldiers carved a chalk kiwi into the nearby hill in early 1919. The New Zealanders' presence popularised the nickname within Europe.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: An Australian boot polish called "Kiwi" was widely used in the imperial forces. William Ramsay, a developer of the product, named the polish in honour of his wife's birthplace, New Zealand. Beginning in 1906, Kiwi Shoe Polish eventually became widely sold in the UK and the US, and the symbol became more widely known. "The Australian National Dictionary" also gives the first use of the term "Kiwi Kids" and "Kiwis" in 1917, to mean Australian army recruits who had "kiwied up"; in other words, they had highly-polished boots.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: Following the Second World War of 1939–1945 the term gradually became attributed to all New Zealanders, and today throughout the world they are referred to as Kiwis, as well as often referring to themselves that way.


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: Spelling of the word "Kiwi", when used to describe the people, is often capitalised. The bird's name is spelled with a lower-case "k" and, being a word of Māori origin, normally stays as "kiwi" when pluralised. As an English word, the nickname normally takes the plural form "Kiwis". Thus, "two Kiwis" refers to two people, whereas "two kiwi" refers to two birds. This linguistic nicety is exemplified by the conservation trust Save the Kiwi, which used the slogan "Kiwis for kiwi". In 2020, Kiwibank shifted to using the plural form "Kiwi" (capitalised but without the terminal "-s") to refer to the people, most prominently changing its slogan from "Kiwis making Kiwis better off" to "Kiwi making Kiwi better off".


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: Kiwi is not generally considered to be a derogatory term, however there are New Zealanders, including some with Māori heritage, that find the appellation jarring and prefer not to identify with it. In 2018, a South Australian employment tribunal ruled that the nickname was not discriminatory, after a New Zealander unsuccessfully argued that she was a victim of racial discrimination after being labelled a "Kiwi".


title: Kiwi (nickname)

text: In an official context, the term "kiwi" has been used in the name of government services and state-owned enterprises, such as Kiwibank, KiwiSaver, and KiwiRail, and is frequently used in government press releases to refer to everyone in or of New Zealand. In August 2022, Minister of Immigration Michael Wood referred to 85,000 holders of recently approved New Zealand 2021 resident visas as "new Kiwis".


title: Operation Castle

text: Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed "Operation Upshot–Knothole" and preceded "Operation Teapot".


title: Operation Castle

text: Conducted as a joint venture between the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Department of Defense (DoD), the ultimate objective of the operation was to test designs for an aircraft-deliverable thermonuclear weapon. All the devices tested, which ranged in weight from , were built to be dropped from aircraft. However, ballistic casings, fins and fusing systems would have to be attached.


title: Operation Castle

text: Operation Castle was considered by government officials to be a success as it proved the feasibility of deployable "dry" fuel designs for thermonuclear weapons. There were technical difficulties with some of the tests: one device had a yield much lower than predicted (a "fizzle"), while two other bombs detonated with over twice their predicted yields. One test in particular, "Castle Bravo", resulted in extensive radiological contamination. The fallout affected nearby islands including inhabitants and U.S. soldiers stationed there, as well as a nearby Japanese fishing boat (the "Daigo Fukuryū Maru"), resulting in one direct fatality, and then continued health problems for many of those exposed. Public reaction to the tests and an awareness of the long-range effects of nuclear fallout has been attributed as being part of the motivation for the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.


title: Operation Castle

text: Bikini Atoll had previously hosted nuclear testing in 1946 as part of "Operation Crossroads" where the world's fourth and fifth atomic weapons were detonated in Bikini Lagoon. Since then, American nuclear weapons testing had moved to the Enewetak Atoll to take advantage of generally larger islands and deeper water. Both atolls were part of the American Pacific Proving Grounds.


title: Operation Castle

text: The extremely high yields of the Castle weapons caused concern within the AEC that potential damage to the limited infrastructure already established at Enewetak would delay other operations. Additionally, the cratering from the "Castle" weapons was expected to be comparable to that of "Ivy Mike", a 10.4 megatons of TNT (Mt) device tested at Enewetak in 1952 leaving a crater approximately in diameter marking the location of the obliterated test island Elugelab.


title: Operation Castle

text: The "Ivy Mike" test was the world's first "hydrogen bomb", producing a full-scale thermonuclear or fusion explosion. The "Ivy Mike" device used liquid deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, making it a "wet" bomb. The complex dewar mechanisms needed to store the liquid deuterium at cryogenic temperatures made the device three stories tall and 82 tons in total weight, far too heavy and bulky to be a usable weapon. With the success of "Ivy Mike" as proof of the Teller-Ulam bomb concept, research began on using a "dry" fuel to make a practical fusion weapon so that the United States could begin production and deployment of thermonuclear weapons in quantity. The final result incorporated lithium deuteride as the fusion fuel in the Teller-Ulam design, vastly reducing size and weight and simplifying the overall design. "Operation Castle" was charted to test four dry fuel designs, two wet bombs, and one smaller device. The approval for "Operation Castle" was issued to JTF-7 by Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, the General Manager of the AEC, on January 21, 1954.


title: Operation Castle

text: "Operation Castle" was organized into seven experiments, all but one of which were to take place at Bikini Atoll. Below is the original test schedule (as of February 1954).


title: Operation Castle

text: The "Echo" test was canceled due to the liquid fuel design becoming obsolete with the success of dry-fueled "Bravo" as noted above. "Yankee" was similarly considered obsolete and the Jughead device was replaced with a "Runt II" device (similar to the "Union device"), which was hastily completed at Los Alamos and flown to Bikini. With this revision, both of the wet fuel devices were removed from the test schedule.


title: Operation Castle

text: "Operation Castle" was intended to test lithium deuteride (LiD) as a thermonuclear fusion fuel. A solid at room temperature, LiD, if it worked, would be far more practical than the cryogenic liquid deuterium fuel in the Ivy Mike device. The same Teller-Ulam principle would be used as in the "Ivy Mike" so-called "Sausage" device, but the fusion reactions were different. "Ivy Mike" fused deuterium with deuterium, but the LiD devices would fuse deuterium with tritium. The tritium was produced during the explosion by irradiating the lithium with fast neutrons.


title: Operation Castle

text: "Bravo", "Yankee (II)", and "Union" used lithium enriched in the Li-6 isotope ("Bravo" and "Yankee" used lithium enriched to 40% Li-6, while the lithium used in "Union" was enriched to 95% Li-6), while "Romeo" and "Koon" were fueled with natural lithium (92% Li-7, 7.5% Li-6). The use of natural lithium would be important to the ability of the US to rapidly expand its nuclear stockpile during the Cold War nuclear arms race, since the so-called "Alloy Development Plants" were in an early stage at the time "Castle" was carried out. The first plant started production in late 1953.


title: Operation Castle

text: As a hedge, development of liquid deuterium weapons continued in parallel. Even though they were much less practical because of the logistical problems dealing with the transport, handling, and storage of a cryogenic device, the Cold War arms race drove the demand for a viable fusion weapon. The "Ramrod" and "Jughead" devices were liquid fuel designs greatly reduced in size and weight from their so-called "Sausage" predecessor. The "Jughead" device was eventually weaponized, and it saw limited fielding by the U.S. Air Force until the "dry" fuel H-bombs became common.


title: Operation Castle

text: "Nectar" was not a fusion weapon in the same sense as the rest of the "Castle" series. Even though it used lithium fuel for fission boosting, the principal reaction material in the second stage was uranium and plutonium. Similar to the Teller-Ulam configuration, a nuclear fission explosion was used to create high temperatures and pressures to compress a second fissionable mass. This would have otherwise been too large to sustain an efficient reaction if it were triggered with conventional explosives. This experiment was intended to develop intermediate yield weapons for expanding the inventory (around 1-2 Mt vs. 4-8).


title: Operation Castle

text: Many fusion or thermonuclear weapons generate much, or even most, of their yields from fission. Although the U-238 isotope of uranium will not sustain a chain reaction, it still fissions when irradiated by the intense fast neutron flux of a fusion explosion. Because U-238 is plentiful and has no critical mass, it can be added in (in theory) almost unlimited quantities as a tamper around a fusion bomb, helping to contain the fusion reaction and contributing its own fission energy. For example, the fast-fission of the U-238 tamper contributed 77% (8.0 megatons) to the yield of the 10.4 Mt "Ivy Mike" explosion.


title: Operation Castle

text: The most notable event of "Operation Castle" was the "Castle Bravo" test. The dry fuel for "Bravo" was 40% Li-6 and 60% Li-7. Only the Li-6 was expected to breed tritium for the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction; the Li-7 was expected to be inert. Yet J. Carson Mark, the head of the Los Alamos Theoretical Design Division, had speculated that "Bravo" could "go big", estimating that the device could produce an explosive yield as much as 20% more than had been originally calculated. It was discovered, because of the unexpected larger yield, that the Li-7 in the device also undergoes breeding that produces tritium. In practice, "Bravo" exceeded expectations by 150%, yielding 15 Mt — about 1,000 times more powerful than the "Little Boy" weapon used on Hiroshima. "Castle Bravo" remains to this day, the largest detonation ever carried out anywhere by the United States, and the fifth largest H-bomb detonation in the world.


title: Operation Castle

text: Because "Castle Bravo" greatly exceeded its expected yield, JTF-7 was caught unprepared. Much of the permanent infrastructure on Bikini Atoll was heavily damaged. The intense thermal flash ignited a fire at a distance of on the island of Eneu (base island of Bikini Atoll). The ensuing fallout contaminated all of the atoll, so much so, that it could not be approached by JTF-7 for 24 hours after the test, and even then exposure times were limited. As the fallout spread downwind to the east, more atolls were contaminated by radioactive calcium ash from the incinerated underwater coral banks. Although the atolls were evacuated soon after the test, 239 Marshallese on the Utirik, Rongelap, and Ailinginae Atolls were subjected to significant levels of radiation. 28 Americans stationed on the Rongerik Atoll were also exposed. Follow-up studies of the contaminated individuals began soon after the blast as Project 4.1, and though the short-term effects of the radiation exposure for most of the Marshallese were mild and/or hard to correlate, the long-term effects were pronounced. Additionally, 23 Japanese fishermen aboard "Daigo Fukuryū Maru" were also exposed to high levels of radiation. They suffered symptoms of radiation poisoning, and one crew member died in September 1954.


title: Operation Castle

text: The heavy contamination and extensive damage from "Bravo" delayed the rest of the series. A revised test schedule was officially released on April 14, 1954. The "Castle Romeo" and "Koon" tests were complete by the time that this revision was published.


title: Operation Castle

text: As "Operation Castle" progressed, the increased yields and fallout caused test locations to be reevaluated. While the majority of the tests were planned for barges near the sand spit of Iroij, some were moved to the craters of "Bravo" and "Union". In addition, "Castle Nectar" was moved from Bikini Atoll to the crater of "Ivy Mike" at Eniwetok for expediency, since Bikini was still heavily contaminated from the previous tests.


title: Operation Castle

text: "Operation Castle" was an unqualified success for the implementation of dry fuel devices. The "Bravo" design was quickly weaponized and is suspected to be the progenitor of the Mk-21 gravity bomb. The Mk-21 design project began on March 26, 1954 (just three weeks after "Bravo") with production of 275 weapons beginning in late 1955. "Romeo", relying on natural lithium, was rapidly turned into the Mk-17 bomb, the first deployable US thermonuclear weapon, and was available to strategic forces as an Emergency Capability weapon by mid-1954. Most of the "Castle" dry fuel devices eventually appeared in the inventory and ultimately grandfathered the majority of thermonuclear configurations.


title: Operation Castle

text: In contrast, the Livermore-designed "Koon" was a failure. Using natural lithium and a heavily modified Teller-Ulam configuration, the test produced only 110 kilotons of an expected 1.5 megaton yield. While engineers at the Radiation Laboratory had hoped it would lead to a promising new field of weapons, it was eventually determined that the design allowed premature heating of the lithium fuel, thereby disrupting the delicate fusion conditions.


title: Scum (film)

text: Scum is a 1979 British drama film directed by Alan Clarke and starring Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth and John Blundell. The film portrays the brutality of life inside a British borstal. The script was originally filmed as a television play for the BBC's "Play for Today" series in 1977. However, due to the violence depicted, it was withdrawn from broadcast. Two years later, director Alan Clarke and scriptwriter Roy Minton remade it as a film, first shown on Channel 4 in 1983. By this time the borstal system had been reformed. The original TV version was eventually allowed to be aired eight years later in 1991.


title: Scum (film)

text: The film tells the story of a young offender named Carlin as he arrives at the institution and his rise through violence and self-protection to the top of the inmates' pecking order, purely as a tool to survive. Beyond Carlin's individual storyline, the film also serves as an indictment of the borstal system's flaws with no attempt at rehabilitation. The warders and convicts alike are brutalised by the system. The film's controversy arose over its graphic depiction of racism, extreme violence, rape, suicide, many fights and very strong language.


title: Scum (film)

text: Three young men arrive at borstal by prison van: Carlin, who has taken the blame for his brother's theft of scrap metal; Angel for stealing a car and Davis for escaping from an open institution. Each is allocated a room; Angel and Davis get private rooms while Carlin is sent to a dormitory.


title: Scum (film)

text: Carlin wants to keep a low profile, having been transferred for assaulting a warden. He meets and befriends Archer, an eccentric and intellectual inmate intent on peacefully inconveniencing the staff as much as possible, and is informed his reputation is already known; Banks, the current "Daddy" (the inmate who controls the wing) is seeking Carlin for a fight to maintain his dominance over the wing.


title: Scum (film)

text: Carlin struggles to settle into the dormitory, and after having watched the timid and bullied Davis be attacked by Banks, is eventually viciously assaulted by Banks who repeatedly headbutts him in an unprovoked attack.


title: Scum (film)

text: Carlin eventually gets his revenge on Banks, using a makeshift cosh from a long sock with two snooker balls inside to beat Richards, then confronts Banks in the bathroom and brutalises him. He then informs him that he is replacing him as the "Daddy" of the ward, and will 'kill him' if he ever interferes with his or his friends' business again. Carlin later takes over the adjacent wing of the borstal by viciously beating the adjacent wing's Daddy.


title: Scum (film)

text: Life improves for the inmates under Carlin, with victimisation of younger, weaker prisoners prevented, along with racially-motivated violence. Carlin gains status with the wardens, persuading them to move him from the dormitory to a single cell in return for agreeing to be a responsible "natural leader". Mr Goodyear, the housemaster, offers Carlin a leadership position in the borstal to help him develop his leadership skills.


title: Scum (film)

text: Another inmate, Toyne, learns through a letter from his in-laws that his wife has died, and sinks into despair, eventually slashing his wrists. After being moved to another prison, word reaches the inmates that he has killed himself in a second suicide attempt. Davis, meanwhile, is framed for theft by Eckersley and placed on report. Carlin advises Davis to avoid them, though Davis is subsequently gang-raped by three youths in a greenhouse. This is seen by warder Sands, who merely smiles at the rape. Davis slips into despair, and kills himself when he uses a razor blade to slash himself in his cell at night. While bleeding to death, he presses the button in his cell for help, but is ignored by warder Greaves.


title: Scum (film)

text: Davis's suicide causes mass hysteria within the prison, with the inmates refusing to eat their food at dinner. Carlin initiates a full-scale riot in the dinner hall. Carlin, Archer and Toyne's friend Meakin are shown being dragged, bleeding and unconscious, into solitary confinement after having been beaten by the wardens. The Borstal's Governor later informs them the damage to the dinner hall will be repaid through lost earnings. The Governor then declares a minute's silent prayer for Davis and Toyne.


title: Scum (film)

text: The film differs from the original BBC production in many respects. The film contains strong language and is much more violent and graphic than the milder BBC version. Ray Winstone, John Blundell, Phil Daniels, John Judd, Ray Burdis and Patrick Murray all reprise their respective roles as Carlin, Banks, Richards, Sands, Eckersley and Dougan from the BBC version, while all other roles are recast. David Threlfall had been intended to reprise his role as Archer from the BBC version, but he was working with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the time and was subsequently replaced by Mick Ford. The story was also changed. The BBC version features a homosexual relationship between Carlin and another inmate, which was dropped from the film. Minton later said that this was a pity as it would have expanded Carlin's character and made him vulnerable in an area where he could not afford to be vulnerable.


title: Scum (film)

text: The television play version of the film also features less graphic rape and suicide scenes. An additional scene shows Davis trying to talk to Carlin about the incident. Carlin dismisses him when he is reluctant to talk in front of Carlin's 'missus' (partner). In the remake, the relationship between Carlin and his 'missus' does not feature. Instead, during the mess, Davis looks up at Carlin from the dining table as if about to confide in him, but Carlin unwittingly chooses that moment to get up and leave.


title: Scum (film)

text: Also in the television play, it is made clear at the end of the film that Banks is in hospital – resulting from the beating administered by Carlin when ousting him as the "daddy"; in the theatrical version he is present at the end moment of silence.


title: Scum (film)

text: The film had its UK premiere at the Prince Charles Cinema in London. It opened on 20 September 1979 at the Prince Charles Cinema and finished fifth at the London box office with a gross of £18,074 in its first week.


title: Scum (film)

text: In 2017, Kino Lorber re-released the film in selected theatres for a limited time. In the United States, the film grossed $5,405.


title: Scum (film)

text: In a High Court case against Channel 4 for showing the film, British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse initially won her private prosecution, but the decision was later reversed on appeal. The Independent Broadcasting Authority had approved on its transmission. However, the film was received well by critics, and today enjoys a reputation of a classic cult movie. Philip Thomas of "Empire" said of the film, ""Scum"'s brutality makes it a genuinely harrowing film. The bleak, snow-dusted locations, the featureless interiors of the institution, the perfect casting and magnificent acting of the indifferent and brutal staff make borstal appear to be what can only be described as a living hell." On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 89% based on reviews from 9 critics.


title: Scum (film)

text: The film was first released on VHS video in the UK in 1983, where it was immediately caught up in the UK Video nasty controversy of the early 1980s.


title: Scum (film)

text: It was later released on DVD in the UK by Odyssey and Prism Leisure. It was the digitally remastered uncut version but in fullscreen, with only a trailer and an interview as bonus features. In the US an Alan Clarke boxset was issued that included several films, among them both the BBC original and cinema version of the film plus audio commentaries. Prism Leisure released a limited edition 2 disc set in the UK on 13 June 2005. Disc One featured the BBC version with an audio commentary and two interviews. Disc Two instead featured the theatrical remake with an audio commentary, several interviews and featurettes and two trailers. It was digitally remastered from a widescreen print. This special edition DVD was sold in amaray slipcase packaging and also in a limited edition tin case. A Region 0 DVD boxset featuring both the theatrical version and the 1977 BBC-banned television version on separate discs followed in the US, released by Blue Underground. In 2015, Australian company Shock Entertainment released "Scum" on DVD and Blu-ray as part of their Cinema Cult line.


title: Ksenia Solo

text: Ksenia Solo (born 8 October 1987; pronounced ) is a Latvian-Canadian actress known for portraying Mackenzie "Kenzi" Malikov on "Lost Girl". She portrayed Peggy Shippen on "". Solo also portrayed the character "Natasha" in the 2010 American television series "Life Unexpected" and Shay Davydov in Season 3 of "Orphan Black". In 2017, she joined the cast of the History Channel's "Project Blue Book" as the Russian spy Susie Miller.


title: Ksenia Solo

text: Solo was born in Riga in the Latvian SSR, and is of Russian heritage. At the age of five, she moved with her family to Toronto, where she was raised. She studied ballet until the age of 14, when a back injury forced her to stop; her mother is a former ballerina-turned-actress.


title: Ksenia Solo

text: Solo played Zoey Jones on the APTN series "renegadepress.com". In both 2005 and 2006, she won the Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Children's or Youth Program or Series for her work on the show. She went on to appear in other Canadian television series and movies, such as the films "Love Thy Neighbor" and "Mayday", as well as guest-starring on the television series "Kojak".


title: Ksenia Solo

text: In 2010, Solo played a small role in Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan" starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. From 2010 to 2011 she played Natasha Siviac in the CW series "Life Unexpected". From 2010 to 2015, she starred as Kenzi in the Showcase series "Lost Girl"; Solo's heritage and fluency in the Russian language were written into the role. She was cast as Dodge in the pilot episode of "Locke & Key", but the series was not picked up by Fox. In 2013, Solo began filming the independent film "Another You" on location in Charleston, West Virginia.


title: Ksenia Solo

text: In 2015, Solo joined the main cast of "" as Peggy Shippen. She also had a recurring role in Season 3 of "Orphan Black" as Shay.


title: Ksenia Solo

text: Solo is actively involved with the anti-bullying foundation Stand for the Silent, and was made one of their directors.


title: History of bread

text: Bread was central to the formation of early human societies. From the Fertile Crescent, where wheat was domesticated, cultivation spread north and west, to Europe and North Africa, and east towards East Asia. This in turn led to the formation of towns, as opposed to the nomadic lifestyle and gave rise to more and more sophisticated forms of societal organization. Similar developments occurred in the Americas with maize and in Asia with rice.


title: History of bread

text: Charred crumbs of a flatbread made by Natufian hunter-gatherers from wild wheat, wild barley and plant roots between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago have been found at the archaeological site of Shubayqa 1 in the Black Desert in Jordan, predating the earliest known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of years. Grinding stones dated at 30,000 years old, possibly used for grinding grains and seeds into flour, have in recent years been unearthed in Australia and Europe, but there is no definitive evidence that these tools or their products were used for making breads.


title: History of bread

text: Bread is otherwise strongly associated with agriculture. Wheat was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. Bread is found in Neolithic sites in Turkey and Europe from around 9,100 years ago.


title: History of bread

text: There is extensive evidence of breadmaking in Ancient Egypt during the Neolithic period, some 10,000 years ago, in the form of artistic depictions, remains of structures and items used in bread making, and remains of the dough and bread itself.


title: History of bread

text: The most common source of leavening in antiquity was to retain a piece of dough (with sugar and water in) from the previous day to utilize as a form of sourdough starter. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce "a lighter kind of bread than other peoples." Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of beer used a paste composed of grape must and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for yeast. Also, Different forms of currency were exchanged in Ancient Egypt before they began using coinage in the First Millennium BC. Until this time, they did not rely on silver or gold, but instead exchanged everyday goods. For the poor, bread and beer were used to pay subsistence workers.


title: History of bread

text: The idea of a free-standing oven that could be pre-heated, with a door for access, appears to have been Greek.


title: History of bread

text: In the Americas, the Mayans were known as "the men of corn" and used that corn to create things like tortillas, tamales, and other breads. The people of modern-day Mexico have adopted these traditions, making corn and bread a popular part of Mexican dishes.


title: History of bread

text: Even in antiquity there was a wide variety of breads. In ancient times the Greek bread was barley bread: Solon declared that wheaten bread might only be baked for feast days. By the 5th century BC bread could be purchased in Athens from a baker's shop, and in Rome, Greek bakers appeared in the 2nd century BC, as Hellenized Asia Minor was added to Roman dominion as the province of Asia; the foreign bakers of bread were permitted to form a "collegium". In the "Deipnosophistae", the author Athenaeus (c. 170 – c. 230 AD) describes some of the bread, cakes, and pastries available in the Classical world. Among the breads mentioned are griddle cakes, honey-and-oil bread, mushroom-shaped loaves covered in poppy seeds, and the military specialty of rolls baked on a spit. The type and quality of flours used to produce bread could also vary, as noted by Diphilus when he declared "bread made of wheat, as compared with that made of barley, is more nourishing, more digestible, and in every way superior. In order of merit, the bread made from refined [thoroughly sieved] flour comes first, after that bread from ordinary wheat, and then the unbolted, made of flour that has not been sifted." The essentiality of bread in the diet was reflected in the name for the rest of the meal: "ópson", "condiment", i.e., bread's accompaniment, whatever it might be.


title: History of bread

text: In medieval Europe, bread served not only as a staple food but also as part of the table service. In the standard table setting of the day the trencher, a piece of stale bread roughly 6 inches by 4 inches (15 cm by 10 cm), was served as an absorbent plate. When food was scarce, an all-too-common occurrence in medieval Europe, the trencher when served would typically be eaten with or at the completion of a meal. In times of relative abundance, trenchers could be given to the poor or fed to the dogs. It was not until the 15th century that trenchers made of wood started to replace the bread variety. In Britain the price, weight and quality of bread and beer was regulated by the Assize of Bread and Ale from the 13th century. Assizes were abandoned in Glasgow in 1801, in London in 1815 and in the rest of Britain in 1836.


title: History of bread

text: The Corn Laws inflated the price of bread. The Anti-Corn Law League demanded cheap bread. After repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 cereal duties were substantially reduced and abolished in 1869.


title: History of bread

text: From the late 18th century to the end of the 19th century, bread sold in England and the United States was often adulterated with hazardous materials, including chalk, sawdust, alum, plaster, clay and ammonium carbonate. Frederick Accum was the first to raise alarm to the food adulteration in 1820. In 1837, American health reformer Sylvester Graham published "Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making", which described how to use unrefined wheat flour to make Graham bread at home, in response to adulterated bread sold in public bake houses.


title: History of bread

text: This gradually came to an end with government action, such as the 1860 and 1899 Food Adulteration Acts in Britain. America had a more difficult time ending these processes of adulteration, however, as various states had varying policies regarding bread making.


title: History of bread

text: Bread-baking was industrialized at the start of the 20th century. Otto Frederick Rohwedder developed a prototype bread-slicing machine in 1912, and a practical machine that both sliced and wrapped bread in 1928.


title: History of bread

text: It was discovered early on that while a bran- and wheatgerm-discarding milling process can help improve white flour's shelf life, it does remove nutrients like some dietary fiber, iron, B vitamins, micronutrients and essential fatty acids. The US government has mandated since 1941 fortification of white flour-based foods with some of the nutrients lost in milling, like thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and iron. This mandate came about in response to the vast nutrient deficiencies seen in US military recruits at the start of World War II.


title: History of bread

text: A major change in the United Kingdom was the development in 1961 of the Chorleywood bread process. This used the intense mechanical working of dough, and control of gases touching dough, to dramatically reduce the fermentation period and the time taken to produce a loaf at the expense of taste and nutrition.


title: History of bread

text: For generations, white bread was the preferred bread of the rich while the poor ate dark (whole grain) bread. However, in most western societies, the connotations reversed in the late 20th century, with whole-grain bread becoming preferred as having superior nutritional value while Chorleywood bread became associated with lower-class ignorance of nutrition.


title: History of bread

text: More recently, and especially in smaller retail bakeries, chemical additives are used that both speed up mixing time and reduce necessary fermentation time, so that a batch of bread may be mixed, made up, risen, and baked in fewer than three hours. Dough that does not require fermentation because of chemical additives is called "quick bread" by commercial bakers. The introduction of commercial yeasts during the 19th century was detrimental to sourdough as these speeded up the baking process making production much easier. Common additives include reducing agents such as L-cysteine or sodium metabisulfite, and oxidants such as potassium bromate or ascorbic acid; this last ingredient is added to whole meal bread to increase the softness of the loaf. Calcium was added to flour in the UK to prevent rickets, which had been detected as common in women who joined the World War II effort.


title: History of bread

text: However, in the 1980s, demand for sourdough in the UK grew to the point that in 1993, regulations were drawn up to define what could be sold as sourdough bread. In Germany, sourdough continued to be used for rye breads, even as commercial yeasts became more popular.


title: History of bread

text: Since 1986, domestic bread makers that automate the process of making bread have become popular in the home.


title: Punky Brewster (2021 TV series)

text: Punky Brewster is an American sitcom streaming television series that premiered on Peacock on February 25, 2021. It is a revival to the 1984–1988 series of the same name, and stars Soleil Moon Frye and Cherie Johnson, with Quinn Copeland, Noah Cottrell, Oliver De Los Santos, Lauren Lindsey Donzis and Freddie Prinze Jr. In August 2021, the series was canceled after one season.


title: Punky Brewster (2021 TV series)

text: Punky Brewster is now a divorced mother raising three children: her teenage biological daughter Hannah, and her two adopted sons, Diego and Daniel. She lives in the same Chicago apartment where she grew up with her foster father, Henry Warnimont, and even works as a photographer, just like he did. She encounters a girl at Fenster Hall named Izzy, who, like Punky, was abandoned by her mother. Punky is still best friends with Cherie, who works at Fenster and arranges to have Izzy live with a foster family, but after seeing the similarities in Izzy compared to when she was her age, Punky decides to take her in and raise her with her three children. Punky also has an on-off relationship with her ex-husband Travis and discovers that the mother who abandoned her in the grocery store as a child is still alive and has been looking for her for years.


title: Punky Brewster (2021 TV series)

text: A "Punky Brewster" revival series was reported to be in development in June 2019. In September of that year, it was reported the series, along with the "Saved by the Bell" revival, would appear on the Peacock streaming service. A 10-episode first season was greenlit by Peacock in January 2020. On August 19, 2021, Peacock canceled the series after one season.


title: Punky Brewster (2021 TV series)

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 57% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 5.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "It's delightful to see Soleil Moon Frye again, but with dated plotting and a lack of focus, "Punky Brewster" can't quite fill her multicolored Cons."


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: Union Pacific 4014, also known as the "Big Boy", is a steam locomotive owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) as part of their heritage fleet. It is a four-cylinder simple articulated 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" type built in 1941 by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) at its Schenectady Locomotive Works. It was assigned to haul heavy freight trains in the Wasatch mountain range. The locomotive was retired from revenue service in 1959 and was donated to the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society; thereafter, it was displayed in Fairplex at the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona, California.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: In 2013, UP re-acquired the locomotive and launched a restoration project at their Steam Shop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In May 2019, No. 4014 moved under its own power for the first time after sitting dormant for almost six decades, becoming the world's largest operational steam locomotive and the only operating "Big Boy" locomotive of the eight that remain in existence. It now operates in excursion service for the UP steam program. No. 4014 became the first mainline steam locomotive to be equipped with the positive train control (PTC) system in 2021.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: The Big Boy class was developed by Union Pacific's (UP) chief mechanical officer Otto Jabelmann and built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in the 1940s to handle the 1.14% eastbound ruling grade of the Wasatch Range. Jabelmann determined that his goals for the new class could be achieved by making several changes to the existing 4-6-6-4 Challenger design: enlarging the firebox to about (about ), lengthening the boiler, adding four driving wheels, and reducing the diameter of the driving wheels from .


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: The Big Boy was articulated like the Mallet locomotive design, although without compounding. It was designed for stability at , allowing for a wide margin of reliability and safety, as steam locomotives normally operated well below that speed in freight service. Peak horsepower was reached around ; optimal tractive effort was reached around . It is longer than two city buses and weighs more than a Boeing 747.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: ALCO built No. 4014 in November 1941 at a cost of $265,174 and delivered it the following month to Union Pacific, where it was placed in revenue service. No. 4014 was part of the first group of 20 Big Boys, classified as 4884-1. Designed to haul freight trains over Utah's Wasatch Range, No. 4014 and the other 24 Big Boys routinely pulled freight trains of up to . On April 2, 1943, it pulled 65 freight cars between Ogden, Utah, and Evanston, Wyoming, with a total of .


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: No. 4014's last routine repairs took place in 1956. The locomotive completed its final revenue run on July 21, 1959, just hours before the last revenue run by any Big Boy. It had traveled during its twenty years of revenue service. Union Pacific retired No. 4014 on December 7, 1961. All of the remaining Big Boys were retired by 1962, when their duties were taken over by diesel locomotives and gas turbine-electric locomotives (GTELs). That same year, Union Pacific donated No. 4014 to the Southern California chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society in Pomona, California, where it became one of the eight Big Boys preserved around the United States.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: In late 2012, Union Pacific officials announced that they would obtain a Big Boy locomotive, restore it to operating condition, and use it in excursion service.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: On July 23, 2013, the Southern California chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society agreed to transfer ownership of No. 4014 back to Union Pacific.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: On November 14, 2013, No. 4014 began its journey to the UP Steam Shop in Cheyenne. It was pulled from its display site at the museum, on temporary track, to the adjacent parking lot. On January 26, 2014, No. 4014 was pulled from the Los Angeles County Fairplex to the Covina station on Metrolink trackage by No. 1996, an SD70ACe diesel locomotive painted in Southern Pacific colors. It presently arrived at UP's West Colton Yard in Bloomington, California, where it sat on display until April 28, when it began its journey to Cheyenne. After arriving at the Steam Shop's roundhouse on May 8, No. 4014 sat largely idle for two years while the UP steam crew worked to overhaul No. 844. The Steam Shop also used the time to expand and upgrade its facilities to accommodate a Big Boy.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: In August 2016, a month after No. 844's repairs and inspection were complete, UP officials announced that the restoration work of No. 4014 had begun under Heritage Fleet Operations director Ed Dickens. By early 2017, the locomotive had been completely disassembled. Some new parts were fabricated, including the rod brasses, top boiler check valve and lubricator check valves. The driving wheels were sent to be repaired by the Strasburg Rail Road in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, for crankpin and axle work as well as installing new tires.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: The work included one major alteration: converting the coal-burning locomotive to run on No. 5 fuel oil. This was done by replacing the firebox grates with a fire pan and an oil burner. This made No. 4014 the first Big Boy to undergo a coal-to-oil conversion since No. 4005, which ran on oil from 1946 until it was converted back to coal in 1948 due to uneven heating in its large, single-burner firebox. No. 4014's old firebox grates were salvaged and used on the Milwaukee Road 261 steam locomotive.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: In March 2018, it was reported that the process of putting the locomotive back together had begun; ten months later, the locomotive's restoration was nearly finished. In December 2018, Union Pacific asked the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to exempt UP Nos. 4014 and 844 from federal Positive Train Control (PTC) requirements; in February 2019, the FRA officials responded that such waivers were not needed. On February 6, 2019, No. 4014's boiler passed a hydrostatic test and the locomotive was successfully test-fired on April 9. Around 9 p.m. on May 1, 2019, No. 4014 moved under its own power for the first time in almost 60 years. The following evening, the locomotive made its first test run, from Cheyenne to Nunn, Colorado.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: Upon the completion of the restoration, No. 4014 joined the railroad's never-retired No. 844 steam locomotive in excursion service. No. 4014 also became the world's largest operational steam locomotive, displacing (and later replacing) No. 3985, which was in poor mechanical condition at the time No. 4014 was restored to operation.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: In May 2019, No. 4014 made its first excursion run amid the celebrations marking 150 years since the completion of the First transcontinental railroad. Following its May 4 christening at the Cheyenne Depot Museum, No. 4014 — doubleheaded with No. 844 — traveled to Ogden, Utah. No. 4014 subsequently made two tours on its own. From July 8 to August 8, it visited the Midwestern United States, including brief stops at Saint Paul Union Depot and the Lake Superior Railroad Museum; it then toured the Southwestern United States from September 27 to November 26.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UP announced in March 2020 that it would cancel that year's steam operations with Nos. 4014 and 844. Excursion operations resumed in August and September 2021 with No. 4014 doing tour stops in Fort Worth and Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; North Little Rock, Arkansas; St. Louis, Missouri; and Denver, Colorado. Also in 2021, No. 4014 became the first mainline steam locomotive to be equipped with new PTC equipment.


title: Union Pacific 4014

text: On April 11, 2022, UP originally announced that No. 4014 would tour the Northwestern United States, starting on June 26 in commemoration of UP's 160th anniversary, but the tour was cancelled on April 22 so UP could reduce supply chain congestion. In late July, No. 4014 pulled the "Museum Special" excursion between Cheyenne and the Denver Union Station to benefit the Union Pacific Railroad Museum.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: The What We Do in the Shadows franchise consists of New Zealand and American mockumentary horror-comedy installments including one limited-theatrical film, a number of short films, two spin-off television series, and one digital series. Created by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, the plot concerns several vampires who live together in shared accommodation, who are followed by a documentary film crew.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: Vampire housemates (Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh) cope with the complexities of modern life and introduce a newly turned vampire to the benefits of being undead.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: A sequel to the "What We Do in the Shadows", focused on the werewolves depicted in the film, originally rumoured to be titled "What We Do in the Moonlight", was announced as being in development in August 2015. In May 2019 Taika Waititi said ""We're Wolves" is the film that Jemaine and I keep pretending that we’re making. Every couple of years we say, we’re making this new film called "We're Wolves" which follows the werewolves from the film,” said Waititi. “I feel bad to even mention it now because we keep saying it, [but] it’s like a dad saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll be home for Christmas.’ I suppose we’re just two dads out on the road enjoying our lives and going, ‘We’re not coming home for Christmas.’ We'll send a postcard. It's not like we don't want to come home for Christmas. We would like nothing more but we have a lot of shit going on. When are you going to die? Do you have a ... deadline before your death? I guarantee it before then. Five years, 10 years? It took us seven years to write the [first] film, so you do the math. That was a sad thing to say."


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: The original 29-minute short film by Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement, which inspired their 2014 film. In the short, three vampires—Deacon Brugh (Jonny Brugh), Count Viago (Waititi), and Vulvus the Abhorrent (Clement)—who share an apartment are interviewed by a TV crew.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: A short film and advertisement campaign to promote the online dating services FindSomeone and Dating for Shoes. The film follows Dating for Shoes founder Angela Meyer giving Viago a tutorial on creating his very own FindSomeone profile: from creating a username, to describing his hobbies and interests.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: A short film and advertisement campaign by Wellington, as a comedic promotion that the city is a vampire-friendly place to visit. The film follows vampire Viago promoting the nightlife, cinemas and clothes shops of the city alongside his flatmates Vladislav and Deacon. As part of the campaign, the 'W' in the Wellington Blown Away sign on Miramar hill was temporarily changed to a blood-red 'V'.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: The series follows Officers Minogue and O'Leary, who originally appeared as secondary characters in the 2014 film. They join a paranormal division of the Wellington Police Department under Sergeant Maaka (Maaka Pohatu). The show debuted on TVNZ 2 in 2018, and was renewed several times. The fourth and final season aired in 2022.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: Production for season three was set to start in February 2021, before being postponed to later in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: What We Do in the Shadows (franchise)

text: "Important COVID-19 Messages from Wellington Paranormal" is a sixteen-episode digital web series and public service campaign released in 2020 by New Zealand Police to inform the public on health, safety, and best practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The series follows Officers Minogue and O'Leary in home isolation, and features several guests including Sergeant Maaka and Officer Parker. The series also includes Andrew Coster and Clarke Gayford as themselves.


title: Eskom

text: Eskom Hld SOC Ltd or Eskom is a South African electricity public utility. It was established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM) and was also known by its Afrikaans name Elektrisiteitsvoorsieningskommissie (EVKOM). Eskom represents South Africa in the Southern African Power Pool. The utility is the largest producer of electricity in Africa, and was among the top utilities in the world in terms of generation capacity and sales, but due to the ANC and incompetence has since slipped in both categories. It is the largest of South Africa's state owned enterprises. Eskom operates a number of notable power stations, including Matimba Power Station and Medupi Power Station in Lephalale, Kusile Power Station in Witbank, Kendal Power Station, and Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in the Western Cape Province, the only nuclear power plant in Africa.


title: Eskom

text: The company is divided into Generation, Transmission and Distribution divisions, and together Eskom generates approximately 95% of electricity used in South Africa, amounting to ~45% used in Africa, and emits 42% of South Africa's total greenhouse gas emissions. By releasing 1.6 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the air in 2019, Eskom is also the largest emitter of sulfur dioxide in the power industry in the world. In 2019, it was announced that Eskom was to be split up into three distinct nationally owned entities due to huge debts and poor reliability of supply.


title: Eskom

text: At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, a deal was announced for developed countries to fund South Africa's transition from coal power to renewable energy. However, employment in the mining sector threatens this transition.


title: Eskom

text: Prior to the establishment of Eskom, the provision of electricity was dominated by municipalities and private companies. The city of Kimberley was one of the first users of public electricity when it installed electric streetlights in 1882 to reduce crime at night. This was followed by Cape Town in 1895 with the construction of the Graaff Electric Lighting Works to power 775 street lights.


title: Eskom

text: Eskom was founded by the Electricity Act of 1922 which allowed the South African Electricity Control Board to appoint Hendrik Johannes van der Bijl as chairman. The company changed its name by combining the two acronyms in its previous name (ESCOM and EVKOM) in 1987 to become known as Eskom.


title: Eskom

text: The Electricity Act stated that Eskom could only sell electricity at cost and was exempted from tax with the firm initially raising capital through the issuing of debentures, later issuing state-guaranteed loans instead. The coal-fired Congella Power Station in Durban and Salt River Power Station in Cape Town were the first power stations built by Eskom, both complete in mid-1928.


title: Eskom

text: One of Eskom's first power plants was a coal-fired 128 MW station in Witbank, completed in 1935 to provide power to the mining industry. The plant was built and run in partnership with the privately owned Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company, which owned a number of other power plants across the country. Thanks to state support, Eskom was able to buy out the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company in 1948 for £14.5 million (roughly equivalent to £2.55 billion in 2017). Following World War 2, South Africa experienced power shortages that led to Eskom negotiating power saving agreements with the mining industry in June 1948.


title: Eskom

text: From 1960 to 1990 Eskom increased its installed power production capacity from 4,000 MW to 40,000 MW so as to keep up with rapid economic growth in the 1960s and 70s. During the same period, Eskom established a nationwide 400 kV power network. During this period the company built a number of large standardised coal-fired power plants that could produce power at very low cost due to the large economies of scale. These plants were known colloquially as "six-packs" for the 6 large generator units they were designed to accommodate.


title: Eskom

text: In 1974 the company was instructed to start work on Koeberg nuclear power station to both provide power to Cape Town and help facilitate the South African government's nuclear program.


title: Eskom

text: In 1981 Eskom was involved in one of its first large financial scandals when its Assistant Chief Accountant was caught embezzling R8 million from the company (equivalent to roughly R164.37 million in 2018).


title: Eskom

text: During the 1970s the company controversially sought to increase electrical tariffs to help pay for its large expansion plans. Due to its financial situation, the government appointed Dr. W.J. de Villiers to chair a commission that recommended a number of financial and organisational changes for the company to adopt. This led to the company abandoning its no-profit objective and to raise funds by taking out international loans. The number of Eskom employees was also reduced from 66,000 to 60,000 in the late-1980s.


title: Eskom

text: Following democratic elections in 1994 and the start of the Mandela government the company changed focus to electrification of previously neglected residential homes and to provide low cost electricity for economic growth. Following the passing of the 1998 Eskom Amendment Act government's powers to influence company policy and investment decisions were greatly expanded. Due to the South African government's attempted privatisation of Eskom in the late 1990s during the administration of President Thabo Mbeki, Eskom requests for budget to build new stations were denied. After leaving the presidency, Mbeki would later state in December 2007 that this was an error, resulting in adverse affects for the South African economy.


title: Eskom

text: In January 2008, Eskom controversially introduced "load shedding" – planned rolling blackouts based on a rotating schedule, in periods where short supply threatened the integrity of the grid. Demand-side management has focused on encouraging consumers to conserve power during peak periods in order to reduce the incidence of load shedding. Following the national power shortage in 2007, Eskom embarked on an aggressive electricity production expansion programme during the administration of President Jacob Zuma. The Zuma administration decided to focus expansion efforts on building additional large scale six-pack coal-fired power plants.


title: Eskom

text: In 2016, Eskom stated it intended to pursue a nuclear solution to the country's energy shortage. According to projections from late 2016, the use of nuclear power would provide over 1000GW of power by 2050. In preparation, the company launched a training program for 100 technicians, engineers and artisans that would certify them as nuclear operators. In January 2018, Eskom's acting chief financial officer stated that the company could not afford a new build, following a 34% drop in interim profits due to declining sales and increasing financing costs. The government stated it would proceed with the plan but more slowly.


title: Eskom

text: In 2017, Eskom was the focus of a major corruption scandal involving the Gupta family and the administration of then President Jacob Zuma.


title: Eskom

text: The National Energy Regulator of South Africa denied an application by Eskom to increase electricity tariffs by a future 19.9% for the financial year 2018/19. The regulator instead granted a 5.2% increase and gave a list of reasons for the refusal to grant higher tariffs that the South African newspaper Business Day stated painted "a picture of inefficiency, inaccurate forecasting and cost overruns" at the power utility. Part of the refusal was the finding that Eskom had 6,000 more employees than needed, costing the company R3.8 billion annually.


title: Eskom

text: In February 2019, shortly after the announcement by government that the company would be broken up, Eskom initiated another round of emergency load shedding. Eskom stated that the 2019 load shedding was initiated due to breakdowns at power stations as well as the depletion of water and diesel resources. Other reasons cited included legacy issues from state capture corruption, coal availability, and that new power plants such as Medupi and Kusile were not yet operational. Corruption during the Zuma administration had been noted as a major factor in the cost overruns and long delays in completing Medupi and Kusile power plants that had a knock-on effect leading to the 2019 power shortages. The power shortage and related troubles at Eskom was blamed as a significant contributing factor to a 3.2% decline in GDP growth in the first quarter of 2019, prompting fears of a recession in 2019. Between March and July 2020 the power supply was stable due to reduced demand during the COVID-19 lockdown, but on 12 July a new round of level 2 load shedding began due to the breakdown of generating units.


title: Eskom

text: Eskom's logo has been an integral symbol of the company since its founding. For a brief period in 1986 Eskom had no logo when it was moving away from the company's original logo of stylised letters spelling "ESC" within a circle to the more contemporary version with a blue shield with a stylised lightning bolt in its center. The 1987 logo was replaced in 2002 with its current logo that replaced the shield with a circle but otherwise kept the logo as it was.


title: Eskom

text: In December 1998, a white paper prepared by the Department of Minerals and Energy recommended that the government restructure Eskom into separate generation and transmission businesses. Although the report predicted that this action would improve power supply and reliability, it was never enacted.


title: Eskom

text: In February 2019, these plans were resurrected during the State of the Nation address. President Ramaphosa announced that the government would be splitting Eskom up into three new state-owned entities focusing on generation, transmission and distribution. This was done so as to better manage the serious operational and financial problems facing the company. By the time of the speech Eskom had a total debt burden of R419 billion (US$30.8 billion) and was entering a death spiral whereby there was not enough revenue to make debt repayments.


title: Eskom

text: In a February 2019 briefing, the Department of Public Enterprises stated that Eskom was "technically insolvent" and would not be able to operate past the next three months if it did not receive additional loans. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni then announced in his 2019 budget speech that government would be providing a R69 billion rand (US$5 billion) bail-out to Eskom over a three-year period so as to stabilise the company's serious financial situation.


title: Eskom

text: The transmission entity would be given its own board, by 31 March 2020 in which the transmission legal entity would be responsible for hearing legislative amendments in accordance to government law. This new transmission entity would involve up to 6,000 people that are responsible of setting up thousands of miles of "wires" and transmission lines that would ensure electricity from the power stations to where power is needed. As part of the Transmission Development Plan (TDP) for 2020–2029 Eskom has plans to increase its transmission infrastructure by approximately 4,800 km of extra high voltage transmission lines, and over 35,000 MVA of transformer capacity over the next 10 years. This new outline of reconstructing Eskom comes from new regulatory guidelines from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) to publish an annual TDP report.


title: Eskom

text: In response to feared job losses resulting from the breakup the trade union COSATU organised a national strike and called for a moratorium on retrenchments in the private and public sectors. This caused to the apparent abandonment of the government's company breakup and restructuring plans. In July 2019 the outgoing Eskom CEO announced that Eskom had entered a "death spiral" and highlighted the need for the company to restructure. Following the appointment of de Ruyter as Eskom CEO trade unions National Union of Mineworkers and Solidarity stated that they would fight any government restructuring efforts that might result in job losses.


title: Eskom

text: In December 2019 COSATU suggested that money be used from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to reduce Eskom's debt from around R450 billion to more manageable levels. In return COSTATU proposed a number of conditions that included keeping workers employed. The trade union Solidarity was strongly apposed to the COSATU proposal arguing that it put the pensions of public employees at risk. The country's second biggest trade union, the Federation of Unions of South Africa, was also skeptical of COSATU's proposed plan.


title: Eskom

text: Between 2020 and 2021, two thousand employees lost their jobs at the power utility. 6000 more jobs are reportedly at risk in order for the company to continue operating.


title: Eskom

text: Eskom – the only electricity utility in the country – has 16,789,974 subscribers in South Africa, comprising about one-third of the population.