title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In 2013, ADM reported that some employees had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and ADM was fined 14 million U.S. dollars, but avoided criminal charges by self-reporting the foreign bribes.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In 2014, ADM moved its upper corporate management out of Decatur and established the new ADM World Headquarters in downtown Chicago. Following the ADM corporate exit, Decatur became listed by the United States Census Bureau as number 3 in "The 15 Fastest-Declining Large Cities" which showed a 7.1% population loss of (-5,376) from 2010 to 2019.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: On April 18 and 19, 1996, the city was hit by tornadoes. On April 18, an F1 tornado hit the city's southeast side, followed by an F3 tornado the following evening on the northwest side. The two storms totaled approximately $10.5 million in property damage.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: On July 19, 1974, a tanker car containing isobutane collided with a boxcar in the Norfolk & Western railroad yard in the East End of Decatur. The resulting explosion killed seven people, injured 349, and caused $18 million in property damage.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In November 1999, Decatur was brought into the national news when Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition protested the two-year expulsion of seven African American students who had been involved in a serious fight at an Eisenhower High School football game under a recently enacted "zero tolerance" policy. Six of the students were arrested but not charged after the fracas. Four were later charged as adults with mob action, a felony. Jesse Jackson intervened in the incident, bringing the controversy to national attention, protesting both the severity and length of the punishment and also alleging racial bias (schools in Decatur in 1999 had an enrollment that was about 44 percent black and five of the six Decatur students expelled in the prior year were black). Jackson pointed out he was invited by the students' parents and that he spoke with them, the kids, ministers and teachers before protesting the zero-tolerance severity of the punishment: "No one can survive zero tolerance," Jackson said. "We all need mercy and grace."


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Outside of Decatur, public support was largely against the School Board's decision but changed once a videotape of the incident surfaced filmed by a parent at the game. Broadcast on national TV news, it showed a melee that swept through one end of the grandstands, with kicking and punching, as some of the fighters tumbled over the rails. The game was stopped and players gawked at the fighting in the bleachers. Ed Bohem, the principal at MacArthur High School who attended the game, described it as a riot: "I feared for the safety of our people -- my parents, my students," Bohem said, referring to the crowd in the bleachers. "You had people pushed through bars, people covering little children so they wouldn't get hurt. It was violent." Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH Coalition organized marches that included hundreds of people bused in from outside the area, criticizing the school board for what Jackson said was unfairly harsh treatment of the boys over a fight. Jackson was arrested and detained briefly; however, charges were later dropped. School officials say the students involved in the fighting were known as truants, described three of them as "third-year freshmen", and noted that the seven students combined had missed 350 days of high school.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The issue dissipated when the school board reduced the original expulsions from two years to one year and agreed to let the students earn credit while attending an alternative school.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The students involved in the fight have since taken different paths in life: with one being sentenced to state prison for 10 years for a 2004 felony drug conviction; another having finished college (helped by a Rainbow PUSH scholarship); another working as a butcher; and a fourth being arrested for home invasion in 2009. Jesse Jackson was criticized for turning what could have been a legitimate criticism/discussion of the effects of "zero tolerance" policies into national debate by attempting to present the seven youths as victims of bigotry.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The USGS Domestic GeoNames resource has two listings for Decatur: "City of Decatur", which is a Civil-class designation, and "Decatur", which is a Populated Place designation, which have slightly different coordinate centroids: "City of Decatur" centroid is located at , while the "Decatur" centroid is at . Decatur is 150 miles southwest of Chicago, 40 miles east of Springfield, the state capital, and 110 miles northeast of St. Louis.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: According to the 2010 census, consisted of land and of water, together amounting to a total area of , consisting of 90% land and 10% water. Lakes include Lake Decatur, an 11 km reservoir formed in 1923 by the damming of the Sangamon River, accounting for >90% of the state's census-designated water area.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Decatur Metropolitan Statistical Area (population 109,900) includes surrounding towns of Argenta, Boody, Blue Mound, Elwin, Forsyth, Harristown, Long Creek, Macon, Maroa, Mount Zion, Niantic, Oakley, Oreana, and Warrensburg.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: "Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race."


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The 2020 census reported there were 70,522 people and 31,073 households living in the city. Out of the 31,073 households, 21.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 35.9% were married couples living together, 36.1% had a female householder with no partner, and 20.6% had a male householder with no partner. The average family size was 3.00 persons.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The median household income for the city was $45,404, the median family income was $62,699, and the median married-couple family income was $77,901. The employment rate was 52.1%. 19.4% of Decatur residents were living below the poverty line; 30.2% of them were under 18 years old, 18.8% were ages 18 to 64, and 9.6% were 65 or older.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: As of the 2010 census, there were 76,122 people, 32,344 households, and 18,991 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 36,134 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 71.6% White, 23.3% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 0.9% from other races, and 3.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 2.2% of the population.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: There were 32,344 households, out of which 24.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.4% were married couples living together, 16.9% had a female household with no husband present, and 41.3% were non-families. 35.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.23 and the average family size was 2.86.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 22.1% under the age of 18, 10.8% from ages 18 to 24, 23.4% from ages 25 to 44, 26.8% from ages 45 to 64, and 16.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39.1 years. For every 100 females, there were 88.0 males. For every 100 females aged 18 and over, there were 85.3 males.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: As of 2017, the median income for a household in the city was $41,977, and the median income for a family was $55,086. Males had a median income of $35,418 versus $34,389 for females. The per capita income for the city was $25,042. About 22% of the population is below the poverty line, including 35% of those under age 18 and 10% of those age 65 or over.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur is listed by the United States Census Bureau as number three in "The 15 Fastest-Declining Large Cities" which showed a 7.1% population loss of (−5,376) from 2010 to 2019. The "Chicago Tribune" says: "in 1980, Decatur's population was at a high of 94,000. Now it is 71,000."


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: A new branding effort for Decatur and Macon County was unveiled in 2015, Limitless Decatur. The intention of the marketing strategy was to attract and retain business and residents by promoting the Decatur area as modern and progressive with opportunities to live, work, and develop.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: For much of the 20th century, the city was known as "The Soybean Capital of the World" owing to its being the location of the headquarters of A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company, a major grain processor in the 1920s, which popularized the use of soybeans to produce products for human consumption such as oil, meal and flour. At one time, over a third of all the soybeans grown in the world were processed in Decatur, Illinois. In 1955 a group of Decatur businessmen founded the Soy Capital Bank to trade on the nickname.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The city's symbol is the Transfer House, an 1896 octagonal structure that was built in the original town square (now called "Lincoln Square") where the city's mass transit lines (streetcars and interurban trains) met. Designed by Chicago architect William W. Boyington, who also designed the Chicago Water Tower, the Transfer House was constructed to serve as a shelter for passengers transferring from one conveyance to another. It was regarded as one of the most beautiful structures of its kind in the United States, and a symbol of the city's high culture and modernity just decades after it was founded as a small collection of log cabins. The second story of the building consisted of an open-air gazebo used as a stage for public speeches and concerts by the Goodman Band. Sitting in the middle of the square as it was, increasing automobile traffic flowing through downtown Decatur on US 51 was forced to circle around the structure, and the Transfer House came to be seen by some as an impediment. The Illinois Department of Transportation, who maintained the US 51 highway route through Decatur, requested it be removed, and in 1962, the structure was transported by truck to nearby Central Park, where it stands today. In that location, it has served as a bus shelter, a visitor information center, and civic group offices.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: On July 19, 1999, the Department of Community Development prepared a map of the official neighborhoods of Decatur, used for planning and statistical purposes. Decatur has 71 official neighborhoods.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Decatur Sister Cities Committee annually coordinates both inbound and outbound high school students, who serve as ambassadors among the three cities.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Between 1829 and 1836, the County Commissioners Court had jurisdiction as it was the seat of Macon County. By 1836 the population reached approximately 300, and Richard Oglesby was elected president of the first board of trustees. Other members of the board of trustees included Dr. William Crissey, H.M. Gorin and Andrew Love as clerk.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In 1839 a town charter was granted to Decatur that gave power to the trustees "to establish and regulate a fire department, to dig wells and erect pumps in the streets, regulate police of the town, [and] raise money for the purpose of commencing and prosecuting works of public improvement." Those who served as president of the town of Decatur were: Richard Oglesby (1836), Joseph Williams (1837), Henry Snyder (1838), Kirby Benedict (1839), Joseph King (1840), Thomas P. Rodgers (1841), David Crone (1846–47), J.H. Elliott (1848), Joseph Kauffman (1849), Joseph King (1850), William S. Crissey (1851), W.J. Stamper (1852), William Prather (1853–54), and Thomas H. Wingate (1854–55).


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In the winter of 1855–56, a special city incorporation charter was obtained. This charter provided an aldermanic form of government and on January 7, 1856, an election was held for mayor, two aldermen for each of the four wards, and city marshal. This aldermanic form of government continued until January 18, 1911, when Decatur changed to city commissioner form of government. The new commissioner system provided a mayor elected at-large and four commissioners to serve as administrators of city services: accounts and finance, public health and safety, public property, and streets and public improvements. The mayor also served as Commissioner of Public Affairs.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The mayor and commissioner system prevailed until a special election on November 25, 1958, in which the present council-manager form of government was adopted.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: According to the city website, the "City of Decatur operates under the Council-Manager form of government, a system which combines the leadership of a representative, elected council with the professional background of an appointed manager." The mayor and all members of the council are elected at-large. Their duties include determining city policy and representing the city in public ceremonies, for which they receive nominal annual salaries. The appointed manager handles all city administration and is the council's employee, not an elected official. Since 1959, the following have served as City Managers: John E. Dever, W. Robert Semple, Leslie T. Allen, Jim Bacon, Jim Williams, Steve Garman, John A. Smith (acting), Ryan McCrady, Gregg Zientara (interim), Timothy Gleason, and Scot Wrighton, the current holder.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Julie Moore Wolfe serves as the current mayor of Decatur. Moore Wolfe was appointed unanimously by the Decatur City Council following the death of Mayor Mike McElroy. She is the first female to be mayor of Decatur. Moore Wolfe, who had been appointed mayor pro tem in May 2015, became acting mayor after McElroy died on July 17, 2015. McElroy had been mayor since 2009 and had recently been re-elected to a second term as mayor in April 2015. Moore Wolfe was elected to a four-year term as mayor on April 4, 2017.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Those who served as president of the town of Decatur were: Richard Oglesby (1836), Joseph Williams (1837), Henry Snyder (1838), Kirby Benedict (1839), Joseph King (1840), Thomas P. Rodgers (1841), David Crone (1846–47), J.H. Elliott (1848), Joseph Kauffman (1849), Joseph King (1850), William S. Crissey (1851), W.J. Stamper (1852), William Prather (1853–54), and Thomas H. Wingate (1854–55).


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: During the winter of 1855–56, a special incorporation charter of Decatur as a city was obtained providing for an aldermanic form of government.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Decatur police department has used public funds to support a controversial technique for 911 call analysis despite a consensus among experts that its application is scientifically baseless. After taking a two-day training course called “911 homicide: Is the caller the killer?” police officers present themselves as experts, relying on circumstantial clues rather than physical evidence. The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, designed to guard against junk science, has no record of scrutinizing the curriculum, but Decatur police have used it as evidence to imprison people for decades.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Municipal Band was organized September 19, 1857, making it one of the oldest nonmilitary bands in continuous service in the United States and Canada. The band was originally known as the Decatur Brass Band, Decatur Comet Band and Decatur Silver Band until 1871 when it was reorganized by Andrew Goodman and became The Goodman Band. In 1942, the band was officially designated as the Decatur Municipal Band and chartered within the City of Decatur. The present Decatur Municipal Band, directed by Jim Culbertson since 1979, is composed of high school and college students and area adults from all walks of life, many of whom look to the Band as a serious avocation, or as a prelude to a life-long profession.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Decatur Public Library was built with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. The library was built in 1902 at the corner of Eldorado and Main and opened to the public July 1, 1903. The building served the community until 1970 when the library moved to North Street at the site of a former Sears, Roebuck & Co. store. In 1999 the library moved to its present location on Franklin Street, which is also an abandoned Sears building. The library is part of the Illinois Heartland Library System. The original Carnegie library building was razed and in its place a bank was built.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur was the original home of the Chicago Bears, from 1919 to 1920. The football team was then known as the Decatur Staleys and played at Staley Field, both named after the local food-products manufacturer. A.E. Staley created the team from regular Staley Processing employees who had an interest in the sport. As the team continued to win games and show promise, Staley decided to invest in the team further by hiring George Halas as its second head coach. Halas led the team to success in the 1920 season, going 10-1-2. As the team continued to win, Staley realized that he could make more money and further develop the team if there were larger crowds and a larger venue to play at. Halas and Staley agreed to move the team to Chicago in 1921 and play at Wrigley Field. The team was to play one season as the Chicago Staleys. In 1922, they played their first season as the Chicago Bears.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: From 1900 to 1974, Decatur was the home of the Commodores, a minor-league baseball team playing at Fans Field.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The USTA/Ursula Beck Pro Tennis Classic has been held annually since 1999. Male players from over 20 countries compete for $25,000 in prize money as well as ATP world ranking points at the Fairview Park Tennis Complex. The tournament is held for eight consecutive days at Fairview Park concluding on the first weekend in August.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur formerly hosted the annual Decatur-Forsyth Classic presented by Tate & Lyle and the Decatur Park District. The tournament was traditionally held in June. The final year for the tournament was 2019.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur has production facilities for Caterpillar, Archer Daniels Midland, Mueller Co., and Primient (previously Tate & Lyle, A. E. Staley).


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Caterpillar Inc. has one of its largest manufacturing plants in the U.S. in Decatur. This plant produces Caterpillar's off highway trucks, wheel-tractor scrapers, compactors, large wheel loaders, mining-class motorgraders, and their ultra-class mining trucks (including the Caterpillar 797). Archer Daniels Midland processes corn and soybeans, Mueller produces water distribution products and Tate & Lyle processes corn in Decatur.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur has been ranked third in the nation as an Emerging Logistics and Distribution Center by Business Facilities: The Location Advisor, and was named a Top 25 Trade City by "Global Trade". In 2013 the Economic Development Corporation of Decatur & Macon County established the Midwest Inland Port, a multi-modal transportation hub with market proximity to 95 million customers in a 500-mile radius. The port includes the Archer Daniels Midland intermodal container ramp, the two class I railroads that service the ramp and the city (the Canadian National Railway, and the Norfolk Southern Railway), five major roadways and the Decatur Airport. The Midwest Inland Port also has a foreign trade zone and customs clearing, and the area is both an enterprise zone and tax increment financing district.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In August 2019, Mueller Company announced plans to construct a "state-of-the-art" brass foundry in Decatur on a 30 acre site in the 2700 block of North Jasper Street. The facility is expected to employ 250 personnel.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: In November 2020, ADM and InnovaFeed announced plans to construct the world's largest insect protein facility targeted to begin in 2021. The facility will be owned and operated by InnovaFeed and will co-locate with ADM's Decatur corn processing complex. This new project represents innovative, sustainable production to meet growing demand for insect protein in animal feed, a market that has potential to reach 1 million tons in 2027. Construction of the new high-capacity facility is expected to create more than 280 direct and 400 indirect jobs in the Decatur region by the second phase.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: From 1917 to 1922 Decatur was the location of the Comet Automobile Co., and the Pan-American Motor Corp.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Japanese corporation Bridgestone owns Firestone Tire and Rubber Corporation, which operated a large tire factory here. Firestone's Decatur plant was closed in December 2001 in the midst of a tire failure controversy, and all 1,500 employees were laid off. Firestone cited a decline in consumer demand for Firestone tires and the age of the Decatur plant as the reasons for closing that facility.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: K–12 public education in the Decatur area is provided by the Decatur Public School District No. 61. High school athletics were in the Big Twelve Conference up to 2013–14. The last two schools in Decatur joined the Central State Eight in the 2014–15 season.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Local Macon County park resources include Lake Decatur, Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial, Rock Springs Conservation Area, Fort Daniel Conservation Area, Sand Creek Recreation Area, Griswold Conservation Area, Friends Creek Regional Park, and Spitler Woods State Natural Area. The Decatur Park District resources include of park land, an indoor sports center, Decatur Airport, three golf courses, softball, soccer and tennis complexes, athletic fields, a community aquatic center, an AZA-accredited zoo, and a banquet, food and beverage business. Decatur was once dubbed "Park City USA" because it had more parks per person than any other city in the country, as well as "Playtown USA" because of Decatur's position as an early national leader in providing recreational space for its citizens. A motion picture short by that name was made in 1944 that featured the city's recreational efforts.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur Airport is served by daily commercial flights on CRJ2 aircraft to and from Chicago-O'Hare International Airport by United Airlines.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: For more than 100 years, Decatur has been a major railroad junction and was once served by seven railroads. After mergers and consolidations, it is now served by two Class I railroads: the Norfolk Southern Railway, and the Canadian National Railway. The city is also served by Decatur Junction Railway, Decatur Central Railroad and Decatur and Eastern Illinois Railroad shortlines.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Interstate 72, U.S. Route 51, U.S. Route 36, Illinois Route 48, Illinois Route 105, and Illinois Route 121 are key highway links for the area.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: The Decatur Public Transit System (DPTS) provides fixed-route bus service as well as complementary door-to-door paratransit service for people with disabilities, who are unable to use the bus system, throughout the City of Decatur. Under an agreement with the Village of Forsyth, service is also provided to the Hickory Point Mall area in Forsyth.


title: Decatur, Illinois

text: Decatur has been mentioned in several movies, including the 1984 movie Bachelor Party, the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the 2008 movie Leatherheads.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome, Italy on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of November 2019, 123 states are party to the statute. Among other things, the statute establishes the court's functions, jurisdiction and structure.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Those crimes "shall not be subject to any statute of limitations". Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can only investigate and prosecute the four core international crimes in situations where states are "unable" or "unwilling" to do so themselves; the jurisdiction of the court is complementary to jurisdictions of domestic courts. The court has jurisdiction over crimes only if they are committed in the territory of a state party or if they are committed by a national of a state party; an exception to this rule is that the ICC may also have jurisdiction over crimes if its jurisdiction is authorized by the United Nations Security Council.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute established four core international crimes: (I) Genocide, (II) Crimes against humanity, (III) War crimes, and (IV) Crime of aggression. Following years of negotiation, aimed at establishing a permanent international tribunal to prosecute individuals accused of genocide and other serious international crimes, such as crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression, the United Nations General Assembly convened a five-week diplomatic conference in Rome in June 1998 "to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court".


title: Rome Statute

text: A five-week diplomatic conference was convened in Rome in June 1998 "to finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court". On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining. By agreement, there was no officially recorded vote of each delegation's vote regarding the adoption of the Rome Statute. Therefore, there is some dispute over the identity of the seven countries that voted against the treaty. It is certain that the People's Republic of China, Israel, and the United States were three of the seven because they have publicly confirmed their negative votes; India, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen have been identified by various observers and commentators as possible sources for the other four negative votes, with Iraq, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen being the four most commonly identified. Explanations of Vote was publicly declared by India, Uruguay, Mauritius, Philippines, Norway, Belgium, United States, Brazil, Israel, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.


title: Rome Statute

text: On 11 April 2002, ten countries ratified the statute at the same time at a special ceremony held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, bringing the total number of signatories to sixty, which was the minimum number required to bring the statute into force, as defined in Article 126. The treaty entered into force on 1 July 2002; the ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date. The statute was modified in 2010 after the Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda, but the amendments to the statute that were adopted at that time are not effective yet.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute is the result of multiple attempts for the creation of a supranational and international tribunal. At the end of the 19th century, the international community took the first steps towards the institution of permanent courts with supranational jurisdiction. With the Hague International Peace Conferences, representatives of the most powerful nations made an attempt to harmonize laws of war and to limit the use of technologically advanced weapons. After World War I and even more after the heinous crimes committed during World War II, it became a priority to prosecute individuals responsible for egregious crimes so serious that they needed to be exemplified by being referred to as "crimes against humanity". In order to re-affirm basic principles of democratic civilisation, the alleged criminals were not executed in public squares or sent to torture camps, but instead treated as criminals: with a regular trial, the right to defense and the presumption of innocence. The Nuremberg trials marked a crucial moment in legal history, and after that, some treaties that led to the drafting of the Rome Statute were signed.


title: Rome Statute

text: UN General Assembly Resolution n. 260 9 December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was the first step towards the establishment of an international permanent criminal tribunal with jurisdiction on crimes yet to be defined in international treaties. In the resolution there was a hope for an effort from the Legal UN commission in that direction. The General Assembly, after the considerations expressed from the commission, established a committee to draft a statute and study the related legal issues. In 1951 a first draft was presented; a second draft followed in 1955 but there were a number of delays, officially due to the difficulties in the definition of the crime of aggression, that were only solved with diplomatic assemblies in the years following the statute's coming into force. The geopolitical tensions of the Cold War also contributed to the delays.


title: Rome Statute

text: Trinidad and Tobago asked the General Assembly in December 1989 to re-open the talks for the establishment of an international criminal court and in 1994 presented a draft Statute. The General Assembly created an "ad hoc" committee for the International Criminal Court and, after hearing the conclusions, a Preparatory Committee that worked for two years (1996–1998) on the draft. Meanwhile, the United Nations created the "ad hoc" tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR) using statutes—and amendments due to issues raised during pre-trial or trial stages of the proceedings—that are quite similar to the Rome Statute.


title: Rome Statute

text: During its 52nd session the UN General Assembly decided to convene a diplomatic conference for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, held in Rome 15 June–17 July 1998 to define the treaty, entered into force on 1 July 2002. This Rome Conference was attended by representatives from 161 member states, along with observers from various other organizations, intergovernmental organizations and agencies, and non-governmental organizations (including many human rights groups) and was held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, located about 4 km away from the Vatican (one of the states represented).


title: Rome Statute

text: The states parties held a Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda from 31 May to 11 June 2010. The Review Conference adopted a definition of the crime of aggression, thereby allowing the ICC to exercise jurisdiction over the crime for the first time. It also adopted an expansion of the list of war crimes.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute outlines the ICC's structure and areas of jurisdiction. The ICC can prosecute individuals (but not states or organizations) for four kinds of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. These crimes are detailed in Articles 6, 7, 8, and 8 "bis" of the Rome Statute, respectively. They must have been committed after 1 July 2002, when the Rome Statute came into effect.


title: Rome Statute

text: The ICC has jurisdiction over these crimes in three cases: first, if they took place on the territory of a State Party; second, if they were committed by a national of a State Party; or third, if the crimes were referred to the Prosecutor by the UN Security Council. The ICC may begin an investigation before issuing a warrant if the crimes were referred by the UN Security Council or if a State Party requests an investigation. Otherwise, the Prosecutor must seek authorization from a Pre-Trial Chamber of three judges to begin an investigation "proprio motu" (on its own initiative). The only type of immunity the ICC recognizes is that it cannot prosecute those under 18 when the crime was committed. In particular, no officials – not even a head of state – are immune from prosecution.


title: Rome Statute

text: The Rome Statute established three bodies: the ICC itself, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), and the Trust Fund for Victims. The ASP has two subsidiary bodies. These are the Permanent Secretariat, established in 2003, and an elected Bureau which includes a president and vice-president. The ICC itself has four organs: the Presidency (with mostly administrative responsibilities); the Divisions (the Pre-Trial, Trial, and Appeals judges); the Office of the Prosecutor; and the Registry (whose role is to support the other three organs). The functions of these organs are detailed in Part 4 of the Rome Statute.


title: Rome Statute

text: Any amendment to the Rome Statute requires the support of a two-thirds majority of the states parties, and an amendment (except those amending the list of crimes) will not enter into force until it has been ratified by seven-eighths of the states parties. A state party which has not ratified such an amendment may withdraw with immediate effect. Any amendment to the list of crimes within the jurisdiction of the court will only apply to those states parties that have ratified it. It does not need a seven-eighths majority of ratifications.


title: Nuevas Ideas

text: Nuevas Ideas (Spanish for "New Ideas") is a Salvadoran populist political party founded on 25 October 2017 and based in San Salvador. It was founded by the current President of the Republic of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. It was legalized by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) on 24 August 2018. Its first secretary general was Federico Gerardo Anliker and was later succeeded by Xavier Zablah Bukele.


title: Nuevas Ideas

text: It is defined, according to its statutes, as a "democratic, decentralized, plural, and inclusive political party without obsolete ideologies, but at the forefront of the struggle for the recognition of all rights for all citizens, without exclusion or privileges. Among its principles are: building a free El Salvador, defending diversity of thought, a free market and social economy, assuming political activity and the exercise of power as an act of commitment to the country."


title: Nuevas Ideas

text: After the then-Mayor of San Salvador Nayib Bukele was expelled from the FMLN on 10 October 2017, he announced on 25 October through his social networks the foundation of a citizen movement called "Nuevas Ideas", seeking for it to become a political party and thus allowing him to compete in the 2019 presidential elections under its banner. Ultimately, this did not materialize, and Bukele ran a successful one-time campaign under the Grand Alliance for National Unity.


title: Nuevas Ideas

text: By legal requirement, Bukele called on his supporters to go to the more than 90 signature collection centers throughout the country to support the creation of the political party. They managed to collect approximately 200,000 signatures in three days.


title: Nuevas Ideas

text: Bukele was exceptionally popular among the citizens as he pushed an anti-corruption agenda. According to a survey, 96 percent of respondents said he was doing a "good" or "very good job." El Salvador's legislative elections was an important breakthrough in February 2021. Nuevas Ideas won around two-thirds of votes with its coalition (GANA–Nuevas Ideas). Nuevas Ideas won 56 of the 84 seats in parliament.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Meadow Lemon III (April 25, 1932 – December 27, 2015), known professionally as Meadowlark Lemon, was an American basketball player, actor, and Christian minister (ordained in 1986). Beginning in 1994, he ran Meadowlark Lemon Ministries in Scottsdale, Arizona. For 22 years, he was known as the "Clown Prince" of the touring Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. He played in more than 16,000 games for the Globetrotters and was a 2003 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: When basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain was asked his opinion on the best player of all time, he responded, "For me it would be Meadowlark Lemon." Fellow Wilmington great Michael Jordan called Lemon a "true national treasure" and a personal inspiration in Jordan's youth.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Lemon was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and attended Williston Industrial School, graduating in 1952. He then matriculated at Florida A&M University, but was soon drafted into the United States Army and served for two years in Austria and West Germany.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Lemon made his first basketball hoop out of an onion sack and coat hanger, using an empty Carnation milk can to sink his first 2-point hoop.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Lemon first applied to the Globetrotters in 1954 at age 22, finally being chosen to play in 1955. In 1980, he left to form one of his Globetrotters imitators, the Bucketeers. He played with that team until 1983, then moved on to play with the Shooting Stars from 1984 to 1987. In 1988, he moved on to "Meadowlark Lemon's Harlem All Stars" team. Despite being with his own touring team, Lemon returned to the Globetrotters, playing 50 games with them in 1994.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 2000, Lemon received the John Bunn Award, the highest honor given by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame outside induction. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In the 1970s, an animated version of Lemon, voiced by Scatman Crothers, starred with various other Globetrotters in the Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series "Harlem Globetrotters", as well as its spinoff, "The Super Globetrotters." The animated Globetrotters also made three appearances in "The New Scooby-Doo Movies."


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Lemon appeared alongside Fred "Curly" Neal, Marques Haynes and his other fellow Globetrotters in a live-action Saturday-morning television show, "The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine," in 1974–1975, which also featured Rodney Allen Rippy and Avery Schreiber.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1978, Lemon appeared in a memorable Burger King commercial by making a tower of burgers until he found a double-beef pickles and onions with no-cheese burger.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1980, Lemon appeared as the coach of the basketball team from "The White Shadow" in a series of guest skits for Order/Disorder week on "3-2-1 Contact".


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1983, Lemon appeared on an episode of "Alice" entitled "Tommy Fouls Out", and in a Charmin toilet paper commercial alongside Mr. Whipple (actor Dick Wilson).


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1996 season 2 episode 5 of "Pinky and the Brain" titled "Brain's Song" Meadowlark Lemon was Brain's best friend in the parody of "Brian's Song".


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 2006, on episode of adult swim's "The Boondocks" entitled "The Itis", the name of Meadowlark was used as the name of the park that Ed Wuncler I mentions an interest in purchasing from the state.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 2009, on FOX's TV show "The Cleveland Show", the name of Meadowlark Lemon was used for a dog's name, a pet for the character of Rallo Tubbs. The dog died in the second episode.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1979, Lemon starred in the educational geography film "Meadowlark Lemon Presents the World." Also in 1979, he joined the cast of the short-lived television sitcom "Hello, Larry" in season two, to help boost the show's ratings. In the same year, he played Rev. Grady Jackson in the movie "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh." It was several years before he actually became an ordained minister himself.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: He recorded a song, "My Kids" which was written by Dalton & Dubarri. The song was produced by Dubarri, and released on Casablanca NB 969 in March, 1979. In The "Cash Box" Singles to Watch section, it was called Top 40 material by the reviewer.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1982, Lemon was featured in the Grammy-nominated video "Fun & Games", an interactive educational video produced by Optical Programming Associates and Scholastic Productions, on the then-emerging LaserDisc format.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: In 1994, Lemon was referenced in an episode of the Nickelodeon show “The Adventures of Pete & Pete”. One of the characters claimed that “...you know, in a matter of moments, we’re all gonna be famous like Meadowlark Lemon.”


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: Lemon had 10 children: Richard, George, Beverly, Donna, Robin, Jonathan, Jamison, Angela, Crystal, and Caleb.


title: Meadowlark Lemon

text: A born-again Christian, Lemon became an ordained minister in 1986 and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Vision International University in Ramona, California, in 1988. He was also featured as a gospel singer in several Gaither Homecoming videos. In his last years, he took up residence in Scottsdale, where his Meadowlark Lemon Ministries, Inc. is located.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a 1947 American romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R.A. Dick. In 1945, 20th Century Fox bought the film rights to the novel, published only in the United Kingdom at that time. It was shot entirely in California (mainly around Stillwater Cove).


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: In Britain in the early 1900s, recently widowed Mrs Lucy Muir moves to the seaside village of Whitecliff despite the disapproval of her in-laws. She rents a house there named Gull Cottage, although it has a reputation as being haunted by the spirit of a seaman who accidentally died there.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: On the first night after moving in with her young daughter, Anna, and her loyal maid, Martha, Lucy is visited by an apparition of the former owner, a roguish but harmless sea captain named Daniel Gregg. He tells Lucy that his death four years ago was not a suicide, but the result of accidentally kicking the valve on a gas-fired room heater in his sleep. Daniel explains that he wanted to turn Gull Cottage into a home for retired seamen and does not appreciate her presence, having personally frightened away previous visitors. However, due to Lucy's headstrong attitude, as well as her appreciation of the house, Daniel reluctantly agrees to allow her to live in Gull Cottage and he promises to make himself visible only to her.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Lucy's poor investment — her only source of income — has dried up, and she considers a move back to London. However, Daniel has warmed up to her and asks her to stay. They decide to write a book, a dictation of his memories from his time at sea, for which she will profit. During the course of writing the book, they fall in love. Both realize it is a hopeless situation, and Daniel tells Lucy that she should find a living man to be with. In London, Lucy goes to meet a publisher and becomes attracted to Miles Fairley, a suave author who writes children's stories under the pen name Uncle Neddy. Daniel's lurid and sensational recollections, titled "Blood and Swash", become a bestseller, providing Lucy with royalties which she uses to buy Gull Cottage. Fairley follows her back to Whitecliff and they begin a whirlwind courtship after Fairly claims he fell in love with her at first sight. Though initially jealous of their relationship, Daniel decides to leave, as he considers himself an obstacle to Lucy's chance at happiness. While she is asleep, he places in her mind the suggestion that she alone wrote the book and his presence was merely a dream. He then fades away after declaring his regret that he never had a life with her.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Fairley sends a note cancelling a planned visit to Gull Cottage, saying he will be in London for a few days. Later, Lucy visits London to sign a contract, and obtains Fairley's address in the city from the office clerk to pay a surprise visit. She discovers that Fairley (who is not at home) is already married with two children, and that Fairley has romanced other women in the past. Heartbroken, Lucy returns to Whitecliff to spend the rest of her life as a recluse, with Martha looking after her.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Anna, now at university, returns with a Royal Navy lieutenant she plans to marry. In the course of a conversation with her mother, Anna reveals that she too had seen Daniel, whom she regarded as a childhood friend, and she knew about her mother's relationship with Fairley. Lucy in turn reveals that Fairley is now an overweight alcoholic, abandoned by his wife and children. Through the conversation, Lucy realizes that the ghost she loved was in fact real.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Many years later, now ailing and under a doctor's care, Lucy receives a letter from Anna, informing her that Anna's daughter - also named Lucy - is engaged to a plane captain. Anna believes that affection for captains runs in their family. Lucy rejects the glass of hot milk Martha has brought for her with a complaint that she is tired. After Martha leaves the room, Lucy takes a sip, but the glass falls to the floor as she dies. Suddenly, Daniel returns and approaches her, whispering that she will never be tired again. Taking his hands, her young spirit leaves her aged body and greets him with a loving smile. Unnoticed by Martha, the couple leave the house and walk arm-in-arm into an ethereal mist.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Although Joseph Mankiewicz had an excellent reputation as a screenwriter, Philip Dunne says Mankiewicz's only contribution to this script was writing a couple of "excellent lines" for George Sanders' character. Sanders' casting came about when Richard Ney, the original actor playing the role, was fired for being inadequate in the part. Bernard Herrmann, the composer of the film's music, regarded it as his finest score.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: "The New York Times" called "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" "a pleasurable film, despite its failings," singling out Edna Best for "by far the best performannce "[sic]"". In the writer's opinion, Harrison "has such an ingratiating personality that this compensates in large measure for the lack of characterization in his role," but Tierney "is a pretty girl, but has no depth of feeling as an actress."


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: "Variety", on the other hand, praised the actors and the film unreservedly: “Gene Tierney gives what undoubtedly is her best performance to date. It’s warmly human... the out-of-this-world romance pulls audience sympathy with an infectious tug that never slackens. In his role as the lusty, seafaring shade, Rex Harrison commands the strongest attention...Philip Dunne’s script lards the R. A. Dick novel with gusty humor and situations that belie the ghostly theme. Dialog makes full use of salty expressions to point up chuckles.”


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: Charles Lang received a 1947 Academy Award nomination for his black-and-white cinematography on the movie.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" was adapted as an hour-long radio play on the December 1, 1947 broadcast of "Lux Radio Theater" with Charles Boyer and Madeleine Carroll and was adapted on the August 16, 1951 "Screen Director's Playhouse" with Boyer and Jane Wyatt. A 90-minute adaptation by Barry Campbell of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 21 December 1974 with Bryan Pringle as Captain Gregg, Gemma Jones as Lucy Muir, and Philip Bond as Miles.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: From 1968 to 1970, a TV series titled "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir", starring Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare, aired on NBC and then ABC. It had the same premise and main characters as the book and film, but it was a situation comedy, downplaying the romantic fantasy elements and focusing on broad humor. The time and setting were changed, with the action taking place in a contemporary American coastal town (although the ghost was portrayed as being from the Victorian era). For the series, Mrs. Muir's first name was changed from Lucy to Carolyn, and the children's names were changed from Cyril and Anna (in the original novel) to Jonathan and Candace.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: In April 1994, "Variety" continued its reporting on Sean Connery's being slated to play the Captain in a version of the story for 20th Century Fox. The project was still “in the pipeline” in 1997.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: On June 3, 2005, a musical based on the film and the book, written and directed by James J. Mellon, had its world premiere at the NoHo Arts Center in Los Angeles. "Variety" gave it a mixed review.


title: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

text: The film was released on Blu-ray in 2013 by 20th Century Fox after being selected in Fox's Voice Your Choice promotion. It previously was released on DVD as part of the 20th Century Fox Studio Classics collection.


title: Teaching grandmother to suck eggs

text: Teaching (your) grandmother to suck eggs is an English language saying that refers to a person giving advice to another person in a subject with which the other person is already familiar (and probably more so than the first person).


title: Teaching grandmother to suck eggs

text: The origins of the phrase are not clear. The Oxford English Dictionary and others suggest that it comes from a translation in 1707, by J. Stevens, of Francisco de Quevedo (Spanish author): "You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs". A record from 1859 is available, implying common usage by that time. Most likely the meaning of the idiom derives from the fact that before the advent of modern dentistry (and modern dental prostheses) many elderly people (grandparents) had very bad teeth, or no teeth, so that the simplest way for them to eat protein was to poke a pinhole in the shell of a raw egg and suck out the contents; therefore, a grandmother was usually already a practiced expert on sucking eggs and did not need anyone to show her how to do it.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: Ithaca is a 2015 American drama film directed by Meg Ryan and written by Erik Jendresen. It is based on the 1943 novel "The Human Comedy" by William Saroyan. The film stars Alex Neustaedter, Jack Quaid, Meg Ryan, Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater and Tom Hanks. The film was released on September 9, 2016, by Momentum Pictures.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: In 1942, Homer Macauley (Alex Neustaedter) is a boy determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger of the small fictional town of Ithaca, CA. His older brother, Marcus (Jack Quaid), along with most of the young men of the town, has gone to serve in World War II, leaving the families worried. His father (Tom Hanks) has died recently in the war and the boy has to take care of his widowed mother (Meg Ryan), his older sister and his 4-year-old brother. Homer delivers letters that bring messages of love, wishes, pain, and death, hoping that one of them announces the return of his brother.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: On January 29, 2014, it was announced Meg Ryan would direct "Ithaca", a film based on the 1943 novel "The Human Comedy" by William Saroyan, with Ryan, Sam Shepard, Hamish Linklater, and Ryan's son Jack Quaid starring in the film. On June 25, 2014, Tom Hanks joined the cast. Principal photography began on July 21, 2014, and ended on August 22, 2014. It was filmed in Petersburg, Virginia, and also some opening scenes of the film were shot on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: The film premiered on October 23, 2015, at the Middleburg Film Festival. The film was released on September 9, 2016, by Momentum Pictures.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: John Mellencamp, Ryan's boyfriend, wrote the entire score for the movie. "Not one note [in "Ithaca"] is anything other than Mellencamp. He did everything," Ryan said.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: In a May 6, 2016 Q&A after a screening of the movie at Geena Davis' Bentonville Film Festival, Ryan said: "The music is so beautiful. John Mellencamp wrote every note – everything – the tiny little needle drops you hear in the back. He wrote about half of it after I read him the script, and then the next half after he saw the movie. He's just incredible."


title: Ithaca (film)

text: In addition to the score, Mellencamp wrote two original songs for "Ithaca": "Sugar Hill Mountain" (sung by Carlene Carter) and "Seeing You Around" (sung by Leon Redbone). "Sugar Hill Mountain" is a fiddle-driven folk song that describes an idyllic location where there's "bubble gum and cigarette trees," no clocks, every day is spring, and anything you need is "gratis." Meanwhile, the piano-heavy "Seeing You Around" has the sound of a 1940s standard (the time period the movie takes place in) and is made all the more authentically '40s-sounding by Redbone's gruff, baritone vocals. Mellencamp's band provided the backing on both tracks and performed all the music that is in the movie.


title: Ithaca (film)

text: Said Carter in 2015: "The way John Mellencamp and I met was he invited me to come and sing this song he had written for the movie that Meg Ryan has coming out called "Ithaca". That was when we became friends, when I went to Indiana and recorded with him and the guys this really cool song called 'Sugar Hill Mountain' that's in the movie. And the movie is wonderful. We got to see a rough cut of it and I was very impressed."


title: Ithaca (film)

text: The track "Sugar Hill Mountain" (sung by Carlene Carter) was later included in John Mellencamp's album Sad Clowns & Hillbillies released in 2017 and which features 6 tracks with Carlene Carter: this one, one she wrote, one she co-wrote with Mellencamp, one that is a reworking of a track from the 2013 John Mellencamp & Stephen King project Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (which had featured Carter's stepsister Rosanne Cash), one that is a Mellencamp version of a Woody Guthrie lyric, and one where she does backing vocals on a song which was originally for his 1996 album Mr. Happy Go Lucky.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Enrico Letta (; born 20 August 1966) is an Italian politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy from April 2013 to February 2014, leading a grand coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties. Since March 2021, Letta has been secretary of the Democratic Party (PD).


title: Enrico Letta

text: After working as an academic, Letta entered politics in 1998 when he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for the Community Policies, a role he held until 1999 when he was promoted to become Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Crafts. In 2001, he left the Cabinet upon his election to the Chamber of Deputies. From 2006 to 2008, he was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers. In 2007, Letta was one of the senior founding members of the Democratic Party, and in 2009 was elected as its Deputy Secretary.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After the 2013 Italian general election produced an inconclusive result, and following negotiations between party leaders, President Giorgio Napolitano gave him the task of forming a national unity government (Letta Cabinet), composed of Letta's PD, the centre-right The People of Freedom (PdL), and the centrist Civic Choice, in order to mitigate the economic and social crises engulfing Italy as a result of the Great Recession. Following an agreement between parties, Letta resigned as PD Deputy Secretary and was appointed Prime Minister of Italy on 28 April 2013. His government tried to promote economic recovery by securing a funding deal from the European Union to alleviate youth unemployment and abolished the party subsidies, something seen as a watershed moment for Italian politics, which for years had depended upon public funds. Letta also faced the early stages of the 2015 European migrant crisis, including the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck, the deadliest shipwreck in the recent history of the Mediterranean Sea; in response, Letta implemented Operation Mare Nostrum to patrol the maritime borders and rescue migrants.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In November 2013, PdL leader Silvio Berlusconi attempted to withdraw his party's support from the government in order to bring about a change of Prime Minister; in response, all of the cabinet's centre-right ministers chose to leave the PdL and formed a new party, saying they wished to continue supporting Letta. Despite securing his position, the election in December 2013 of Matteo Renzi as PD secretary brought significant leadership tensions within the PD to public view. After several weeks of denying that he would seek a change, Renzi publicly challenged Letta for the position of Prime Minister on 13 February 2014. Letta quickly lost the support of his colleagues and resigned as Prime Minister on 22 February.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Following his resignation, Letta initially retired from politics, leaving Italy to accept appointment as dean of the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris. In March 2021, the PD secretary Nicola Zingaretti resigned after growing tensions within the party. Many prominent members of the party asked Letta to become the new leader; after a few days, Letta announced that he would return to Italy to accept the candidacy, and he was elected as new secretary by the national assembly on 14 March 2021. On 4 October 2021, Letta was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Siena district.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta was born in Pisa, Tuscany, to Giorgio Letta, an Abruzzo-born professor of mathematics who taught probability theory at the University of Pisa, member of the Lincean Academy and of the National Academy of the Sciences, and Anna Banchi, born in Sassari and raised in Porto Torres of Tuscan and Sardinian origins. Born into a numerous family, uncles on his father's side include the centre-right politician Gianni Letta, a close advisor of Silvio Berlusconi, and the archeologist Cesare Letta, while one of his paternal aunts, Maria Teresa Letta, served as vice president of the Italian Red Cross; a maternal great-uncle is the poet and playwright Gian Paolo Bazzoni.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After spending part of his childhood in Strasbourg, Letta completed his schooling in Italy at the "liceo classico" Galileo Galilei in Pisa. He has a degree in political science, which he received from the University of Pisa and subsequently obtained a PhD at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, a Graduate School with university status.


title: Enrico Letta

text: From 2001 to 2003, Letta was professor at the University Carlo Cattaneo near Varese, and then he taught at the Sant'Anna School in Pisa in 2003 and at the HEC Paris in 2004.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta, a catholic, began his political career in the Christian Democracy (DC), the dominant centrist and Roman Catholic party, which ruled Italy for almost fifty years. From 1991 to 1995, Letta was president of the Youth of the European People's Party, the official youth wing of the European People's Party, a political party at European level founded by national-level Christian democratic parties, including the Italian DC; he used his presidency to help strengthen long-term connections among a variety of centrist parties in Europe, and has since remained a convinced supporter of the European Union and European integration.


title: Enrico Letta

text: During the Ciampi Cabinet headed by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 1993 and 1994, Letta worked as chief-of-staff for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Beniamino Andreatta; Andreatta, a left-leaning Christian Democrat economist with whom Letta had already been collaborating in a think tank known as "Agenzia di Ricerche e Legislazione" (AREL), played a highly influential role in Letta's political career.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Following the collapse of the DC in 1994, Letta joined its immediate successor, the Italian People's Party (PPI); after serving as secretary general of the Euro Committee within the Ministry of Treasury from 1996 to 1997, he became deputy secretary of the party in 1997 and 1998, when it was fully allied with the centre-left. In 1998, after the fall of Romano Prodi's first government, Letta was appointed Minister for the Community Policies in cabinet of Massimo D'Alema at the age of 32, becoming the youngest cabinet minister in post-war Italy.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 1999, Letta became Minister of Industry, Commerce and Crafts in the second government of D'Alema; a position that he hold until 2001, serving also in the cabinet of Giuliano Amato. During Amato's government he hold the role of Minister of Foreign Trade too.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In the 2001 Italian general election, Letta was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a member of Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy, a newly formed centrist formation to which the Italian People's Party had joined. In the following year, he was appointed national responsible for economic policies of The Daisy.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 2004, Letta was elected member of the European Parliament, with nearly 179,000 votes, within The Olive Tree list, joining the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group. As MEP he became member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. Letta served also in the committee for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 2006, Letta was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies and was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers in the second government of Romano Prodi, thereby succeeding his uncle Gianni Letta who had held the same position in the outgoing cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi. In this post, he became the closest advisor of Prime Minister Prodi, becoming one of the most influential politicians within the government. However, Prodi's government fell after only two years following tensions within its majority caused by the resignation of the Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella. Following the 2008 Italian general election, which saw a victory of the centre-right, Letta returned the post to his uncle, when the Berlusconi IV Cabinet was sworn in.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 2007, together with other The Daisy's members, Letta joined the Democratic Party (PD), the new centre-left party, born from the union between The Daisy and the Democrats of the Left. Having been a founding member of the party, Letta run in the first leadership election, which was held as an open primary. He announced his candidacy in July 2007 through a YouTube video. After a few weeks from the announcement, he compared the PD to Wikipedia, stating: "As in Wikipedia, even in the PD each of the hundreds of thousands of members must bring their own contributions, their own skills, which in certain fields are certainly more important than mine and those of the other leaders of the centre-left." In support of his candidacy, Letta founded the 360 Association, a centrist and Christian leftist group, mainly composed by former members of The Daisy.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta's candidacy was supported by prominent members of the Italian centre-left, like Francesco Cossiga, Paolo De Castro, Gianni Pittella, Vito De Filippo and many other former members of The Daisy. Moreover, Letta's faction was composed by politicians considered close to Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a Christian leftist professor and founding father of the Italian centre-left. However, Letta had to face the politician who, more than any other, had worked to the formation of the Democratic Party and who was unanimously considered the future leader of the centre-left, Walter Veltroni, the incumbent Mayor of Rome. In the primary election, Veltroni won by a landslide with 75.8% of votes, followed by the former Minister of Health Rosy Bindi with 12.9% and Letta with 11.0%.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After the primary election, Veltroni appointed Letta national responsible for labour. In May 2008, after the defeat in the 2008 election, Letta was appointed Shadow Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the second and last Shadow Cabinet formed in Italy.


title: Enrico Letta

text: During the leadership election of 2009, Letta supported the eventual winner, the social-democrat Pier Luigi Bersani, being appointed Deputy Secretary by the party's national convention.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In June 2010, Letta organized a three-day meeting in Verona, during which he met, within its association, entrepreneurs and key leaders of Lega Nord, the largest party in Veneto and eastern Lombardy. An opinion poll among northern Democrats, released during the "Nord Camp", showed that they were keener on an alliance with Lega Nord than Berlusconi's The People of Freedom. Letta was praised both by Roberto Maroni and Umberto Bossi.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In the 2013 Italian general election, the centre-left alliance Italy Common Good led by Bersani won a clear majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, thanks to a majority bonus that has effectively trebled the number of seats assigned to the winning party, while in the popular vote it narrowly defeated the center-right alliance of former Prime Minister Berlusconi. Close behind, the new anti-establishment Five Star Movement of comedian Beppe Grillo became the third-strongest force, clearly ahead of the centrist coalition of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti. In the Senate, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 20 April 2013, when Bersani resigned as Secretary after the candidates for President of the Republic Franco Marini and Romano Prodi were defeated in the presidential election, the whole leadership of the PD, including Deputy Secretary Letta, resigned their positions.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Following five inconclusive ballots for the 2013 Italian presidential election, incumbent President Giorgio Napolitano accepted to be re-elected at the Quirinal Palace. Eventually, Napolitano reluctantly agreed to serve for another term in order to safeguard the continuity of the country's institutions. Napolitano was easily re-elected on 20 April 2013, receiving 738 of the 1007 possible votes, and was sworn in on 22 April 2013 after a speech when he asked for constitutional and electoral reforms.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After his re-election, Napolitano immediately began consultations with the chairmen of the Chamber of Deputies, Senate and political forces, after the failure of the previous attempt with Bersani, and the establishment of a panel of experts by the President himself (dubbed as "wise men" by the press), in order to outline priorities and formulate an agenda to deal with the persistent economic hardship and growing unemployment. On 24 April 2013, Enrico Letta was invited to form a government by President Napolitano, following weeks of political deadlock.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 27 April, Letta formally accepted the task of leading a grand coalition government, with support from the centre-left Democratic Party, the centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) of Silvio Berlusconi and the centrist Civic Choice of outgoing PM Mario Monti. The government he formed became the first in the history of the Italian Republic to include representatives of all the major coalitions that had run in the latest election. His close relationship with his uncle, Gianni Letta, one of Berlusconi's most trusted advisors, was perceived as a way of overcoming the bitter hostility between the two opposing factions. Letta appointed Angelino Alfano, secretary of the People of Freedom, as his Deputy Prime Minister. The new government was formally sworn-in as on 28 April. During the swearing ceremony, a man fired gunshots outside Chigi Palace and wounded two Carabinieri. The attacker, Luigi Preiti, was stopped and arrested; he declared that he wanted to kill politicians or at least to hit a "symbol of politics" and that he was forced by despair being unemployed and recently divorced.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 29 April, Letta's government won the confidence vote in the Chamber with 453 votes in favour, 152 against and 17 abstentions. On the following day, he won the confidence vote in Senate too, with 233 votes in favour, 59 against an 18 abstentions. In his first speech in front of the Parliament, Letta stressed "necessity to restore decency, sobriety and a sense of honor"; he also advocated for a reduction of politics' costs.


title: Enrico Letta

text: During his premiership, Letta had to face a serious socio-economic crisis caused by the Great Recession and the subsequent European debt crisis. In 2013, one of the major problems of the country was the huge youth unemployment, which was valued around 40%. To face this issue, on 14 June 2013, Letta scheduled a summit at Chigi Palace with the ministers of the economy, finance and labour of Italy, Germany, France and Spain, to agree on common EU policies for reducing unemployment. After a few weeks, during a press conference at the conclusion of the Council of the European Union in Brussels, Letta announced that Italy would receive 1.5 billion euros in EU funds to fight youth unemployment.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 31 May, the Council of ministers resolved to sponsor a bill to abolish party subsidies, which was widely considered a revolution in Italian politics and political parties, which heavily depended on public funds. On 4 June, Letta, within his Minister of Economic Development, Flavio Zanonato and his Minister of the Environment, Andrea Orlando, announced the receivership of Ilva, one of the largest steel makers in Europe, for a duration of 36 months, appointing Enrico Bondi as receiver.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 15 June, the government approved the so-called "Action Decree" on hiring policies enabling economic recovery. The decree was later approved by the Parliament between July and August 2013 with a confidence vote. The reform was harshly criticized by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. On 29 August, the government abolished IMU, the Italian tax on real estate introduced by the technocratic government of Mario Monti, for primary homes and for farm buildings .


title: Enrico Letta

text: As a result of the Libyan and Syrian Civil Wars, a major problem faced by Letta upon becoming Prime Minister in 2013 was the high levels of illegal immigration to Italy.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was reported that the boat had sailed from Misrata, Libya, but that many of the migrants were originally from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of 155 survivors. On 12 October it was reported that the confirmed death toll after searching the boat was 359, but that further bodies were still missing; a figure of "more than 360" deaths was later reported, becoming the deadliest shipwreck occurred in the Mediterranean Sea.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After the Lampedusa tragedy, Prime Minister Letta decided to strengthen the national patrolling of Sicilian channel by authorizing Operation Mare Nostrum, a military and humanitarian operation whose purpose was to patrol the maritime border and provide relief to migrants. This operation had two main purposes: to safeguard life at sea and to combat the illegal smuggling of migrants. The operation brought at least 150,000 migrants to Europe, mainly from Africa and the Middle East. The operation ended a few months after the end of his premiership, on 31 October 2014.


title: Enrico Letta

text: A strong pro-Europeanist politician, Letta built up close relations with the other prominent European leaders like Angela Merkel, who was the first foreign leader he met, just a few days after his sworn in, on 30 April. Letta built also a warm relation with the French President François Hollande, with whom he shared a common view on austerity policies, considered outdated to face the economic crisis; Letta and Hollande often stressed the necessity to increase the public expenditures in investments.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 17 and 18 June, Letta participated in his first G8 summit at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. During the summit, Letta had his first bilateral meeting with the President of the United States, Barack Obama. On 17 October, Letta was invited to the White House by President Obama, who stated that he had been really impressed by the Italian Prime Minister and his reforms' plan.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 5 and 6 September, Letta took part in the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg. The summit was focused on the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. Letta advocated for a diplomatic resolution of the crisis promoted by the United Nations. On 25 September, during his speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly, Letta asked a deep reform of the UN Security Council.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 28 September 2013, five ministers of The People of Freedom resigned on the orders of their leader, Silvio Berlusconi, pointing to the decision to postpone the decree that prevented the increase of the VAT from 21 to 22%, thus opening a government crisis. On the following day, Letta had a meeting with President Napolitano to discuss about the possible alternatives to solve the crisis. The head of State stressed that he would dissolve parliament only if there were no other possible alternatives.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In the following days, dozens of members of PdL prepared to defy Berlusconi and vote in favour of the government, prompting him to announce that he would back the Prime Minister. On 2 October, the government received 235 votes in favor and 70 against in the Senate, and 435 in favor and 162 against in the Chamber of Deputies. Letta could thus continue his grand coalition government.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 23 November, the Senate had to vote about the expulsion of Berlusconi from the Parliament, due to a conviction of tax fraud by the court of final instance and the Court of Cassation, which occurred a few months before. Because he had been sentenced to a gross imprisonment for more than two years, the Senate voted to expel him from the Parliament, barring him from serving in any legislative office for six years.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After his expulsion from the Parliament, Berlusconi, who disbanded the PdL a few days before re-founding Forza Italia party, withdrew his support to the government. However, the interior minister Angelino Alfano did not follow his former leader, founding, along with other ministers and many members of the parliament, the New Centre-Right party, remaining in government. The government later won key confidence votes in December 2013, with 173 votes in favour in the Senate and 350 in the Chamber.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 26 January 2014, the Minister of Agriculture, Nunzia De Girolamo, resigned from her post due to claims of improper conduct linked to a scandal in the local healthcare system of her hometown, Benevento. Her resignation was accepted by Letta on the following day, who took the ministerial role "ad interim".


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 8 December 2013, the Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, won the Democratic Party leadership election by a landslide, immediately starting rumors about the possibility of becoming the new Prime Minister. On 17 January 2014, while on air at "Le invasioni barbariche" on La7 TV channel, interviewed about tensions between him and Prime Minister Letta, Renzi tweeted the hashtag #enricostaisereno ("Enrico don't worry") to reassure his party colleague that he was not plotting anything against him.


title: Enrico Letta

text: The growing criticism of the slow pace of Italian economic reform left Letta increasingly isolated within his own party. At a PD's meeting on 13 February 2014, the Democratic Party leadership voted heavily in favour of Renzi's motion for "a new government, a new phase and a radical programme of reforms". Minutes after the party backed Renzi's proposal by 136 votes to 16, with two abstentions, Letta went to the Quirinal Palace, for a bilateral meeting with President Napolitano.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In an earlier speech, Renzi had paid tribute to Letta, saying that he was not intended to put him "on trial". But, without directly proposing himself as the next Prime Minister, he said the Eurozone's third-largest economy urgently needed "a new phase" and "radical programme" to push through badly-needed reforms. The motion he put forward made clear "the necessity and urgency of opening a new phase with a new executive". Speaking privately to party leaders, Renzi said that Italy was "at a crossroads" and faced either holding fresh elections or a new government without a return to the polls.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 14 February, Letta resigned from the office of Prime Minister. Following Letta's resignation, Renzi formally received the task of forming a new government from President Napolitano on 17 February, and was formally sworn in as Prime Minister on 22 February.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 2015, Letta resigned as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, after having voted against the new electoral law proposed by Prime Minister Renzi; at the same time, he announced that he would not renew the PD's membership.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In April 2015, Letta moved to Paris to teach at the Sciences Po, a higher education institute of political science. Since 1 September, he became dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) of the same institute. Along with his commitment to Sciences Po, he also had teaching periods at the University of Technology Sydney and the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. In the same year, Letta launched "Scuola di Politiche" (School of Politics), a course of political science for young Italians.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In 2016, Letta supported the constitutional reform proposed by Renzi to reduce the powers of the Senate. In the same year, along with the Jacques Delors Institute, he launched a school of political science focused on European issues, known as "Académie Notre Europe". In October 2017, he joined the new "Comitè Action Publique 2022", a public commission for the reform of state and public administration in France which was strongly supported by President Emmanuel Macron.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In March 2019, following the victory of Nicola Zingaretti in the PD leadership election, Letta announced that he would re-join the party after four years. In the same year, Letta also served on the advisory board of the annual Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), co-chaired by Thomas Piketty and Tharman Shanmugaratnam. In 2020, he spoke in favour of the constitutional reform to reduce the number of MPs, considering it the first step to overcome perfect bicameralism.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Following his retirement from politics, Letta became advisor of many corporations and international organizations like Abertis, where he became member of the Board of Directors in 2016, Amundi, in which he served as member of the Global Advisory Board since 2016, the Eurasia Group, of which he has been Senior Advisor since 2016, Publicis, where he served within the International Advisory Board since 2019 and Tikehau Capital, of which he became member of the International Advisory Board.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta is a member of many no-profit organizations like the International Gender Champions (IGC), the British Council, Re-Imagine Europa, the Trilateral Commission, in which he presided the European Group, the Aspen Institute Italia, in which he served in the Executive Committee, Associazione Italia ASEAN, of which he became chairman and the "Institut de Prospective Economique du Monde Méditerranéen" (IPEMED).


title: Enrico Letta

text: In January 2021, after the government crisis which forced Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to resign, a national unity government led by Mario Draghi was formed. In the midst of the formation of Draghi's government, Zingaretti was heavily criticized by the party's minority for his management of the crisis and strenuous support to Conte. On 4 March, after weeks of internal turmoil, Zingaretti announced his resignation as secretary, stating that he was "ashamed of the power struggles" within the party.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In the next days, many prominent members of the PD, including Zingaretti himself, but also former Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, former party secretary Dario Franceschini and President of Emilia-Romagna Stefano Bonaccini, publicly asked former Letta to become the new leader of the party. Following an initial reluctancy, Letta stated that he needed a few days to evaluate the option. On 12 March, he officially accepted his candidacy as new party's leader. On 14 March, the national assembly of the PD elected Letta secretary with 860 votes in favour, 2 against and 4 abstentions.


title: Enrico Letta

text: On 17 March, Letta appointed Peppe Provenzano and Irene Tinagli as his deputy secretaries. On the following day, he appointed the party's new executive, composed of eight men and eight women. Later that month, Letta forced the two Democratic leaders in Parliament, Graziano Delrio and Andrea Marcucci, to resign and proposed the election of two female leaders. On 25 and 30 March, senators and deputies elected Simona Malpezzi and Debora Serracchiani as their leaders in the Senate and in the Chamber.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In July 2021, Letta announced his intention to run for the Chamber of Deputies in the Siena district, which remained vacant after the resignation of Pier Carlo Padoan. On 4 October, Letta won the by-election with 49.9% of votes, returning to the Parliament after six years. In the concurrent local elections, the PD and its allies won municipal elections in Milan, Bologna, Naples, Rome, Turin and many other major cities across the country.


title: Enrico Letta

text: As leader of the third political forces in the parliament, Letta played an important role in the re-election of incumbent president Sergio Mattarella. On 23 January 2022, during Fabio Fazio's talk show "Che tempo che fa", Letta stated that his favorable candidates to the presidency were Mario Draghi and Sergio Mattarella. On the morning of 29 January, after the fall of all other possible candidacies, Letta asked the other leaders to follow "the Parliament's wisdom", referring to the massive support that Mattarella had received in the previous ballots. On the same day, all the main parties asked Mattarella to serve for a second term. Despite his initial firm denial, Mattarella accepted the nomination and was re-elected with 759 votes.


title: Enrico Letta

text: In July 2022, tensions arose within the governing majority especially between Giuseppe Conte, leader of the Five Star Movement, and Prime Minister Draghi. Letta, who was trying to form a broad centre-left coalition with the M5S in the following election, was particularly critic toward the possibility of a government crisis. On 13 July, Conte announced that the M5S would revoke its support to the national unity government regarding the so-called "decreto aiuti" (), concerning economic stimulus to contrast the ongoing energy crisis, opening a political crisis within the majority. On the following day, the M5S abstained and Prime Minister Draghi, despite having won the confidence vote, resigned. However, the resignation was rejected by President Mattarella. On the same day, Letta stressed that a government crisis needed to be officially opened in the Parliament, adding that "Italy deserved to stand with a strong personality like that of PM Draghi and the team that was around him." However, on 21 July, Draghi resigned again after a new confidence vote in the Senate failed to pass with an absolute majority, following the defections of M5S, Lega, and Forza Italia; A snap election was called for 25 September 2022.


title: Enrico Letta

text: After the 2022 general election, Enrico Letta conceded defeat and announced that he would not stand at the congress to elect the new party secretary, due to be held likely in 2023.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta is married to Gianna Fregonara, an Italian journalist, with whom he had three children, Giacomo, Lorenzo and Francesco.


title: Enrico Letta

text: Letta is known to be fond of listening to Dire Straits and playing Subbuteo; he is also an avid supporter of A.C. Milan. In addition to his native Italian, Letta speaks French and English fluently.


title: Horace and Pete

text: Horace and Pete is an American web series created, written, and directed by Louis C.K., who describes it as a tragedy. In addition to C.K., the series stars Alan Alda, Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco and Jessica Lange. Dealing with the themes of abuse, mental illness, politics and family dynamics, the series focuses on Horace (played by C.K.), Pete (Buscemi), and Sylvia (Falco), the owners of Horace and Pete's, a run-down Brooklyn bar. The first episode was released on C.K.'s website without any prior announcements on January 30, 2016. New episodes premiered weekly until the tenth episode was released on April 2, 2016.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The series is set in a run-down bar called Horace and Pete's in Brooklyn, New York. The bar has been owned by the same family since 1916 and has been passed down through several generations, always with a Horace and a Pete in charge. The current owners are the 49-year-old Horace Wittel VIII and his 52-year-old cousin Pete. The bar is old-fashioned and tradition bound, serving no mixed drinks, with the only beer they sell being Budweiser on tap. For many years, the management has been watering down the drinks, and pricing is variable, depending on whether the customer is a regular or a hipster who is drinking there "ironically". While there is a narrative concerning the relationships between the members of the family and the future of the bar, there are many scenes which take place in the bar and do not advance the main plot.


title: Horace and Pete

text: C.K. said that the show was inspired by Mike Leigh's 1977 play, "Abigail's Party," which was written and developed using Leigh's improvisation method, and was then made into a multi-camera TV play. "Abigail's Party's" story takes place during the course of a night, over drinks and dinner. It is one scene over two hours. C.K. also credits playwright Annie Baker both in discussion about the show and in the credits, as he saw her play "The Flick," and was influenced by her work there. She also helped him with the writing of the first few episodes.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The idea was a sitcom with no audience or laugh-track, multi-camera, shot from a stage-like perspective (i.e., from one angle). The focus would be, similar to "Abigail's Party," centered on a family. Steve Buscemi came on board first, then Edie Falco and Jessica Lange. C.K. said that the cast will get a portion of the profits.


title: Horace and Pete

text: For the role of Pete Wittel, C.K. originally tried to cast Joe Pesci. In a conversation over the phone, Pesci declined the role, so C.K. went to his home to try to persuade him. After discussing about the script, Pesci admitted that he liked it, yet still said no. C.K. had also offered the role to Jack Nicholson and Christopher Walken, before eventually considering and signing Alan Alda. C.K.'s character's name is a homage to the late comedian Harris Wittels, who opened for C.K. and was someone C.K. considered a talented comedian of note.


title: Horace and Pete

text: C.K. started writing the show in October 2015 and then as cast members came on board, he held rehearsals in January 2016. Sections of the show's scripts were kept intentionally blank with placeholders to insert current events, like the upcoming presidential election.


title: Horace and Pete

text: C.K. said that each episode cost half a million dollars to shoot. The show was shot in a studio in New York City called NEP Penn Studios, which is located in the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Madison Square Garden. They shot the show starting in early January 2016, with production lasting about five or six weeks. Using the look and feel of "Abigail's Party," C.K. used a color-coded shot list that was created during rehearsals to enable live-switching between cameras.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The series had frequent references to current events during the barroom discussions. This was made possible by the short time between the production and release of the episodes (less than a week). A quick line-cut would enable a fast turnaround to distribution. There would be no ad breaks for commercials and no standards & practices that would restrict language. Also important to C.K., and why he did not want to release the show via a television network, was that he wanted the show to be secret and unexpected, where the audience had little to no information before viewing, which he said would have been impossible with a traditional TV show model.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The strategy was that C.K. would make the first four episodes and use the money people paid for those to fund the rest of the season. Due to lack of promotion, there was not enough money and he went into debt to fund the production of the show. After he finished production on the show C.K. went on a promotional tour to promote the show and recoup some of the costs. C.K. said that what he was going to be doing (i.e., producing shows of varying length, using a theater-based approach to storytelling, distributing the show himself) was going to be so extreme he did not want to have funding from other sources, like FX Networks, even though people like Lorne Michaels strongly discouraged C.K. from doing this.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The theme song was written and performed by Paul Simon. C.K. asked Simon to write the theme song via email, let Simon read all 10 scripts, and then the two went into the studio for a day to work on the song. The song was subsequently included on the deluxe edition of Simon's 2016 album, "Stranger to Stranger". Simon makes a brief appearance as a customer in a flashback scene in episode 10. "America" by Simon & Garfunkel, and Dion DiMucci and Paul Simon's "New York Is My Home" are featured in different episodes of the show.


title: Horace and Pete

text: The first episode was released on January 30, 2016, with no press or previous mention. Subscribers to C.K.'s mailing list received an email notice of its availability. It is a continuation of the sell-through direct-to-consumer model that C.K. used successfully in prior releases of content.


title: Horace and Pete

text: C.K. explained that the direct-to-consumer, sell-through model of pricing the pilot at $5 would allow him to produce following episodes. On his website, he discussed the challenges of creating, shooting, and releasing a multi-camera TV show and addressed the pricing, revealing a tiered cheaper price for the remaining episodes of the show: $5 for the first episode, $2 for the next, and the $3 for the rest of the episodes. The show has a very short production-release model, as episode 2 was being shot the week following the pilot, and was released a week after the first episode was made public, with following episodes to come. All of the ten episodes were edited by C.K.'s former "Louie" assistant editor Gina Sansom, and had no predetermined running time, ranging in length from 30 minutes to 67 minutes. The closing credits for episode 5 include the notice: End of Act 1. At the close of episode 10, C.K. announces "That's a wrap on "Horace and Pete"" while the cast applaud in a kind of curtain call. Shortly after the final episode of season one was released, C.K. revealed that guest actress Amy Sedaris, a late casting decision, had developed her own character and improvised all her dialogue.


title: Horace and Pete

text: "Horace and Pete"s production, marketing, and distribution model sparked much debate over the strategic, financial, creative options available to content creators. C.K.'s work was compared to Kanye West as both navigate funding singular artistic visions that focus on creative control and in C.K.'s case, distribution, funding, and publicity methods outside the typical television model.


title: Horace and Pete

text: C.K., during an extensive discussion with fellow comic Marc Maron, said that he wanted to open source the process by which he created the show, transparently sharing as much information as possible so others might be able to adopt and learn from his experience.


title: Horace and Pete

text: Critics have been generally positive towards "Horace and Pete", with a consensus and praise that the show feels like a filmed stage play. It was favorably compared to "Playhouse 90," with critic Matt Zoller Seitz from "Vulture" calling it "aggressively classical." The show has been described as being filmed live, with a realism that reflects technical imperfections that add to subtle moments by a cast of veteran actors. James Poniewozik of "The New York Times" called it a "messy experiment that stays just on the good side of pretentiousness. But it's also probing, engaged and moving." "Entertainment Weekly's" Ray Rahman said of the performances, "Alda is magnetic as he descends into sadness, while Falco injects Horace and Pete with tissue-worthy emotion. Buscemi is masterfully Buscemi-ian, and C.K. has only gotten better at making shame-filled frowny faces." Alan Sepinwall from HitFix declared Laurie Metcalf's performance the "year's best". Filmmaker Stephen Cone gave significant praise to the series in terms of Louis C.K.'s hybridization of film, TV, and theater, comparing him to French film director Alain Resnais and stating: "Leave it to Louis C.K. to save cinema – whatever that means – with a goddamn web series." Seitz focused on the show's unique use of silence, in part a noted homage to a quote by recently deceased Garry Shandling on how there is value and meaning to be had in silence.


title: Horace and Pete

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes sampled 23 reviewers and judged 96% of the reviews to be positive. With a mean score of 8.7/10, the site's consensus states, ""Horace and Pete" creator Louis C.K. uses his signature blend of awkward humor – and brilliant performances from a top-notch cast – to pull off an engagingly ambitious experiment in TV tragicomedy." On Metacritic the series has a score of 78 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Horace and Pete

text: In 2016, Louis C.K. entered the series in the drama category for the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards. Lead actors C.K. and Steve Buscemi, supporting actors Alan Alda, Steven Wright, Kurt Metzger, Jessica Lange and Edie Falco, and guest stars Laurie Metcalf and Aidy Bryant were reportedly submitted for nomination by C.K. Nominations were announced in July 2016 and the series received two nominations: Laurie Metcalf for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and Gina Sansom for Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series.


title: Horace and Pete

text: "Horace and Pete" won the Peabody Award in 2016, the original announcement began: ""Horace and Pete" is a true original, a melding of contemporary politics and serialized storytelling with a throwback approach to in-studio drama harkening back to 1950s television."


title: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

text: The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix () is a Formula One motor racing event which took place for the first time in 2021. The inaugural edition of the race was held in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. It was the fifth full-night race title on the Formula One calendar, following the Singapore, Bahrain, Sakhir and Qatar Grands Prix.


title: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

text: In August 2019, plans for a permanent motorsports complex to be built in the city of Qiddiya were made public. The project was conceived by Test and Training International, a motorsports consultancy headed by former Formula One driver Alexander Wurz, with the objective of creating a world-class circuit capable of hosting all FIA categories through to Formula One. In January 2020, plans for a race track in Qiddiya were officially confirmed at an event, where track designer Wurz appeared alongside current and former Formula One drivers who were given the opportunity to drive on the layout in a racing simulator. During the event, it was confirmed that the track was designed to FIA and FIM Grade 1 standards. At the time, Formula One declined to comment on the possibility of a race.


title: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

text: The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix first appeared on the first draft of the Formula One provisional calendar, which was shown to teams at a Formula One Commission meeting, held in October 2020. The draft calendar saw all 22 races from the original calendar carried over, with the addition of Saudi Arabia. In November 2020, it was announced that the city of Jeddah would host the inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, in collaboration with the Saudi Automobile and Motorcycle Federation, and the Jeddah Corniche Circuit would be located along the shore of the Red Sea.


title: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

text: In October 2022, Saudi Arabia's minister of sport Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Saud expressed interest in having both Jeddah and Qiddiya host annual Formula One races or for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to alternate between the two venues, once the Qiddiya track opens.