title: Mexico City Metro

text: On 18 September 2009, a man was vandalizing the walls of Balderas station with a marker before being confronted by a police officer. He took out a gun and killed the officer and a construction worker who tried to disarm him, and injured 5 others.


title: Mexico City Metro

text: On 4 May 2015, two trains heading towards Politécnico station on Line 5 crashed in Oceanía station. The first was leaving to Aragón station which was requested to stop and wait, while the second did not deactivate the autopilot and crashed it at the end of the platform. 12 people were injured.


title: Mexico City Metro

text: On 10 March 2020, two trains heading towards Observatorio station on Line 1 crashed in Tacubaya station. The first train was parked at the platform when it was hit by another train that was coming in reverse. 1 person died and 41 were injured, all inside the second train, as people in the parked train were evacuated moments before the crash.


title: Mexico City Metro

text: On 9 January 2021, the Central Control Center serving lines 1 to 6 caught fire. During the fire, a female police officer was killed due to a fall in the building. All the stations in those lines have remained closed and provisional transport service is provided by city buses and police vehicles. According to the Metro authorities, the service in lines 4, 5, and 6 could be normalized in days, while that in lines 1, 2, and 3 in several months.


title: Mexico City Metro

text: On 3 May 2021, a train was traveling on Line 12 between the Olivos and Tezonco stations when a girder supporting the overpass on which the train was traveling collapsed, killing 26 and injuring more than 70. Service on Line 12 was later suspended, while STC warned residents to avoid the site of the collapse.


title: Michael III

text: Michael III (; 9 January 840 – 24 September 867), also known as Michael the Drunkard, was Byzantine Emperor from 842 to 867. Michael III was the third and traditionally last member of the Amorian (or Phrygian) dynasty. He was given the disparaging epithet "the Drunkard" () by the hostile historians of the succeeding Macedonian dynasty, but modern historical research has rehabilitated his reputation to some extent, demonstrating the vital role his reign played in the resurgence of Byzantine power in the 9th century. He was also the youngest person to bear the imperial title, as well as the youngest to succeed as senior emperor.


title: Michael III

text: Michael was the youngest child of the emperor Theophilos and his empress Theodora. His precise date of birth is uncertain, but the balance of available evidence supports a birthdate in early 840, probably on 9 or 10 January. He was crowned co-emperor soon after, probably on 16 May of the same year. Michael had just turned two years old when his father died, and Michael succeeded him as sole emperor on 20 January 842.


title: Michael III

text: During his minority, the empire was governed by a regency headed by his mother Theodora, her uncle Sergios, and the minister Theoktistos. The empress had iconodule sympathies and deposed Patriarch John VII of Constantinople, replacing him with the iconodule Methodius I in 843. This put an end to the second spell of iconoclasm.


title: Michael III

text: As the emperor was growing up, the courtiers around him fought for influence. Increasingly fond of his uncle Bardas, Michael invested him with the title "kaisar" (caesar – at the time a title second only to emperor) and allowed him to murder Theoktistos in November 855. With the support of Bardas and another uncle, a successful general named Petronas, Michael III overthrew the regency on 15 March 856 and relegated his mother and sisters to a monastery in 857.


title: Michael III

text: The internal stabilization of the state was not entirely matched along the frontiers. Byzantine forces were defeated by the Abbasids in Pamphylia, Crete, and on the border with Syria, but a Byzantine fleet of 85 ships did score a victory over the Arabs in 853. There were also many operations around the Aegean and off the Syrian coast by at least three more fleets, numbering 300 ships total. Following an expedition led by Michael's uncle and general, Petronas, against the Paulicians from the eastern frontier and the Arab borderlands in 856, the imperial government resettled them in Thrace, thus cutting them off from their coreligionists and populating another border region. Michael was also responsible, as per the writings of Constantine VII, for the subjugation of the Slavs settled in the Peloponnese.


title: Michael III

text: A conflict between the Byzantines and Bulgarian Empire occurred during 855 and 856. The Byzantine Empire wanted to regain its control over some areas of Thrace, including Philippopolis (Plovdiv) and the ports around the Gulf of Burgas on the Black Sea. Byzantine forces, led by the emperor and the caesar Bardas, were successful in reconquering a number of cities – Philippopolis, Develtus, Anchialus and Mesembria among them – as well as the region of Zagora. At the time of this campaign the Bulgarians were distracted by a war with the Franks under Louis the German and the Croatians. In 853 Boris had allied himself to Rastislav of Moravia against the Franks. The Bulgarians were heavily defeated by the Franks; following this, the Moravians changed sides and the Bulgarians then faced threats from Moravia.


title: Michael III

text: Michael III took an active part in the wars against the Abbasids and their vassals on the eastern frontier from 856 to 863, and particularly in 857 when he sent an army of 50,000 men against Emir Umar al-Aqta of Melitene. In 859, he personally led a siege on Samosata, but in 860 had to abandon the expedition to repel an attack by the Rus' on Constantinople. In 863, Petronas defeated and killed the emir of Melitene at the Battle of Lalakaon, and celebrated a triumph in the capital.


title: Michael III

text: Bardas justified his usurpation of the regency by introducing various internal reforms. Under the influence of both Bardas and Photios, Michael presided over the reconstruction of ruined cities and structures, the reopening of closed monasteries, and the reorganization of the imperial university at the Maganaura palace under Leo the Mathematician. Photios, originally a layman, had entered holy orders and was promoted to the position of patriarch on the dismissal of the troublesome Ignatios in 858. Although a Council of Constantinople in 861 confirmed Photios as patriarch, Ignatios appealed to Pope Nicholas I, who declared Photios illegitimate in 863, leading to the Photian schism. Michael presided over a synod in 867 in which Photios and the three other eastern patriarchs excommunicated Pope Nicholas and condemned the Latin "filioque" clause concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit. The conflict over the patriarchal throne and supreme authority within the church was exacerbated by the success of the active missionary efforts launched by Photios.


title: Michael III

text: Under the guidance of Patriarch Photios, Michael sponsored the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodios to the Khazar Khagan in an effort to stop the expansion of Judaism among the Khazars. Although this mission was a failure, their next mission in 863 secured the conversion of Great Moravia and devised the Glagolitic alphabet for writing in Slavonic, thus allowing Slavic-speaking peoples to approach conversion to Orthodox Christianity through their own rather than an alien tongue.


title: Michael III

text: Fearing the potential conversion of Boris I of Bulgaria to Christianity under Frankish influence, Michael III and the Caesar Bardas invaded Bulgaria, imposing the conversion of Boris according to the Byzantine rite as part of the peace settlement in 864. Michael III stood as sponsor, by proxy, for Boris at his baptism. Boris took the additional name of Michael at the ceremony. The Byzantines also allowed the Bulgarians to reclaim the contested border region of Zagora. The conversion of the Bulgarians has been evaluated as one of the greatest cultural and political achievements of the Byzantine Empire.


title: Michael III

text: Michael III's marriage with Eudokia Dekapolitissa was childless, but the emperor did not want to risk a scandal by attempting to marry his mistress Eudokia Ingerina, daughter of the Varangian (Norse) imperial guard Inger. The solution he chose was to have Ingerina marry his favorite courtier and chamberlain Basil the Macedonian. While Michael carried on his relationship with Ingerina, Basil was kept satisfied with the emperor's sister Thekla, whom her brother retrieved from a monastery. Basil gained increasing influence over Michael, and in April 866 he convinced the emperor that the Caesar Bardas was conspiring against him and was duly allowed to murder Bardas. Now without serious rivals, Basil was crowned co-emperor on 26 May 866 and was adopted by the much younger Michael III. This curious development may have been intended to legitimize the eventual succession to the throne of Eudokia Ingerina's son Leo, who was widely believed to be Michael's son. Michael celebrated the birth of Leo with public chariot races, a sport he enthusiastically patronized and participated in.


title: Michael III

text: If ensuring Leo's legitimacy had been Michael's plan, it backfired. Ostensibly troubled by the favour Michael was beginning to show to another courtier, named Basiliskianos, whom he threatened to raise as another co-emperor, Basil had Michael assassinated as he lay insensible in his bedchamber following a drinking bout on 24 September 867. Basil with a number of his male relatives, plus other accomplices, entered Michael's apartment; the locks had been tampered with and no guard had been placed. Michael's end was grisly; a man named John of Chaldia killed him, cutting off both the emperor's hands with a sword before finishing him off with a thrust to the heart. Basil, as the sole remaining emperor (Basiliskianos had presumably been disposed of at the same time as Michael), automatically succeeded as the ruling "basileus".


title: Michael III

text: Michael's remains were buried in the Philippikos Monastery at Chrysopolis on the Asian shore of the Bosphoros. When Leo VI became ruling emperor in 886, one of his first acts was to have Michael's body exhumed and reburied, with great ceremony, in the imperial mausoleum in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. This contributed to the suspicion held by the Byzantine public that Leo was (or at least believed himself to be) Michael's son.


title: Michael III

text: The reign and personality of Michael III are difficult to evaluate because of the hostile accounts written by Byzantine authors operating under Basil I and his successors. Byzantine accounts describe Michael's habitual drunkenness, his obsession with chariot racing and his orchestration of public displays mocking the processions and rituals of the church. The impression gained from Arab sources, however, is one of Michael as an active and often successful military commander.


title: Michael III

text: Though Michael III was allegedly prone to squander money, his reign stabilized the economy, and by the year 850 the empire's annual revenues had increased to 3,300,000 "nomismata". The definitive end to iconoclasm early in his reign led, unsurprisingly, to a renaissance in visual arts. The Empire made considerable advances in internal organisation and religious cohesion, and it had more than held its own against the Abbasid Caliphate. Most importantly Bulgaria had been transformed into a religious and cultural satellite of Byzantium. Much of the credit for these achievements, however, must go to Theodora and Theoktistos up to 855, and Bardas and Petronas thereafter.


title: Michael III

text: Michael III is referenced in the opening parts of the Primary Chronicle, a major source for the early history of the Slavs. The dates of Michael III's reign, which are firmly known from reliable Byzantine sources, are useful in checking the accuracy of the information provided by that Chronicle - an issue of great importance for Russian and other Slavic historians.


title: Michael III

text: Michael III had no children by his wife Eudokia Dekapolitissa but was conjectured to have fathered one or two sons by his mistress Eudokia Ingerina, who was married to Basil I:


title: Michael III

text: Recent years have seen the first translations into English of a number of primary sources about Michael III and his times.


title: Margo Rey

text: Margo Rey (born Margarita Reymundo-Jurado; 18 October 1966) is a Mexican singer-songwriter whose original stage name was Margo Reymundo.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey was born in Acapulco, Mexico and grew up in Arlington and Dallas, Texas, the youngest of five children in the family. Her mother, Juana-Amparo Jurado, was a Flamenco dancer, and her father, Alejandro Reymundo, was a cliff diver. When Rey was two, the family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. She began performing at the age of 11.


title: Margo Rey

text: In Texas, Rey took classical music training. As a teenager, Rey was the lead vocalist in Debutante, an all-female rock band in Arlington. The band toured the U.S. and overseas. In 1988, Debutante self-released an album, "These Boots Were Made For Walkin"'. In the early 1990s, Rey began singing in The Ritual, a power-pop band. The band garnered interest from Columbia Records, but on the verge of signing, they broke up. Rey was then hired by a Dallas venue, Sambuca. She became the bandleader of a Latin Jazz/R&B sextet called "Miss Margo & The Lost Souls".


title: Margo Rey

text: The group's debut album, "Acaba", had one top-five and two top-twenty singles, according to "Radio y Musica" magazine. The album's success landed Rey a major record deal in 1997 with PolyGram Latino. Due to corporate consolidation, Rey found herself in label limbo and for three years her album wasn't released but neither could she exit her deal.


title: Margo Rey

text: In 1998, actor Edward James Olmos heard Rey sing and recommended her for a principal role in the bound-for-Broadway musical "Selena Forever".


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey moved to Los Angeles to make music while working as an actress. She was signed by Abrams Artist Agency. She has been a commercial vocalist for Juniper Music and has done voiceover work in TV commercials and national advertising for a variety of companies in both English and Spanish.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey calls her style of music "Organica", an unorthodox hybrid of pop music that is rooted in jazz with deep ethno-rhythmic grooves, textural guitars, keys and lush vocals. In 2009, she released her album "My Heart's Desire" and appeared as a guest on the Dr. Phil show, where she performed "Between Us". The album received the 2009 Muse's Muse award for "Best Overall CD Project in Any Category".


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey's music caught the attention of comedian Ron White and music producer Michael Blakey, a former president of Virgin Records/2K Records. Blakey and White formed Organica Music Group and made Rey their first signing.


title: Margo Rey

text: A year later, Organica launched Rey's original dance single EP called "Habit (Remixes)", which debuted at No. 7 and climbed its way to No. 1 for two straight weeks. "Habit" also stayed on the "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Songs Chart for nine weeks.


title: Margo Rey

text: At the end of 2011, Rey's song "Let The Rain", which she co-wrote with John Oates, remained on the charts for 21 weeks, peaking at No. 17 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary chart. The track was named a "Hot Shot Debut" on the "Billboard" Adult Contemporary chart. The following radio single, "Between Us," climbed to No. 21 on the Billboard AC Chart in August 2012.


title: Margo Rey

text: In 2011, Rey released a Christmas EP, "This Holiday Night", which appeared in the Top 20 of the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts. The title song was written by Rey and Barrett Yeretsian.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey's album "Habit", released in July 2012 by Organica Music Group, was produced by Rey, Elton Ahi, and Chris Wabich. "Habit" was recorded and mixed at "Rusk LA" by Ahi and mastered by Yossi Shaken.


title: Margo Rey

text: The single "Tempted", a cover of Squeeze's 1980s track, charted at No. 28 on the National AC Airplay Chart on Billboard, the week of 26 May 2013.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey was a resident at the B. B. King's Blues Club in 2011 and 2012. Together with White and her band, Rey put on numerous shows entitled "Ron White Presents: Margo Rey Live", hosted by White, and with guest appearances that included John Oates.


title: Margo Rey

text: At the end of 2012, Rey accompanied saxophonist Dave Koz as a guest singer on his "Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2012" tour between Thanksgiving and Christmas.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey is a metastatic breast cancer survivor. She performed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel at a one-night event benefiting the Noreen Fraser Foundation, a non-profit organization that raises funds for women's cancer research.


title: Margo Rey

text: Rey's brother is comedian Alex Reymundo. From 2013 to 2017, Rey was married to comedian Ron White, with whom Rey's brother tours as White's opening act.


title: Spencer Wilding

text: Spencer Lee Wilding (born 26 July 1972) is a Welsh actor and special creature performer in the UK. He is from Meliden in Denbighshire, North Wales. He has also had some success as a professional kickboxer and professional cruiser weight boxer. He was trained by former three-time world champion Russ Williams.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The British Post Office scandal is a miscarriage of justice involving the wrongful civil and criminal prosecutions of an unknown or unpublished number of sub-postmasters (SPMs) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. The cases constitute the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, spanning a period of over twenty years and it remains unresolved.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: After some convicted SPMs successfully sued the Post Office, 555 convictions were declared unsafe and to have been obtained unlawfully. By 2022, 736 prosecutions had been identified, 81 convictions had been overturned and more were expected to be quashed. The number of those affected by other types of abuse by the Post Office, torts, breach of contract, coercion etc., has not been tabulated or published. The prosecutions, civil actions, and extortions resulted in criminal convictions, false confessions, imprisonments, defamation, loss of livelihood, bankruptcy, divorce, and suicide.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In 1996, International Computers Limited (ICL) began working on a computer accounting system, called Horizon, for the publicly-owned Post Office corporation. By 1999, ICL was part of Fujitsu. In 1999, the problems began with Horizon's introduction, which wrongly detected the existence of financial discrepancies at multiple post office branches. Second Sight's (forensic accountants) report of 2014 described the Horizon Computer System as not fit for purpose, whilst the Post Office stated that "there is absolutely no evidence of any systemic issues with the computer system". The Post Office terminated the Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme in 2015 and published a report clearing themselves of any wrongdoing.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office has a single shareholder, the British Government. Initially, the government refused to pay any compensation; both the Post Office and government repeatedly stated that the money awarded when the SPMs sued the Post Office was a full and final settlement. After appeals by MPs in 2021, the government promised financial compensation to the victims of the scandal, as the Post Office itself did not have sufficient resources.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office set up a separate historic shortfall scheme that went on to attract more than 2,400 claims. The scheme excluded the 555 SPMs who had successfully sued the post office. , no commitment to compensate those 555 SPMs existed. On 22 March 2022, a government scheme was launched to compensate the 555 SPMs at the same level of compensation as other SPMs.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In 2020, the government initiated an independent inquiry, led by retired judge Wyn Williams. After two initial hearings, it was converted to a public inquiry in June 2021. In November it held a preliminary 'List of Issues Hearing' and, in February 2022, commenced a series of 'Human Impact Hearings' investigating whether the Post Office and software supplier Fujitsu knew about the faults in the IT system, which led to criminal convictions and civil proceedings against staff, which have subsequently been quashed. The inquiry hopes to be completed by Autumn 2022.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In 1999, the UK Post Office, part of Royal Mail, introduced a computer accounting system, Horizon, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu. From February 2003 to 2010, Royal Mail was under the leadership of Adam Crozier, its CEO. On 1 April 2012, Post Office Ltd became independent of Royal Mail Group, and was reorganised to become a subsidiary of Royal Mail Holdings, with a separate management and board of directors.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: By 2013, Horizon was used by at least 11,500 branches and was processing some six million transactions every day. From 1999, sub-postmasters (SPMs) began reporting unexplained discrepancies and losses. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was "robust" and that none of the discrepancies were due to Horizon. Some sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft, false accounting and fraud. Between 1991 and 2015, there were 918 successful prosecutions. These were largely private prosecutions by the Post Office relying on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Public prosecutions also occurred in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in the Crown Court. Some SPMs were persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them. According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one suicide.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In 2019, the Horizon Issues trial judgment in the "Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd" group litigation at the High Court found that software errors and defects did exist and that it was possible for these to cause apparent discrepancies or shortfalls in branch accounts or transactions, to undermine the reliability of Horizon accurately to process and to record transactions. Mr Justice Fraser found that this had happened on numerous occasions.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In September 2020, the Post Office declared it would not oppose 44 postmasters' appeals against conviction, but it unsuccessfully opposed their appeals against improper prosecution. In December 2020, six summary jurisdiction convictions were quashed, and in April 2021 the Court of Appeal quashed a further 39 convictions. The court made the rare finding that the Post Office had acted in such a way as to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system and public confidence in it. The prosecutions were found to be an abuse of process and an affront to the conscience of the court. By this relatively rare finding the appellants were completely exonerated. The BBC called the convictions "the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In April 2021, Post Office chief executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced with a new cloud-based IT system.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: After a lengthy competitive procurement exercise, begun in 1994, the contract for further development and full implementation in all post offices was awarded in May 1996 to ICL's "Pathway" division, which had been created for the purpose.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In 1999, four years and £700 million of taxpayers' money after the pilot scheme began, the government, by now Labour, stopped the scheme in its tracks. The Department of Social Security withdrew from the deal, leaving ICL/Fujitsu to run the system. ICL subsequently criticised the PFI payment criterion: it would have been paid partly on how many customers post offices attracted. Stuart Sweetman, the then group managing director of customer and banking services for Consignia (the name used at the time by the then holding company for Post Office Counters Ltd, Parcelforce and Royal Mail), said in 2001: "Looking back, I think it was over-ambitious ... You can't export all the risk to a supplier."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 8 April 2021, after the problems had caused scandal, Post Office chief executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system would be replaced by a new IT system that would be "more user-friendly, easier to adapt for new products and services, and cloud-based to ensure easy maintenance and ready interoperability with other systems." He said: "This will not be easy – it will after all be among the biggest, if not the biggest, IT roll-out in the country when the time comes. But the change is both necessary and overdue."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Sub-postmasters began to report computer errors to the Post Office within weeks of the Horizon system being installed, via the 'Helpline' the SPMs were instructed to use. The Post Office resisted the SPMs' reports of faults in the system, insisted that the SPMs make up any shortfall of money and, when asked by an SPM, denied that other SPMs had reported problems. In 2000, there were six shortfall convictions that relied on Horizon data. 41 SPMs were prosecuted in 2001, and 64 in 2002. In May 2002, shopkeeper Baljit Sethi raised concerns with the press that there were errors in Horizon, after his wife Anjana Sethi was notified that her SPM contract would be terminated. The Post Office responded that they "totally refuted" that the system was faulty, and that it had "sent experts... to check it twice". In around 2000, problems with the system were reported by Alan Bates, the SPM at Craig-y-Don from March 1998 until November 2003. In 2003, Bates had his contract as SPM terminated when he refused to comply with Post Office policy. He reported his concerns to "Computer Weekly" in 2004; sufficient evidence had been gathered by 2009 to publish it. A campaign group on the issue, Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) was formed by Bates and others in September 2009. By 2012, concern in the media, and amongst a number of members of parliament, had grown. As a result, an independent investigative firm, Second Sight, was commissioned by the Post Office to conduct a separate, independent inquiry in 2012. At around this time, Paula Vennells became CEO of the Post Office.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Vennells, who stood down from her Post Office role in 2019, said in 2020, of the 2013 report, that "it concluded, while it had not found evidence of system-wide problems with the Horizon software, there were specific areas where Post Office should consider its procedures and operational support for sub-postmasters." Ron Warmington, of Second Sight had said in 2019 "if the Post Office Board had believed ... and acted on ... what Second Sight reported ... instead of being led by the nose by its own middle management and in-house and external legal advisors, huge amounts of money, and human suffering, would have been avoided." In July 2013, Second Sight issued an interim report and Post Office Ltd admitted that software defects with "Horizon" had indeed occurred, but said that the system was effective. The review discovered problems in 2011 and 2012, when Post Office Ltd discovered defects that had caused a shortfall of up to £9,000 at 76 Post Office branches. The BBC reported that the Post Office later made good those losses and the SPMs were not held liable. However, more than 150 sub-postmasters continued to raise issues with the system, which they claimed had, by error, put them in debt by tens of thousands of pounds, and that in some cases they lost their contracts or went to prison. In 2019, Warmington said,


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Second Sight's report of 9 April 2015, titled "Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme" and marked as confidential, states that they were first appointed by Post Office at the request of Members of Parliament in July 2012. Undertakings were given by Post Office to satisfy MPs that Second Sight would be able to conduct an independent investigation into the matters of concern. The report described the "Horizon" system as, in some cases, "not fit for purpose". The lead investigator for Second Sight claimed that there were about 12,000 communication failures every year, with software defects at 76 branches and old and unreliable hardware. The system had, according to the report, not been tracking money from lottery terminals, tax disc sales or cash machines – and the initial Post Office Ltd investigation had not looked for the cause of the errors, instead accusing the SPMs of theft. The report was dismissed by the Post Office. However, it was leaked to the BBC in September 2014. The BBC's article on the report also said that training on the system was not good enough, that "equipment was outdated", and that "power cuts and communication problems made things worse".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In March 2015, "Private Eye" magazine and other sources reported that Post Office Ltd had ordered Second Sight to end their investigation just one day before the report was due to be published, and to destroy all the paperwork which they had not handed over. Post Office Ltd then scuppered the independent committee set up to oversee the investigation, as well as the mediation scheme for SPMs, and published a report which cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. Of the 136 cases, 56 had been closed, and Post Office Ltd would put the rest forward for "mediation" unless a court ruling prevented them from doing so. After ending the inquiry, Post Office Ltd said that there were no wide-scale problems, and that:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Post Office Ltd then went into mediation with some of the affected SPMs. By December 2014, however, MPs had criticised Post Office Ltd for how it handled the SPMs' claims, and 140 of those affected had withdrawn their support for the Post Office-run mediation scheme. 144 MPs had been contacted by SPMs about the issue, and James Arbuthnot, the MP leading on the matter, accused the organisation of rejecting 90% of applications for mediation. Post Office Ltd said that the claims by Arbuthnot were "regrettable and surprising". Arbuthnot further claimed that Post Office Ltd had been "duplicitous", and said that:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In February 2015, "Computerworld UK", a trade magazine for IT managers, reported that Post Office Ltd were obstructing the investigation by refusing to hand over key files to Second Sight. Post Office Ltd (Angela van den Bogerd) claimed in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee hearing of 3 February 2015 that they "have been working with Second Sight over the last few weeks on what we agreed at the outset. We have been providing the information", but the lead investigator for Second Sight, when asked by Adrian Bailey MP, if that were the case, said "No, it is not", as he had not been given access to prosecution files, which he needed to back up his suspicions that Post Office Ltd had brought cases against SPMs with "inadequate investigation and inadequate evidence". He said that these files were still outstanding eighteen months after they had been requested.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Paula Vennells (then Chief Executive, Post Office), subsequently apologised to workers affected by the scandal, saying: "I am truly sorry we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused." Her letter to the Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee claims "The message that the Board and I were consistently given by Fujitsu, from the highest levels of the company, was that while, like any IT system, Horizon was not perfect and had a limited life-span, it was fundamentally sound" (Answer 11). She claims "I raised this question repeatedly, both internally and with Fujitsu, and was always given the same answer: that it was not possible for branch records to be altered remotely without the sub-postmaster's knowledge. Indeed, I remember being told by Fujitsu's then CEO when I raised it with him that the system was "like Fort Knox" (Answer 54).


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office proceeded aggressively against its staff in criminal prosecutions in magistrates' courts and the Crown Court and with civil actions. At the time of the prosecutions, the Post Office had no different standing in law to that of any other private prosecutor in the British legal system. It acted as a private prosecutor in England and Wales. In Scotland, it reported allegations of crime to a procurator fiscal, and in Northern Ireland to the Public Prosecution Service. However, The Post Office's unique position, with a history as a prosecutor going back to 1683, gave the Criminal Cases Review Committee the greatest cause for concern upon its referral to the Court of Appeal. Historically Royal Mail had been a public authority.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office is not a typical private prosecutor. The Private Prosecutors' Association question whether the Post Office was conducting private prosecutions at all and was in fact a "publicly-owned entity and a public prosecutor" during the relevant period. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), in its written submission to the Commons Select Committee, questioned whether any organisation with the Post Office's combined status, as victim, investigator and prosecutor, would be able to take decisions on investigations and disclosure "appropriately free from conflict of interest and conscious or unconscious bias". Counsel for the defence in the case of Misra raised the issues of insufficient disclosure, conflict of interest, etc.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Paul Marshall, counsel to three appellants in the case of "Hamilton", until forced to resign from the case by an allegation by the Post Office of contempt, or information to the court indicating contempt, or breach of disclosure terms, in written evidence to the parliamentary Justice Committee, rejected the notion of the private nature of the prosecutions as a single cause of the scandal. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has written to some 73 SPMs who may have been wrongly prosecuted and/or convicted. Marshall postulated four inter-related causes:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: As the mediation process broke down, the affected SPMs began to consult and combine their efforts into legal action. The action taken against the Post Office took the form first of the Group Litigation in the name of "Bates and others", a civil action in the High Court by some 600 people, and the linked appeal cases, first of "R v Christoper Trousdale & Others" in the Crown Court, and then of "Hamilton and Others" in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). In the "Trousdale" and "Hamilton" appeals, the findings in the civil case ("Bates") were used to support the appeals against convictions. In "Bates", six 'lead claimants' and 23 'Common Issues' were identified and agreed to enable the court to examine the 600 cases. The court of appeal judgment, that all of the successful appeals had suffered a prosecution that was "an affront to the conscience of the court", has important implications for any future civil cases against the Post Office.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Further cases since the "Hamilton" appeal have been heard and further appeals and civil claims are expected. The "Financial Times" headlined "Sub-postmasters set to file UK lawsuits for malicious prosecution". 81 people have had their convictions quashed.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Magistrates' courts are not courts of record. An appeal from a conviction in a magistrates' court is by way of case stated to a higher court, usually to the Crown Court. , the number of convictions obtained by the Post Office, directly or via public prosecution in magistrates' courts is unknown or unpublished.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The first subpostmaster appeals against convictions were at Southwark Crown Court before Circuit Judge Taylor, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court. The cases were from magistrates' court convictions in London, Luton, Basingstoke, Oxford, Burton-upon-Trent, and Scarborough between 2004 and 2012. "The Post Office is currently reviewing around 800 prosecutions made between 1999 and 2014, where Horizon data was used in evidence." The six appealed against their convictions. The appeals were unopposed; the respondent, the Post Office, offered no evidence, the appeals were allowed and Not Guilty verdicts were entered. Little if any mention was made of the distinction between unsafe convictions and prosecutions that should not have been brought.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: This case was heard before submissions about "ultra vires" or wrongful prosecutions were made in "Hamilton & Others". Just three months later, it was known publicly that these submissions were to be made and that the Post Office intended to oppose them in "Hamilton". Five of the six appellants were represented by counsel – one was unrepresented and had been advised by the court that she need not attend. Costs were awarded to the appellants. At the end of the hearing the judge said, "I am sure that all of the appellants are grateful for the approach that the Post Office has taken finally to this matter and that it can be put to rest for them."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Seema Misra was prosecuted and sentenced to imprisonment at Guildford Crown Court. In written evidence to Parliament's Justice Committee, the barrister who had started her representation at her appeal in the "Hamilton" case said, that at "Mrs Misra's criminal trial, on ... three separate occasions, the defence applied to three separate judges to have the prosecution stopped on the basis that the disclosure given by the Post Office was woefully inadequate and the prosecution an abuse of process..." The submissions at Guildford Crown Court were dismissed and Ms Misra was charged with one count of theft, to which she pleaded not guilty, and six of false accounting to which she pleaded guilty.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In a further application, during the trial, that the trial be stopped, Mr Hadrill, for Mrs Misra, said of the prosecution's expert witness, "He operates under a restriction because he is an employee of Fujitsu who are under contract to the Post Office and he can only comply with his contractual terms as best he can and there is no suggestion his integrity is anywhere at fault as to what he is permitted to do, bearing in mind this is a Post Office prosecution. I don't go behind that but it is not an independent prosecution at arm's reach from the loser company and Mr Jenkins, so we have to have concerns as to the quality of his evidence and the best he has done in regard to the restrictions he operates under." The application was again unsuccessful. The prosecution told the jury, "In a Post Office case it is a Post Office investigator who conducts the interview because of course they are familiar with Post Office procedures in a way a Police Officer would not necessarily be."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Mrs Misra, recalling the moment when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: This was a civil case in which the Post Office sued Mr Castleton. The case was heard before Judge Richard Havery QC in December 2006 and January 2007. The defendant represented himself and counterclaimed damages in the sum of £11,250 on the ground that the Post Office wrongfully determined the contract as a subpostmaster following his suspension. The judge found for the Post Office on the claim for £25,858.95. He found the deficiencies were real, the business was not properly managed and that Mr. Castleton was therefore in breach of his contract with the Post Office. "Moreover, the losses must have been caused by his own error or that of his assistants. The counterclaim was dismissed." Unable to afford the losses and the £321,000 in legal costs, Mr. Castleton declared himself bankrupt.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 22 March 2017, Senior Master Fontaine made a group litigation order with the approval of the President of the Queen's Bench of the High Court and, on 31 March, Fraser J was nominated managing judge in "Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd", brought by approximately 600 claimants. At the start of the proceedings, the Post Office unsuccessfully opposed the making or the existence of a GLO. The Post Office had set up a litigation sub-committee, attended on 24 April 2019 by Tim Parker, Tom Cooper, (director of UK Government Investments), David Cavender QC, Alisdair Cameron, Ben Foat, staff from Womble Bond Dickinson and from Herbert Smith Freehills. There was an unsuccessful application by the Post Office that the judge recuse himself, an appeal, and two separate submissions described by judges as attempts to put the courts "in terrorem". At the Judgment No. 6 the judge said:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The SPMs were financed by a litigation fund, Therium. High court battles are expensive. Defendants try to intimidate funders by running up costs and with delaying tactics, in the hope the latter might walk. The matter ended by consent when the Post Office agreed to pay costs of £58 million, without admitting liability, and compensation was therefore not awarded. Of that payment, £46 million went to the financial backers.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The extent to which the government was aware of the Post Office's approach to its defence was questioned during the parliamentary debate on 19 March 2020. David Jones MP said, "Of course the Post Office has a non-executive director appointed by the Government. One must assume that that non-executive director is reporting to Ministers." Kevin Jones MP replied, "If I had been the Minister, I would have had that person in and scrutinised what was going on ... That would certainly have applied in the past few months, given the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been spent defending the indefensible." Bambos Charalambous MP said, "The Post Office seemed to have unlimited funds at its disposal to fight this action, ... The Post Office is an arm's length organisation, but there seems to be no accountability ..." Chi Onwurah MP said, "Its only shareholder is the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so more should have been done to address the scandal before it was allowed to fester to this extent."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Arbuthnot, sitting in the House of Lords as Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom, in a written question asked, "... whether the Accounting Officer with responsibility for the Post Office has played any role in advising ministers on the Government's policy in relation to ... (3) the sub-postmasters' litigation against the Post Office". In an article headed ""Did government officials collude in trying to remove a judge?"" journalist Nick Wallis sets out and assesses the government's reply to Arbuthnot's questions, "Mr Chisholm (Principal Accounting Officer at BEIS) has never been held to account for his actions in monitoring or blessing the Post Office's behaviour since he was appointed BEIS Permanent Secretary in 2016. We don't know what he advised ministers about the progress of the litigation or the post-Common Issues "changes" to "strategy".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Referring to costs and delay, the judge said, "Fitting hearings around their availability has all the disadvantages of doing an intricate jigsaw puzzle, with none of the fun associated with that activity."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: This decision followed a case management hearing and dismissed an application to strike out roughly one-quarter of the lead claimants' evidence – more than 160 paragraphs. The judge commented that adverse publicity for Post Office was not a matter of concern for the court if the evidence was relevant and admissible. He also warned against the aggressive conduct of litigation, particularly in a group action of this nature.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In the judgment in the Court of Appeal refusing permission to appeal the recusal application, Lord Justice Coulson said that the SPMs had submitted "that the strike-out application arose because the PO wished to adduce extensive factual evidence in their favour but objected to any evidence to the contrary from the SPMs. As they put it 'the Post Office wanted the case decided all one way'. There remains a distinct flavour of that approach within the recusal application." "The application by the defendant to strike out this evidence appears to be an attempt to hollow out the Lead Claimants' case to the very barest of bones (to mix metaphors), if not beyond, and to keep evidence with which the defendant does not agree from being aired at all." Counsel for the SPMs, in a written submission that was quoted and accepted by the judge, said the application "appears to be an attempt by Post Office to secure an advantage at the Common Issues Trial by selectively tailoring the evidence which the Court is to consider."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The sub-postmasters and the Post Office had identified 23 issues relating to the contractual relationship between them and about which they disagreed. The judge made findings on each so that obligations under all iterations of the contracts would be settled, both retrospectively and prospectively. Of the 23 issues, 16 were decided in the SPMs favour. The parties agreed that broadly the claimants were more successful. Issue 1 was later described by the judge as important. He found Subpostmasters' contracts are relational contracts. "This means that the Post Office is not entitled to act in a way that would be considered commercially unacceptable by reasonable and honest people."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In court, Fraser criticised testimony given by Post Office witnesses. The judge said Angela van den Bogerd (Head of Partnerships, Post Office) "did not give me frank evidence, and sought to obfuscate matters, and mislead me." Fraser commented on the evidence given by Stephen Parker, Head of Post Office Application Support, Fujitsu:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Of the evidence of one Post Office witness, the judge said, "The Post Office appears, at least at times, to conduct itself as though it is answerable only to itself. The statement that it is prepared to preserve documents – as though that were a concession – and the obdurate to accept the relevance of plainly important documents, and to refuse to produce them, is extremely worrying." Fraser said in the Horizon Issues trial,


title: British Post Office scandal

text: When the judgment was delivered, the Post Office said it would appeal. On 23 May, the judge refused the Post Office permission to appeal and set out his reasons on 17 June. The Post Office applied for permission to appeal that refusal. However, during the Horizon Issues evidence, just as the judge returned to court for the final afternoon, Joshua Rozenberg reported, "he was told that the Post Office had served an application for his recusal ... Counsel representing Post Office on the Horizon issues had apparently not seen it. He made no mention of it that morning".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office brought in Lord Grabiner QC to make an application to Fraser J that he recuse himself. Grabiner is widely described as a 'legal heavyweight'. Statements supporting the recusal application alleged that paragraphs 22 to 25 of Judgment No 3 were findings, or observations that fell outside the scope of the Common Issues trial. Paragraph 24 of that judgment gave the clear impression that the judge has already formed a firm view on these matters that will prevent him from taking an impartial view when they are revisited at subsequent trials. The statement further alleged that the judgment contained critical invective directed at the Post Office and that parts harshly criticised the Post Office's witnesses on irrelevant matters. The SPMs argued that the Post Office was insufficiently specific and the judge required the Post Office to identify the relevant paragraphs of Judgment No 3. In response, the Post Office cited 110 different paragraphs.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The recusal application was dismissed on two grounds, no bias, and waiver due to delay by the Post Office. Lord Grabiner had been asked to explain the delay in making the application. He replied "It was made at board level within the client and it also involved the need for me to be got up to speed from a standing start. And I am not the only judicial figure or barrister that has looked at this with a view to reaching that conclusion. It has also been looked at by another very senior person before the decision was taken to make this application. The delay, such as it is, is very, very tiny". This submission was rejected. The judge decided the issue of waiver as a result of the delay in making the application for recusal.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The issuing by the Post Office of the recusal application on 21 March 2019 caused significant disruption to the Horizon Issues trial which had started on 11 March 2019, and to the Group Litigation as a whole. The SPMs applied for the costs of that application; the Post Office sought that the judge reserve costs, in the following terms


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The judge was troubled by this submission. Inherent was a veiled or implied threat that the Post Office will say that the overall outcome of the litigation, or other future issues, has been decided. The Post Office was attempting to put the court "in terrorem" again. After asserting no predecision he said, "I do nonetheless consider that it is appropriate that I consider whether to make a costs order now ... " After considering cases cited the application by the Post Office to reserve costs was dismissed. "The claimants would not be on an equal footing with the Post Office, a publicly funded body, if I reserved the costs of the Common Issues trial until the very end of the litigation ... I do not however consider that the presence of litigation funding should sway this decision one way or the other. I agree with Mr Cavender that the presence of such funding should not put a claimant in a better position "vis-à-vis" the correct stage in litigation at which costs should be addressed, compared to a non-funded party. However, regardless of who is funding litigation, a funder or an individual litigant, cash flow is a relevant consideration for most litigants. It is a consideration that might weigh less heavily upon publicly funded bodies such as the Post Office, but even such entities are likely to be concerned to some extent with cash flow." Of the SPMs submissions that their award of costs should not be reduced, the court rejected them.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: This judgment concerns the operation and functionality of the Horizon system itself. The hearings took place in March, April, June and July 2019. The hearings were interrupted by the Post Office's application for the judge to recuse, to appeal his refusal to recuse (judgment 4), and his judgment 3. The judgment was published in December 2019. Twenty-nine bugs, errors and defects were identified and analysed. Witnesses for the SPMs and for the Post Office submitted statements and gave oral evidence. Documents that had been submitted, and further documents, the submission of which had been resisted were, after argument and rulings, submitted. These included the 'Known Error Logs' and the 'PEAKs', a browser-based software incident and problem management system used by Fujitsu for the Post Office account. Permission, for two IT experts to be called, one for the claimants (Mr Coyne) and one for the Post Office (Dr Worden)


title: British Post Office scandal

text: During this trial, the Post Office issued an application that the judge recuse himself. That led first to Fraser J's Judgment No. 4, and then to an application for permission to appeal that judgment. The applications and the appeal failed but caused considerable delay.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Lord Justice Coulson refused permission to appeal judgment No 3 and handed down his written reasons on 22 November. Before dealing with the 26 grounds that formed the basis of the application the judge set out a number of reasons that he felt militated against granting the Post Office permission to appeal. In short, the judge said:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Lord Justice Coulson refused the Post Office permission to appeal the refusal to recuse. Of the submission by Lord Grabiner, that he was not the only judicial figure or barrister that had looked at the decision to seek recusal, Coulson said at paragraph 48: "Such a comment, presumably made "in terrorem", should not have been made at least without proper explanation of its relevance." In her legal analysis of the case Kate Beaumont said, "Recusal applications are extremely serious. They are not a tactic to be strategically deployed by a losing party." She quotes Coulson as saying "Without making any finding, he stated that he at least understood the claimants' submission that the recusal application and the permission to appeal application were made in an attempt to de-rail the litigation as a whole."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In March 2020 the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred for appeal the convictions of 39 Post Office applicants. The commission said it would be referring all those cases, which involve convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting, on the basis that each prosecution amounted to an abuse of process. In May 2020 the CCRC referred a further eight such convictions, bringing the total to 47. In January 2021 the CCRC decided to refer a further four convictions, bringing the total to 51. In May 2021 Helen Pitcher, chair of the commission, told MPs that the organisation was 'not adequately resourced' if 200 cases were to be brought forward for review. She told the justice committee that a shortage of case review managers would take months to address, and that talks are ongoing with the Ministry of Justice about extending funding.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In April 2021, after an appeal before three judges, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Picken and Mrs Justice Farbey, thirty-nine of the convicted former postmasters had their convictions quashed, with a further twenty-two cases still being investigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: At the commencement of the case, three of the applicant SPMs were represented by Paul Marshall and Flora Page, his junior. In December 2020, Marshall and Page resigned from the case under threat from the court of contempt proceedings. That threat was lifted at a hearing in April 2021 before Lord Justice Fulford. It was Marshall and Page who led the charge on the critical second limb of the appeal, that it was an "affront to the public conscience for the appellants to face prosecution."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Forty-two historic convictions of dishonesty were referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to the Court of Appeal. "The CCRC referred the cases because it considered that two cogent lines of argument in relation to abuse of process were available to each appellant: first, that the reliability of Horizon data was essential to the prosecution and conviction, and it was not possible for the trial process to be fair; and secondly, that it was an affront to the public conscience for the appellant to face criminal proceedings." Each of the forty-two cases was considered individually. Of the forty-two, just two had previously appealed, unsuccessfully.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Post Office accepted Fraser's findings of the unreliability of the Horizon systems and, in some cases, of inadequate investigation, and/or of insufficient disclosure. In these cases, the Post Office did not resist the appeal on Ground 1 but it would oppose Ground 2. The Post Office divided the appellants into three groups; A, 4 cases where it asserted that both categories 1 and 2 abuse of process applied, group B, 35 cases where category 1 applied, but not category 2, and group C, where neither category applied. The Post Office would not seek a retrial of any appellant whose appeal is allowed.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: At paragraphs 79 and 80 of the substantive "Hamilton" judgment, the court referred to a directions hearing on 18 November. That hearing led to further hearings in November, December, and January. The court addressed three issues:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Mr Altman's information to the court on 19 November led to hearings on 3 December 10 December and 15 January before the present court, and to Marshall and Page resigning from the case. On 3 December, Altman said, "I am confident that the court understands why we brought these matters to the court's attention. ... For the avoidance of any doubt, I should like to make clear that the Post Office has not made application for anyone's committal for contempt. ... We have sought to assist the court as we were invited to do," referring to signed undertakings, "... the court suggested that all legal representatives sign an express undertaking not to use disclosed material other than for the proper conduct of these proceedings." Lord Justice Holroyde interjected, "I thought you suggested that," and Altman replied, "Ultimately, my Lord, I think it was at the suggestion of the court but that is what has happened and that is what has been done."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The court issued a brief judgment. "... we direct that the question of whether any contempt proceedings are to be initiated against Mr Marshall and/or Miss Page and, if so, whether by the Post Office or by the Court of its own initiative, must be adjourned for consideration after the appeals have been concluded. ... we direct that all further hearings must be before a different constitution." On 15 January 2021, the court set out its reasons. It led to Marshall and Page facing the possibility of an action against them, either by the court or by the Post office, for contempt of court. By 4 December, barristers Paul Marshall and Fiona Page had resigned from the Hamilton case. Mr Marshall had written two letters to the court. Of the second, Nick Wallis said, "It makes for troubling reading." In April 2021, the matter came before Lord Justice Fulford, Mrs Justice Cutts and Mr Justice Saini when it was declared no further action to be taken. Mr Marshall said "the threat of contempt proceedings from the outset was seriously questionable as a matter of law".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Attorney General instructed counsel as advocate to the court, Marshall and Page were succeeded by Ms L. Busch QC and Dr S. Fowles, and the court addressed "the issue of whether an appellant whose appeal was not resisted by the Post Office on Ground 1 was entitled to argue Ground 2." All counsel at the December hearing agreed that no appellant is entitled as of right to argue Ground 2. An earlier written submission to the contrary was not pursued. However, Ms Busch and Dr Fowles went on to argue that "... the court must act judicially. It would be wrong in principle for the court to permit the respondent (the Post Office) effectively to preclude argument on Ground 2 by its concession that Ground 1 is not opposed. ... The appellants have suffered very severely as a consequence of their prosecutions, and a finding in their favour on Ground 1 alone would not fully vindicate them. ... She (Ms Busch) pointed out that there has been an important disclosure since the Commission referred the cases, and submitted that the public interest required consideration of the complete picture."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: For the other applicants, it was submitted all were concerned about delay; only three of the whole group had actively sought to argue Ground 2 ... appellants would be content to have their appeals allowed on Ground 1 alone ... however, appellants do contend that Ground 2 is made out in their cases ... if the court concluded that argument should be heard on Ground 2, they would wish their submissions on Ground 2 heard.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The court ordered that, "... in the exercise of the court's discretion we would permit argument on Ground 2 by any appellant who wished to advance it. In the event, each appellant did wish to do so." The court set out its reasoning and highlighted four factors of particular importance:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: At the April hearings, after considering the submissions of the SPMs and the Post Office, the court stated, "In those circumstances, we are satisfied that a fair trial was not possible in any of the “Horizon cases” and that Ground 1 accordingly succeeds in each of those cases." The court then set out its reasoning in respect of Ground 2. In short, the court decided that Ground 2 succeeds in each of the "Horizon cases".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The 'Clarke Advice' consists of two pieces of advice to the Post Office in 2013 by a barrister working for Cartwright King (CK), a solicitors’ firm instructed in relation to the Post Office prosecutions. This document led to the "CK Sift Review" and the "Brian Altman General Review". The Sift review "raised the prospect of at least 26 potential miscarriages of justice and caused the immediate cessation of 4 prosecutions. It was concluded in 2014." It was disclosed in the "Hamilton" appeals in November 2020 by the Post Office amongst a bundle of post prosecution disclosures at the request of Aria Grace Law, the solicitors for three appellants in November, and was described by Lord Falconer, former head of the judiciary, as a likely "smoking gun".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Clarke Advice had not been disclosed to the CCRC prior to its referral of the SPMs' cases to the Court of Appeal. Paul Marshall said, "The Court of Appeal elicited acceptance that the provision of the Clarke Advice was an 'error of judgment' and that being done it was determined no further action was to be taken. ... the 'Clarke Advice' was pivotal in the Court of Appeal's finding that ... the Post Office was engaged in conduct that constituted an abuse of the process of the court and calculated to subvert the integrity of the criminal justice system or undermine public confidence in it. Its disclosure resulted in the much later disclosure of the 'shredding' Clarke advice."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The Communication Workers' Union called for Vennells' appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), in the 2019 New Year Honours for "services to the Post Office and to charity", to be rescinded. In April 2021, after the overturning of the thirty-nine convictions, Vennells resigned as a director of Dunelm and Morrisons and as an associate Church of England minister.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 26 February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to hold an independent inquiry. Evidence about the case was also heard by Parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee on 10 March 2020. On 19 March 2020, in a debate in the House of Commons, Kevan Jones MP criticized former Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, for her role in the scandal. Arbuthnot said in November 2019:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In a written ministerial statement on 10 June 2020, Paul Scully, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets, announced the scope of the Independent Review into the Post Office Horizon IT System and Trials. Of the review's terms of reference, Lord Arbuthnot said in the Lord's chamber on 6 October, "Yet the Government are expressly excluding from the scope of their inquiry the Post Office Ltd prosecution function, the Horizon group damages settlement and the conduct of current or future litigation. ... why have the Government excluded these most important things?" The minister replied the settlement agreed in December was full and final and therefore excluded from the scope of the inquiry ... the Post Office is not conducting any private prosecutions and has no plans to do so ... only the courts can decide on criminal matters, such as whether to overturn the postmasters’ convictions, so it would not be appropriate for the inquiry to look at these questions, especially when the court process is still ongoing.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The non-statutory inquiry, now titled "The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry" by the government and led by Sir Wyn Williams, began work in Autumn 2020 and issued a call for evidence on 1 December 2020. The first public hearing session took place on 15 January 2021. The Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) refused to take part in the inquiry, described it as a whitewash and called for a full public inquiry.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Dr Neil Hudgell, of solicitors for SPMs said, "Now Post Office officials must face criminal investigation for maliciously ruining lives by prosecuting innocent people in pursuit of profits," and called for the prime minister to convene a judge-led inquiry. After the SPM's successful appeals on both grounds 1 and 2 abuse of process, in an article headed "Calls grow for SRA and police to investigate Post Office lawyers", Hudgell is quoted as saying the Post Office engaged in "legal gymnastics to seek to persuade the court away from finding a clear systematic abuse of process of the criminal law." In the same article, Richard Moorhead, professor of law and professional ethics at Exeter Law School, said "the SRA and BSB should investigate whether anyone should be held to account amid professional concerns about who was responsible for disclosure issues." Solicitors for SPMs wrote to the government (DBEIS) asking it to re-establish the inquiry on a statutory footing and to consult again on the terms of reference. "The department should be called as witnesses under oath, not have effective control of the inquiry," ... "The Post Office wrongly prosecuted so many upstanding pillars of the community and its owners want to mark (their) own homework – that is unconscionable."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 19 May 2021, the government announced that an extended, statutory inquiry into the computer scandal would deliver its conclusions in autumn 2022. Witnesses could now be compelled to give evidence. Mr Scully said he and Sir Wyn had agreed that the context of the events had changed after convictions were quashed and hundreds more were expected to follow. Boris Johnson said:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The University of Exeter commenced a research project into the events surrounding the "Bates" and "Hamilton" cases.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 19 May 2021 Wyn Williams said that in the following weeks, the inquiry would produce a statement of approach and that, in September 2021, a further statement of approach would set out all relevant details.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 28 July, the government (DBEIS) issued its fourth statement of approach, which included the inquiry terms of reference. After setting out preliminary and organisational matters – the appointment of solicitors and counsel to the inquiry – establishment of a website and of premises, etc., the statement set out terms of reference, in essence:


title: British Post Office scandal

text: During the non-statutory inquiry two public hearings were held in early 2021. A preliminary hearing on the provisional List of Issues was held on 8 November 2021. The 'Human Impact Hearings' opened on 14 February 2022, at Juxon House, in the City of London, expected to continue for most of the year. It is being streamed online. The Phase 2 hearings, covering the Horizon IT System procurement, design, pilot, roll out and modifications, are scheduled to start in the week commencing 10 October 2022.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Richard Moorhead, Professor of Law and Professional Ethics, University of Exeter, made written and oral submissions to the Williams inquiry. Moorhead, in an oral submission to the Williams inquiry, said


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Immediately after the November hearing, Williams said he would ask Post Office Limited, IT supplier Fujitsu, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the UK government to 'waive privilege’ in respect of material relevant to the inquiry's terms of reference, and he set a deadline for response. On 16 November, Wyn Williams reported that all four parties had responded within the timescale specified and added "The response of POL, on any view, goes a very long way towards meeting the request I made of them. It is clear to me that in respect of many of the most crucial lines of investigation for the Inquiry POL has waived legal professional privilege." The Post Office published its response to the request on 15 November 2021. Government (BEIS) said that it was its "firm position that the inquiry should not be obstructed by the assertion of legal privilege", but the government-owned Post Office was more cautious. It agreed to a limited waiver over relevant material but would maintain privilege over documents relevant to ongoing litigation/remediation activities. The Post Office maintained privilege over documents relevant to the ongoing group litigation claim in the Employment Tribunal. It maintained privilege over legal advice related to the Historical Shortfall Scheme and to current and anticipated claims from individuals whose criminal convictions have been or will be quashed. This could have wide-reaching ramifications for the inquiry; if advice is withheld on the basis that it is relevant to current and anticipated claims from those who have had their convictions quashed, this may lead to gaps in the inquiry.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: On 13 February 2022, in a report prior to the start of the Wyn Williams hearings, the BBC quoted a prosecuted, jailed and subsequently cleared Sub-Post Master, "I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was.", this request was later repeated by several other SPMs.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The report of the Exeter research project had been critical of the legal work connected with the civil case by the SPMs against the Post Office. The terms of reference of the statutory inquiry and the inquiry's 'themes', circulated on 12 October 2021, "left it unclear as to whether the Post Office's conduct of the Bates group litigation falls within the terms of reference of the Inquiry. It is surprising, and perhaps unsatisfactory, that this should be a matter of uncertainty or doubt." Lawyers acting for the government sought to prevent the Post Office scandal inquiry from looking into the role of legal advisers.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In December 2019, "The Register", in an article titled "Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures", reported that Mr Justice Fraser would be passing a file on to the Director of Public Prosecutions. A number of cases are under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, raising the possibility of civil actions for malicious prosecution.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In June 2021, a press release by solicitors Rosenblatt referred to the BBC Radio 4 series 'The Great Post Office Trial' in which the former legal adviser to the Post Office noted that "everyone involved in the prosecution process has a duty to comply with the rules, and a deliberate failure to comply with the rules usually amounts to a perversion of the course of justice. I can probably name half a dozen people, with hindsight, who should be very worried."


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Sub-Postmasters in Bates & Others v Post Office announced on 11 December 2019 that they had reached an out of court settlement with the Post Office. The Post Office did not accept liability so this was a costs settlement, not compensation. The details of the settlement were not made public until August 2020. At the time of the high court verdict, the government decided this group could not apply for compensation through the historical shortfall scheme. The group that brought the legal action was awarded £57.75m, but some £46m was taken in legal costs, leaving only about £20,000 for each person, which MPs said the victims saw as "inadequate".


title: British Post Office scandal

text: Speaking in April 2021, Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, urged the government to provide funding for compensation. "The Post Office simply does not have the financial resources to provide meaningful compensation," he said. "I completely understand that government is keen that Post Office should be seen to be fixing its own mess – and through the work being undertaken across the business every day to place the needs and interests of postmasters first, we are doing just that. ... But financial compensation commensurate with wrongful conviction is a different matter. ... I am urging government to work with us to find a way of ensuring that the funding needed for such compensation, along with the means to get it to those to whom it may become owed, is arranged as quickly and efficiently as possible." Shortly afterwards the government promised "fair and speedy" pay-outs for the 555 victims of the Horizon IT scandal who had been excluded from the Post Office's compensation scheme.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In July 2021 government announced that Sub-Postmasters wrongly convicted of offences would get interim compensation of up to £100,000.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: In May 2021, the British Computer Society (the official body for IT professionals in the UK) called for reconsideration of courts' default presumption that computer data is correct.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: The presumption that computer evidence is correct is based on a naïve and simplistic understanding of software systems. Large systems are complex and lay people cannot discern whether these systems are reliable or be confident that they can spot errors as they happen. It is difficult even for experts to judge the reliability of systems or detect any but the simplest errors.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: If the legal system and wider society are to have any confidence in computer evidence the providers of such evidence must be able to demonstrate that they are managing their systems responsibly. This was not the case at the Post Office and Fujitsu. Horizon was not subjected to a full, rigorous system audit. In 2010 senior Post Office management took a decision that Horizon would not be subjected to an independent review because;


title: British Post Office scandal

text: No independent review was conducted until Second Sight was commissioned in 2012, and the contract was terminated abruptly. The Post Office have not offered any evidence that their own internal auditors conducted an appropriate system audit.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: A BBC Radio 4 series about the scandal, "The Great Post Office Trial", produced by Whistledown Productions, won two gold awards in the New York Festivals Radio Awards.


title: British Post Office scandal

text: A book, "The Great Post Office Scandal", written by Nick Wallis, was published by Bath Publishing in November 2021.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: Enea Bastianini (born 30 December 1997), nicknamed "La Bestia" (The Beast), is an Italian Grand Prix motorcycle racer, riding for Ducati Lenovo Team in the MotoGP class. He won the 2020 Moto2 World Championship.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: Born in Rimini, Bastianini first rode a minibike aged 3 years and 3 months: hence his racing number, 33. After a successful career in minibike racing, Bastianini raced successfully in various categories, including the Honda HIRP Trophy 100cc, the MiniGP 70cc Italian Championship and the Honda RS125 Trophy, where he finished as champion during the 2012 season. In 2013, Bastianini competed in the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup, where he took two victories en route to a fourth-place finish in the championship. Bastianini also took his first steps in Moto3, participating in five races of the Italian Championship.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: In 2014, Bastianini made his debut in the Moto3 World Championship riding for Team GO&FUN Moto3. Bastianini scored his first points in his second start, finishing 13th at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas, commencing a run of four consecutive points-scoring finishes; he took top ten placings at the Argentine, Spanish and French Grands Prix. After failing to finish his home race at Mugello, Bastianini took his first podium with a second-place finish in Catalunya; he added another second-place finish in the Czech Republic and a third-place finish in the following race in Great Britain. Bastianini finished the season ninth in the riders' championship.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: In 2015, Bastianini emerged as runaway leader Danny Kent's nearest challenger, taking five podium finishes – including four second places – and two pole positions in the first eleven races of the season. At Misano in September, Bastianini took his first race victory; having started from pole position, Bastianini was part of the five-rider lead battle for the whole race, and took the race win after a final-lap pass on Miguel Oliveira. Bastianini finished the season in third place in the final championship standings.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: In 2016, Bastianini continued to race in the Moto3 class with Gresini Racing Moto3. He finished the season as the championship runner-up, taking 177 points with 6 podiums and a win at Motegi.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: In 2019, he joined Italtrans Racing Team and finished the season in 10th place taking 97 points with 1 podium.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: He finished the 2020 Moto2 season as the world champion, taking 205 points with 3 wins and 7 podiums. At the Austrian Grand Prix, Bastianini crashed into turn 1, which let his bike stranded on the track, until Aspar rider Hafizh Syahrin did not notice, hit Bastianini's bike, create a massive pile-up and pulled out the red flag, neither rider were injured after the accident.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: He signed with Esponsorama Racing for the 2021 MotoGP season and was partnered with Moto2 rival and fellow compatriot Luca Marini. Both Bastianini and Marini rode two-year-old specification Ducati GP19 bikes the whole season. Bastianini scored points consistently during the season, before getting his then best result in Aragon in 6th position, followed by a 3rd place finish in Misano, a repeat 6th place finish again in COTA, and a repeated 3rd place finish again at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Misano during the last lap. Bastianini finished the season 11th in the riders' standings with 102 points.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: Bastianini won the first race of the 2022 MotoGP season, the 2022 Qatar Grand Prix and became the championship leader. Gresini Racing and Bastianini made history by winning with a 2021-specification Ducati Desmosedici GP21. After mid-pack results in Indonesia and Argentina, where he took P11 and P10 respectively, he took his second win at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. This was followed by a DNF in Portugal and P8 in Jerez. At the French Grand Prix in Le Mans, Bastianini took another win, after overtaking both factory Ducatis to return to the top step of the podium. This win meant he was just eight points adrift of championship leader Fabio Quartararo after seven rounds. He returned again to the podium with a 2nd place finish in at the San Marino Grand Prix. Bastianini then took his fourth win of the season at the Aragón Grand Prix, then another 2nd place finish at the Malaysian Grand Prix.


title: Enea Bastianini

text: Bastianini will switch to Ducati Lenovo Team for the 2023 MotoGP World Championship, replacing Jack Miller and partnering Francesco Bagnaia.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: A Rake's Progress (or The Rake's Progress) is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–1734, then engraved in 1734 and published in print form in 1735. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). The original paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where they are normally on display for a short period each day.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In the first painting, Tom has come into his fortune on the death of his miserly father. While the servants mourn, he is measured for new clothes. Although he has had a common-law marriage with her, he now rejects the hand of his pregnant fiancée, Sarah Young, whom he had promised to marry (she holds his ring and her mother holds his love letters). He pays her off, but she still loves him, as becomes clear in the fourth painting. Evidence of the father's miserliness abound: his portrait above the fireplace shows him counting money; symbols of hospitality (a jack and spit) have been locked up at upper right; the coat of arms shows three clamped vises with the motto "Beware"; a half-starved cat reveals the father kept little food in the house, while lack of ashes in the fireplace demonstrates that he spent even less money on wood to heat his home. A servant hanging mourning crepe accidentally uncovers a cache of gold coins. The engraving (right), which is reversed left-to-right compared to the painting, shows the father went so far as to resole his shoes with a piece of leather cut from a Bible cover.An account book has an entry of the miser joy of getting rid of a bad shilling.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In the second painting, Tom is at his morning levée in London, attended by musicians and other hangers-on all dressed in expensive costumes. Surrounding Tom from left to right: a music master at a harpsichord, who was supposed to represent George Frideric Handel or Nicola Porpora; a fencing master; a quarterstaff instructor; a dancing master with a violin; a landscape gardener, Charles Bridgeman; an ex-soldier offering to be a bodyguard; a bugler of a fox hunt club. At lower right is a jockey with a silver trophy. The quarterstaff instructor looks disapprovingly on both the fencing and dancing masters. Both masters appear to be in the "French" style, which was a subject Hogarth loathed. Upon the wall, between paintings of roosters (emblems of cockfighting), there is a painting of the Judgement of Paris.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: The third painting depicts a wild party or orgy underway at a brothel. The prostitutes are stealing the drunken Tom's watch. On the floor at bottom right is a night watchman's staff and lantern — souvenirs of Tom's 'wild night' on the town. The scene takes place at the Rose Tavern, a famous brothel in Covent Garden. The prostitutes have black spots on their faces to cover syphilitic sores.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In the fourth, he narrowly escapes arrest for debt by Welsh bailiffs (as signified by the leeks, a Welsh emblem, in their hats) as he travels in a sedan chair to a party at St. James's Palace to celebrate Queen Caroline's birthday on Saint David's Day (Saint David is the patron saint of Wales). On this occasion he is saved by the intervention of Sarah Young, the girl he had earlier rejected; she is apparently a dealer in millinery and pays the bill. In comic relief, a man filling a street lantern spills the oil on Tom's head. This is a sly reference to how blessings on a person were accompanied by oil poured on the head; in this case, the 'blessing' being the 'saving' of Tom by Sarah, although Rakewell, being a rake, will not take the moral lesson to heart. In the engraved version, lightning flashes in the sky toward White's gambling club and a young pickpocket has just emptied Tom's pocket. At the lower right urchins are gambling. The painting, however, shows the young thief stealing Tom's cane, and has no lightning.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In the fifth, Tom attempts to salvage his fortune by marrying a rich but aged and ugly old maid at St Marylebone. In the background, Sarah arrives, holding their child while her indignant mother struggles with a guest. It looks as though Tom's eyes are already upon the pretty maid to his new wife's left during the nuptials.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: The sixth painting shows Tom pleading for the assistance of the Almighty in a gambling den at White's club after losing his reacquired wealth. Neither he nor the other obsessive gamblers seem to have noticed a fire that is breaking out behind them.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: All is lost by the seventh painting, and Tom is incarcerated in the notorious Fleet debtors' prison. He ignores the distress of both his angry new wife and faithful Sarah, who cannot help him this time. Both the beer-boy and jailer demand money from him. Tom begins to go mad, as indicated by both a telescope for celestial observation poking out of the barred window (an apparent reference to the longitude rewards offered by the British government) and an alchemy experiment in the background. Beside Tom is a rejected play; another inmate is writing a pamphlet on how to solve the national debt. Above the bed at right is an apparatus for wings, which is more clearly seen in the engraved version at the left.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: Finally insane and violent, in the eighth painting he ends his days in Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam), London's infamous mental asylum. Only Sarah Young is there to comfort him, but Rakewell continues to ignore her. While some of the details in these pictures may appear disturbing to 21st-century eyes, they were commonplace in Hogarth's day. For example, the fashionably dressed women in this last painting have come to the asylum as a social occasion, to be entertained by the bizarre antics of the inmates. In the engraving the name of the prostitute Betty Careless is shown carved into the rail of the stairs.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: Hogarth published engravings of the paintings on 25 June 1735, the day that the Engravers' Copyright Act became law. The composition of several of the engravings is reversed from the paintings, due to the printing process.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: Gavin Gordon composed a 1935 ballet titled "The Rake's Progress", based directly on Hogarth's paintings. It was choreographed by Ninette de Valois, designed by Rex Whistler, has been recorded several times, and remains in the repertoires of various ballet companies.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: The 1945 British comedy-drama film "The Rake's Progress", released in the US as "Notorious Gentleman", is loosely based on the paintings.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: The 1946 RKO film "Bedlam", produced by Val Lewton and directed by Mark Robson, was inspired by "A Rake's Progress". Hogarth received a writing credit for the film.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: Igor Stravinsky's 1951 opera "The Rake's Progress", with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is loosely based on the story from Hogarth's paintings. In 1961, David Hockney created his own print edition version of "The Rake's Progress"; he has also created stage designs for the Stravinsky opera.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In 2012, English artist Grayson Perry created a series of tapestries named "The Vanity of Small Differences", an adaptation of Hogarth's originals.


title: A Rake's Progress

text: In 2014 Ulrike Theusner created a version with eight paintings accompanied by copper engravings on the same themes.


title: Christopher Gavigan

text: Christopher Gavigan is an American entrepreneur, co-founder of The Honest Company, and founder and CEO of therapeutics brand PRIMA. He is the author of "Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home", published by Dutton in 2008.


title: Christopher Gavigan

text: In January 2012, Gavigan and business partners Jessica Alba and Brian Lee launched The Honest Company, focused on leading the clean lifestyle movement.


title: Christopher Gavigan

text: Gavigan has served as the CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World, an organization that works to advocate and improve children's and family's health by eliminating questionable toxins from their environment. He also was the founder of Pinnacle Expeditions, a California-based adventure travel company for teens.


title: Masayuki Suzuki

text: Masayuki Suzuki (鈴木雅之, "Suzuki Masayuki", born September 22, 1956, in Ōta, Tokyo) is a Japanese singer best known as a former member of group Rats & Star (previously called "Chanels"), and for performing the opening themes for the anime television series "". He is also called Japan's King Of Love Songs. His trademarks are sunglasses and a moustache, and he is nicknamed "Martini".


title: Masayuki Suzuki

text: Suzuki was born in Tokyo on September 22, 1956. His sister Kiyomi Suzuki is also a musician. He rose to fame as a member of the band Rats & Star (formerly known as Chanels), which began activities in 1975. His first single "Runaway" was released in 1980. He would continue solo music activities after Rats & Star disbanded in 1996.


title: Masayuki Suzuki

text: Since 2019, Suzuki has performed the opening themes for the anime television series "". In 2019, he sang "Love Dramatic feat. Rikka Ihara", the opening theme for the series's first season. In 2020, he sang "Daddy! Daddy! Do! feat. Airi Suzuki", the opening theme for the show's second season. In 2022, he sang "Giri Giri" with Suu from Silent Siren, the opening theme for the show's third season.


title: Media control symbols

text: In digital electronics, analogue electronics and entertainment, the user interface may include media controls or player controls, to enact and change or adjust the process of video playback, audio playback, and alike. These controls are commonly depicted as widely known symbols found in a multitude of products, exemplifying what is known as dominant design.


title: Media control symbols

text: Media control symbols are commonly found on both software and physical media players, remote controls, and multimedia keyboards. Their application is described in ISO/IEC 18035.


title: Media control symbols

text: The main symbols date back to the 1960s, with the Pause symbol having reportedly been invented at Ampex during that decade for use on reel-to-reel audio recorder controls, due to the difficulty of translating the word "pause" into some languages used in foreign markets. The Pause symbol was designed as a combination of the existing square Stop symbol and the caesura, and was intended to evoke the concept of an interruption or "stutter stop".


title: Media control symbols

text: The Play symbol is arguably the most widely used of the media control symbols. In many ways, this symbol has become synonymous with music culture and more broadly the digital download era. As such, there are now a multitude of items such as T-shirts, posters, and tattoos that feature this symbol. Similar cultural references can be observed with the Power symbol which is especially popular among video gamers and technology enthusiasts.


title: Media control symbols

text: Media symbols can be found on an array of advertisements: from live music venues to streaming services.


title: Media control symbols

text: In 2012, Google rebranded its digital download store to Google Play, using the Play symbol in its logo. The Play symbol also serves as a logo for YouTube since 2017. Television station owners Morgan Murphy Media and TEGNA have begun to institute the Play symbol into the logos of their stations to further connect their websites to their over-the-air television presences.


title: Media control symbols

text: In recent years, there has been a proliferation of electronics that use media control symbols in order to represent the Run, Stop, and Pause functions. Likewise, user interface programing pertaining to these functions has also been influenced by that of media players.


title: Media control symbols

text: For example, some washers and dryers with an illuminated Play/pause button are programmed such that it stays lit when the appliance is running. A line of Philips pasta makers has the Play/pause button for controlling the pasta-making process.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) international standard in 1971 and published as ISO 3297 in 1975. ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC 9 is responsible for maintaining the standard.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: When a serial with the same content is published in more than one media type, a different ISSN is assigned to each media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media. The ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN (p-ISSN) and electronic ISSN (e-ISSN). Consequently, as defined in ISO 3297:2007, every serial in the ISSN system is also assigned a linking ISSN (ISSN-L), typically the same as the ISSN assigned to the serial in its first published medium, which links together all ISSNs assigned to the serial in every medium.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: The format of the ISSN is an eight-digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers. As an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the general form of the ISSN code (also named "ISSN structure" or "ISSN syntax") can be expressed as follows:


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: where codice_1 is in the set {"0,1,2...,9"}, a digit character, and codice_2 is in {"0,1,2...,9,X"}; or by a Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) regular expression:


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: For example, the ISSN of the journal "Hearing Research", is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, that is codice_2=5. To calculate the check digit, the following algorithm may be used:


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, counting from the right (if the check digit is X, then add 10 to the sum). The modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, based on the above algorithm.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: ISSNs can be encoded in EAN-13 bar codes with a 977 "country code" (compare the 978 country code ("bookland") for ISBNs), followed by the 7 main digits of the ISSN (the check digit is not included), followed by 2 publisher-defined digits, followed by the EAN check digit (which need not match the ISSN check digit).


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an intergovernmental organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: "ISSN-L" is a unique identifier for all versions of the serial containing the same content across different media. As defined by "ISO 3297:2007", the "linking ISSN (ISSN-L)" provides a mechanism for collocation or linking among the different media versions of the same continuing resource. The "ISSN-L" is one of a serial's existing ISSNs, so does not change the use or assignment of "ordinary" ISSNs; it is based on the ISSN of the first published medium version of the publication. If the print and online versions of the publication are published at the same time, the ISSN of the print version is chosen as the basis of the "ISSN-L".


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: With "ISSN-L" is possible to designate one single ISSN for all those media versions of the title. The use of "ISSN-L" facilitates search, retrieval and delivery across all media versions for services like OpenURL, library catalogues, search engines or knowledge bases.


title: International Standard Serial Number

text: The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, the "ISDS Register" (International Serials Data System), otherwise known as the "ISSN Register". the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. The Register is not freely available for interrogation on the web, but is available by subscription.