title: Port Talbot

text: Faults have an orientation of North West-South East, east–west and north–south. All are normal faults which form extension processes. There are also many marine fossils bands.


title: Port Talbot

text: Marine fossils found in Port Talbot region include species of bivalves, gastropods and brachiopods. Terrestrial fossils include fern tree branches, trunks, leaves and roots. Traces of organism footprints can also be found.


title: Port Talbot

text: The drift geology average thickness is between . Several landslips occur in the highlands including many bole holes historically made for the construction of the M4 motorway, steelworks and coal mines.


title: Port Talbot

text: Rivers in the region are fault guided meaning that they flow is highly influenced by a structural weakness called a fault. Several natural springs occur in the highland regions with a neutral to slightly acidic ph values. Natural groundwater levels varies from below the Taibach area of Port Talbot to over . Rivers in the region including the River Afan (Aberafan), River Neath (Baglan Bay), Ffrwdwyllt (Taibach), Arnallt Brook (Taibach), Baglan Brook (Baglan) and other rivers are fast flowing and are highly influenced by their mouths (end of the rivers, tidal region). A spout can be found in Baglan Park in the Baglan region of Port Talbot. Many open and uncovered reservoirs exist in the region. Water has been channelled into ditches in industrial areas of Port Talbot.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot sea floor topography ranges from within Swansea Bay. There are many patches within the bay including the North Kenfig patches, green grounds, outer green grounds, madjoe and stalheim. These patches are created from faults, hollows, general topography and other factors. Sea depth around Port Talbot is with increasing depth with increasing distance from the coast. There are two beaches within Port Talbot: Aberafan and Morfa. The sand at both beaches is yellow and semi-shell rich. The tide in the area has a harmonic prediction which means it can be predicted easy and has repeatable tide heights every year. The outer bay area and sea area near Port Talbot Pier has a tidal stream with no harmonic prediction. A tidal stream (or tidal current) is an alternating horizontal movement of water associated with the rise and fall of the tide caused by tide-producing forces. This means that the tide cannot be accurately predicted due to additional factors like currents, rip current, river mouths and precipitation. There are also two major dumping grounds within the bay. These are areas where sand is collected for the construction industry. Port Talbot docks is a deep water harbour which allows large cargo ships to dock into the area.


title: Port Talbot

text: A campus of Neath Port Talbot College is located in the Margam area. The Margam campus was previously called Afan College.


title: Port Talbot

text: The University of South Wales has a campus at Baglan Energy Park called the "Hydrogen Centre", which includes a Renewable Hydrogen Research and Development Centre.


title: Port Talbot

text: The nearby Margam Stones Museum has early Christian inscribed stones and Celtic crosses, including four from the area now under the Steelworks. A Roman milestone, an 8th-century pillar, and two Celtic crosses from the 10th century were all rescued from the steelworks site by the Talbot family and taken to Margam, where they are now in the museum, in the care of Cadw.


title: Port Talbot

text: In December 2018 the artist Banksy confirmed that he produced a mural painted on the corner of a garage close to Port Talbot steelworks. On one side it depicts a boy playing in what appears to be snowfall, but the other side shows the snowfall is ash falling from a bin fire. In May 2019, the mural was moved to a gallery in the town's Ty'r Orsaf building.


title: Port Talbot

text: In April 2011, actor Michael Sheen led a 72-hour National Theatre Wales production of a modern retelling of The Passion. The play began at 5:30 am on Good Friday with a seafront scene, inspired by John the Baptist's baptism of Jesus, which was watched by hundreds who had heard about it by word of mouth.


title: Port Talbot

text: By the time the first main part of the play was performed on Aberafan Beach at 3:00 pm, organisers estimated up to 6,000 people had gathered to watch.


title: Port Talbot

text: On Saturday, there were sequences in Llewellyn Street, the Castle Street underpass, Aberafan Shopping Centre, the Seaside Social and Labour Club in Sandfields and nearby Abbeyville Court.


title: Port Talbot

text: On Easter Sunday, the production returned to Aberafan Beach as part of the finale. A trial was performed on Civic Square before a procession from Station Road, with the final scene, "the cross", at Aberafan seafront. By the time the procession had reached the seafront close to where it had begun 72 hours earlier, organisers estimate over 13,000 people had come to watch on the small roundabout.


title: Port Talbot

text: In April 2012, Michael Sheen returned to attend the world premiere of the feature-length film "The Gospel of Us" based on The Passion. The premiere was held at the Apollo Cinema (now the Reel Cinema) on the Aberafan seafront close to where The Passion took place. Tickets for the premiere sold out weeks before the showing; all six screens showed the film simultaneously. The film was also shown daily from Easter Sunday to the following Thursday prior to its UK-wide release the next day.


title: Port Talbot

text: The area is served by several radio stations: The Wave (96.4 FM), Greatest Hits Radio South Wales (1170 MW), Easy Radio (102.1 FM), Heart South Wales (106.0 FM) and Nation Radio (107.3 FM), all of which are available on DAB. Radio Phoenix also operates a 24-hour hospital radio service for the patients & staff of Neath Port Talbot Hospital in Baglan Moors.


title: Port Talbot

text: In 2005 the area was granted its first radio station when Afan FM, the inspiration of a group of local young people, was awarded a five-year licence by Ofcom to serve Port Talbot and Neath. Afan FM broadcast from the AquaDome leisure complex on Aberafan Seafront. Following a December 2009 fire at the AquaDome, Afan FM moved to Aberafan House, adjacent to the town's shopping centre. Afan FM closed in December 2011 was shut down following after an unexpected tax bill.


title: Port Talbot

text: The town has been served by several newspapers. The "Port Talbot Guardian" was a weekly paper published by Media Wales, part of the Trinity Mirror group, but ceased publication in October 2009. The Swansea-based daily "South Wales Evening Post" and the weekly "Courier and Tribune" are distributed in the town and are published by Media Wales, part of the Reach plc group.


title: Port Talbot

text: The Welsh-language song competition "Cân i Gymru" is usually filmed in Port Talbot. TV programmes such as "Doctor Who" and "The Sarah Jane Adventures" have filmed in the town.


title: Port Talbot

text: Terry Gilliam has recounted how he was inspired to create the movie "Brazil" after hearing a transistor radio play the song "Aquarela do Brasil" on the beach at Port Talbot.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot is served by the South Wales Main Line at Port Talbot Parkway railway station. Great Western Railway and Transport for Wales serve the station with services westbound to and and West Wales Line and eastbound to , and London Paddington. Trains also run via and to and Manchester Piccadilly.


title: Port Talbot

text: The new £5.6 million Integrated Transport hub was completed in 2017, linking Port Talbot Parkway with new bus and taxi links. This also included extensive upgrades to the railway station and surrounding area.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot bus station, located adjacent to the Aberafan Centre in the centre of the town is the main bus transport hub, it is a National Express stop. Local bus services are provided by First Cymru and South Wales Transport. The bus station's layout is very distinctive for the fact that buses always have to perform a 270° clockwise turn to exit the station. A Sustrans cycle route has recently been constructed at this bus station as part of the connect2 scheme connecting the Afan Valley with Aberafan beach. A second bus station opened in the town in 2017, at Port Talbot Parkway railway station.


title: Port Talbot

text: The M4 motorway passes through the town from southeast to northwest, crossing a central area on a concrete viaduct, junctions 38 to 41 serve Port Talbot, with junctions 40 and 41 being in the commercial heart of the town. This busy urban stretch of the M4, with tight bends, two-lane carriageways, short narrow slip roads and concrete walls on both sides, was the first length of motorway in Wales when it opened to traffic in 1966. The road has a speed limit of enforced with automatic number-plate recognition speed cameras in both directions. The stretch through Port Talbot town centre is a particular traffic congestion blackspot and there have been calls to close the slip roads at junctions 40 and 41 to improve traffic flow. However some commuters oppose this plan since it would add more time to their journey. A new dual carriageway relief road, the Port Talbot Peripheral Distribution Road (PDR), was completed in 2013. It serves as a distributor road through Port Talbot to the southwest of the M4, beginning at M4 Junction 38 and ending near Junction 41.


title: Port Talbot

text: The Port Talbot Docks complex consist of an inner set of floating docks and an outer tidal basin. Construction of the tidal basin began in 1964 and the whole basin covers about . The tidal basin is capable of handling ships of up to 170,000 DWT and is used mostly for the import of iron ore and coal for use by nearby Port Talbot Steelworks. The inner floating docks were constructed in 1898 and were closed in 1959. They were re-opened in 1998 for commercial shipping and in March 2007 for the import of some steel products and are capable of handling ships of up to 8,000 dwt. There have been proposals for the development of an intermodal freight terminal at the port.


title: Port Talbot

text: On 20 November 2007, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) granted consent for the world's largest biomass power station to be built at Port Talbot. This is expected to provide enough electricity (from wood from environmentally-managed forests, mostly in North America) to supply half the homes in Wales with electricity.


title: Port Talbot

text: Potential future development currently centres around the peripheral distributor road to the south (the dual carriageway road in the Margam and Taibach areas was finished in 2013), Baglan Industrial Park and Baglan Energy Park to the west, Port Talbot Docks to the southwest, Margam Country Park to the east and the Afan Valley to the north. In March 2009 Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council announced a regeneration project for Port Talbot town centre and docks, with a master plan for new homes, offices, light industry, retail developments and improvements to the railway station.


title: Port Talbot

text: In January 2021, permission was granted for a new £200m adventure resort to open in the Afan Valley. The resort will include ski slopes, zip wires, tree top high-wire courses, Bear Grylls Survival Academy, an aqua adventure park, an equestrian centre, mountain biking, BMX and skate parks, a luxury spa, central plaza with shops and restaurants, 100 bed hotel and 500 luxury lodges.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot is home to a number of youth organisations. They are operated by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, the Ministry of Defence and a range of other charitable organisations.


title: Port Talbot

text: The 499 (Port Talbot) Squadron Air Training Corps, Sea Cadets, Port Talbot Detachment and Dyfed and Glamorgan Army Cadet Force operate in Port Talbot.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot coastguard celebrated its centenary in 2008. The crew are the mud rescue team for the Swansea Bay area and are one of the seven rescue teams in the Gower Sector. Port Talbot inshore lifeboat is operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and operates in the docks, at Aberafan Beach and in the navigable sections of the local rivers.


title: Port Talbot

text: The town is part of the Ospreys rugby union region, by which it is represented at the top level of the sport. Other teams include:


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot Town who were relegated from the Cymru South join Baglan Dragons F.C. who were promoted to the Ardal Leagues.


title: Port Talbot

text: Margam Forest to the northeast of the Port Talbot is used as a venue for a stage of the annual Wales Rally GB. In the past, the rally route has traversed Margam Country Park.


title: Port Talbot

text: Afan Forest Park to the north of the town has a number of dedicated mountain biking trails including the 'Penhydd', 'Y Wâl', 'Skyline', 'White's Level' and 'W²'.


title: Port Talbot

text: The Aberavon beach is popular for surfing and kite surfing. A local life-saving club operates during the summer months.


title: Port Talbot

text: Port Talbot has several protected sites, including Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and a Ramsar wetland site.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Joseph Anthony Musgrove (born December 4, 1992) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played within the Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, and Pittsburgh Pirates organizations.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove was born in El Cajon, California, and began participating in baseball tournaments at the age of seven. He broke out as a star pitcher and batter during his junior season at Grossmont High School, which he helped take to two state championship appearances. After being selected by the Blue Jays in the first round of the 2011 MLB Draft, Musgrove chose to forgo his previous commitment to play college baseball for San Diego State, instead signing with the team. Partway through the 2012 season, Musgrove was traded to the Astros as part of a massive ten-player swap. There, his minor league career faltered due to a series of injuries, and he did not advance past the Rookie League until 2014. He began to rise through the Astros' farm system in 2015, and made his major league debut the following year.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: In 2017, Musgrove was part of the World Series-winning Astros team. That offseason, Musgrove was part of another massive trade between the Astros and the Pirates. He spent two years there before being traded to his hometown Padres. On April 9, 2021, Musgrove pitched the first no-hitter in the Padres' 52-year franchise history.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove was born on December 4, 1992, in El Cajon, California, to Mark and Diane Musgrove. He has one brother and two sisters. Mark, a lifelong baseball fan, originally supported the San Francisco Giants but became a San Diego Padres fan after the team was created in 1969. He was frequently busy, working as a police officer and private investigator in San Diego, California so Diane played catch with a young Musgrove in their front yard. Musgrove began participating in baseball tournaments at the age of seven, where he was often physically larger than his teammates. Additionally, Musgrove took pitching lessons with distant relative Dominick Johnson, the son of Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher Deron Johnson. Johnson taught Musgrove a series of intense workouts designed in the 1970s by former Philadelphia Phillies trainer Gus Hoefling.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove attended Grossmont High School in El Cajon, where he emerged as a strong two-way player during his junior season. As a pitcher in 2010, Musgrove boasted an 11–1 win–loss record with five saves, a 2.07 earned run average (ERA), and 70 strikeouts in innings pitched. As a batter, he also had a .430 batting average, with nine home runs and 35 runs batted in (RBIs). The following year, his record fell to 7–5, but Musgrove recorded a 2.40 ERA and 100 strikeouts in innings, while hitting .350 with nine home runs and 32 RBIs.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: The Toronto Blue Jays selected Musgrove out of high school in the first round, 46th overall, of the 2011 MLB Draft. At the time, he had committed to play college baseball for San Diego State but chose to forgo that commitment in order to sign with the Blue Jays. He played eight games with the Rookie Gulf Coast League Blue Jays before being moved to the other Rookie affiliate, the Bluefield Blue Jays, in late August. In a combined nine games and innings for the two teams, Musgrove posted a 1–1 record in 2011, with a 4.01 ERA and 18 strikeouts. He began with Bluefield in 2012, recording a 1.13 ERA and nine strikeouts in eight innings.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: On July 20, 2012, Musgrove was part of a massive 10-player trade between the Blue Jays and the Houston Astros. He was traded to Houston alongside major league players Francisco Cordero and Ben Francisco, minor league prospects Asher Wojciechowski, David Rollins, and Carlos Pérez, and a player to be named later, in exchange for J. A. Happ, Brandon Lyon, and David Carpenter. The player to be named later was eventually named as pitching prospect Kevin Comer. Houston assigned Musgrove to the Greeneville Astros, where he went 0–1 with a 7.00 ERA in four games and nine innings. He spent the entirety of the 2013 season with the Gulf Coast League Astros, going 1–3 with a 4.41 ERA in innings and 11 games.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: A series of injuries throughout his minor league career kept Musgrove from breaking out of the Rookie Leagues until 2014, when he was assigned to the Class A Short Season Tri-City ValleyCats. He missed two months of the 2012 season due to a strained rotator cuff, and spent the majority of the 2013 season on the sidelines with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament. An injury to his sternoclavicular joint continued to bother Musgrove during his time with the ValleyCats, and he made only a handful of appearances. In the 77 innings that he did pitch, Musgrove posted a 7–1 record with a 2.81 ERA and 67 strikeouts, as well as 0.96 walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP).


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove started the 2015 season with the Class A Quad Cities River Bandits, with whom he posted a 4–1 record and a 0.70 ERA in five games. He received two promotions that season: first, in May, to the High-A Lancaster JetHawks, and then again in June to the Double A Corpus Christi Hooks. Musgrove went 12–1 for the season across all three teams, with a 1.88 ERA and 99 strikeouts in innings. He was named the Astros' 2015 Minor League Pitcher of the Year, and was added to the 40-man roster in November so that he could be protected from the Rule 5 draft.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: After beginning 2016 with Corpus Christi, Musgrove was promoted to the Triple A Fresno Grizzlies on May 13, 2016. After a strong start to his time in Fresno, recording a 2.00 ERA with 19 strikeouts by mid-July, Musgrove was selected as the starting pitcher for the United States Team at the 2016 All-Star Futures Game. He retired all three World Team batters he faced in only 11 pitches. Musgrove went 5–3 for the season in Fresno, with a 3.81 ERA and 57 strikeouts in 59 innings.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove was recalled by the Astros from Fresno on August 1, 2016. In 16 games between Corpus Christi and Fresno prior to his promotion, he was 7–4 with a 2.74 ERA. He made his major league debut on August 2 versus the Toronto Blue Jays, striking out eight over 4.1 innings while only allowing one hit. His first Major League strikeout victim was Edwin Encarnación. He spent the remainder of the season with the Astros, going 4–4 with a 4.06 ERA over 11 games (ten starts). Musgrove began 2017 with Houston, and spent the majority of the season there, pitching only one game with Fresno. In 38 games (15 starts) for the Astros in 2017, he was 7–8 with a 4.77 ERA.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: In the postseason, he appeared in seven games, including four World Series games. In four innings pitched, he allowed three hits and three runs, but threw a scoreless top of the 10th inning of Game 5 against the Dodgers where he was the winning pitcher. The series concluded after 7 games with the Astros winning the title. Three years later, it was revealed in the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal that the Astros had cheated during the 2017 season. Musgrove subsequently said he thought the team's championship was "tainted" because of this.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: On January 13, 2018, the Astros traded Musgrove, along with Michael Feliz, Colin Moran and Jason Martin, to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Gerrit Cole. He began the season on the disabled list and was activated on May 25, joining the starting rotation. Pitching against the St. Louis Cardinals on August 30, 2018, Musgrove began the game by throwing 21 consecutive strikes, the most by a major league pitcher to start a game since 1988. This included eight swinging strikes, six called strikes, two foul balls and five balls in play where the batter was put out by the Pirates fielders. In 19 starts, he finished with a record of 6–9 in innings.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: In 2019, his left-on-base percentage of 63.2% was the worst in the majors. In 2020 for the Pirates, Musgrove recorded a 1–5 record and 3.86 ERA with 55 strikeouts in 39.2 innings pitched.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: On January 19, 2021, the Pirates traded Musgrove to his hometown San Diego Padres in a three team trade that sent David Bednar, Omar Cruz, Drake Fellows, Hudson Head, and Endy Rodríguez to the Pirates and Joey Lucchesi to the New York Mets.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: The 2021 season proved to be a breakout campaign for Musgrove, as he posted career bests in several categories, including ERA, WHIP, batting average against, strikeouts, innings pitched, and win/loss record. On April 9, 2021, Musgrove threw a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field, the first no-hitter in the Padres' 52-year history. He threw 77 of 112 pitches for strikes and struck out 10 batters; a fourth-inning hit by pitch to Joey Gallo prevented Musgrove from achieving a perfect game. In 2021, Musgrove posted an 11–9 record with a 3.18 ERA and 203 strikeouts in innings. He led the Padres' starting rotation in wins, ERA and strikeouts.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: On August 1, 2022, the Padres announced they signed Musgrove to a five-year contract extension, worth $100 million.


title: Joe Musgrove

text: Musgrove followed up his 2021 campaign with a strong season in 2022, recording a career low 2.93 ERA over 181 innings pitched, the lowest ERA among the Padres starting rotation that season. 21 of Musgrove's 30 starts in 2022 were Quality starts, and Musgrove had the 9th lowest ERA among qualified NL starting pitchers. Musgrove pitched the third game of the 2022 NL Wild Card Series against the New York Mets, holding the Mets scoreless over seven innings while allowing only two baserunners. Musgrove pitched the fourth game of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers and earned the win in the series-clinching game, holding the Dodgers to two runs over six innings despite allowing nine baserunners.


title: Donna Leon

text: Donna Leon (; born in Montclair, New Jersey) is the American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice, Italy, featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti. In 2003, she received the Corine Literature Prize.


title: Donna Leon

text: Leon lived in Venice for over 30 years and now resides in the small village of Val Müstair in the mountains of Grisons in Switzerland. She also has a home in Zurich. In 2020 she became a Swiss citizen. She was a lecturer in English literature for the University of Maryland University CollegeEurope (UMUC-Europe) in Italy and taught English from 1981 to 1990 at an American military base in Italy. She has stopped teaching and concentrated on writing and other cultural activities in the field of music (especially baroque music).


title: Donna Leon

text: Her Commissario Brunetti novels all take place in or around Venice. They are written in English and have been translated into many foreign languages, butat Leon's requestnot into Italian. The ninth Brunetti novel, "Friends in High Places", won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2000. German television has produced 26 "Commissario Brunetti" episodes for broadcast.


title: Donna Leon

text: Donna Leon was born to Catholic parents, who had strong leanings to the Democratic party. Her paternal grandparents were Spanish and her maternal grandparents were Irish and German. She grew up in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Her parents put a strong focus on education for their daughter.


title: Donna Leon

text: "The Guardian" reports: "Leon was teaching in Iran while attempting to complete a PhD about Jane Austen when the revolution of 1978-79 interrupted her studies and her life. When her trunks were returned to her months later, following her hasty evacuation (part of it at gunpoint, on a bus), her papers were gone." She returned to the US and worked in New York City writing advertising copy. When she visited Italy for the first time, she fell in love with the country.


title: Donna Leon

text: In 2015, she left Venice as her full-time home and began to split her time between the homes she owns in Switzerland, one in Zurich and another in the mountains. She returns to Venice approximately one week each month.


title: Donna Leon

text: Leon wrote a crime novel after seeing a scene she thought belonged in such a novel. She wrote it in 8 months and stuck it in a drawer until a friend persuaded her to submit to a writing contest, which she won.


title: Donna Leon

text: The police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice. Each case is an opportunity for the author to reveal another aspect of the seamy underside of society and another facet of Venetian life. Brunetti reports to the vain and self-serving buffoon, Vice-Questore Patta, while Sergente (later Ispettore and with the inspector per "tu") Vianello and the all-knowing and well-connected Signorina Elettra, Patta's secretary, assists Brunetti on the ground and through research.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: The 1977 Russian flu was an influenza pandemic that was first reported by the Soviet Union in 1977 and lasted until 1979. The outbreak in northern China started in May 1977, slightly earlier than that in the Soviet Union. The pandemic mostly affected population younger than 25 or 26 years of age, and resulted in approximately 700,000 deaths worldwide. It was caused by an H1N1 flu strain which highly resembled a virus strain circulating worldwide from 1946 to 1957. Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: In May 1977, an outbreak of flu took place in northern China including Liaoning, Jilin and Tianjin. The strain was isolated and determined by Chinese researchers to be H1N1, which mostly affected students in middle and primary schools who lacked immunity to H1N1 virus. Clinical symptoms were relatively mild. Other areas in mainland China and British Hong Kong were also affected in the following months.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: In the same year, the H1N1 strain was detected in Siberia shortly after the outbreak in China, and then spread rapidly across the Soviet Union, which was the first country to report the outbreak to the World Health Organization (the People's Republic of China was not a member of WHO until 1981). Therefore, the pandemic was named "Russian flu".


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: In 1977, the Russian flu hit the United Kingdom. The virus reached the United States in January 1978. The first outbreak in the U.S was reported in a high school in Cheyenne, where the clinical attack rate was more than 70% but involved solely students. Even though infections were seen in schools and military bases throughout the U.S, there were few reports of infection in people older than 26, and the death rate in affected individuals was low.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: Since late 1977, the H1N1 strain has begun to co-circulate with the H3N2 strain in humans, as seasonal flu.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: There have been various H1N1 strains. The 1918 Spanish flu was caused by an H1N1 strain, and H1N1 strains afterwards became endemic and circulated around the world until 1957, when they all but vanished. (There were some isolated reports of other H1N1 strains such as the one in the early 1960s.) H1N1 reappeared in 1977 and the strain of the Russian flu was almost identical to one that had been isolated in 1950. This feature of the 1977 strain has been interpreted as pointing towards an anthropogenic origin of the virus, and the pandemic is the only documented human epidemic believed to result from research activity.


title: 1977 Russian flu

text: The Russian flu was relatively benign. In 1977, Chinese researchers found uneven attack rates among different groups of students, as well as many mild and asymptomatic infections. In the United States, some researchers estimate the "influenza mortality rate" (not the infection fatality rate or the case fatality rate) around 5 in every 100,000 population, less than that of the typical seasonal influenza (~6 in every 100,000 population). Most of the infected people were under the age of 26 or 25, presumably because older people retained immunity from exposure to previous H1N1 strains. It is estimated that 700,000 people died due to the Russian flu pandemic worldwide.


title: Dean Dillon

text: Dean Dillon (born Larry Dean Flynn; March 26, 1955) is an American country musician and songwriter. Between 1982 and 1993, he recorded six studio albums on various labels, and charted several singles on the "Billboard" country charts. Since 1993, Dillon has continued to write hit songs for other artists, most notably George Strait.


title: Dean Dillon

text: In 2002, Dillon was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2020, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.


title: Dean Dillon

text: Dean Dillon was born Larry Dean Flynn on March 26, 1955 in Lake City, Tennessee, where he was raised. He began playing the guitar at the age of seven, and when he was 15 he made his first public appearance as a singer and performer in the Knoxville variety show "Jim Clayton Startime". After completing Oak Ridge High School in 1973 he hitchhiked to Nashville with hopes of starting a music career. Dillon first recorded on the Plantation label as Dean Rutherford, and then as Dean Dalton. Upon moving to RCA Records, he was persuaded to change his recording name; record executive Jerry Bradley randomly picked the name Dillon from a telephone book.


title: Dean Dillon

text: As a recording artist between 1979 and 1983, Dillon charted eight times, including one top 30 hit, "I'm into the Bottle (To Get You out of My Mind)". He was featured on several duet albums with songwriting partner Gary Stewart. Early songwriting success earned Dillon a recording deal with Capitol Records for whom he released two studio albums. In 1991, now at Atlantic Records, Dillon released his most successful and most recent studio album, "Out of Your Ever Lovin' Mind".


title: Dean Dillon

text: As a songwriter, early successes includes David Allan Coe's 1981 hit "Tennessee Whiskey". Dillon has written many singles for George Strait, including "The Chair", "Nobody in His Right Mind Would've Left Her", "It Ain't Cool to Be Crazy About You", "Ocean Front Property", "Famous Last Words of a Fool", "I've Come to Expect It from You", "If I Know Me", "Easy Come, Easy Go", "Lead On", "The Best Day", "She Let Herself Go", "Living for the Night", "Drinkin' Man", and "I Believe". Strait and his son Bubba co-wrote the latter three with Dillon.


title: Dean Dillon

text: In 2018 he met Sundance Head at a Houston Rodeo and fell in love with his voice. "The first time I heard 'Dance' I thought, 'where has THIS guy been hiding? I've been in this business all my life, and with the exception of a couple of people, I've never heard anybody sing the way this man does. He is extremely special," says Dillon. With the help of business associates from Texas Dean Dillon create his own record label WildCatter Records, signing Sundance Head. On January 25, 2019, their first album together, "Stained Glass and Neon", was released.


title: Dean Dillon

text: Dillon's daughter, Jessie Jo Dillon, is also a songwriter. He also has another daughter, named Song, who is also a singer songwriter.


title: Dean Dillon

text: Dillon has worked with a younger generation of country stars including Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney. In 2002, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame along with Bob Dylan and Shel Silverstein. Dillon co-wrote two songs on Toby Keith's 2005 album "Honkytonk University", and five on his 2006 album "White Trash with Money", including the single "A Little Too Late".


title: Guntur Talkies

text: Guntur Talkies is a 2016 Indian Telugu-language crime comedy film directed by Praveen Sattaru who co-wrote the film with Siddu Jonnalagadda. The film stars Jonnalagadda, Rashmi Gautam, Shraddha Das, and Naresh. The film was a sleeper hit. It was remade in Tamil as "Evanukku Engeyo Matcham Irukku" (2018).


title: Guntur Talkies

text: Hari (Siddu) and Giri (Naresh) live in a slum in Guntur and work as a low-end salesmen in a medical shop managed by a greedy man. They have a secret life of petty thieves. They steal small and insignificant items so that nobody recognizes them and complain to the police. One day both of them steal of money and run away to Goa. Suddenly they are chased by police and mafia. Rest of the story is about how they escape from them and how they settle in their life.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Amanda Oliveira de Lemos (born May 22, 1987) is a Brazilian mixed martial artist who competes in the Strawweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. As of November 8, 2022, she is #3 in the UFC women's strawweight rankings, and as of November 21, 2022, she is #9 in UFC women's pound-for-pound rankings.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos started her professional mixed martial arts career in her native Brazilian regional circuit, fighting mostly in Jungle Fight. Racking up an undefeated record of 5–0, she faced Mayra Cantuária for the Jungle Fight Women's Bantamweight Championship at Jungle Fight 85 on January 23, 2016. The fight ended in a majority draw, which prompted a rematch between the two contenders. The rematch for the title took place on June 25, 2016 at Jungle Fight 88. Lemos won the title via third-round knockout.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos was scheduled to face Arlene Blencowe at Legend MMA 1 on January 28, 2017. However, Lemos withdrew from the bout and was replaced by Janay Harding.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Replacing injured Lina Länsberg on short notice, Lemos made her promotional debut against Leslie Smith at on July 16, 2017. She lost the lopsided fight via second-round knockout.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: On March 28, 2018, news surfaced that USADA had suspended Lemos for two years for testing positive for stanozolol and its metabolite, stemming from a sample taken on November 8, 2017.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos was scheduled to return from the suspension against Veronica Macedo in a strawweight bout on December 21, 2019, at UFC Fight Night 165. However, Macedo withdrew from the bout due to concussion-like symptoms and was replaced by Miranda Granger. She won the fight via technical submission.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos faced Lívia Renata Souza on March 6, 2021, at UFC 259. She won the fight via technical knockout in round one after knocking Souza down twice.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos faced Montserrat Ruiz on July 17, 2021, at UFC on ESPN 26. Lemos won the fight via technical knockout in round one.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos was scheduled to face Nina Nunes on December 18, 2021, at . However, Nunes was removed from the bout for undisclosed reasons and was replaced by Angela Hill. Lemos won the bout via split decision. 10 out of 11 media scores gave it to Hill. This bout earned the "Fight of the Night" bonus award.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos faced former strawweight champion Jéssica Andrade on April 23, 2022, at UFC Fight Night 205. She lost the fight via a standing arm-triangle choke in round one.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos faced Michelle Waterson on July 16, 2022, at UFC on ABC 3. She won the fight via guillotine choke submission in the second round. This win earned Lemos her first "Performance of the Night" bonus award.


title: Amanda Lemos

text: Lemos was scheduled to face Marina Rodriguez on October 22, 2022 at UFC 280, but the bout was postponed to UFC Fight Night 214 for unknown reasons. She won the fight via technical knockout in the third round.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The national flag of Cyprus (; ) came into use on 16 August 1960, under the Zürich and London Agreements, whereby a constitution was drafted and Cyprus was proclaimed an independent state. The flag was designed by artist İsmet Güney. The design of the flag deliberately employs peaceful and neutral symbols in an attempt to indicate harmony between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, an ideal that has not yet been realised. In 1963, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities separated because of Cypriot intercommunal violence.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The national flag features the shape of the entirety of the island, with two olive branches below (a symbol of peace between the island's two communities) on white (another symbol of peace). The olive branches signify peace between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The map on the flag is a copper-orange colour, symbolising the large deposits of copper ore on the island, from which it may have received its name.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The flag of the Republic of Cyprus was preceded by the flag of British Cyprus. Upon independence, Cyprus adopted a new flag. Under the constitution, the flag should “have a neutral design and colour,” i.e. it should not include either blue or red colours (the colours of the flag of Greece and the flag of Turkey), nor portray a cross or a crescent.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The original proposal, made by the former British colonial administration, featured a rust-brown K on a white field. It was rejected by the President Makarios III and Vice-president Fazil Küçük, who preferred a flag proposed by İsmet Güney, a Turkish Cypriot artist.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: In the design of August 1960, the colour of the map is copper (Pantone 144-C). Both the crest and the two olive-tree leaves are olive green (Pantone 336-C). The background is white with the 3:5 ratio. In April 2006 the design was updated, the shape of the olive branches were slightly altered, its color was changed to Pantone 574, The copper color of the map was changed to Pantone 1385 and the ratio was changed to 3:2.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: Flags produced on Cyprus often differ from the original specifications, both regarding the size of the map and the colours used. The government announced in October 2005, that it would take steps to "start from scratch" and assure that only flags complying with the official specifications would be produced.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: Under the constitution of Cyprus, the flag of Cyprus may be flown by state institutions, public corporations, and citizens of the country.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: According to the constitution, the community authorities and their institutions have the right to hoist the Greek flag or the Turkish flag alongside the flag of Cyprus during the holidays. Any citizen may, without any restriction, fly the Greek or Turkish flag, or both, next to the Cypriot flag at their residence or store. Other provisions also allow municipalities, educational institutions and the National Guard to do so as well. Since the de facto division of the island, consecutive to the 1974 invasion, the flag of Greece is the only of the two flown in the area under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Cyprus, due to the predominant presence of Greek-Cypriots in that part of the island. Similarly, the flag of Turkey is only observed in the area under the control of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (recognised only by Turkey). Lately, only the National Guard, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Defence and the Municipal authorities of the Republic of Cyprus fly the Greek flag alongside the Cypriot and EU flags.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The flag of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is based on the flag of Turkey, with the colors reversed and two additional horizontal red stripes at the top and bottom. It was designed by Emin Çizenel.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: Under the terms of the Annan Plan for Cyprus, a United Nations proposal to settle the Cyprus dispute, a new national flag would have been adopted by a reconstituted confederal republic of Cyprus. A competition was announced and the UN collected over 1000 proposals until 17 February 2003. Some of the proposals can be found on the webpage "Cyprus seeks new flag" by the BBC. It is possible that any future Cyprus settlement will include the adoption of a new flag.


title: Flag of Cyprus

text: The plan was accepted by Turkish Cypriots, but rejected by Greek Cypriots, therefore the plan was not put into place.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The Grand Slam in professional golf is winning all of golf's major championships in the same calendar year. Variations include a Career Grand Slam: winning all of the major tournaments within a player's career and the Tiger Slam: winning four consecutive major titles but not in the same calendar year (named after Tiger Woods, the only player to accomplish the feat).


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The Grand Slam in men's golf is an unofficial term for winning all four major championships in the same year.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: In the modern era, the Grand Slam requires victories in four tournaments in a single calendar year (listed in current playing order):


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Prior to the creation of the Masters Tournament, the national amateur championships of the U.S. and the UK were considered major championships. During that earlier era, the Grand Slam comprised consecutive victories at the United States Amateur Championship, The Amateur Championship (British Amateur) along with the U.S. Open and the Open Championship.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The term "Grand Slam" was first applied to Bobby Jones' achievement of winning the four major golf events of 1930: The Open Championship, the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur. When Jones won all four, the sports world searched for ways to capture the magnitude of his accomplishment. Up to that time, there was no term for such a feat because no one had thought it possible. The "Atlanta Journal"s O. B. Keeler dubbed it the "Grand Slam," borrowing a bridge term. George Trevor of the "New York Sun" wrote that Jones had "stormed the impregnable quadrilateral of golf." Keeler would later write the words that would forever be linked to one of the greatest individual accomplishments in the history of sports:


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: This victory, the fourth major title in the same season and in the space of four months, had now and for all time entrenched Bobby Jones safely within the 'Impregnable Quadrilateral of Golf,' that granite fortress that he alone could take by escalade, and that others may attack in vain, forever.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The modern definition could not be applied until at least 1934, when the Masters was founded, and still carried little weight in 1953 when Ben Hogan won the Masters, U.S. Open, and Open Championship. That year, it was impossible to win all four as the PGA Championship preceded and overlapped with the Open Championship; the PGA's 36-hole match play semifinals and finals near Detroit were the same days as the mandatory 36-hole qualifier at Carnoustie in Scotland for the Open Championship; the only way to compete in both events was to lose an early match at the PGA. Hogan is the only player to have won the Masters, U.S. Open, and Open Championship in the same calendar year.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: In 1960, Arnold Palmer won the Masters in April and U.S. Open in June. According to his autobiography, "A Golfer's Life", he and his friend Bob Drum (of the Pittsburgh Press), while on the trans-Atlantic flight to The Open Championship at St Andrews, came up with the idea that adding it and the PGA Championship titles that July would constitute a modern Grand Slam. Drum spread the notion among the gathered media and it caught on. Two years earlier, the PGA had changed to stroke play, and it started to be held two weeks after the Open Championship in 1960. Scheduling problems continued through the 1960s as the last two majors were held in successive weeks in July on five occasions. The PGA was played in August in 1965 but returned to July for the next three. With the formation of the Tournament Players Division in late 1968, now the PGA Tour, the PGA Championship moved to August in 1969 and, except for the 1971 edition, held in late February to avoid the summer heat of Florida, continued to be held during that month until 2018. From 2019 it is held in May.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Tiger Woods came closest to winning a modern Grand Slam by holding all four major titles at the same time. He won all four major championships consecutively — the U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship in 2000 and the 2001 Masters — but not in the same calendar year. This has been called the "Tiger Slam". In fact, even before Woods accomplished this, there was much debate over the definition of "Grand Slam." Fred Couples said, "I don't know how I can put it more simply . . . if he wins all four, it's a Slam."


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Only five golfers have won all four of golf's modern majors at any time during their careers, an achievement which is often referred to as a "Career Grand Slam": Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. Woods and Nicklaus have won each of the four majors at least three times.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The term also refers to a former tour tournament, the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, an annual off-season tournament, that was cancelled after the 2014 tournament, contested by the winners of the four major championships.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Women's golf also has a set of majors. No woman has completed a four-major Grand Slam, but Babe Zaharias won all three majors contested in 1950 and Sandra Haynie won both majors in 1974.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Seven women have completed the Career Grand Slam by winning four different majors. There are variations in the set of four tournaments involved as the players played in different eras, and the women's tournaments defined as "majors" have varied considerably over time in a way that has not been paralleled in the men's game. The seven are Pat Bradley, Juli Inkster, Inbee Park, Annika Sörenstam, Louise Suggs, Karrie Webb, and Mickey Wright. Webb is separately recognized by the LPGA as its only "Super Career Grand Slam" winner, as she is the only one of the group to have won five different tournaments recognized as majors.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Although other women's tours, notably the Ladies European Tour (LET) and the LPGA of Japan Tour, recognize a different set of "majors", the U.S. LPGA is so dominant in global women's golf that the phrase "women's majors", without further qualification, is almost universally considered as a reference to the U.S. LPGA majors.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: <br> Inbee Park is recognized as achieving the career Grand Slam for winning four different major championships, even though The Evian Championship had since been designated as the fifth major championship.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Senior (i.e., 50 and over) men's golf also has a set of majors. Like the women's majors, the senior majors are not globally recognized. However, because the U.S.-based PGA Tour Champions overwhelmingly dominates worldwide senior golf, its roster of majors is by far the most widely recognized.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Unlike the mainstream men's and women's (until 2013) Grand Slams, the senior version (as recognized by PGA Tour Champions) now contains five events.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The Senior PGA is by far the oldest of the senior majors, having been founded in 1937, decades before the establishment of PGA Tour Champions (as the Senior PGA Tour) in 1980. The other events were all founded in the 1980s—the U.S. Senior Open in 1980, the Senior Players Championship in 1983, The Senior Open in 1987, and The Tradition in 1989. This era saw senior golf became a commercial success as the first golf stars of the television era, such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, reached their fifties. The Senior Open, however, was not recognized as a U.S. senior major until 2003.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: The stability of the majors in senior golf falls somewhere between mainstream men's golf and the LPGA:


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: No man has ever won all of the senior majors contested in a year, even in the period between 1980 and 1982 when only two senior majors existed. Bernhard Langer is the only man to have won all five of the current senior majors in his career, having completed the career Slam by winning both the Senior PGA Championship and Senior Open Championship in 2017. Miller Barber won both of the 1980-1982 senior majors, the Senior PGA and U.S. Senior Open, during that time span, and won the inaugural Senior Players Championship in 1983. Those three tournaments would be the only senior majors until The Tradition was first played in 1989. Prior to the founding of The Tradition, Palmer and Player also completed that era's Career Senior Grand Slam. However, neither Barber, Palmer, nor Player would ever win The Tradition.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Jack Nicklaus is the only other player to have completed any era's Career Senior Grand Slam, doing so in his first two years on the Senior Tour. In his first year of eligibility in 1990, he won The Tradition and the Senior Players Championship. The next year, he defended his Tradition title and went on to win the Senior PGA and U.S. Senior Open. However, he failed to defend his Senior Players title and thus missed out on a calendar-year Grand Slam.


title: Grand Slam (golf)

text: Langer and Nicklaus are the only players to have won four or more different senior majors in their careers. Although Nicklaus never won The Senior Open, that event was not recognized as a U.S. senior major until 2003, which was also the only year he played the event. Player won The Senior Open three times before 2003, when it was considered a major by the European Senior Tour but not the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions.


title: Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

text: The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (), controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany.


text: The ministry was created as the central institution of Nazi propaganda shortly after the party's national seizure of power in January 1933. In the Hitler cabinet, it was headed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who exercised control over all German mass media and creative artists through his ministry and the Reich Chamber of Culture (), which was established in the fall of 1933.


text: Shortly after the March 1933 Reichstag elections, Adolf Hitler presented his cabinet with a draft resolution to establish the ministry. Despite the skepticism of some non-National Socialist ministers, Hitler pushed the resolution through. On 13 March 1933, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg issued a decree ordering the establishment of a Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP). At the time the German word ‘Propaganda’ was value neutral. In today's terms, the ministry could be understood to have had a name that meant roughly ‘ministry for culture, media and public relations’.


text: The ministry moved into the 18th-century Ordenspalais building across from the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, then used by the United Press Department of the Reich Government (). It had been responsible for coordinating the Weimar Republic's official press releases but by then had been incorporated into the Nazi state. On 25 March 1933 Goebbels explained the future function of the Ministry of Propaganda to broadcasting company directors: "The Ministry has the task of carrying out an intellectual mobilization in Germany. In the field of the spirit it is thus the same as the Ministry of Defense in the field of security. [...] Spiritual mobilization [is] just as necessary, perhaps even more necessary, than making the people materially able to defend themselves."The ministry was tailored for Joseph Goebbels, who had been the Reich propaganda leader of the Nazi Party since April 1930. By a decree of 30 June 1933, numerous functions of other ministries were transferred under the responsibility of the new ministry. The role of the new ministry was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural, mass media and intellectual life for the country.


text: The RMVP grew steadily. It began in 1933 with five departments and 350 employees. A first plan for the distribution of responsibilities dated 1 October 1933 listed seven departments: Administration and Law (I), Propaganda (II), Broadcasting (III), Press (IV), Film (V), Theater, Music and Art (VI) and Security (VII, subtitled "security against lies at home and abroad"). By 1939, 2,000 employees worked in 17 departments. From 1933 to 1941 the RMVP's budget increased from 14 to 187 million Reichsmarks. Reich Minister Goebbels was ultimately in charge of three state secretaries and the departments they headed:


text: With the establishment of Department V (Film), the Propaganda Ministry became the most important body for the German film industry alongside the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Reich Film Chamber. Initially little changed in the formal structure of German film censorship after the founding of the RMVP. The inspection and review offices that had existed since 1920 (notably the central film inspection office) were incorporated into the RMVP's Film Department, which was headed by state secretary () Ernst Seeger, who had headed the Weimar Republic's Reich Film Office in the Ministry of the Interior since 1919. Fritz Hippler, director of the 1940 film "The Eternal Jew", followed him in 1939 and then Hans Hinkel in April 1944.


text: The department had five divisions: film and cinema law, film industry, film abroad, film newsreels, and film dramaturgy. In 1938 the German Film Academy at Babelsberg, the first state-run German training center for film artists, was added as an additional department.


text: The head of the film department also assumed responsibility for the production of certain feature-length documentaries and was in charge of the newsreel ‘'Deutsche Wochenschau'’ ("German Weekly Review"). He supervised the completion of the newsreels and saw to it that they were favorably placed in cinema programs.


text: The main instrument of press control was the Reich press conference. One was held daily at the RMVP beginning 1 July 1933; the press releases issued between 1933 and 1945 number between 80,000 and 100,000. Selected press representatives often received very detailed instructions as to which reports were to be published and in what form. The instructions affected all parts of reporting and sometimes dealt with quite banal events. Bans and explicit language regulations were at first rarely issued in order to avoid complete uniformity in the daily press's content. The RMVP's control of the press was based instead on a principle of indirect pre-censorship and direct post-publication censorship. After reviewing the relevant articles, the ministry followed up with either praise or censure.


text: The participants in the Reich press conference were obligated to destroy the instructions issued to them after they had been implemented. Newspapers that did not have correspondents in Berlin received the instructions in writing as "Confidential Information". The "Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung", the "Berliner Tageblatt" and the "Frankfurter Zeitung" were responsible for the highest number of violations of the RMVP's dictates. The journalist Walter Schwerdtfeger was imprisoned for treason until 1945 because he passed the RMVP's instructions on to the foreign press. Employees of the and the national daily newspaper offices nevertheless resisted the order and hid their notes. Some are still extant in the German Federal Archives.


text: There were additional press conferences on other topics such as culture and business. Press conference for correspondents of the foreign press were held twice daily after March 1938 by the RMVP and once per day by the Foreign Office.


text: On 9 February 1934, in a speech to the Reich Professional Group Film (), Goebbels described film as "one of the most modern and far-reaching means of influencing the masses".


text: The head of the film department, like Goebbels himself, could suggest ideas and themes, commission scripts and with all the means at his disposal support films that for example served military or foreign policy interests. He and Goebbels were also entitled to clean up “mistakes of taste" and "artistic errors" and to stop unpopular film projects altogether. After the revision of the Reich Film Law in 1934, the “violation of National Socialist, moral or artistic sensibilities" was included as a reason for prohibition. Every film project had to be approved before filming began, after the Reich film dramaturge had checked the script.


text: The RMVP's Film Department was also responsible for the "Deutsche Wochenschau" ("German Weekly Review"), which by 1940 had begun to surpass the press in its influence on public awareness. More than 300 film reporters, some of them part of so-called propaganda companies, were deployed on behalf of the High Command of the Wehrmacht in the army, navy and air force as well as the Waffen-SS. Their material was centrally edited and set to music by the RMVP. In addition to reporting on the war, the Wochenschau presented current political and cultural events in a propagandistic manner.


text: The carefully staged film reports were well received by cinema audiences and had a considerable propaganda effect. In 1942 the Wochenschau was shown in almost all German cinemas as a 20-minute compilation of various film reports before the main film and reached 20 million moviegoers per week.


text: By a decree of 30 June 1933, the regional broadcasting corporations were forcibly coordinated and incorporated into the Reich Broadcasting Corporation, which was subordinate to the RMVP. At Goebbels’ instigation, it was renamed Greater German Broadcasting () on 1 January 1939. It broadcast a unified program for the Reich starting in June 1940.


text: Numerous tasks of the Propaganda Ministry overlapped with the jurisdictions of other organizations which were interconnected by a complex network of personnel and that were also partly under Goebbels’ direction. As a professional organization, the Reich Chamber of Culture controlled and supervised creative artists in theater, radio, film and the press. At the Nazi Party level, there were three Reich leaders with media jurisdiction whose areas of responsibility overlapped: the Reich propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels, the Reich leader for the press Max Amann, and the Reich press chief Otto Dietrich. The latter, as vice president of the Reich Press Chamber, was in turn Goebbels’ subordinate in his role as president of the Reich Chamber of Culture. Due to power struggles, personal enmities and mutual dependencies, contradictory directives were sometimes issued by the various offices. For the 1936 Summer Olympics, direct responsibility lay with the Reich Ministry of the Interior, which was responsible for sports. However, since Goebbels had met with the president of the organizing committee Theodor Lewald three days after taking office and had reached far-reaching agreements with him, he was able to involve himself at all levels. In the film "Olympia" by Leni Riefenstahl, the power of the propaganda can still be seen.


text: Heated disputes arose over the responsibility for foreign propaganda, for which the Reich Foreign Ministry claimed general competence. The influence on internal Italian reporting, for example, remained entirely in the hands of the Foreign Office since diplomatic tact was called for in dealing with Germany's Axis partner. Since regulations and prohibitions were not appropriate when directed at a sovereign state, the Foreign Office instead flooded the Italian Propaganda Ministry with finished news pieces from all over the world – news that was more detailed and up-to-date than the Italian correspondents’ material and was therefore frequently taken up by newspapers and radio. Although Hitler's directive of 8 September 1939 clearly established the leading role of the Foreign Office in foreign propaganda, Goebbels and his Ministry continued to interfere in the area until the end of the war.


title: Alternative investment

text: An alternative investment, also known as an alternative asset or alternative investment fund (AIF), is an investment in any asset class excluding stocks, bonds, and cash. The term is a relatively loose one and includes tangible assets such as precious metals, collectibles (art, wine, antiques, cars, coins, musical instruments, or stamps) and some financial assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, distressed securities, hedge funds, exchange funds, carbon credits, venture capital, film production, financial derivatives, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, and tax receivable agreements. Investments in real estate, forestry and shipping are also often termed "alternative" despite the ancient use of such real assets to enhance and preserve wealth. Alternative investments are to be contrasted with traditional investments.


title: Alternative investment

text: As the definition of alternative investments is broad, data and research vary widely across the investment classes. For example, art and wine investments may lack high-quality data. The Goizueta Business School at Emory University has established the Emory Center for Alternative Investments to provide research and a forum for discussion regarding private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital investments.


title: Alternative investment

text: In recent years, the growth of alternative finance has opened up new avenues to investing in alternatives. These include the following:


title: Alternative investment

text: In a 1986 paper, William Baumol used the repeat sale method and compared prices of 500 paintings sold over 410 years before concluding that the average real annual return on art was 0.55%. Another study of high-quality oil paintings sold in Sweden between 1985 and 2016 determined the average return to be 0.6% annually. However, art gallerists are sometimes ambivalent to the idea of treating artwork as an investment. Art is also notoriously difficult to value, and there are quite a few factors to bear in mind for art valuation.


title: Alternative investment

text: Equity crowdfunding platforms allow "the crowd" to review early-stage investment opportunities presented by entrepreneurs and take an equity stake in the business. Typically an online platform acts as a broker between investors and founders. These platforms differ greatly in the types of opportunities they will offer up to investors, how much due diligence is performed, degree of investor protections available, minimum investment size and so on. Equity crowdfunding platforms have seen a significant amount of success in the UK and, with the passing of JOBS Act Title III in early 2016, are now picking up steam in the United States.


title: Alternative investment

text: The notion of “infrastructure as an asset class” has grown steadily in the past seven years. But, so far, this development has been the preserve of institutional investors: pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds, with very limited access to high-net-worth investors (except a few large family offices).


title: Alternative investment

text: Only available in the UK, SEIS funds and EIS funds present a tax-efficient way of investing in early-stage ventures. These work much like venture capital funds, with the added bonus of receiving government tax incentives for investing and loss relief protection should the companies invested in fail. Such funds help to diversify investor exposure by investing in multiple early ventures. Fees are normally charged by the management team for participating in the fund, and these can end up totaling anywhere between 15% and 40% of the fund value over the course of its life.


title: Alternative investment

text: Lease investing platforms provide investors with options to co-invest and have partial ownership in physical assets that earn lease income. Through these platforms, investors can have fractional ownership of a particular asset leased to an organization and earn fixed returns.


title: Alternative investment

text: Private equity consists of large-scale private investments into unlisted companies in return for equity. Private funds are typically formed by combining funds from institutional investors such as high-net-worth individuals, insurance companies, university endowment funds and pension funds. Funds are used alongside borrowed money and the money of the private equity firm itself to invest in businesses they believe to have high growth potential.


title: Alternative investment

text: Venture capital consists of private investments made into young start-up companies in exchange for equity. Venture capital funds are typically formed by drawing capital from seed money, or angel investors. Nowadays, crowdfunding is also used by start-up companies for capital. Accredited investors such as high-net worth individuals, banks, and other companies will also invest in a start-up company if it grows to a large enough scale.


title: Alternative investment

text: The 2003 Capgemini World Wealth Report, based on 2002 data, showed high-net-worth individuals, as defined in the report, to have 10% of their financial assets in alternative investments. For the purposes of the report, alternative investments included "structured products, luxury valuables and collectibles, hedge funds, managed futures, and precious metals". By 2007, this had reduced to 9%. No recommendations were made in either report about the amount of money investors "should" place in alternative investments. As of 2019, the global breakdown of financial assets included a 13% allocation to alternative investments.


title: Alternative investment

text: Alternative investments are sometimes used as a way of reducing overall investment risk through diversification.


title: Alternative investment

text: Liquid alternatives ("alts") are alternative investments that provide daily liquidity. Liquid alternative investments should produce returns uncorrelated to GDP growth, must have protection against systemic market risk and should be too small to create new systemic risks for the market. Hedge funds may be included in this category; however, traditional hedge funds may have liquidity limitations, and the term is usually used for registered mutual funds which use hedge fund strategies such as long-short equity investments.


title: Alternative investment

text: Liquid alternatives became popular in the late 2000s, growing from $124 billion in assets under management 2010 to $310 billion in 2014. However, in 2015 only $85 million was added, with 31 closed funds and a high-profile underperformance by the largest long-short equity fund at the time, Marketfield Fund.


title: Alternative investment

text: In 2014 there were an estimated 298 liquid alternative funds with strategies such as long-short equity funds; event-driven, relative value, tactical trading (including managed futures), and multi-strategy. This number does not include option income funds, tactical shorting and leveraged indexed funds.


title: Alternative investment

text: There has been expressed skepticism over the complexity of liquid alts and the lack of able portfolio managers. One of the world's largest hedge fund managers, AQR Capital, began offering funds in 2009, and grew from $33 billion in assets under management (AUM) in 2010 to $185 billion in AUM in 2017 driven in part by marketing mutual-fund like products with lower fees. As of 2016, AQR Capital was the largest manager of liquid alts.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On May 31, 2009, George Tiller, a physician from Wichita, Kansas, who was nationally known for being one of the few doctors in the United States to perform late terminations of pregnancy (also known as "late-term abortions"), was murdered by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist. Tiller was killed during a Sunday morning service at his church, Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was serving as an usher. Tiller had previously survived an assassination attempt in 1993 when Shelley Shannon shot him in the arms.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Roeder was arrested within three hours of the shooting and charged with first-degree murder and related crimes two days later. In November 2009, Roeder publicly confessed to the killing, telling the Associated Press that he had shot Tiller because "preborn children's lives were in imminent danger." Roeder was found guilty of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault on January 29, 2010, and sentenced on April 1, 2010, to life imprisonment without any chance of parole for 50 years. This sentence was later reduced to allow for the possibility of parole after serving 25 years.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: George Tiller was shot dead on May 31, 2009, during worship services at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher. The church is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Tiller was shot in the head at point blank range; he was wearing body armor, as he had been since 1998, when the FBI told him he was being targeted by anti-abortion militants. After threatening two others who tried to prevent his departure, the gunman fled in a car. Witnesses described the vehicle as a powder-blue 1993 Ford Taurus.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Wichita had no abortion provider until 2013, when Trust Women Foundation opened a clinic in the city.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Scott Philip Roeder (born February 25, 1958 from Merriam, Kansas,) was arrested in Gardner, Kansas, away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting. He was charged on June 2, 2009, with first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Roeder was formally charged before a Sedgwick County district judge on June 2. He said very little during the hearing, where he asked for a public defender and did not enter a plea.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Prosecutors said the killing did not meet Kansas' standards for capital murder, which would have carried a possible death sentence. Prior to the shooting, Roeder was not among the people monitored as potential threats by some abortion rights groups, including the state chapter of the National Organization for Women. It has been reported that neither the FBI nor local police arrested him in the days leading up to the murder despite reports and evidence offered to both that he vandalized a women's clinic the week before and the day before.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: In a telephone call to the press from prison, Roeder admitted that he had shot and killed Tiller, and declared that he felt no remorse.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: In the six months before Roeder's arrest, he said, he had worked for an airport shuttle service, a party-rental shop, a convenience store and a property management enterprise.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: After his arrest, Roeder's ex-wife, Lindsey Roeder, claimed that Roeder had been mentally ill and that at about the age of 20 he was diagnosed with possible schizophrenia, but she offered her own diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Roeder claimed to be the father of a young child and asked for time for visitation, but the mother of that child did not wish such visitation. The 2005 Pennsylvania family court which ruled on Roeder's custody petition regarding a daughter born in 2002 took formal notice that Roeder had been diagnosed with possible schizophrenia and was not on medication.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: The Associated Press quoted Roeder's brother, David, who said that Scott had had mental illness from time to time:


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Roeder had been a member of the anti-government Montana Freemen group. He was stopped in Topeka, Kansas, in April 1996 while displaying a placard reading "Sovereign Citizen" in lieu of a license plate. He had no driver's license, vehicle registration or proof of insurance. Police officers searching his car discovered explosive charges, a fuse cord, a pound of gunpowder and nine-volt batteries in the trunk. He was charged, represented by a public defender, convicted in June of all four counts and sentenced to 24 months probation. In July 1997, his probation was revoked for failure to pay taxes and provide his social security number to his employer as well as other probation violations. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison to be followed by 24 months parole supervision. He filed notice of appeal and was represented by a state-funded appellate attorney who challenged the basis of the original search that found the bomb components. The Kansas Court of Appeals overturned this conviction in March 1998, ruling that the search of Roeder's car had been illegal and remanded the case to the trial court. Roeder was released after serving eight months.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Roeder belonged to a group called the Sovereign Citizen Movement, which believes that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate. The ADL's National Director Abraham Foxman stated that "Roeder's attachment to extreme causes extended beyond anti-abortion extremism. His extremism cross-pollinated between anti-government extremism and anti-abortion activism and led to violence and murder."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: After being charged with murder, Roeder frequently called an Associated Press reporter from the county jail. He complained about being treated like a criminal and about his having been characterized in other media as having been anti-government. Roeder told the reporter, "I want people to stop and think: It is not anti-government, it is anti-corrupt-government."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Lindsey and Scott Roeder were married in 1986, and were together for ten years. Immediately after his 2009 arrest, she stated that the explosives which led to his 1996 arrest had been intended for detonation at an abortion clinic.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On June 2, 2009, Lindsey Roeder gave an interview to Anderson Cooper of CNN about when and why her husband became radicalized:


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: David Leach, publisher of "Prayer & Action News," a magazine that opines that the killing of abortion providers would be justifiable homicide, told reporters that he and Roeder had met once in the late 1990s and that Roeder at that time had authored contributions to Leach's publication. Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions, in the January 1996 issue of his magazine. A Kansas acquaintance of Roeder's, Regina Dinwiddie, told a reporter after Tiller's murder (speaking of Roeder), "I know that he believed in justifiable homicide." Dinwiddie, an anti-abortion militant featured in the 2000 HBO documentary "Soldiers in the Army of God", added that she had observed Roeder in 1996 enter Kansas City Planned Parenthood's abortion clinic and ask to talk to the physician there; after staring at him for nearly a minute, Roeder said, "I've seen you now," before turning and walking away.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Roeder's former roommate of two years, Eddie Ebecher, who had met Roeder through the Freemen movement in the 1990s, told a reporter after Tiller's murder that he and Roeder had considered themselves members of the Army of God. Ebecher said Roeder was obsessed with Tiller and discussed killing him, but that Ebecher warned him not to do so. Ebecher, who went by the "nom de guerre" "Wolfgang Anacon," added that he believed Roeder held "high moral convictions in order to carry out this act. I feel that Scott had a burden for all the children being murdered."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: In 2007, someone who identified himself as Scott Roeder posted on the website of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue that, "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation." This was reported by the ADL's Center on Extremism, noting that Roeder called for "the closing of his death camp." After Tiller's murder, officials from Operation Rescue, which had long opposed Tiller's abortion practices but denounced his shooting, said Roeder was not a contributor or member of the group. The cell phone number for Operation Rescue's senior policy advisor, convicted clinic bomb plotter Cheryl Sullenger, was found on the dashboard of Scott Roeder's car. At first, Sullenger denied any contact with Roeder, saying that her phone number is freely available online. Then, she revised her statements, indicating that Roeder's interest was in court hearings involving Tiller.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Roeder reportedly attended the 2009 trial in which Tiller was acquitted of violating state abortion laws; Roeder called the trial "a sham" and felt the justice system failed in letting Tiller go free. On May 30, one day before Tiller was killed, a worker at a Kansas City clinic told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Roeder had tried gluing the locks of the clinic shut, something Roeder was suspected of doing there before years earlier. The "Kansas City Star" reported that a man of Roeder's description had glued the locks shut at the Central Family Medicine clinic in Kansas City on May 23 and 30.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: President Barack Obama said, "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: A number of other organizations also condemned the murder. Cardinal Justin Rigali of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stated,


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: The American Jewish Congress stated in a press release that Tiller's murder "exemplifies criminal anarchy, not legitimate protest. Dr. Tiller's murder was not just a terrible crime against an individual. It was also a crime against our democracy... Murder is not a debating technique. It is never, and must never be, an accepted way of advancing a point of view." The National Council of Jewish Women also condemned the murder, with President Nancy Ratzan stating that "Dr. Tiller devoted his life to ensuring that women did indeed have choices when confronted with an unintended or untenable pregnancy. His murder – his assassination – is intended to terrorize not only all involved with providing abortions but anyone even remotely associated with abortion rights." The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism also condemned Tiller's murder.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Some commentators argued that the treatment of the murder, by both the White House and the media, was absurdly disproportionate. The day after the murder, two soldiers were attacked at an Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas: one died; the other suffered injuries. Comparing this incident with the Tiller murder, Michelle Malkin wrote,


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: James Taranto of "The Wall Street Journal" found fault with this view, claiming that its proponents failed to acknowledge that the crimes were different in nature and, therefore, in public import. Although equally "abhorrent",


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Taranto also felt that the President's sentiments on the cases could be read quite differently: although his condemnation of the Tiller killing was worded far more strongly, it was only to the soldiers and their kin that condolences and sympathy were proffered, in spite of the fact that Tiller's wife was present at her husband's death. "If anything", Taranto opined, the statement was somewhat "cowardly", and the pains to which he went to appease the anti-abortion movement were duly noted.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Another response to Malkin's charge of "disparate treatment of the two brutal cases" has been that the true disparity was the mass media's downplaying of Roeder's Christianity. In this view, major media outlets "relegate Mr. Roeder's religious motivation to the margins, while all play up Mr. Muhammad's connections to Islam."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly has also been accused of demonizing Tiller. O'Reilly was found to have mentioned Tiller by name on "The O'Reilly Factor", his show on the Fox News Channel, 42 separate times prior to Tiller's death, referring to him specifically as a "baby killer" in 24 instances. O'Reilly said he was not responsible for Tiller's death and defended his campaign against Tiller, saying:


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: In 2009, Congressman Keith Ellison said, "There is no room in America to 'justify' murder in the name of ideological differences. I condemn the act committed against Dr. Tiller as well as those who take comfort from his death."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On June 9, U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter sponsored a House resolution condemning the murder of Tiller, which was unanimously passed.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Several anti-abortion groups claimed to have received death threats in the aftermath of the shooting, some of them threatening "vengeance" against the anti-abortion movement.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Although most anti-abortion activists avoided Tiller's funeral, 17 members from the Westboro Baptist Church picketed the funeral. The church members held signs that read "God sent the shooter", "Abortion is bloody murder", and "Baby Killer in Hell".


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On June 2, 2009, the District Attorney of the 18th Judicial District of the State of Kansas filed charges on behalf of the State of Kansas against Scott Roeder consisting of one count first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. A preliminary hearing was held in Wichita on July 28, 2009.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Judge Warren Wilbert ruled on January 8, 2010, that he would allow Roeder's defense team to argue for a voluntary manslaughter conviction, which in Kansas is defined as killing with "an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force."


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday, January 11, 2010, but was delayed after prosecutors challenged the judge's decision to allow the defense to build a case for a lesser charge. Selection proceedings began in closed session on January 12, 2010. Judge Wilbert had ordered jury selection closed to the public and press citing fears jurors would be less than truthful if questioned in public. The Kansas State Supreme Court overturned his order, although parts of the questions to individual jurors remained private.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: The defense had asked the court to hear the testimony of the former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline and Barry Disney, a current member of that office. Both had previously tried to convict Tiller of providing illegal late-term abortions. The judge, upon previewing the testimony of Kline, disallowed his testimony pointing out such abortions are legal in Kansas and citing the possibility of prejudicing the jury.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Scott Roeder took the stand in his own defense on January 28, 2010. At the outset, he admitted to killing Tiller, defending his act as an attempt to save unborn children and giving his views on abortion. Under questioning by his attorney, he attempted to describe abortion practices in detail but was repeatedly halted by objections based on his lack of medical expertise.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Following Roeder's testimony on the stand, Judge Wilbert ruled that the jury would not have the voluntary manslaughter option.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On January 29, 2010, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all three charges after less than 40 minutes of deliberation. Roeder's attorneys appealed the conviction, arguing that the jury should have been given the voluntary manslaughter option. The Kansas Supreme Court heard the appeal on January 29, 2014, and rejected it, upholding Roeder's conviction, on October 24, 2014.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On April 1, 2010, in Wichita, Kansas, Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert sentenced Roeder to a "Hard 50", meaning life in prison with no possibility of parole for 50 years, for the murder of Tiller, the maximum sentence available in Kansas, plus an additional two years for the two counts of aggravated assault. Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court has altered the rules regarding when mandatory minimum sentences such as the "Hard 50" may be imposed, and on October 24, 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court called for re-sentencing. According to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, the "hard 50" can still be imposed, but the finding that the circumstances of the crime justify the sentence must be made by a jury, rather than by the judge.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: On November 23, 2016, Roeder was re-sentenced to life in prison but is now eligible to apply for parole after serving 25 years rather than after 50 years. As before, besides the sentence for murder, Roeder was also sentenced to two additional years for aggravated assault because he had threatened to shoot two church ushers while fleeing the murder. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said that prosecutors made the decision not to convene a new jury or ask for the reinstatement of the "hard 50", because of Roeder's age, his worsening health, and the likelihood that he will die in prison before the 25 years pass. The prosecutors also consulted Tiller's family, who said that they were comfortable with the reduction.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: In 2013, Roeder was placed in solitary confinement for 45 days for issuing further threats of violence during a telephone interview with anti-abortion activist David Leach. He referenced the work of Julie Burkhart, Founder and CEO of Trust Women Foundation to open an abortion providing facility in Wichita.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: Tiller's murder inspired an episode of the television legal drama "Law & Order" entitled "Dignity". In that episode, an anti-abortion activist murdered a doctor who performed late-term abortions in New York. The defense said it was a justifiable homicide, since the murderer did it in order to prevent the doctor from performing a late-term abortion upon a specific woman, hence, he did it in defense of another human being. In the end, the jury decided that the defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree. The episode's reception was polarized: the anti-abortion blogosphere appreciated the episode's handling of the abortion issue as a whole, while many pro-abortion rights sources condemned the episode.


title: Assassination of George Tiller

text: The aftermath of Tiller's death is also the subject of the 2013 documentary "After Tiller", which follows the lives of four other late-term abortion providers after Tiller's murder.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: The Nishan-e-Imtiaz (; ) is one of the state organized civil decorations of Pakistan. It is awarded for achievements towards world recognition for Pakistan or outstanding service for the country. However, the award is not limited to citizens of Pakistan and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform. Nishan, translating as decoration/order/mark, is a highly restricted and prestigious award, roughly equivalent to Presidential Medal of Freedom (United States) and Order of the British Empire (United Kingdom), and is the first category award of Order of Imtiaz. The other three descending categories are Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Sitara-i-Imtiaz and Tamgha-e-Imtiaz. Usually, it is regarded as the highest award one can achieve in Pakistan since the higher award Nishan-e-Pakistan is awarded only to foreign Heads of States.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: The Nishan-e-Imtiaz was established on 19 March 1957, following the proclamation of Pakistan as a parliamentary republic, by the 1956 Constitution. The award is the top decoration in the country, given to a person who has accomplished duty beyond what is assigned to them. The person has to show eminence and be outstanding in providing excellent service in a significant field of activity.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: The award may be bestowed posthumously and may also be awarded to an individual more than once, though it has not been awarded twice since 1999. Nishan-i-Imtiaz is an honour given by the Government of Pakistan to both the military officers of the Pakistan Armed Forces and civilians who have outstanding contributions that prompted world recognition of Pakistan. For civilians, it is awarded for distinguished merit, honouring their excellence in their respected fields of literature, arts, sports, medicine, or science. The award is usually given to individuals not groups because the purpose of the award is to recognise individual excellence.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: For those in the military it is given after distinguished service and is also the highest award that can be awarded to those at the rank of Generals (Army), Air Chief Marshals (Air Force), and Admirals of the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: Parliament's committee for the Award and Recognition of Services for the State of Pakistan, selects individuals and sends a final report to the Prime minister of Pakistan. On advice of the Prime Minister, the President organizes a ceremony that is telecast and broadcast nationally.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: This award ceremony is held once in a year, nominees are announced on Independence Day and the ceremony takes place on Pakistan Day in the Presidential Palace. Nishan-i-Imtiaz is awarded to the nominees by the President of Pakistan in a public ceremony.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: The badge of the Nishan-e-Imtiaz is in the form of pure golden star with light-white enamel, with well polished green emerald circumference to the inside the golden star. Written in gold words around the green emerald, it reads as نشان امتیاز. A golden Jasminum stands between the point of the star. It is worn around the neck with a yellow, bright yellow and white ribbon (for civilians) or bright green and white ribbon (for military officers) with white edge stripes.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: A special grade of the award has a larger execution of the same medal design worn as a star on the left chest. In addition, it is worn as a sash on the right shoulder, with its rosette (yellow with white (for civilians) or/ green (Military officers only) with white and yellow edge, bearing the disc of the medal at its center, resting on the left hip. At the ceremony, both medals can be worn at the same time.


title: Nishan-e-Imtiaz

text: For military officers, the medal is accompanied by a ribbon bar for wearing on military uniform, a miniature medal pendant for wearing on mess uniform, and a lapel badge for wearing on civilian clothes.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Ernst Eduard vom Rath (3 June 1909 – 9 November 1938) was a member of the German nobility, a Nazi Party member, and German Foreign Office diplomat. He is mainly remembered for his assassination in Paris in 1938 by a Polish Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, which provided a pretext for "Kristallnacht", "The Night of Broken Glass".


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Vom Rath was born in Frankfurt am Main to an aristocratic family, the son of a high-ranking public official, Gustav vom Rath. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn, Munich and Königsberg, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat. In April 1933 he became a member of the SA, the party's paramilitary unit. In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest, he was posted to the German embassy in Paris. Regarding the "Jewish Question", Rath expressed regret that the German Jews had to suffer but argued that the anti-Semitic laws were "necessary" to allow the "Volksgemeinschaft" to flourish.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: On the morning of 7 November 1938, Polish-German Jew Herschel Grynszpan, 17, went to the German embassy in Paris and asked to speak with an embassy official. After he had learned of the deportation of his parents from Germany to the Polish frontier, Grynszpan shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris. He shot the 29-year-old vom Rath five times, mortally wounding him with bullets to the spleen, stomach and pancreas.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Adolf Hitler himself sent his two best doctors, personal physician Karl Brandt and surgeon Georg Magnus, to Paris to try to save vom Rath's life. Hitler promoted vom Rath, who had been a junior officer at the embassy, to the rank of Legal Consul, First Class ("Gesandtschaftsrat I. Klasse") hours before vom Rath's death on 9 November at 17:30 (5:30 p.m.). "Kristallnacht" was launched within hours.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Why Grynszpan, who had fled from Germany to France in 1936, chose vom Rath is not known with certainty, although he was upset over the news that his family was being deported from Germany back to Poland. As far as it can be established, Grynszpan and Rath did not know each other. Most accounts of the shooting state that Grynszpan did not ask for vom Rath by name but only asked to speak to a member of the diplomatic staff. The records were falsified in 1942, and the Germans spread propaganda that Grynszpan's intention was to kill the Nazi ambassador, Count Johannes von Welczeck.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Grynszpan, who was immediately arrested and confessed, insisted his motives were to avenge the Jewish people for the actions already taken by the Germans. He had a postcard on him written to his parents that read, "With God's help. My dear parents, I could not do otherwise, may God forgive me, the heart bleeds when I hear of your tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do. Forgive me."


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Vom Rath was given a state funeral on 17 November in Düsseldorf, with Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop among those in attendance. Germany used the incident to publicize that the Jews had "fired the first shot" in a war on Germany; in his funeral oration, Ribbentrop declared, "We understand the challenge, and we accept it."


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: American journalist Dorothy Thompson reported widely on the case and raised funds for Grynszpan's defence in his French trial, which never took place. Much to the fury of Grynszpan who wanted to use the "Jewish avenger" defense successfully used by Sholem Schwarzbard at his trial in 1927, Grynszpan's French lawyer Vincent de Moro-Giafferi wanted to use as the defense the allegation that Rath was a homosexual who had seduced Grynszpan, and that Grynszpan had killed Rath as a part of a lover's quarrel. Under French law, those convicted of murder for political reasons faced the death penalty, but who committed a "crime passionnel" were usually given a lesser sentence.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: Grynszpan initially escaped from prison when France fell in 1940, but he was captured by the Nazis and taken back to Germany. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to face a trial there, one that Joseph Goebbels planned to turn into Nazi propaganda about an international Jewish conspiracy and to claim it as evidence that Jews had started World War II.


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: However, the allegations emerged that vom Rath was a homosexual, and Goebbels learned that Grynszpan was intending to use this claim in his defence at the trial by implying that vom Rath had seduced him. Grynszpan planned to claim that vom Rath was his pimp and he had been sent to be with various diplomats (although Grynszpan later stated this to be false in an encrypted letter sent from Sachsenhausen).


title: Ernst vom Rath

text: The homosexuality accusations threatened to humiliate the Nazis. Goebbels wrote that "Grynszpan has invented the insolent argument that he had a homosexual relationship with... vom Rath. That is, of course, a shameless lie; however, it is thought out very cleverly and would, if brought out in the course of a public trial, certainly become the main argument of enemy propaganda."