title: NLC India Limited

text: This Project is consisting of two units of 250 MW capacity each. Unit-II attained commercial operation in April 2015 and Unit-I in July 2015. The lignite requirement is met through expansion of Mine-II. The steam generators of this project employ eco-friendly Circulating Fluidised Bed Combustion (CFBC) technology. This technology has been adopted for 250 MW capacity units for the first time in India.


title: NLC India Limited

text: NLC has four open cast lignite mines, namely, Mine I, Mine II, Mine IA and Barsingsar Mine. The lignite mined out is used as fuel to the linked pithead power stations. Also, raw lignite is being sold to small scale industries to use it as fuel in their production activities.


title: NLC India Limited

text: NLC Tamil Nadu Power Limited (NTPL), is a joint venture company of NLC India Ltd (formerly known as NLC Ltd) and TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company), incorporated under the Companies Act. The Equity participation between NLC and TANGEDCO is 89:11. The Government of India had issued sanction for the implementation of coal-based 2 X 500MW thermal power project by NTPL at Tuticorin at an estimated cost of ₹ 4,909.54 crores, Unit 1 and Unit 2 has been declared for commercial operation effective 18 June 2015 and 29 August 2015. RCE – 2 for the project (Completion cost of the project) works out to ₹ 7,293.48 crores (June – 15 base). Power Purchase Agreement has been signed with TANGEDCO, ESCOMs of Karnataka, Puducherry Electricity Department, Kerala State Electricity Board and DISCOMs of Andhra Pradesh. Power evacuation from this project is being carried out by Power Grid Corporation of India. NTPL has signed a fuel supply agreement with Mahanadhi Coalfields for supply of 3.0 MTPA of coal and to meet the shortfall in the requirement, a contract has also been awarded on MSTC for the supply of imported coal.


title: NLC India Limited

text: Neyveli Uttar Pradesh Power Limited (NUPPL) is a joint venture between NLC India and Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited, for setting up of 3 x 660 MW power project at Ghatampur, Uttar Pradesh.


title: NLC India Limited

text: The Neyveli New Thermal Power Project (2x500 MW) is being implemented at a capital cost of ₹ 5,907.11 crores as a replacement for the more than five decades old 600 MW Thermal Power Station I and adopts pulverized fuel firing technology. Consequent to re-tendering of Steam Generator package, the units are rescheduled to be commissioned in October 2017 and April 2018. LOA for Steam Generator package (NTA 1) and Turbo-Generator package (NTA 2) has been issued to BHEL and detailed engineering activities, civil and mechanical erection works and supplies are in progress. LOA has also been issued for the Balance of Plant Package and the engineering & civil works, supplies and erection are in progress.


title: NLC India Limited

text: In order to meet the additional requirement of lignite arising out of implementation of 1000 MW Neyveli New Thermal Power Project at Neyveli, expansion of Mine-IA is being implemented, which would result in raising the Mine IA capacity by 4 MTPA. Ministry of Coal has accorded approval for mining expansion plan of Mine 1A.


title: NLC India Limited

text: NLC is implementing wind power farm of capacity 51 MW at Kazhuneerkulam in Tamil Nadu at an estimated cost of ₹ 347.14 crores. M/s LeitwindShriram Manufacturing Limited is the implementing agency and so far 29 nos. of Wind Turbine Generators (WTG) have been commissioned and the balance 5 Nos. are expected to be commissioned during the year 2016. Power Purchase Agreement has been signed with TANGEDCO.


title: NLC India Limited

text: NLC is setting up 130MW Solar power project at Neyveli, Tamil Nadu. The project is implemented through EPC route and scheduled to be commissioned in 2016–17. BHEL and M/s Jakson bagged the contract and LOA has been issued. Power Purchase Agreement has been signed with TANGEDCO.


title: NLC India Limited

text: Bithnok Thermal Power Project (250MW) with the linked lignite mine of 2.25 MTPA capacity at Bithnok in Rajasthan is being set up at an aggregate estimated cost of ₹ 2,709.93 crores. Power Purchase Agreement has been signed with Rajasthan DISCOMs. Agreement for supply of 25 cusecs of water from IGNP canal has been entered into. Rajasthan Government has issued award for acquisition of 1175.87 hectares of private land in Bithnok and 1863.18 Ha of Government land will be diverted to project by Rajasthan Government after takeover of private land. The project is proposed to be implemented through Engineering, Procurement & Commissioning (EPC) contract mode and is expected to be commissioned during 2020. Ministry of Coal has accorded approval for revised mining plan in June 2015. EOI short listing is completed & techno-commercial evaluation is in progress.


title: NLC India Limited

text: A lignite based Thermal Power Plant with a capacity of 250MW as an extension of the existing power plant at Barsingsar is being set up. The fuel requirement for the above power plant is to be met from linked Hadla Mine of 1.9 MTPA and the existing Barsingsar Mine. The aggregate estimated cost of the project is ₹ 2,635.04 crores. All statutory clearances have been obtained. Government of Rajasthan has allocated mining lease area of 15.66 Sq. km. The project is proposed to be implemented through Engineering, Procurement & Commissioning (EPC) route and is expected to be commissioned during 2020. EOI short listing is completed & techno-commercial evaluation is in progress.


title: NLC India Limited

text: It is proposed to set up a coal based thermal power project with an overall capacity of 3960MW, in two phases, at Sirkazhi in the coastal district of Nagapattinam, in Tamil Nadu Advance Action Proposal at a cost of ₹ 56.52 crores for taking up pre-project activities is in progress. NLCI has identified Thirumullaivasal as the site for locating the power plant. Feasibility report is under preparation. Action has been initiated for floating tender for preparation of CRZ map for the project. Application for land acquisition has been submitted to Government of Tamil Nadu for issue of administrative sanction for acquisition of land for this project. Preparations of EIA/EMP report, DPR for captive coal jetty are in process. Change in configuration to 5 x 800MW using super critical technology is under active consideration.


title: NLC India Limited

text: It is proposed to increase the power generating capacity by adding another 1320MW thermal power plant as the second expansion to the existing TPS-II at Neyveli. A new mine, Mine-III of capacity of 11.5 MTPA is proposed to be set up to exploit the mineable lignite reserves of about 380 MT available in the south of the existing Mine-II to meet the fuel requirement of the proposed thermal power plant. Advanced Action Proposals (AAP) of Rs. 7.05 Cr for Mine-III and Rs. 1.80 Cr for TPS-II Second Expansion for taking up phase-I pre-project activities were approved. Action has been initiated to enter into Power Purchase Agreement with DISCOMs of Southern States. PPA has been signed with TANGEDCO, Kerala SEB, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.


title: NLC India Limited

text: It is proposed to augment Mine-II from the present capacity of 15.0 MTPA to 18.75 MTPA, in order to meet the lignite requirements of TPS-II including Expansion for operating at a higher Plant Load Factor (PLF).


title: NLC India Limited

text: The Government has allotted Talabira-II and III coal blocks in Odisha to power NLC which is looking to ramp up coal-based electricity generation capacity. NLC plans to have 19,000 MW capacity by 2025; projects to generate 6,000 MW from coal and 2,500 MW from lignite are underway.


title: NLC India Limited

text: NLC is expediting to set up a pit head coal based power project in Odisha with the capacity of 3,200 MW. The power plant will entail an estimated investment of ₹ 17,000 crores, and is to be built at Tareikela near Jharsuguda in the western part of Odisha. This power plant would be linked to Talabira II & III coal block in Sambalpur and Jharsuguda district which has a mineable reserve of 553.98 Million Metric Tones. The thus annual capacity of the mine is 20 MTPA. Currently, the mine is being developed by NLC and its mine operator and developer, M/s Talabira Odisha Mining Private Limited, a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Limited.


title: NLC India Limited

text: Centre for Applied Research & Development (CARD) is the in-house R&D Centre of NLC and has been recognised by the Department of Science & Technology since 1975.


title: NLC India Limited

text: The testing and R&D facilities were upgraded under a project (LERI) sponsored by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Vienna during 1995–2000. The main objective was to strengthen CARD to improve its capability to provide analytical, environmental monitoring, R&D, technology and services to industry and the Government. Under this project, services of national and international experts were utilised for lignite utilisation and opencast mines, power stations related problems and acquired sophisticated equipments, training and established combustion and gasification testing facilities.


title: NLC India Limited

text: The major functions of CARD are carrying out Science & Technology Projects (Ministry of Coal), in-house S&T plan projects, Pollution level measurements, Quality control testing & consultancy services, pilot plant studies based on R&D and commercialization of technology developed, coordination of S&T projects taken by other NLC units, institutional services for students, special studies for operation & new schemes etc.


title: NLC India Limited

text: CARD is carrying out various R&D works on lignite utilization, diversification, product development, by-product utilization, solid waste management, wasteland reclamation, corrosion evaluation and prevention etc. For implementing these projects, CARD is associating with outside agencies like, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, CIMFR, TNAU, BHEL, Anna University, Madras University, Annamalai University, NIIST, VIT, NIT-Trichy, CECRI, VCRC-Pudhucherry, IRERC, Kollam, etc. Based on the R&D works, some of the processes have been scaled up to pilot plant scale. The projects include Ministry of Coal funded R&D projects as well as in-house S&T funded projects.


title: NLC India Limited

text: CARD has completed seventeen projects funded by Ministry of Coal and seventeen projects under in-house R&D. There are two on-going Ministry of Coal funded projects and nine on-going projects under in-house R&D and a study on upgradation of brown coal in association with M/s Kobe Steel Ltd., Japan with a funding from NEDO, Japan.


title: NLC India Limited

text: CARD/NLC has conducted extensive studies on mine spoil reclamation, integrated farming system, slope stabilization, ash pond reclamation, utilization of Fly ash, bottom ash and bottom slag etc.


title: NLC India Limited

text: Corrosion studies have been conducted in SME structures of Mines to develop suitable coating material. Corrosion studies are also being conducted in SWC pumps to prevent erosion-corrosion due to adverse conditions in mining environment.


title: NLC India Limited

text: CARD has a well-established analytical facility and is rendering analytical services towards quality control of various products/materials used in mines, power stations and other service units as well as outside agencies. The analytical testing facility includes lignite analytical, microbiology, material testing, environmental section, soil mechanical section, metal testing, paint testing, general analytical, petrography etc.


title: NLC India Limited

text: The sophisticated instruments available include Scanning Electron Microscope with EDS, ED-X-RAY Fluorescence Spectrometer, Elemental Analyzer, TGA/DTA, Heating Microscope, Inductively coupled Plasma spectrometer, Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, High Pressure Liquid Ion Chromatograph, Nitrogen Analyzer, Fluorescence Microscope, Petrography microscope, Metallurgical Microscope, Surface area analyzer, Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System, Power quality analyzer etc. CARD facilities are available for internal use and utilized by other agencies like SAIL, BHEL, MECL, GSI, STCMS etc.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The Subaru Tribeca is a mid-size crossover SUV made from 2005 to 2014. Released in some markets, including Canada, as the Subaru B9 Tribeca, the car derives its name from the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. Built on the Subaru Legacy platform and sold in five- and seven-seat configurations, the Tribeca was intended to be sold alongside a slightly revised version known as the Saab 9-6X. Saab, at the time a subsidiary of General Motors (GM), abandoned the 9-6X program just prior to its release subsequent to GM's 2005 divestiture of its 20 percent stake in FHI.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Inspired by the "B9X" concept car, the Tribeca's original design was criticized at launch and subsequently revised in 2007 for the 2008 model year, and the model name was shortened to simply "Tribeca" in all markets.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Although not sold in Japan, North American markets received the Tribeca in 2005 for the 2006 model year, and it was introduced to Australasia and Europe in late 2006. In addition to these markets, the Tribeca was also sold in South America, South Africa, China, the Middle East, and parts of Southeast Asia.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The vehicle was initially announced as the B9X on November 5, 2004 at the South Florida Auto Show, and was renamed the B9 Tribeca in December after soliciting current and potential customer feedback. Subaru had planned on renaming all of its vehicles with a "B" (standing for "boxer") and a number corresponding to where they were in its lineup. "Tribeca" was added so that "Subaru [could] leverage the vested equity already associated with the progressive style, art, and culture that the name TRIBECA represents," according to Subaru President and CEO Kyoji Takenaka. The Tribeca made its worldwide debut at the North American International Auto Show in January 2005 and was scheduled to go on sale in early summer 2005 for the 2006 model year, with production at the SIA plant in Lafayette, Indiana supplying vehicles for sale in the United States, Canada, Australia and Chile.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The B9 Tribeca featured a triangular grille and a rounded body shape. Subaru also used the grille styling on the Impreza, and the Japanese market Subaru R1 and R2 kei car products. As this styling motif proved controversial, all future Subaru redesigns abandoned this design language as well as the "B" naming scheme.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The grille design and aviation theme was initially conceived and applied to the earlier B11S and B9 Scrambler concept vehicles by Fuore Design, an independent design consulting firm based in Spain. The grille design was reportedly "meant to convey parent-company Fuji Heavy Industries' glorious history in aviation". While the exterior design was largely complete prior to the arrival of Subaru designer Andreas Zapatinas, Zapatinas and his team were responsible for the design of the interior, and the dashboard in particular.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The Tribeca was initially powered by the 3.0-liter "EZ30" boxer engine paired with a five-speed automatic transmission.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The Tribeca was slightly reworked in 2006 for the 2007 model year. The updated model, first shown at the Chicago Auto Show, included a revised grille, struts, stabilizer bars, and spring rates. Inside, XM Satellite Radio and iPod connectors were provided. A backup camera and parking assist system were optional for the navigation system. A "Special Edition" package included a mesh grille, XM radio, and unique wheels.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Saab had plans to retail a version of the Tribeca, to be called the "9-6X," but the plans stopped in 2005 when Saab's parent company GM sold its 20 percent stake in FHI, part of which was acquired by Toyota. The 9-6X would have been built alongside the Tribeca at the SIA factory in the United States. Saab revised their plans to replace the 9-7X after a short two-year lifespan, and instead the Oldsmobile Bravada-based body-on-frame SUV continued production until the 2009 model year.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Saab withheld its version of Tribeca from the public until a prototype 9-6X was added to the Saab museum in Trollhättan in July 2011, with nearly the same interior as the contemporary B9 Tribeca. Many of the exterior styling tweaks (including the front fenders) from the unreleased Saab 9-6X were used for the model year 2008 facelift, which was released relatively quickly after the original model's release.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Subaru released the 2008 models at the New York International Auto Show in April 2007 with a facelift and a larger 3.6-liter "EZ36" flat-six engine rated at . Subaru claimed 10 percent better fuel economy while using regular-grade gasoline; the 2006 and 2007 models require premium. At the same time, Subaru dropped the "B9" identifier, renaming the vehicle the "Subaru Tribeca" in all markets where it was offered. The rear of the vehicle was also mildly redesigned with more rounded taillamps, a restyled hatch, and the rearmost side window reshaped. Interior styling was unchanged, but the second row seats were redesigned for more room and easier access to the third row.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: North American market Tribecas offered two trim levels— Base and Limited, the latter added a moonroof, leather interior, roof rails for enhanced cargo carrying and a premium audio system with six-disc in-dash CD changer. The interior colors were somewhat limited to either light ("Desert Beige") or dark ("Slate Gray"), both colors finished in either cloth (on the base model) or leather (exclusive to the Limited model) trim. For the leather-trimmed models, no interior color choice was available; due to the interior color being determined by the exterior color. In 2007, the beige cloth trim was dropped and the base model was now only available in just two exterior colors. The North American market 2006 to 2007 year model B9 Tribeca also had smaller wing mirrors that were upgraded to the larger European market mirrors starting in model year 2008.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The Limited trim level included an in-dash multifunction screen that displayed audio system information, trip computer functions, and outside temperatures. When equipped with the navigation package, the screen added navigation system information, maintenance intervals, controls for various vehicle settings, calendar, calculator and memo-taking functions. An alternate rear-seat DVD entertainment system and navigation package was available on models with a third-row seat, which added a video input from the rear-seat DVD entertainment system which could only be displayed on the instrument panel center screen if the parking brake was engaged.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The cargo volume was with the second row seats raised and with rear seats lowered. Seating configuration remained at standard second row seats or optional third row seats.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The vehicle was equipped with six airbags; two for the front passengers, two side impact airbags that deployed from the outer edge of the front seats and side curtain airbags that dropped in front of the front and second row side doors.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Two stereo packages were offered, either a 100-watt six-speaker system with a single-disc in-dash CD player with MP3 compatibility, or (on Limited models) a premium stereo with 160-watt, nine speakers with subwoofer and a six-disc in-dash CD changer, also MP3 compatible. Both stereos had steering wheel-mounted audio controls, and in 2007, an auxiliary audio jack was added.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: In North America at the time, the Tribeca was the only vehicle in this class that comes equipped with all-wheel drive as standard equipment. In the United States, Subaru's initial television ad campaign for the Tribeca prominently featured the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind". The Tribeca won the "Ward's" Auto 2006 "Interior of the Year" for premium-priced crossover utility vehicles in voting from automotive industry professionals. Also, it was considered Most Innovative Concept at the 2004 Detroit Auto Show. The Tribeca scored well on Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash tests; it earned a "Top Safety Pick" ranking.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Subaru chose to use an aluminum alloy horizontally-opposed "boxer" engine to minimize powertrain weight and lower the center of gravity so as to reduce body roll. The weight of the engine and automatic transmission are laterally balanced instead of being offset from left to right. The power delivery is also direct from the transmission to the front wheels, and distributed to the rear axle via a "Variable Torque Distribution" system which uses a central planetary differential gear with an electronically-controlled hydraulic clutch, with torque split 45% to the front axle and 55% to the rear axle under normal driving conditions. The rear wheels are driven through a rear differential, which is limited slip on some models. The front differential is integrated into the transmission.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The boxer design also provides near-perfect vibration mitigation because the movement of each piston is exactly countered by the corresponding piston in the opposing cylinder bank, eliminating the need for a counterbalance shaft, and that the movement of the pistons is on a horizontal plane. The only vibration caused by the boxer engine is secondary caused by the cylinders being slightly offset on opposing banks. This vibration, however, is minimal and is largely absorbed by rubber engine mounts. Torque steer is also reduced with this type of power train layout. This is achieved by having the front driveshafts being of equal weight and length, and extend from the transmission to the front wheels at almost perpendicular from the transmission.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The 2006 Tribeca was initially rated at using the EPA city cycle and on the EPA highway cycle. Using the revised EPA driving cycle, the consumption increased to city and highway, with combined consumption at for both the original (3.0-litre engine) and revised (3.6-litre engine) models.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: In 2006, COBB Tuning released several performance upgrades for the B9 Tribeca, including a supercharger which increased output by to , a suspension tuning package, and four-piston front brakes.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Subaru announced in January 2012 that the Subaru Tribeca would stop being sold in the US and Australia, and that its production would end in December 2012. On October 18, 2013, Autoblog, Jalopnik, and Cars.com all confirmed that Subaru informed its dealers that production on the Tribeca would end in January 2014 due to slow sales.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Subaru sold just under 77,000 Tribecas total in the United States, making it one of the worst-selling vehicles in the US in 2011 and 2012. Only 1,247 Tribecas were sold in the first nine months of 2013, and placed seventh among the worst-selling vehicles in the United States for the 2013 model year with only 1,598 units sold, down 23% from 2012.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: The discontinuation came as Subaru was looking at replacing the vehicle with an upscale 7-seat crossover SUV, possibly based on the Subaru Exiga, that would have competed against the Ford Explorer and Nissan Pathfinder. The replacement vehicle had been in the planning stages in an effort to attract new buyers without alienating current ones.


title: Subaru Tribeca

text: Subaru stated in April 2015 that the next-generation Exiga Crossover 7 for the Japanese market would not be offered in North America because of its size, and instead a larger Tribeca successor that could be built in the United States was being studied. At the 2017 LA Auto Show, Subaru revealed the Subaru Ascent, a new mid-size, crossover SUV, set to be the replacement for the Tribeca in North America in Summer 2018.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a studio album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, released in February 1981. It was Byrne's first album without his band Talking Heads. The album integrates sampled vocals and found sounds, African and Middle Eastern rhythms, and electronic music techniques. It was recorded before Eno and Byrne's work on Talking Heads' 1980 album "Remain in Light", but problems clearing samples delayed its release by several months.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: The extensive sampling on "My Life" is considered innovative, though its influence on later sample-based music genres is debated. "Pitchfork" named it the 21st best album of the 1980s, while "Slant Magazine" named it the 83rd.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: Eno and Byrne first worked together on "More Songs About Buildings and Food", the 1978 album by Byrne's band Talking Heads. "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" was primarily recorded during a break between the Talking Heads albums "Fear of Music" (1979) and "Remain in Light" (1980), both produced by Eno. Eno had also recently recorded "" with Jon Hassell, who intended to collaborate with Eno and Byrne on the album, but could not afford to fly to California for the recording sessions. Upon hearing the tapes, Hassell felt "outraged" at what he felt was an appropriation of his music.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: Eno described "My Life" as a "vision of a psychedelic Africa". Rather than conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist. Musicians had previously used similar sampling techniques, but, according to "Guardian" writer Dave Simpson, sampling had never before been used "to such cataclysmic effect". In 2001, Eno cited Holger Czukay's experiments with dictaphones and shortwave radios as earlier examples of sampling. He felt that the "difference was, I suppose, that I decided to make [sampling] the lead vocal". The release was delayed while legal rights were sought for the large number of samples used on the album. A sample of an evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman performing an exorcism intended for "The Jezebel Spirit" was refused by her estate as they objected to the context it was to be used in.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: The album title is derived from Amos Tutuola's 1954 novel "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". According to Byrne's 2006 liner notes, neither he nor Eno had read the novel, but they felt the title "seemed to encapsulate what this record was about".


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: Soon after the album was released, the Islamic Council of Great Britain objected to the use of samples of Qur'anic recital in the track "Qu'ran", considering it blasphemy. Byrne and Eno removed the track from later pressings. In 2006, Byrne said:


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: Two tracks on the album, "Regiment" and "The Carrier", sample the voice of Lebanese singer Dunya Younes (credited in the album's liner notes as Dunya Yunis). Although Byrne and Eno took care to clear the samples with the label that released the album her vocals had been sampled from, as well as paid for the sampling accordingly, Younes was unaware of the use of her voice on the album until 2017. Both songs were taken down from streaming services after a family representative contacted the duo a year later, and the songs were later reinstated when the issue was settled amicably out of court.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: The original package design was created by Peter Saville. The cover image was created by pasting small cutout humanoid shapes onto a monitor and pointing a camera at it to create video feedback, infinitely multiplying the shapes. Byrne said of the process: "Somehow, despite it being very techie, these techniques also seemed analogous to what we were doing on the record. It was funky as well as being techie. Extremely lo-tech, actually, and not what you were supposed to do with a TV set."


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: The official short films accompanying two tracks, "America Is Waiting" and "Mea Culpa", were each made by collage filmmaker Bruce Conner.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, many initial reviews of "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" dismissed the album as "an eggheads-in-the-soundlab experimental exercise." In "Rolling Stone", Jon Pareles rated the album four out of five stars and applauded it as "an undeniably awesome feat of tape editing and rhythmic ingenuity" that generally avoids "exoticism or cuteness" by "complementing the [speech] sources without absorbing them". "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau was less impressed, giving it a "C+" and finding the recordings "as cluttered and undistinguished as the MOR fusion and prog-rock it brings to the mind's ear," while lacking "the songful sweep of "Remain in Light" or the austere weirdness of Jon Hassell".


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: In later years, "My Life" has come to be regarded as a highly influential album, particularly in its use and treatment of sampled source material. AllMusic critic John Bush describes it as a "pioneering work for countless styles connected to electronics, ambience and Third World music". "The Independent"s Andy Gill found the album groundbreaking in its recontextualisation of sampling in a less overtly avant-garde context, with its sampled sounds instead being "marshalled by funk rhythms into repetitive hooks." Writing in "The Observer", Jason Cowley said that its immediate influence was felt "in the work of young artists of ambition, from David Sylvian to Kate Bush", and subsequently on later acts, among them electronic artists such as Massive Attack, Moby, and Thievery Corporation. Chris Dahlen of "Pitchfork" felt that while its sampled vocals had lost some of their revolutionary impact, the album mostly lives up to its critical reputation "as a near-masterpiece, a milestone of sampled music, and a peace summit in the continual West-meets-rest struggle."


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: In a 1985 interview, Kate Bush said that "My Life" had "left a very big mark on popular music". Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright said it "knocked me sideways when I first heard it – full of drum loops, samples and soundscapes. Stuff that we really take for granted now, but which was unheard of in all but the most progressive musical circles at the time... The way the sounds were mixed in was so fresh, it was amazing." Hank Shocklee of hip hop production collective the Bomb Squad cited the album as an influence on the Bomb Squad's sample-driven production work for the group Public Enemy.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" was reissued on 27 March 2006 in the United Kingdom and on 11 April 2006 in the United States, remastered and with seven extra tracks. To mark the reissue, the entire multitracks for two songs – "Help Me Somebody" and "A Secret Life" – were made available to download. Under the Creative Commons license, members of the public are able to download the multitracks and use them for their own remixes.


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: For the 1981 second edition, the track "Qu'ran" was removed at the request of the Islamic Council of Great Britain. In its place "Very, Very Hungry" (length: 3:21), previously released as the B-side of "The Jezebel Spirit" 12" single, was substituted. The first edition of the CD (1986) included both tracks, with "Very, Very Hungry" as a bonus track. Later editions (1990 and later) followed the revised LP track order without "Qu'ran".


title: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)

text: A widely circulated bootleg of outtakes was released in 1992 as Klondyke Records KR 21. Sound quality is nearly equal to the original CD release.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: A series of protests against the Cuban government and the Communist Party of Cuba began on 11 July 2021, triggered by a shortage of food and medicine and the government's response to the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic in Cuba. The protests were the largest anti-government demonstrations since the Maleconazo in 1994. Protesters' motivations included resentment at the Cuban government's authoritarianism and curbs on civil liberties, the government's COVID-19 pandemic lockdown rules, the government's failure to follow through on promised economic and political reforms. Protesters were also angered by the poor state of the Cuban economy, which is attributed by the Cuban government to 500 years of colonialism, and most recently the U.S. embargo; Cuban dissidents have placed the responsibility on the government's economic policies and human rights abuses.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Many international figures called for dialogue, asking that the Cuban authorities respect the protesters' freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstrations. Protesters abroad called for the United States to provide humanitarian aid, One person was confirmed dead during a clash between protesters and police; the dissident organization Cuba Decide estimated five deaths.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The Cuban government responded to the demonstrations with a crackdown, making hundreds of arrests and charging at least 710 Cubans with crimes, including sedition; some demonstrators were given lengthy prison sentences in trials criticized by Amnesty International, activists and families as unfair. As a result of the protests, the Cuban government lifted some import restrictions, and the United States government imposed new sanctions on Cuban officials.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: In 2020, the economic situation in Cuba worsened. The Cuban economy contracted by 10.9% in 2020, and by 2% in the first six months of 2021. The economic crises emerged from a combination of factors, including reduced financial support (subsidized fuel) from Cuba's ally Venezuela, the United States embargo against Cuba and United States sanctions (tightened by the Trump administration in 2019), and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit the industry of tourism in Cuba and led to a decrease in remittances from Cubans abroad. Currency reform, which limited Cuban pesos exchange for United States dollars because the government needed the reform package to finance imports, led to soaring inflation, with rates estimated to be 500%. The economic situation has been exacerbated by sanctions, and some observers have blamed inefficiencies of Cuba's Soviet style-centrally planned economy, and a lack of reforms that other Communist states have taken. Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University in Colombia, stated that reforms in Cuba "do not depend on the embargo, and the embargo should be eliminated unilaterally, independently from reforms in Cuba. Both cause problems." The Cuban government has blamed the crisis on the trade embargo and its tightness as well as the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban history at the University of Florida, the food shortages and high prices were the result of government spending money on building hotels and tourists facilities. According to "The Guardian", they were the result of United States sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Deteriorating economic conditions led to reductions in Cubans' standard of living, shortages of food and other basic products, a shortage in hard currency, and persistent power outages. Promised economic reforms, which according to NBC News' Carmen Sesin were needed and were another cause of discontent alongside the embargo, did not materialize, in part because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic according to the Cuban government. Cuba did not reach out including the global free COVID-19 vaccinesCOVAX programs, to seek vaccines used elsewhere, unlike most of the other countries in the region. Cuba decided not to buy vaccines from overseas and, instead, developed its own: Soberana 02 and Abdala. The "Miami Herald" and "The Wall Street Journal" described the vaccine rollout process as delayed and slow, and said it angered some Cubans and prompted their calls for more vaccines. According to international trackers, at the time the protests had broken out, Cuba had administered 64.3 doses per 100 people, the 6th highest rate in Latin America, and about 15% of the Cuban population was fully vaccinated. In 2021, COVID-19 cases began to surge especially in the Matanzas Province, and the situation was further aggravated by the shortage of medicines and food. Cuba responded by deploying more doctors to the province.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: For many Cuban-Americans, the protests were fuelled by dissatisfaction with lack of civil liberties, such as freedom of expression, in Cuba's tightly-controlled government, which "The Washington Post"s Anthony Faiola described as "an authoritarian government struggling to cope with increasingly severe blackouts, food shortages and a spiking coronavirus outbreak", with protesters "demanding an end to the 62-year dictatorship" according to "The Wall Street Journal". It exerts tight control using its intelligence, police, and security apparatus, which has been described by analysts as a police state that has provided intelligence support to allied governments, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela. The government's curbs and clampdowns on Cubans' civil liberties has prompted resentment. For Sesin, Cuba has received praise for providing its citizens of important primary care and basic needs, but the government also limits their freedom in several ways, such as controlling food, internet, and wages prices, and having a lack of freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and multi-party elections. Measures adopted by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as closed borders and no tourism, have also been praised for having reduced the number of COVID-19 infections but were very strict and did not help the economy in such times of crisis.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Increased use of social media also mobilized participants in the demonstrations; internet access in Cuba began to surge in 2008, and 3G mobile phone service came to the island in 2019, leading to widespread adoption. Earlier in 2010, USAid contactors began working on ZunZuneo, a Cuban Twitter-like social media network, planning to encourage Cubans to organise "smart mobs" that could "renegotiate the power balance between the state and society", but the project was ended in 2012. The use of VPNs spread, as people have used them "to access anti-Castro news websites blocked by the state, but also to make payments via PayPal, to send files through WeTransfer, or to play Pokémon GO – all services otherwise blocked by US sanctions."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Due to the evolving crises, a social media campaign using the hashtags SOSCUBA and SOSMATANZAS was initiated to collect money, medical materials, food, and other supplies to be sent to Cuba. Various international figures such as Don Omar, Ricardo Montaner, Alejandro Sanz, Nicky Jam, J Balvin, Daddy Yankee, Becky G, and Mia Khalifa joined the request. The Cuban government recognized the crisis describing it as "very complex" but rejected a proposed humanitarian corridor and described the campaign as an attempt to misrepresent the situation. The Cuban government set up a bank account to receive aid and said that it was open to receive donations, although the designated account is in a Cuban bank under United States sanctions. According to the "Miami Herald", the Cuban government has historically refused or seized aid coming from Cuban exiles. During the protests, as the government shut down access to several social media websites, over one million protesters began using the tool Psiphon.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 11 July 2021, at least two demonstrations emerged in San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, and Palma Soriano, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, singing the song "Patria y Vida" ("Homeland and Life"), which inspired the protests according to Nancy San Martín and Mimi Whitefield. The song's name is an inversion of the Cuban Revolution motto "Patria o Muerte" ("Homeland or Death"). Videos of protesters singing slogans of "Down with Communism" (also shouted by protesters in the United States), "Freedom", and "We are not afraid" were broadcast on social networks, in addition to protesters demanding vaccines and an end to repression, which was aggravated by the economic crisis and the pandemic. Opposition media outlets such as Radio y Televisión Martí have published social media videos of protests in Malecón, Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Bayamo, Guantánamo, San José de las Lajas, Holguín, and Cárdenas. According to Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, an exiled dissident of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, there were protests in more than fifteen cities and towns in Cuba. Gutiérrez asked the United States government to lead an international intervention to prevent protesters from being "victims of a bloodbath" ("baño de sangre"). The San Isidro Movement called on the protesters to march to Malecón. Writing in "Slate", Baruch College professor Ted Henken suggested that the Cuban demonstrators' use of the Internet to mobilize and publicize the protests showed "that the Internet can still be a force for democracy", and wrote that "in authoritarian contexts like Cuba, where the government has long since monopolized the mass media and transformed journalism into political propaganda, access to unfiltered channels of information and communication can indeed shift the balance of power in small but powerful ways."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuban president and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel said that the United States embargo against Cuba and economic sanctions were responsible for the conditions that led to the unrest. He urged government-supporting citizens to take to the streets in counter-protest to respond to the demonstrations, saying in a special television broadcast: "The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries!" The government called the protests counter-revolutionary. Younger Cubans comprised the majority of protesters, while some members of older generations responded to demonstrations, assisting Cuban authorities.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Following Díaz-Canel's statements, about 300 government supporters arrived at El Capitolio; the "Miami Herald" reported that one Associated Press (AP) cameraman was assaulted by these counter-protesters, while a separate AP photographer was injured by police. AP photographer Ramon Espinosa was detained by authorities as well. San Antonio residents reported that the police repressed protesters and detained certain participants. In videos circulated on social media, people were seen throwing stones at police, while reports of authorities beating demonstrators were heard. By the evening, protests had dissipated.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez reported that after the protests on 11 July some were injured and there were hundreds of detentions. José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Human Rights Watch's Americas division, said: "This is pretty massive. My sense is that this is a combination of social unrest based on a lack of freedoms, and covid, and economic conditions. The lack of access to electricity. The blackouts. ... People are screaming for freedom." Cuban journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa tweeted from Havana: "Cuba is an island ruled by the military for 62 years. Today there is no food, no medicine, and people are dying like flies from Covid. People got tired. This country is losing even fear." The small class of private entrepreneurs in Cuba, such as Nidialys Acosta, said that protests in the middle of a pandemic were not the solution and do not agree with Diaz-Canel inciting the revolutionaries to the streets either. "The Washington Post" quoted Acosta as saying: "I could not believe the magnitude. People are tired. It has been aggravated in recent weeks by blackouts. There are blackouts of six hours in a row in the countryside."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 12 July, more protests were reported in Cuba. Camila Acosta, a journalist from the Spanish newspaper "ABC", was arrested. Internet watchdog NetBlocks reported that social media platforms in Cuba were censored beginning on 12 July 2021, although virtual private networks were able to bypass government blockages and with a police presence in the streets of Havana. Dozens of women gathered in front of police stations to inquire about the whereabouts of their husbands, children and relatives arrested or disappeared during the events of the previous day. Faced with the accusations of missing persons, Díaz-Canel stated: "They have already come up with the fact that in Cuba we repress, we murder. Where are the Cuban murders? Where is the Cuban repression? Where are the disappeared in Cuba?"


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: A meeting of the top leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba including former First Secretary Raúl Castro was held where the issue of the protests was addressed, releasing a statement that "the provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary elements, organized and financed from the United States with destabilizing purposes, were analyzed." Díaz-Canel accused the United States of using a policy of "economic asphyxiation [to] cause social unrest" in Cuba. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla labeled the protesters as vandals. Authorities blocked access to social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Some Cuban exiles and Florida politicians have called for military United States foreign intervention. Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez stated the United States should consider air strikes against Cuba. Some international politicians and abroad Cubans blamed the United States embargo against Cuba. The Cuban government blamed the protests on United States interference and "U.S.-financed 'counter-revolutionaries' exploiting hardship caused by the decades-old U.S. trade embargo that Washington tightened in the midst of the pandemic, pushing the Cuban economy to the brink."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuba's Ministry of Interior stated that it "mourns the death" of a 36-year-old man named as Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, who had taken part in the protests. Diubis' mother committed suicide few days later after his death. The Cuban dissident organization Cuba Decide estimated a toll of five deaths during the protests.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: During a live interview with the Spanish television program "Todo es mentira", Cuban YouTuber and activist Dina Stars was detained by Cuban security officers. She was later released after being accused of promoting protests in Cuba and stated that "they didn't torture me or kidnap me." In Miami, Florida, protesters temporarily blocked the Palmetto Expressway in both directions in order to show support for the Cuban protesters. Some newspapers reported that the protesters were in violation of a Florida anti-riot law; however, none of the protesters have been charged, and Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis said he did not think the law applied.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: In response to protesters tired of hardship and wanting change, former Cuban central bank economist Pavel Vidal stated: "There is a lack of credibility over the promised reforms. ... It's not just the economic crisis. People don't have hope in getting out of the crisis in a definitive way." The United States State Department said that it was willing to provide humanitarian aid, as it did in early 2021 by sending to Cuba chicken food worth $123 million.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuba's Ministry of Interior confirmed one dead and reported several injuries to citizens, including some officers. The web page CiberCuba released a video where allegedly a black beret-wearing group, the Cuban police, break into the house of a demonstrator and fire at him immediately in front of his wife and children, detaining him afterwards. According to the organization of lawyers Cubalex, over 200 people have been detained and many remain in detention as of 15 July. Deputy Minister of the Interior Jesús Manuel Burón Tabit questioned decision-making within the ministry and the Security Council as well as what he called the excessive use of police force to repress the demonstrations; the Cuban government denied that he resigned after his statements.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: In order to deal with the shortages, the Cuban Chamber of Commerce lifted customs restrictions that limited imports of hygiene products, medicine and food, which one of the protesters demanded the government should do. Travelers would be allowed to bring these products into Cuba between 19 July and 31 December 2021 without being subject to customs duties. In addition, directors of state-owned enterprises would be given the authority to determine their employees' salaries, while small- and medium-sized privately-owned businesses would be able to be organized. The government announced that it would be improving on the electricity system, of which problems ETECSA did not provide explanation until Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla attribute them to power outages and difficulties with food or transportation. Cuban official Carlos Fernandez de Cossio told the MSNBC that the government did not interrupt Internet service as a whole and that interruptions were sporadic, or limited to specific services.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Access to internet in Cuba was partially restored, although with an unstable network of intermittent functionality, while access to social media and instant messaging applications remained blocked. According to Ted Henken, who has written on the topic in works such as "Cuba's Digital Revolution" (2021), the decision to shut down internet access in Cuba, even if temporary, could prove "very expensive" for both education in Cuba and the Cuban economy. Henken told "The Guardian": "It's a cost that cannot be borne for more than a few days."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Díaz-Canel stated that there are three kinds of protesters: counter-revolutionaries, criminals, and those with legitimate frustrations. Earlier on 12 July, as reported by Reuters, Díaz-Canel said that "many protesters were sincere but manipulated by U.S.-orchestrated social media campaigns and 'mercenaries' on the ground, and warned that further 'provocations' would not be tolerated, calling on supporters to confront 'provocations.'" In a national address on 14 July, Díaz-Canel called on Cubans not to "act with hate" but also admitted some failures by the government, explaining: "We have to gain experience from the disturbances. We also have to carry out a critical analysis of our problems in order to act and overcome, and avoid their repetition."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuba's Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla claimed to have "irrefutable proof that the majority of those that took part in this (internet) campaign were in the United States and used automated systems to make content go viral, without being penalized by Twitter", which analysts spoken to by Agence France-Presse (AFP) said was "at best an exaggeration" in an article published on 16 July.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: In response to the anti-government protests during the previous days, there was a government-organized demonstration, which was attended by tens of thousands of supporters; the Cuban government reported a turnout of about 100,000 people. Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro were present and held speeches. In his speech during the rally, Díaz-Canel reiterated that most of blame for the unrest rested on the United States and the embargo, which he described as "the blockade, aggression and terror", as well as the impact of and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and a social network campaign allegedly spread by dissident Cuban-American groups. Later in the day, Díaz-Canel acknowledged some responsibilities on the government's part. About the protesters, Díaz-Canel was quoted as saying that "there were four sectors involved in the protests: radical supporters of the United States who waved that country's flag during the protests and demanded military intervention, criminals who took advantage of the situation to loot, people genuinely desperate due to the impact of the crisis on their daily lives and young people who felt disenfranchised."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: In response to some concessions by the government, José Jasan Nieves, director of the online newspaper "El Toque", stated: "The Cuban government has just shown that it could have allowed the entry of food and medicine without quantity limits or tariffs all along but chose not to do so for more than a year of the pandemic." According to Cuban economist Omar Everleny Pérez, the concessions, such as "permits for private entrepreneurs to import goods without going through the state and allowing foreign companies to install retail markets or raising the ceiling for agricultural prices in order to increase supply", were welcome but more was needed. Everleny Pérez stated: "Without affecting the ideology, there is a lot of space in which the state can take action." Observers such William M. LeoGrande stated that there were many difficulties for Cuba, with LeoGrande in particular stating: "I think the government is just trying to signal to people that it understands their desperation and that it's going to try to alleviate some of the misery that they're experiencing. The problem is that the government just doesn't have much in the way of resources that it can devote to doing that."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: A group of Cuban exiles approached Havana by sea in private floats, and launched flare lights and fireworks that were visible from land as a signal of support to the protests, creating expectation among Cuban citizens who watched, recorded, and shared the images through social media. The Cuban government immediately militarized the coast of Havana, including El Malecón.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The crackdown on the protests was followed by a heavy militarization of the streets and massive detentions. According to human rights organizations, an estimated of 700 people were held by the government by the end of July 2021. According to Cuban government officials, "all investigations and detentions stemming from the July 11 protests — which included looting, attacks on police officers and acts of vandalism — have been conducted lawfully." Independent journalist Maykel Gonzales, who witnessed the detention and mistreatment of a group of protesters by civilian-dressed police officers, told to "The New York Times": "[Authorities'] intent was to punish, to do harm."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: During a talk in Cuban television's informative Mesa Redonda, the prime minister Manuel Marrero said: "[Cienfuegos] province is the same as the others with the lack of antigen tests, the lack of medicines, the same objective problems. But there are more complaints of subjective problems than objective. When you add up the lack of medicines, this, that and the other, they're lower than the number of complaints and reports of abuse, neglect, lack of visits. That's incredible." Marrero's comments were criticized by medical personnel on social media. Critics also complained on dealing with outnumbered health centers lacking adequate equipment, medicine, and sanitation; some invited the minister himself to treat the patients personally as physicians do. One of the doctors who complained about Cuba's pandemic response had a picture of "Patria y Vida" on his Facebook profile.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The Cuban press published the enactment of the newly-approved Decree–Law 35, which considers as crime the "divulgation of fake news," "offensive messages," and "diffamation against the country's prestige," among other complementary laws that introduce 17 new felonies, cataloguing "cybersecurity crimes" and their "levels of dangerosity." Díaz-Canel wrote via his official Twitter account: "Our Decree 35 goes against misinformation and the cyber-lie ." The announcement caused outrage among Cuban citizens, many of which argued that it greatly limits their freedom of expression on the Internet and social media even further. Cuban analysts have compared the measure to the totalitarianism of "Nineteen Eighty-Four".


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: More protests were to take place with the help of Yunior Garcia, a Cuban playwright who has been a leader as of recently in these protests. However, Garcia was found to have fled the country to Spain in fear of being imprisoned. Garcia believes he was not stopped because officials wanted him out of the country. There have been mixed reactions to his fleeing and some commentators said they feel betrayed that he had left.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The Cuban government responded to the demonstrations with a crackdown, making hundreds of arrests and charging at least 710 Cubans with crimes, including sedition, vandalism, theft, and public disorder. Amnesty International criticized the government for making arbitrary arrests en masse; noting that the demonstrators were largely peaceful, Amnesty wrote that "the authorities’ default approach has been to criminalize nearly all those who participated in the protests, including some children." Amnesty named six detained Cubans as prisoners of conscience.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Human rights groups condemned the trials of demonstrators as lacking fairness. Cuba does not have freedom of assembly; unauthorized public gatherings are illegal. The government acknowledged for the first time that trials had occurred in January 2022, when the public prosecutor's office said 172 people had already been tried and convicted. Human rights group Justicia 11J said in January 2022 that sentences for demonstrators had ranged from four to 30 years in jail.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: According to the "Miami Herald", various young protesters, including minors, were arrested by Cuban authorities and subjected to summary trials under the accusation of "public disorder." Cuban lawyer Laritza Diversent told the "Miami Herald" that summary trials in Cuba have been "an express procedure for minor crimes" since 1959. She added that "there is almost no documentation of the whole process, making any appeal difficult. It is very arbitrary." The "Miami Herald" also quoted a Cuban visual artist researching the protests as saying: "The fact that they are charging people with public disorder shows they were just peaceful protesters and did not commit any crimes."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: According to a report by the Spanish NGO Prisoners Defenders, more than 178 persons have disappeared during the protests in Cuba, and have not had "contact with their relatives and for whom no document on their location exists." The alleged missing people include dissident and Patriotic Union of Cuba executive secretary José Daniel Ferrer, dissident rap singer Luis Manuel Otero, and dissident and human rights activist Guillermo Fariñas. The report mentioned journalist Camila Acosta, who was covering the protests for the Spanish newspaper "ABC"; however, she was put under house arrest and published a report on the 25 July describing her experiences. The San Isidro Movement stated that Ferrer was moved to a high-security prison, same as Otero. The UN Working Group against Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances has forwarded a request to the Permanent Representative of Cuba to the United Nations to take action regarding the disappearances.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Writing for the Associated Press at the height of the protests on 14 July 2021, Andrea Rodríguez summarized that many protesters "expressed anger over long lines and shortages of food and medicines, as well as repeated electricity outages. Some demanded a faster pace of vaccination against COVID-19. But there were also calls for political change in a country governed by the Communist Party for some six decades." Cuban authorities have stated that the United States government and its alleged enemies were organizing the protests through social networks, such as Twitter, and blamed most of the hardships on United States sanctions, which are believed to have costed at least $5.5 billion in 2020; the estimate is disputed by Cuba's critics, who also blame the government's failure to reform the state-run economy. Cuba's tourism industry, which is an important source of income, has been wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic in Cuba, while foreign aid from allies such as Venezuela declined as a result of the crisis in Venezuela, which was further exacerbated by the pandemic in the country. Cuban officials appeared on state television to analyze the events, and Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel went to talk to citizens.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Al Jazeera mentioned "frustration with rising prices, falling wages, the United States embargo and the failings of the island's long-standing communist government to address its economic challenges." The Associated Press, the BBC, the "Financial Times", "The Guardian", "The New York Times", and Reuters also mentioned the United States embargo against Cuba and the impact that Donald Trump's tighter sanctions had on Cuba, which the BBC described as having hit hard on Cuba. According to "The New York Times", the embargo "cuts off its access to financing and imports", while remittances to Cuba "are believed to be around $2 billion to $3 billion annually, representing its third biggest source of dollars after the services industry and tourism", and the United States "may ease ban on remittances as part of Cuba review" according to Reuters. Sanctions exacerbated the economic crisis, alongside inefficiencies and "Soviet-style one-party rule" (which Reuters attributed to its detractors), the COVID-19 pandemic, and the collapse of tourism, and "choked the economy" in the "Financial Times"s words. According to "The Guardian", sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic led to food shortages and high prices, "sparking one of the biggest such demonstrations in memory", which were also caused by social media and "a younger generation hungry for higher living standards."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: As reported by Reuters on 4 August 2021, the anti-government protests were expected to damage the Cuban struggling economy but could speed up economic reforms, as relations with the United States deteriorated further, when United States president Joseph Biden branded Cuba a "failed state" and sanctioned their military and police forces, ending hopes of a return to the era of detente that begun under former president Barack Obama; according to experts, the protests may quicken the pace of reform, such as "several tweaks to the state-dominated and centralized economy" and "long-awaited regulations giving legal status to existing and future small and medium-sized businesses." Omar Everleny, a Cuban economist and former University of Havana professor, stated: "The negative result of the protests on July 11 is that hopes the Biden administration would lift at least the Trump-era sanctions were dashed. The positive is that it signals we have to do what we have to do in terms of improving the economy without waiting for the United States." Foreign executives expressed their worry that the anti-government protests, which tarnished the image of Cuba as a stable country, would make it even more difficult to work with Cuba, whose "import-dependent economy, already under a nearly six-decade U.S. trade embargo, has been squeezed further by sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration", and "has been almost totally excluded from the international financial system by sanctions imposed by the United States" according to Marc Frank.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: By August 2021, observers saw the protests as being mainly caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and compared them to other protests over responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Caribbean and Latin America. "The Guardian" stated that some protesters "were marching against systems of different stripes: Jair Bolsonaro's far-right administration in Brazil and the communist dictatorship of Cuba. But both were expressions of what many suspect is a new wave of Covid-fuelled social and political turbulence that is starting to sweep the region in response to the ravages of a pandemic that has officially killed nearly 1.4 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuban authorities and critics have advised fellow Cubans to be careful of any news or information which is not verified, as several of them have been intensified by Cubans abroad in support of the anti-government protests. The Cuban government has said that "stories, which spread on social media and messaging apps, were part of a broader U.S.-backed attempt by counter-revolutionaries to destabilize the country", while its critics accused Cuban officials of purposely spreading misinformation "to muddy online waters with misinformation and sow confusion so that no-one trusts future news of unrest." According to Reuters, fake news spread following the protests in Cuba. Examples of such fake news and misinformation include allegations that former Cuban leader Raúl Castro had fled to Cuba's ally Venezuela, protesters reportedly kidnapped a provincial Communist Party of Cuba chief, and Venezuela was sending troops in the country to support the government. According to Cuban authorities, such misinformation was spread by what they termed "counter-revolutionaries"; government critics have contended that the Cuban officials were at fault for it, with Al Jazeera stating that "neither provided evidence for their claims and that Reuters was not able to ascertain the origins of the stories." Mexican-based communications specialist José Raúl Gallego stated: "Often it is state security launching these kind of rumors to afterwards ... say they are foreign-directed campaigns to manipulate Cubans so people stop trusting in information circulating outside government control." According to Al Jazeera, the proliferation of misinformation on social networks, including manufactured videos, has become a common feature of recent protests around the world, such as during the 2019 Bolivian protests, the 2019–2021 Chilean protests, the yellow vests protests in France, and the George Floyd protests in the United States. In addition, some posts were unrelated to the protests, including photos from Cuba's 2018 May Day march and a protest from the Egyptian revolution of 2011.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The Cuban government has blamed "a Twitter campaign orchestrated by the United States", stating that the "SOSCuba" campaign "launched in early July to highlight Cuba's healthcare crisis, the spike in Covid-19 cases, and to plead for foreign humanitarian aid"; however, experts spoken to by the AFP said that this view was an exaggeration. Spanish social media and disinformation expert Julian Macias Tovar told the AFP that "there is something strange in the figures around the hashtag" and "something does not add up", stating that between 5–8 July there were just 5,000 tweets, then it suddenly went up to 100,000 tweets on 9 July, 1.5 million on 10 July, and 2 million on 12 July. According to Macias Tovar, the accounts tweeting the hashtag "came from many different places, and I believe there's an international network of accounts linked ideologically", the same bots that pushed misinformation about president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other leftist governments, such as in Argentina and Spain, and that this was "a case of fake accounts or automated accounts programmed to produce a large number of tweets." He posited that the campaign was in part the work of members from the Atlas Network and have also been involved in misinformation campaigns in the 2019 Bolivian political crisis, the 2021 Ecuadorian general election, and the 2021 Peruvian general election. Doug Madory, an Internet analysis director at Kentik, was more skeptical about it, stating: "Someone sends a tweet in the United States that puts people on the streets in Cuba? I find it hard to believe. I don't know if one could sit and try to create a Twitter campaign that holds such sway over the average Cuban that out of the air they convince them to do things they wouldn't otherwise have done." While acknowledging that there were automated tweets, Madory stated that it is "probably true also of the government themselves", and mentioned that the government can cut off internet access, as it partially did. Venezuelan fact-checking platform "Cazadores de Fake News" () analyzed the "SOSCuba" hashtag trend, saying that although anomalous accounts participated, including bots, bot networks, and cyborgs, and that there was spam generation, the trend was promoted naturally, starting with Cubans in the island that since 11 July were supported by users from several countries across America and Europe. After the report was published, the Cuban government blocked "Cazadores de Fake News" in the country.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Media outlets such as "El País", the "Financial Times", Fox News, "La Nación", "The New York Times", RTVE, La Sexta, Voice of America, and "The Washington Times", published photos of a pro-government protest which they erroneously captioned as a photo as an anti-government one. CNN published an image of a Miami demonstration in a story about demonstrations in Cuba, while only "The Guardian" amended a 12 July 2021 article because the original caption on the image of people on the Máximo Gómez monument described them as anti-government protesters, when they were in fact protesters in support of the government. As reported by "The Express Tribune", journalists Ben Norton and Alan MacLeod were among the first to note the error, and MacLeod suggested they may have simply copied and pasted the Associated Press's original photo caption, replicating the error across multiple news outlets.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cuban political scientist Harold Cardenas stated that "it would be a simplification to say it's a US campaign because there are obviously many other reasons behind the protests. ... I know communists that were detained the other day for taking part in protests. That's not to say that the United States has no responsibility in the unrest [through its sanctions that] intentionally asphyxiate the Cuban people." Cardenas added that social networks have been "used to create parallel realities", specifically mentioning misinformation and fake images which were widely shared in the country during the anti-government protests, and "[t]here has been an effort from abroad to create uncertainty in the country", but criticized the Cuban government for "attributing an exaggerated importance to Twitter", as people were genuinely "fed up and economically exhausted." Macias Tovar agreed with Cardenas' views, stating: "Beyond this being a campaign orchestrated [from abroad] there are people who are mobilizing, people who are demonstrating against the government, people who have petitions [—] what the Cuban government must do is respect the right to protest."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The Cuban government mainly blamed the unrest on the United States and the embargo, whose sanctions "have restricted trade with Cuba since 1962" and "were tightened under former US President Donald Trump" in 2019, as stated by the BBC. Cuban officials stated that online propaganda, coupled with scarcity created by sanctions, amounted to a "destabilisation campaign", and Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, head of United States affairs at the Cuban foreign ministry, stated that the internet is now "being used as part of warfare against Cuba"; the government also acknowledged faults on its part.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 14 July 2021, the BBC reported that on the government news website "Cubadebate" several readers "laid the blame for the crisis on US sanctions, which have contributed to the island's dire economic situation and shortages." One reader said: "The only help that Cuba needs to ask for is for them [the US] to take away the blockade [sanctions]." Another reader was quoted as saying: "I just want to point out that the indiscipline and the lack of responsibility and oversight is not the fault of the blockade or the Yankees. It is ours alone." Some Cuban-Americans expressed their belief that shortages does not explain protests and that they were mainly about freedom. As reported by NBC News, "while conservatives and Republicans are known for a more hard-line stance against Cuba, some progressives have been denouncing the Cuban government's tough stance against activists' calls for greater freedom of expression." In 2013, a Cuban dissident uncovered Operation Truth, a secret state program described by the dissident as "enlisting students to attack those criticizing the government online" according to "The Guardian"; some dissident journalists reportedly received hate messages on social networks.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: The percentage of people trusting the Cuban government also dropped after the protests. A survey conducted by researchgate.net website shows that 56.7% do not trust the leadership of the Communist Party in dealing with the pandemic; and 51.4% do not trust the information officially published by the press about COVID-19.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Cubans residing in Chile marched to the Cuban consulate in Santiago in support of the protests. Protests in Miami urging the United States to provide aid for the protests in Cuba have taken place. Demonstrations also took place at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a protest took place in front of the Cuban embassy in Buenos Aires with protesters holding placards with the phrases "Patria y vida" and others with the slogan "S.O.S. Cuba". In São Paulo, Brazil, political parties and social movements staged a protest in favor of the Cuban government and "in defense of sovereignty" in front of the Consulate General of Cuba. A Change.org petition calling for the United States government to invade Cuba, started by a Belgian citizen, gained nearly 500,000 signatures by 21 July.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 13 July 2021, a protest march was held starting at 6 pm between North Bergen, New Jersey, and West New York. The march would go along Bergenline Avenue, starting at 79th Street in North Bergen and ending at 60th Street in West New York. Northern Hudson County, New Jersey, has a sizable Cuban American population in it. About 300–400 people would attend a protest march in Las Vegas, Nevada, marching along the Las Vegas Strip that night.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Three people were arrested in Tampa, Florida, during a demonstration in support of the protests on the evening of 13 July 2021. Two of those were arrested under Florida's recently passed anti-riot law, the Combating Public Disorder Act. All three were charged with resisting without violence, while two were charged under battery on a law enforcement officer. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper would be injured while trying to assist police officers in an arrest in Tampa during the protest there. In Orlando, an arrest was made during a protest that night. A crowd of about 500 people would gather near the intersection of Semoran Boulevard and Curry Ford Road. The crowd would eventually end spilling into the street blocking southbound traffic and once the crowd went into the street, the Orlando Police Department would ask them to disperse for 15 minutes in English and Spanish. A man was arrested after refusing to move off the street as he was sitting there when he was asked by the police.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: A group of Cuban exiles showed intention to sail into Cuba with supplies in order to support the protests. The United States Navy issued a statement asking Cubans to not cross the Straits of Florida in unauthorized vessels, recalling the deaths of 20 Cubans trying to cross the straits in recent weeks before that date: "The Coast Guard along with our local, state and federal partners are monitoring any activity ..., including unpermitted vessel departures from Florida to Cuba."


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 14 July 2021, a protest march was held in Philadelphia, and was organized by a Facebook group named "Cubanos en Philadelphia", going from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia City Hall that day. On 15 July 2021, a small group of Florida State University students with the Cuban-American Student Association gathered at the Florida State Capitol in solidarity with the demonstrators. On 16 July 2021, protesters scrawled "Cuba Libre" ("Free Cuba") on the street outside the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, D.C. In Miami, "a few dozen" would march for about two miles along Eight Street. Protests in Florida outside of Miami would be seen that day in Fort Myers, Florida, with protesters walking along the Fort Myers Music Walk located in the city's downtown area.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: On 13–16 July 2021, demonstrations of Cuban exiles occurred in Downtown Halifax, Canada. Protesters wore signs in support of those in Cuba, some of them calling for an international military intervention in the island nation. Protesters also chanted the song "Patria y Vida" ("Homeland and Life"). One protester told the local press: "Tell the world that we are fighting for our freedom." At the base of the Freedom Tower in Miami, there would be protests on 17 July 2021. Several thousand were believed to have attended with the protest starting the afternoon and going into the evening; it ended when the Freedom Tower was illuminated in the colors of the Cuban flag. The same Facebook group that organized the 14 July protest march in Philadelphia also organized another protest outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art on July 18 2021, drawing 200 participants.


title: 2021 Cuban protests

text: Following the protests in July, dissidents called for protests on 15 November, which were banned by the Cuban government. The planned protests largely fizzled under pressure from authorities and government supporters, while Cuban Americans in Miami held rallies and led prayers to support the dissidents on the island. The morning of the scheduled day, government supporters gathered outside the houses of dissident leaders, discouraging them from protesting and shouting pro-government slogans. In one case, Yunior Garcia, a playwright and dissident leader, was expected to march alone down a central street in Havana, but government supporters surrounded García's apartment complex in the early afternoon, draped his house in Cuban flags and obscured the window's view from the street, shouting slogans in support of Fidel Castro; García's street access was blocked by a bus.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Ivan Hennadiyovych Bakanov, (; born 2 May 1975) is a Ukrainian politician who, from 2019 to 2022, served as head of the Security Service of Ukraine, which is the primary intelligence and security agency of Ukraine. Bakanov is also a close childhood friend of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Ivan Bakanov was born in Kryvyi Rih. He is a childhood friend of Volodymyr Zelensky. They studied together and later worked over different projects, namely, Kvartal 95 Studio.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Ivan Bakanov graduated from the Kyiv National Economic University (1997) and the Academy of Labor, Social Relations and Tourism (2006), with a specialty in “Court, advocacy and prosecution".


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: He was the head of the Kvartal 95 troupe from January 2013 and of Kvartal 95 Studio since December 2013.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Ivan Bakanov was part of Volodymyr Zelensky's team during 2019 presidential campaign. He was the leader of the Servant of the People party from 2017 to 2019.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: The October 2021 Pandora Papers revealed that before Zelensky's inauguration Bakanov, and his chief aide, Serhiy Shefir, operated a network of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. These companies included some that owned expensive London property.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: On 22 May 2019, President Zelensky appointed Bakanov the First Deputy Chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – the Chief of the Main Directorate on Fight against Corruption and Organized Crime of the Central Department of the Security Service.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov was appointed as a Member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on 28 May 2019.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: On 29 May, the SBU announced that Bakanov would hold the post of the Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine since 3 June. The reason for that was the vacation of the Head of the SBU Vasyl Hrytsak.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov was awarded with the military rank of "lieutenant" in the end of May 2019 in order to have an access to classified information. Bakanov declared he was not going to apply for further ranks.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov was officially appointed as the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine by parliament on 29 August 2019.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov said during his address to the MPs:"Talking about the whole SBU reform, I suppose, we’ll need three years at least. Talking about first efficient steps, I presume, one year will be enough."


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: The Security Service of Ukraine has conducted several notable operations under Bakanov's leadership. In particular, one of the leaders of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group Al-Bara Shishani, who had been hiding in Ukraine, was apprehended.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Dozens of corruption schemes were exposed, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars, especially in the defense sphere. 50 Ukrainian officials were convicted and 150 received notices of suspicion.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: The SBU detained the largest in Ukraine's history contraband batch of tobacco, amounting to UAH 120 million.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: The SBU became more focused on national security, counterintelligence, it systematically conducts special operations in eastern Ukraine, counteracts the activities of Russian hackers.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov himself said that the SBU should become more efficient – not only deal with the consequences, but also neutralize threats in the bud. A new law “On the SBU”, drafted under Bakanov's leadership, is according to its makers to gain such results. In February 2020 it was expected to be passed in spring 2020. According to human rights lawyer Volodymyr Yavorsky the proposed law will “give virtually unlimited and uncontrolled powers to the SBU which are not typical for democratic countries.”


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov was dismissed under Article 47 of the Disciplinary Statute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which states:


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Later, a clarification was issued by the presidential office that Bakanov had actually been "suspended" (and not dismissed) pending an inquiry into the work of the SBU. He was officially removed from his post on 19 July 2022, after a vote in Ukraine's parliament that was put forward by the Ukrainian President.


title: Ivan Bakanov

text: Bakanov is married to Oksana Lazarenko, a former Russian citizen, who has lived and worked in Ukraine since 1998 and has permanent residence permit. In June 2019, her husband stated that she is in line to get Ukrainian citizenship. According to Bakanov's 2019 e-declarations, Oksana is, since 2019, a citizen of Ukraine.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State (, ) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See. It was founded in 1816 as Corps of Gendarmes by Pope Pius VII, renamed the Central Security Office in 1970, the Security Corps in 1991, and was restored to its original name in 2002.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The corps numbered 130 as of 2017. It is led by Inspector General Gianluca Gauzzi Broccoletti, who has served on the Vatican gendarmerie since 1995 and who was made deputy leader in 2018. He was appointed by Pope Francis on 15 October 2019.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: In 1816, after the dissolution of the Napoleonic empire, Pope Pius VII founded the Papal Carabinieri Corps for the service of the Papal States.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: In 1849, under Pope Pius IX, it was renamed, first as the Papal Velites Regiment, and then as the Papal Gendarmerie Corps. It was charged with ensuring public security and passed from dependence on the Ministry of the Army to dependence on the Cardinal Secretary of State.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: It took an active part in the battles that finally led to the complete conquest of the Papal States by the victorious Kingdom of Italy.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: After the capture of Rome in 1870, a small group of members of the Corps continued to serve in the papal residence and the gardens.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: In 1929, the force was expanded to deal with its duties in the newly founded Vatican City State and in the buildings and other areas over which the Holy See had extraterritorial rights.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: When in 1970 Pope Paul VI abolished all the military bodies in Papal service except the Swiss Guards, the Gendarmerie was transformed into a Central Security Office, with the duties of protecting the Pope, defending Vatican City, and providing police and security services within its territory.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Its name was changed in 1991 to Security Corps of Vatican City State and in 2002 to Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The corps is responsible for security, public order, border control, traffic control, criminal investigation, and other general police duties in Vatican City.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Vatican Gendarmerie includes two special units, the Rapid Intervention Group ("Celeri Interventu Coetus;" C.I.C., ; G.I.R.) and an Anti-Sabotage Unit ("Antiocculte pessumdare unitatis," ). Since 2000 an operations and control room, staffed 24 hours a day, coordinates the response of the Vatican security services in the case of an emergency.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Interpol National Central Bureau for Vatican City, tasked with collecting and sharing relevant information on crime and security with Interpol, an organisation of which Vatican City is a full member since 2008, is also part of the Vatican Gendarmerie.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: While the protection of the Pope's person is primarily the Swiss Guard's responsibility, the gendarmes ensure public order at the audiences, meetings and ceremonies at which he is present. In Italian territory and other countries, this is done in liaison with the local police authorities.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: There are a number of different roles within the Gendarmerie. Ranks are shown in the structure below.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: To qualify for enrollment as a gendarme, a person must be an unmarried male, between the ages of 21 to 24, of good health and a practising Catholic. There are also minimum requirements of height and education—standing at least , and being a high school graduate.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Military service is not a requirement, but is advantageous (in Italy there are two national military police forces in addition to civilian police forces).


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Gendarmerie's patron saint is Saint Michael the Archangel. Since 1977, the oratory of San Pellegrino in Vaticano serves as the chapel of the Gendarmerie. The church previously served as the chapel of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Band of the Gendarmerie (Latin: "Cohors Gendarmerie Corps", ) is a uniformed band of musicians that serves at Gendarmerie events and also serves as the official marching band of Vatican City.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: In October 2007, the band is the heir to the Papal Gendarmerie band founded in 1851 and in turn descended from the musical formations of the body of the Pontifical Velites. The band is made up of about 100 musicians and volunteers coming from the Italian military bands such as the Italian Army Music Band and the National Carabinieri Band.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Gendarmerie are responsible for policing the whole of Vatican City State (however the Italian Polizia di Stato and sometimes Italian Carabinieri patrol St. Peter's Square).


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Twenty of the one hundred and thirty-eight Vatican officers have received “special training” for countering “anti-terrorist actions”. Some of these officers accompany the Pope during his international travels.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Vatican has an operational centre “of high technological level,” and thousands of surveillance cameras, as well as in extraterritorial Vatican properties.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Gendarmerie has a Rapid Intervention Group (GIR) trained for various situations to respond to threats more effectively:


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The Commandant of the Gendarmerie Corps is the head of the Directorate of Security and Civil Protection Services, which also oversees the Vatican fire brigade.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Security in Vatican City is also provided by the Pontifical Swiss Guard, a military unit of the Holy See, not Vatican City State. The Swiss Guard are responsible for the security of the Pope, dignitaries and all papal buildings. The Swiss Guard have maintained a centuries-long tradition of carrying swords and spears, unlike the Gendarmerie Corps.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: As Vatican City State is a country within another country and due to the nature of the policing duties of the Gendarmerie, the Vatican Government and Gendarmerie maintain strong links with the Italian police and authorities. Sometimes, they will visibly assist each other in times of crisis, such as the earthquake in 2016, when the Pope reportedly sent some gendarmes to assist in the rescue but also keeping law and order. The gendarmes sent were in their uniform and carrying their firearms, as it was reported that there were looters in and amongst the area. Members of the Vatican Fire Brigade and Pontifical Swiss Guard, were also sent to help.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Likewise, the Italian Arma dei Carabinieri (Italian state military police) and Polizia di Stato (Italian national civil state police) are seen in and around St. Peter's Square (Vatican territory) policing the crowds and carrying out protective duties.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: For the elite-unit Rapid Intervention Group (GIR), members are equipped with the Carbon 15 carbine and Heckler & Koch FABARM FP6 shotguns.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: In 2010, Ducati presented two police motorbikes to the Gendarmeria, designed in the white and yellow colors of the Vatican.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Later, in 2012 the donations of a Fiat Bravo and a Renault Kangoo led to the debut of a blue livery with a white-gold band, initially with the words "Gendarmeria Vaticana" then simply changed to "Gendarmeria".


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: All of these vehicles are registered in Vatican City State with 'SCV' preceding the numbers on all vehicle registration plates (the Pope's vehicles wear 'SCV1').


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: Before 1970, the 180 Pontifical Gendarmes wore elaborate ceremonial uniforms of 19th-century origin. These included bearskin headdresses with red plumes, black coatees with white-fringed epaulettes, white doeskin breeches and knee-high riding boots. In service dress bicornes and blue trousers were substituted.


title: Corps of Gendarmerie of Vatican City

text: The present-day Vatican City gendarmes wear dark blue modern police uniforms. There are different orders of dress for different occasions and seasons (as well as weather). However, rank, insignia and decorations do not differ between uniforms.


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, he was one of the most famous of the "Mexican muralists". He was a member of the Mexican Communist Party, and a Stalinist and supporter of the Soviet Union who led an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in May 1940.


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: By accordance with Spanish naming customs, his surname would normally have been "Alfaro"; however, like Picasso (Pablo Ruiz y Picasso) and Lorca (Federico García Lorca), Siqueiros used his mother's surname. It was long believed that he was born in Camargo in Chihuahua state, but in 2003 it was proven that he had actually been born in the city of Chihuahua, but grew up in Irapuato, Guanajuato, at least from the age of six. The discovery of his birth certificate in 2003 by a Mexican art curator was announced the following year by art critic Raquel Tibol, who was renowned as the leading authority on Mexican Muralism and who had been a close acquaintance of Siqueiros. Siqueiros changed his given name to "David" after his first wife called him by it in allusion to Michelangelo's "David".


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: Many details of Siqueiros's childhood, including birth date, birthplace, first name, and where he grew up, were misstated during his life and long after his death, in some cases by himself. Often he is reported to have been born and raised in 1898 in a town in the state of Chihuahua, and his personal names are reported to be "José David". Thanks to art historian Raquel Tibol, who found a birth certificate for him, we know now that he was born in Mexico City, not Camargo or the state of Chihuahua.


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: Siqueiros was born in Chihuahua in 1896, the second of three children. He was baptized José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros. His father, Cipriano Alfaro, originally from Irapuato, was well-off. His mother was Teresa Siqueiros. Siqueiros had two siblings: a sister, Luz, three years elder, and a brother "Chucho" (Jesús), a year younger. David's mother died when he was four and their father sent the children to live with their paternal grandparents. David's grandfather, nicknamed "Siete Filos" ('seven knife-edges'), had an especially strong role in his upbringing. In 1902, Siqueiros started school in Irapuato, Guanajuato.


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: He credits his first rebellious influence to his sister, who had resisted their father's religious orthodoxy. Around this time, Siqueiros was also exposed to new political ideas, mainly along the lines of anarcho-syndicalism. One such political theorist was Dr. Atl, who published a manifesto in 1906 calling for Mexican artists to develop a national art and look to ancient indigenous cultures for inspiration. In 1911, at the age of fifteen, Siqueiros was involved in a student strike at the Academy of San Carlos of the National Academy of Fine Arts that protested the school's teaching methodology and urged the impeachment of the school's director. Their protests eventually led to the establishment of an "open-air academy" in .


title: David Alfaro Siqueiros

text: At the age of eighteen, Siqueiros and several of his colleagues from the School of Fine Arts joined Venustiano Carranza's Constitutional Army fighting the government of President Victoriano Huerta. When Huerta fell in 1914, Siqueiros became enmeshed in the "post-revolutionary" infighting, as the Constitutional Army battled the diverse political factions of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata for control. His military travels around the country exposed him to Mexican culture and the raw, everyday struggles of the working and rural poor classes. After Carranza's forces had gained control, Siqueiros briefly returned to Mexico City to paint before traveling to Europe in 1919. First in Paris, he absorbed the influence of cubism, intrigued particularly with Paul Cézanne and the use of large blocks of intense color. While there, he also met Diego Rivera, another Mexican painter of "the Big Three" on the brink of a legendary career in muralism, and he traveled to Italy to study the great fresco painters of the Renaissance. In Barcelona he published a magazine, La vida Americana, in which he issued a manifesto to the artists of America to reject the decadent influence of Europe and create a new form of public art with the latest tools and technology.