title: The Australian

text: "The Australian" is published by News Corp Australia, an asset of News Corp, which also owns the sole daily newspapers in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, and Darwin, and the most circulated metropolitan daily newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne. News Corp's Chairman and Founder is Rupert Murdoch.


title: The Australian

text: "The Australian" integrates content from overseas newspapers owned by News Corp Australia's international parent News Corp, including "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Times" of London.


title: The Australian

text: The first edition of "The Australian" was published by Rupert Murdoch on 15 July 1964, becoming the third national newspaper in Australia following shipping newspaper "Daily Commercial News" (1891) and "Australian Financial Review" (1951). Unlike other original Murdoch newspapers, it is not a tabloid publication. At the time, a national paper was considered commercially unfeasible, as newspapers mostly relied on local advertising for their revenue. "The Australian" was printed in Canberra, then plates flown to other cities for copying. From its inception, the paper struggled for financial viability, and ran at a loss for several decades.


title: The Australian

text: A Sunday edition, "The Sunday Australian", was established in 1971. It was discontinued in 1972, though, because press capacity was insufficient to print "The Sunday Telegraph", the "Sunday Mirror", and it.


title: The Australian

text: "The Australian's" first editor was Maxwell Newton, before leaving the newspaper within a year, and was succeeded by Walter Kommer, and then by Adrian Deamer. Under Deamer's editorship, "The Australian" encouraged female journalists, and was the first mainstream daily newspaper to hire an Aboriginal reporter, John Newfong.


title: The Australian

text: During the 1975 election, campaigning against the Whitlam government by its owner led to the newspaper's journalists striking over editorial direction.


title: The Australian

text: Editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell was appointed in 2002 and retired on 11 December 2015; he was replaced by Paul Whittaker, formerly the editor-in-chief of Sydney's "Daily Telegraph".


title: The Australian

text: In October 2011, "The Australian" announced that it was planning to become the first general newspaper in Australia to introduce a paywall, with the introduction of a $2.95/week charge for readers to view premium content on its website, mobile phone, and tablet apps. The paywall was officially launched on 24 October, with a free 3-month trial.


title: The Australian

text: In October 2018, Chris Dore, former editor of "The Daily Telegraph", "The Courier-Mail", and "The Sunday Times" (Western Australia) was announced as taking over as editor-in-chief.


title: The Australian

text: Daily sections include national news ("The Nation"), world news ("Worldwide"), sport news, and business news ("Business"). Contained within each issue is a prominent opinion/editorial (op/ed) section, including regular columnists and occasional contributors. Other regular sections include technology ("Australian IT"), media (edited by Darren Davidson since 2015), features, legal affairs, aviation, defence, horse-racing ("Thoroughbreds"), the arts, health, wealth, and higher education. A traveland indulgence section is included on Saturdays, along with "The Inquirer", an in-depth analysis of major stories of the week, alongside much political commentary. Saturday lift-outs include "Review", focusing on books, arts, film, and television, and "The Weekend Australian Magazine", the only national weekly glossy insert magazine. A glossy magazine, "Wish", is published on the first Friday of the month.


title: The Australian

text: ""The Australian" has long maintained a focus on issues relating to Aboriginal disadvantage." It also devotes attention to the information technology, defence and mining industries, as well as the science, economics, and politics of climate change. It has also published numerous special reports into Australia's energy policy, legal affairs, and research sector.


title: The Australian

text: The tone and nature of "The Australian's" coverage has changed over time, but since the late 20th century under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and with Chris Mitchell as editor-in-chief, it has taken a markedly conservative direction. It was outspoken in supporting the conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard.


title: The Australian

text: Former editor Paul Kelly stated in 1991, ""The Australian" has established itself in the marketplace as a newspaper that supports economic libertarianism". Laurie Clancy asserted in 2004 that the newspaper "is generally conservative in tone and heavily oriented toward business; it has a range of columnists of varying political persuasions, but mostly to the right." Former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell has said that the editorial and op-ed pages of the newspaper are centre-right but "claims it is down the middle in its news coverage".


title: The Australian

text: In 2007, "Crikey" described the newspaper as generally in support of the Liberal Party of Australia and the then-Coalition government, but has pragmatically supported Labor governments in the past as well. In 2007, "The Australian" announced their support for Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party in the Federal election. As of 2021, the last time the paper endorsed the Labor Party at any level, state or federal, was the 2010 Victorian election. Along with other Australian papers owned by News Ltd, "The Australian" has been highly and repeatedly critical of the Labor Party.


title: The Australian

text: "The Australian" presents varying views on climate change, including articles by those who disagree with the alleged scientific consensus, such as Ian Plimer, and those who agree, such as Tim Flannery and Bjørn Lomborg. A 2011 study of the previous seven years of articles claimed that four out of every five articles were opposed to taking action on climate change.


title: The Australian

text: In 2010, ABC's "Media Watch" presenter Paul Barry accused "The Australian" of waging a campaign against the Australian Greens, and the Greens' federal leader Bob Brown wrote that "The Australian" has "stepped out of the fourth estate by seeing itself as a determinant of democracy in Australia". In response, "The Australian" opined that "Greens leader Bob Brown has accused "The Australian" of trying to wreck the alliance between the Greens and Labor. We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box".


title: The Australian

text: "The Australian" has been described by some media commentators and scholars as working to promote a right-wing agenda, and as a result, encouraging political polarisation in Australia. In 2019, former "The Australian" journalist Rick Morton reported in "The Saturday Paper" that an unpublished study by Victoria University, Melbourne, found that "The Australian" "fuels far-right recruitment" through dog whistle coded language. Victoria University issued a statement that "At no point does the research report claim that News Ltd publication fuelled far-right sentiment."


title: The Australian

text: Caroline Overington, a senior journalist writing for "The Australian", reported in 2005 about the Australian Wheat Board funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Iraq and the government of Saddam Hussein before the start of the Iraq War. This story became known as the AWB oil-for-wheat scandal, and resulted in a commission of inquiry into the matter. Overington received a Walkley award for her coverage.


title: The Australian

text: In 2009, "The Australian" ran a large number of articles about the Rudd government's Building the Education Revolution policy, which uncovered purported evidence of overpricing, financial waste, and mismanagement of the building of improvements to schools such as halls, gymnasia, and libraries. On the newspaper's website, a section named "Stimulus Watch", subtitled "How your Billions Are Being Spent", contained a large collection of such articles.


title: The Australian

text: The following year, other media outlets also reported these issues and the policy turned into a political embarrassment for the government, which until then had been able to ignore "The Australian"s reports. Along with the government's insulation stimulus policy, it contributed to criticisms, perceptions of incompetence, and general dissatisfaction with the government's performance.


title: The Australian

text: On 16 July 2010, Julia Gillard was reported to have admitted that the school-building program was flawed and that errors had been made because the program was designed in haste to protect jobs during the global financial crisis.


title: The Australian

text: In 2011, Glenn Milne reported on the allegations against Prime Minister Julia Gillard concerning the AWU affair, including a claim regarding Gillard's living arrangements with Australian Workers' Union official Bruce Wilson. Gillard contacted the chief executive of "The Australian", resulting in the story being removed and an apology and retraction posted in its place.


title: The Australian

text: On 18 August 2012, Hedley Thomas reported that Gillard had left her job as a partner with law firm Slater and Gordon as a direct result of a secret internal investigation in 1995 into corrupt conduct on behalf of her then-boyfriend Ralph Blewett. The story was ignored for a long time by other media outlets until after Gillard held a press conference to respond to the allegations against her. In 2013, the Fair Work Commission commenced initial inquiries into allegations of improper union financial conduct, and the government initiated a judicial inquiry into the AWU affair in December of that year as part of a royal commission into trade unions.


title: The Australian

text: "The Teachers Pet", an investigation into the disappearance of Lynette Dawson, is a podcast written by Hedley Thomas and Slade Gibson that ran in 2018. It was credited with generating new leads that led to the subsequent arrest of Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife, and the setting up of police enquiry Strike Force Southwood to explore claims of sexual assaults and student-teacher relationships at several Sydney high schools brought up on the podcast. The series has had 28 million downloads, was the number-one Australian podcast and reached number one in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. Both Hedley and Gibson received Gold Walkley awards for their work on the series.


title: The Australian

text: Former columnists include Mike Steketee, David Burchell, Michael Stutchbury, Simon Adamek, Emma Jane, George Megalogenis, Glenn Milne, Cordelia Fine, Alan Wood, Michael Costa, P. P. McGuinness, Michael Costello, Frank Devine, Matt Price, Christopher Pearson, Niki Savva. Political cartoonist Bill Leak worked for the paper until his death..


title: The Australian

text: Columnists include Janet Albrechtsen, Troy Bramston, Henry Ergas, Ticky Fullerton, Robert Gottliebsen, Gideon Haigh, Paul Kelly, Chris Kenny, Brendan O'Neill, Nicolas Rothwell, Angela Shanahan, Dennis Shanahan, Greg Sheridan, Judith Sloan, Peter van Onselen, Graham Richardson, Peta Credlin. It also features daily cartoons from Johannes Leak.


title: The Australian

text: Occasional contributors include Gregory Melleuish, Kevin Donnelly, Caroline Overington, Tom Switzer, James Allan, Hal G.P. Colebatch, Luke Slattery, Noel Pearson, Bettina Arndt, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, and Lucian Boz.


title: The Australian

text: Contributors to "The Weekend Australian Magazine" and "Review" in "The Weekend Australian" include Phillip Adams, national art critic Christopher Allen, actor and writer Graeme Blundell, Jeremy Clarkson, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, author Trent Dalton, author Nikki Gemmell, poet Sarah Holland-Batt, demographer Bernard Salt, film critic David Stratton.


title: The Australian

text: In 1971, "The Australian" instituted its own "Australian of the Year award" separate and often different from the Australian of the Year chosen by the government's National Australia Day Council. Starting in 1968, the official award had long had links to the Victorian Australia Day Council, and at the time a public perception arose that it was state-based. As a national newspaper, "The Australian" felt it was better situated to create an award that more truly represented all of Australia. Nominees are suggested by readers, decided upon by an editorial board, and awarded in January of every year.


title: The Australian

text: In the June quarter of 2013, the average print circulation for "The Australian" on weekdays was 116,655, and 254,891 for "The Weekend Australian". Both were down (9.8 and 10.8%, respectively) compared to the June quarter the previous year.


title: The Australian

text: As of March 2015, the weekday edition circulation was 104,165 and the weekend edition was 230,182, falling 6.5% and 3.3%, respectively, compared to the same period in 2014. "The Australian" had 67,561 paid digital subscribers in the same period.


title: The Australian

text: As of August 2015, according to third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb, "The Australian"s website was the 72nd- and 223rd-most visited websites in Australia, respectively. SimilarWeb rates the site as the 23rd-most visited news website in Australia, attracting almost 3 million visitors per month.


title: The Australian

text: In September 2019, Roy Morgan reported figures of 843,000 (Sep 2018 – 810,000) for the print version (total, weekend, and weekday editions); digital versions 1,903, 000 (Sep 2018 – 1,812,000); total cross-platform 2,394,000 (Sep 2018 – 2,503,000); down 4.4%. (By way of comparison, "The Sydney Morning Herald" total figure was 4,209,000; "The Age" (Melbourne) 2,852,000, "Herald Sun" (Melbourne) 2,801,000. The only other nationally distributed daily newspaper, the business-focused "Australian Financial Review", had 1,599,000 cross-platform readers (up 17.7%).)


title: The Australian

text: Several journalists writing for "The Australian" have received Walkley awards for their investigative reporting.


title: Marvels

text: Marvels is a four-issue miniseries comic book written by Kurt Busiek, painted by Alex Ross and edited by Marcus McLaurin. It was published by Marvel Comics in 1994.


title: Marvels

text: Set in the 1939 to 1974 time period, the series examines the Marvel Universe, the collective setting of most of Marvel's superhero series, from the perspective of an Everyman character, news photographer Phil Sheldon. The street-level series portrayed ordinary life in a world full of costumed superhumans, with each issue featuring events well known to readers of Marvel comics, as well as a variety of minute details and a retelling of the most famous events in the Marvel universe.


title: Marvels

text: "Marvels" won multiple awards and established the careers of Busiek and Ross, who would both return to the "everyday life in a superhero universe" theme in the Image Comics (later Homage Comics and currently DC Comics) series, "Astro City".


title: Marvels

text: Warren Ellis's "Ruins" returned to this theme in 1995 with a twisted story of an alternate universe, in which everything that can go wrong goes wrong, but an actual sequel was not developed until 2008 with the release of "Marvels: Eye of the Camera", but only Busiek was involved. A single issue epilogue was released in late 2019 with both Busiek and Ross returning.


title: Marvels

text: "Marvels" was a four-issue miniseries (cover-dated January–April 1994) by writer Kurt Busiek, with painted art by Alex Ross and editing by Marcus McLaurin. It was followed by issue #0 (August 1994) containing a 12-page story of the original 1940s Human Torch by Busiek and Ross, two text articles, and 18 pages of Ross superhero pinups. The series was later collected into a trade-paperback edition.


title: Marvels

text: In 1939, Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch is created by scientist Phineas T. Horton, and the project is considered a success until the android catches on fire when air is projected into its glass chamber, only to go out when the air is gone. Horton shows his creation to the public, which is met with demands from the terrified civilians to destroy it. A dejected Horton begins to bury the android, but the chamber cracks, allowing in air and enabling the Human Torch to escape. The android describes his appearance as the beginning of a "golden age".


title: Marvels

text: Meanwhile, young Phil Sheldon, an aspiring photographer, and young J. Jonah Jameson are shocked by these "Marvels". Sheldon is more confused than Jameson by the spectacle and, worried, seeks the support of his fiancée, Doris Jacquet. More unusual beings begin to appear, notably Namor the Sub-Mariner, and fights erupt between him and the Human Torch. Sheldon, feeling it would be irresponsible for him to raise children in a world where these Marvels run rampant, breaks off his engagement with Doris. It is only when Captain America is unveiled to the world that Sheldon becomes less apprehensive about the Marvels. When World War II begins, Sheldon, Doris, and many others see the Marvels in newsreels joining forces with the Allies, providing public reassurance. But after rekindling his romance with Doris, Sheldon hears that the Human Torch and Namor are fighting again, and the battle this time damages New York City landmarks. During the fight, they come near but do not directly encounter Sheldon; he is knocked out by a small chunk of masonry and permanently blinded in his left eye. Still, he has lost all fears of the Marvels and goes on to marry Doris. Sheldon becomes a war correspondent in Europe, reporting on the Allied Forces and the Marvels as they combat the Nazis.


title: Marvels

text: In the mid-1960s, a married Sheldon is now the father of two girls, Beth and Jennie, and he is preparing to write a book called "Marvels". New York now has two superhero teams, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. Sheldon is excited by recent news of the return of Captain America, a hero from his youth, but the public has begun to fear mutants, especially the mutant team known as The X-Men. As he covers an anti-mutant mob that comes face to face with the X-Men, he hears X-Men leader Cyclops refuse to engage with the mob, saying "they're not worth it" and leaving. Sheldon, unsure of their meaning, finds the words staying with him. On the positive side, some Marvels are treated as celebrities, as seen by Sheldon at the gala opening of Alicia Masters' sculptures. Gossip spreads over the upcoming marriage of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Susan Storm. Sheldon leaves the gala and rushes home after hearing about the anti-mutant mob near there, and he finds his daughters hiding their friend, a mutant girl with a skull-like head. Sheldon sees the importance of hiding this girl, but is worried for his family. Following the wedding, mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels are unleashed during a television debate involving Professor Xavier; they malfunction and begin rampaging throughout the city. A mob forms, attacking and destroying everything in sight, with only Sheldon helping the injured. The newly repaired Sentinels stop the mob, but Sheldon returns home to find the mutant girl gone.


title: Marvels

text: As the 1960s progress, Sheldon is preoccupied with his work, to the detriment of his family. The news is filled with stories of the Avengers being declared a menace; the law going after Tony Stark; sightings of Spider-Man, who the public is unsure is a hero or a danger; and a possible Judgement Day. The Silver Surfer appears to the world and defeats the Fantastic Four, heralding the appearance of Galactus. With the city in panic, Sheldon believes the Earth will end, and he returns home to be with his family in the final moments. Suddenly, news comes that the Fantastic Four have managed to defeat Galactus, saving Earth. In the wake of the team's victory, Sheldon promises he will spend more time with his family. However, he is later disgusted by the way the public has again turned on the heroes, with one newspaper claiming the Galactus threat was a hoax. Sheldon rages at a crowd carrying on an anti-mutant conversation.


title: Marvels

text: In the 1970s, Sheldon releases his book "Marvels", and it is an instant bestseller. He remains dismayed at the public's reaction to the Marvels and is disgusted by Jameson (who is now publisher of the "Daily Bugle") and his screeds against Spider-Man, who has been framed for the death of NYPD Captain George Stacy. Sheldon resolves to investigate the murder and clear Spider-Man's name. While talking to a witness with Luke Cage, he learns that not only do the police believe Spider-Man is innocent, but that they suspect Otto Octavius is the killer. Sheldon interviews Octavius, but he refuses to confess to the murder. Sheldon then interviews Stacy's daughter Gwen and develops a friendship with her. Gwen's admiration and trust in the Marvels gives Sheldon a sudden insight: the purpose of the Marvels is to protect innocents like Gwen. On his way to meet her at Peter Parker's apartment, Sheldon witnesses Gwen's kidnapping by the supervillain Green Goblin. He follows the Goblin to the Brooklyn Bridge and a confrontation with Spider-Man. Watching their battle through a telephoto lens, Sheldon is certain that Spider-Man will defeat the villain and rescue the innocent victim, because that's what Marvels do. Instead, Gwen is knocked off the bridge and killed, and Sheldon's faith in the Marvels is shattered. He plans to retire, but before he can hang up his camera, a final photo is taken of Phil, his wife, and a "nice, normal boy" — Danny Ketch, who, unbeknownst to Sheldon, will grow up to become the demonic hero Ghost Rider.


title: Marvels

text: During Christmas time, Sheldon is with his daughters in Rockefeller Center when the Sentinels begin attacking. The X-Men, who were walking among the crowd, spring into action with Sheldon and his daughters left in awe at both Banshee and Storm. After the Sentinels are defeated, the cops try to monitor the situation when Nova, who admits that he is new, appears to help with any civilian casualties. Beth and Jennie ask their father if what occurred was anything like his old job, to which he answers positively adding: "It's scary. It's exciting. It's thrilling. All of it at once". Having relived the thrill and earning the gumption to write another article, he resists and takes his daughters back home for the night.


title: Marvels

text: In 1995, "Marvels" was compiled into a trade paperback that featured the Human Torch short story (2003 re-release ). For the tenth anniversary in 2004 Marvel released a 400-page hardcover (). In 2008 the original was reprinted as a hardcover () and softcover volume (by Panini Comics, ) and in 2012 as issue 15 of "The Official Marvel Graphic Novel Collection" as number 13.


title: Marvels

text: Marvel later published similar limited series under the "Marvels" header, with other writers and painters, though none of these titles were as successful as the original. They were collected in the paperback "Marvels Companion".


title: Marvels

text: In 1995, Marvel released the darker "Ruins" by writer Warren Ellis and painters Cliff and Terese Nielsen, which was a two-issue parallel world series in which Sheldon explored a Marvel Universe that had gone terribly wrong.


title: Marvels

text: The 1997 miniseries "Code of Honor", written by Chuck Dixon and painted by Tristan Shane and Brad Parker, had a similar approach to "Marvels", following a police officer whose job is affected by the superheroes and villains. Busiek declared he and Ross debated on doing a "Marvels" sequel, only for Ross to bail out not wanting to draw Wolverine and the Punisher, and once the writer himself left the project, Busiek refitted the intended plot on "The Dark Age" arc of his title "Astro City".


title: Marvels

text: In 2008, the long-planned direct sequel, the six-part limited series "Marvels: Eye of the Camera", began. It returns to Sheldon's perspective, after his retirement. While Ross did not return for this sequel, Busiek returned as writer, with Roger Stern as co-writer for issues #3–6, with artwork by Jay Anacleto.


title: Marvels

text: Ross also did the artwork for the DC Comics mini-series "Kingdom Come". Phil Sheldon makes a cameo at the superhero press conference held at the headquarters of the United Nations in "Kingdom Come" #2. He also makes an appearance in the last page of the epilogue in the "Kingdom Come" trade paperback. He is seated next to the Spectre in his civilian guise of Jim Corrigan and Norman McCay.


title: Marvels

text: Phil Sheldon is mentioned in Peter's first scene in the "Daily Bugle" in "". J. Jonah Jameson requests Sheldon to cover the photo op of Harry Osborn in the hospital. He is reminded that "Phil is covering the Tony Stark trial".


title: Marvels

text: Phil Sheldon makes a cameo appearance on "The Super Hero Squad Show" episode "This Al Dente Earth!", voiced by Charlie Adler. He takes a picture of Iron Man, Silver Surfer, and Galactus after Silver Surfer convinces Galactus not to devour the Earth.


title: Marvels

text: In fall 2019, a radio drama podcast adaptation of "Marvels" was released with the first season focusing on the aftermath of the Fantastic Four's battle with Galactus in New York City, New York, starring Clifford "Method Man" Smith as Ben Urich, AnnaSophia Robb as Marcia Hardesty, Ethan Peck as Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic, Seth Barrish as Phil Sheldon, Louisa Krause as Susan Storm / Invisible Woman, Jake Hart as Ben Grimm / The Thing, Ehad Berisha as Johnny Storm / Human Torch, Teo Rapp-Olsson as Peter Parker / Spider-Man, and Gabriela Ortega as Charlie Martinez. The adaptation was written by Lauren Shippen, directed by Paul Bae, with music by Evan Cunningham, and sound design by Mischa Stanton. Stanton was nominated for two 2020 Audio Verse Awards for their work on the podcast.


title: Marvels

text: Phil Sheldon appears in "Avengers" (2020), voiced by Walt Gray. This version is depicted as a journalist rather than a photographer.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Jérémy Mathieu (born 29 October 1983) is a French professional footballer who plays as a centre-back or a left-back for Régional 2 club Luynes Sports.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Mathieu made 172 Ligue 1 appearances across seven seasons, split equally between Sochaux and Toulouse. He played five seasons in La Liga with Valencia before joining Barcelona in 2014, where he won the treble in his first season.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: An international for France from 2011 to 2016, Mathieu was selected in the squad to represent France at UEFA Euro 2016 but dropped out with injury.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Born in Luxeuil-les-Bains, Haute-Saône, Mathieu started his career with the biggest club in the Franche-Comté region, Sochaux. When he was 16 AC Milan was interested in signing him, but Sochaux's coach Jean Fernandez advised him to stay because mentally he still wasn't strong enough.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: He made his Ligue 1 debut, during the 2002–03 season, in a league match against Sedan coming on as a late-match substitute. Despite being 18, he was inserted into the starting 11, and quickly provided an impact scoring his first professional goal in just his third league match in a 2–2 draw against Stade Rennais. He made 23 league appearances that season scoring four goals, which included an equalising goal against Paris Saint-Germain, and two game-winning goals against Nantes and Le Havre. His play, along with the team itself, was a main factor in the club finishing 5th and qualifying for the UEFA Cup.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Over the next two seasons, Mathieu continued his great form appearing in 63 league matches and scoring six league goals. He also performed well in Europe appearing in 14 matches and scoring two goals. He also helped Sochaux win the Coupe de la Ligue in 2004. His performances at Sochaux led to strong interest from Italian club Juventus, English clubs Newcastle United, Everton, and Southampton.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: After announcing his desire to move to another club and only having one year left on his current deal, Sochaux agreed to listen to offers for the player. Eventually, he agreed to join Toulouse after agreeing to a four-year deal. He made his league debut for Toulouse against his former club Sochaux playing the full 90 minutes in a 1–0 victory. He continued this positive play appearing in 36 league matches and scoring two goals against AC Ajaccio and Troyes. The following season, he made 32 league appearances and score another two goals helping Toulouse qualify for the UEFA Champions League. However, both Mathieu and Toulouse had a horrible 2007–08 season with Mathieu fracturing a bone in his foot, which forced him to miss half the season, and Toulouse finishing just one spot short of relegation. This led to Mathieu pondering his future with the Midi-Pyrénées-based side.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Despite heavy interest from Italian side Roma and other Italian outfits, Toulouse refused to budge with efforts to get Mathieu to remain at the club. Mathieu responded by turning down a contract extension, which effectively allowed him to leave on a free transfer at the end of the 2008–09 season. Eventually it was agreed by Toulouse and Mathieu that the player would see out the season at Toulouse, after Toulouse turned down a €4.5 million move to Bordeaux.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Despite the ongoing transfer situation, Mathieu remained civil in regards to playing. He made 31 league appearances during the 2008–09 season, contributing to Toulouse's successful league campaign, as well as the team's success in the Coupe de France, where they were eliminated in the semi-finals by the eventual champions Guingamp.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 10 June 2009, Mathieu signed for La Liga club Valencia on a three-year contract. The transfer came into effect on 1 July 2009. He made his debut for the club in a 2–0 win over Sevilla FC.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 1 May 2014, Mathieu looked to have scored the goal to send Valencia through to the 2014 UEFA Europa League Final when he scored off of Ricardo Costa's lay-off, making the score 3−0 against Sevilla (3−2 on aggregate) but Stéphane Mbia scored a 94th-minute header to win the semi-final on away goals for the Andalusian side. Three days later, Mathieu headed in a corner to send Valencia into a 1−0 lead at the Santiago Bernabéu but Real Madrid battled back to secure a 2−2 draw as Valencia conceded another late stoppage time goal.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 23 July 2014, Mathieu signed a contract with La Liga club Barcelona for the next four seasons, with an optional season. The cost of the transfer was €20 million and the buyout clause was set at €50 million. Mathieu claims that he would rather have stayed as Valencia's captain rather than risking "polishing the bench" in Barcelona but that he decided to move after Valencia's chairman Amadeo Salvo rejected his demand for an intermediate figure between his pay in Valencia and Barcelona's proposal.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 15 January 2015, he scored his first goal for Barcelona in a 4–0 Copa del Rey away win against Elche (9–0 on aggregate) from a free kick. Mathieu scored his first La Liga goal for the club against rivals Real Madrid in a 2–1 "El Clásico" win at Camp Nou on 22 March 2015. In the team's next fixture, Mathieu scored the only goal in a 1–0 win at Celta Vigo, to keep his team four points clear at the top of the league. These two winning goals were important for the attainment of Barcelona's 23rd League title, as the team won it by a 2-point advantage over Real Madrid.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: In the 2015 UEFA Super Cup against Sevilla FC in Tbilisi, he conceded a penalty with a foul on Vitolo, which was converted by Kevin Gameiro as the opponents came from 1–4 down to take the game into extra time; Barcelona nonetheless triumphed 5–4.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 7 July 2017, Portuguese club Sporting CP announced the signing of Mathieu on a free transfer for two seasons. He scored his first goal for the club on his sixth appearance, in a 2–0 home win against Tondela. Upon his return to the Camp Nou, Mathieu netted an own goal for Sporting in a 2–0 loss in their final game of the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League groupstage.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: On 24 June 2020, Mathieu suffered an injury to his left knee during training, which ultimately put an end to his career.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Mathieu has received caps with all of France's youth teams beginning with the under-15s. Though, he was a regular with the under-21 squad leading up to the 2006 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, he was not selected to participate in the event. He received his first call-up to the senior squad for their friendly against Slovakia. However, he played with the second team, France B, who were playing Slovakia B.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: He made his national team debut in a friendly against the United States at the Stade de France on 11 November 2011, playing the full 90 minutes.


title: Jérémy Mathieu

text: Mathieu was named in France's squad for their hosting of UEFA Euro 2016, but dropped out with injury on 28 May, to be replaced by Samuel Umtiti.


title: The Noun Project

text: The Noun Project is a website that aggregates and catalogs symbols that are created and uploaded by graphic designers around the world. Based in Los Angeles, the project functions both as a resource for people in search of typographic symbols and a design history of the genre.


title: The Noun Project

text: The Noun Project was co-founded by Sofya Polyakov, Edward Boatman, and Scott Thomas and is headed by Polyakov. Boatman recalled his frustration while working at an architectural firm at the lack of a central repository for common icons, "things such as airplanes, bicycles and people." That idea morphed into a broader platform for visual communication. The site was launched on Kickstarter in December 2010, which raised more than $14,000 in donations, with symbols from the National Park Service and other sources whose content was in the public domain. Site design was by the firm Simple.Honest.Work, with mentoring from the Designer Fund.


title: The Noun Project

text: The Noun Project has generated interest and new symbols by hosting a series of "Iconathons", the first of which was held in the summer of 2011. The sessions typically run five hours and include graphic designers, content experts, and interested volunteers, all working in small groups that focus on a specific issue, such as democracy, transportation or nutrition. The idea for the event came from Chacha Sikes, who was at the time a fellow at Code for America.


title: The Noun Project

text: Contributors come from around the world. A 2012 "New York Times" story profiled one of them: Luis Prado, a graphic designer at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, who uploaded 83 icons he had created for his agency, including a pruning saw, a logging truck and a candidate symbol for global warming, which he created when he could not find one online.


title: The Noun Project

text: The site has four stylistic guidelines: include only the essential characteristics of the idea conveyed, maintain a consistent design style, favor an industrial look over a hand-drawn one, and avoid conveying personal opinions, feelings and beliefs. Contributors select a public domain mark or a Creative Commons attribution license, which enables others to use the symbol with attribution, free of charge. The attribution requirement can be waived upon payment of a nominal fee, which is split between the artist and The Noun Project. The founders envisioned the site as being primarily useful for designers and architects, but the range of users includes people with autism and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, who sometimes favor a visual language, as well as business professionals incorporating the symbols into presentations.


title: Harappan language

text: The Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age () Harappan civilization (Indus Valley civilization, or IVC). The language being unattested in any readable contemporary source, hypotheses regarding its nature are reduced to purported loanwords and substratum influence, notably the substratum in Vedic Sanskrit and a few terms recorded in Sumerian cuneiform (such as "Meluhha"), in conjunction with analyses of the undeciphered Indus script.


title: Harappan language

text: There are a handful of possible loanwords from the language of the Indus Valley civilization. Sumerian "Meluhha" may be derived from a native term for the Indus Valley civilization, also reflected in Sanskrit "mleccha" meaning "non-Vedic" or "native", and Witzel (2000) further suggests that Sumerian "šimmar" (a type of tree) may be cognate to Rigvedic "śimbala" and "śalmali" (also names of trees).


title: Harappan language

text: the hypothesis has gained some plausibility and is endorsed by Kamil Zvelebil, Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan.


title: Harappan language

text: The Indus script only indicates that it was used to write one language (if any). But it is quite possible that multiple languages were spoken in the IVC, similar to how Sumerian and Akkadian co-existed in Mesopotamia for centuries. Jane R. McIntosh suggests one such possibility: Para-Munda was originally the main language of the civilization, especially in the Punjab region. Later, the proto-Dravidian immigrants introduced their language to the area in the 5th millennium BC. The Dravidian language was spoken by the new settlers in the southern plains, while Para-Munda remained the main language of those in Punjab.


title: Harappan language

text: Michael Witzel suggested as an alternative, that an underlying, prefixing language similar to Austroasiatic, notably Khasi; he called it "para-Munda" (i.e. a language related to the Munda subgroup or other Austroasiatic languages, but not strictly descended from the last common predecessor of the contemporary Munda family). Witzel argued that the Rigveda showed signs of this hypothetical Harappan influence in the earliest historic level, and Dravidian only in later levels, suggesting that speakers of Austroasiatic were the original inhabitants of Punjab and that the Indo-Aryans encountered Dravidian speakers only in later times.


title: Harappan language

text: As of 2019, Witzel prefers to leave the question of the original Indian language(s) open until better reconstructions for Dravidian and Munda substrate components in Indo-Aryan languages have been done.


title: Laggies

text: Laggies (released in the United Kingdom as Say When) is a 2014 American romantic comedy film directed by Lynn Shelton and written by Andrea Seigel. It stars Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Kaitlyn Dever, Jeff Garlin, Ellie Kemper, Mark Webber, and Daniel Zovatto. It premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2014. The films received positive reviews from critics.


title: Laggies

text: Experiencing a quarter-life crisis, Megan panics when she gets a proposal, then escapes for a week, hiding out with her new 16-year-old friend Annika, who lives with her single dad.


title: Laggies

text: Megan (Keira Knightley) is an aimless twenty-eight-year-old living in Seattle, Washington who is in a committed relationship with her high school sweetheart and still close with her high school friends. At her friend Allison's (Ellie Kemper) wedding, her boyfriend unexpectedly proposes. She also sees her father cheating on her mother.


title: Laggies

text: Shocked and confused, she flees and runs into teenager Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her friends outside a grocery store. After buying them alcohol, Megan plays with their skateboard. When they ask her to join them on their night out, she does.


title: Laggies

text: Returning home, Megan's boyfriend suggests that rather than having a big wedding, they elope. She agrees, but delays the wedding by pretending she has a week-long career advice seminar to attend.


title: Laggies

text: Megan receives a call from Annika asking her to pretend to be her absentee mother at a guidance counsellor's meeting. She goes to the meeting, then asks Annika if, in return, she can stay at her house.


title: Laggies

text: Annika is unsuccessful at sneaking Megan into her house, where her single-parent lawyer father Craig (Sam Rockwell) questions Megan about her relationship with his daughter. She lies that there is a one-week gap between her lease expiring and her move into a new apartment. Craig reluctantly allows her to stay and gradually begins to trust her. Annika asks Megan to drive her to her estranged mother's house to see her for the first time in years.


title: Laggies

text: Craig asks Megan out for a drink. When they return—having had more drinks than they planned—they end up having sex. The next morning, he offers to let her stay longer than the week she asked for, but she declines.


title: Laggies

text: Annika, seeing them kiss, tentatively tells Megan that she approves of the relationship. She then finds the engagement ring in her purse. Megan tells her she's engaged, and that Craig has no idea. On the way home from shopping for Annika's prom dress, they begin arguing, Patrick is distracted and crashes the car. He tells Megan he has been drinking the wine she bought for them because he is upset that his parents are sending him to boarding school.


title: Laggies

text: Feeling guilty, Megan tells the police she was the one driving the car. She still has alcohol on her breath from that morning, and is arrested. When Craig arrives to free her, Megan reveals her engagement and that she bought alcohol for his daughter.


title: Laggies

text: Megan's father picks her up at the police station. He says he has confessed his cheating to her mother and they are trying to work things out.


title: Laggies

text: Misty shows up at Megan's door with her white dress she bought and a few other things she'd left in Patrick's car, and tries to convince Megan to go to the prom. When Anthony comes to the door, they tell him Misty is a girl she was mentoring at the seminar. Once he goes back upstairs, Misty gives Megan a prom ticket, urging her to go for Annika's benefit.


title: Laggies

text: Megan continues to lie to her fiancé about where she was for the past week. At the airport, he takes a selfie of them, sending it to their high school friends. Megan, realizing their relationship is stifling her, breaks up with him, unfriends her high school friends, and goes to Annika's prom, where she tells Annika to be honest and pursue Junior, a friend with whom she is in love.


title: Laggies

text: Megan goes to Craig's house and leaves him a box of wine with a note that says, 'Can we try again? Check [Yes] or [No]". She knocks, then hides at the bottom of the steps. Craig answers the door, reads the note, sees Megan at the bottom of the steps, and closes the door. Not to be deterred, she knocks again, then picks up the house key hidden outside—but before she can unlock the door, Craig opens it again and lets her in.


title: Laggies

text: The writer and director have explained that choosing the title "Laggies" was a complex decision. Shelton said she had never heard the term before making the film, but that screenwriter Andrea Seigel insisted it was a common term for adult slackers. As the film was made, Shelton realized that no one but Seigel had heard of laggies before, but the title stuck. The film was released in the UK as "Say When".


title: Laggies

text: Before Knightley joined the film, Anne Hathaway was attached to lead with Moretz, but left the project due to scheduling conflicts with "Interstellar". It was announced in December 2013 that "Laggies" would be in the 2014 Sundance Film Festival lineup. Principal photography began the first week of June 2013 in Seattle. Filming took place at 23 locations over a 26-day shoot, and wrapped in early July.


title: Laggies

text: "Laggies" received mostly positive reviews. At Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 65% based on 117 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The website's critical consensus states: ""Laggies" may not do as much with its ideas as it could, but it's buoyed by a winsome performance from Keira Knightley, as well as Lynn Shelton's empathetic direction." On Metacritic, the film has a rating of 63 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The 2010–11 season was Manchester City Football Club's 109th season of competitive football, 82nd season in the top flight of English football and 14th season in the Premier League. As City finished fifth in previous season's league campaign, they qualified for the recently rebranded UEFA Europa League. The Blues were managed by Roberto Mancini, who had been appointed midway through the previous season.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The season is best remembered by City's title run in the FA Cup, which saw them defeat rivals Manchester United in the semi-finals before overcoming Stoke City in the final, both by a 1–0 scoreline. The triumph ended Manchester City's 35-year wait for the silverware and signified the start of a new are under the CFG ownership. The season was also notable due to the club finishing third in the Premier League and qualifying for next season's UEFA Champions League, something that had not happened since 1967–68, when the Blues qualified for the old European Cup via their league title victory.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: In the summer transfer window, the club, one of the richest in the world since its 2008 takeover by the Abu Dhabi United Group, spent £126 million on players, including Jérôme Boateng from Hamburger SV, Yaya Touré from Barcelona, David Silva from Valencia, Aleksandar Kolarov from Lazio, Mario Balotelli from Inter Milan and James Milner from Aston Villa. Popular City midfielder Stephen Ireland was transferred to Aston Villa as part of a player exchange agreement in the Milner deal.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The team began this season's campaign well, collecting four out of a possible six points against "Top 7" opponents Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool, which was three points more than City managed in the comparable fixtures last season. The Blues then stuttered for a couple of games against Sunderland (away) and Blackburn Rovers (at home), bagging only a single home point out of the six despite completely dominating both games, with (according to manager Roberto Mancini) at least 25 missed chances in the Blackburn game alone. City got itself back on a winning track again with a 0–2 away win against Wigan Athletic, which was the first time the team had ever won at the DW Stadium, breaking what some supporters had labelled a jinx for this fixture.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: After the previous season's run to the semi-finals of the League Cup, the team's performance in that competition this season was very disappointing, with the Blues falling at the first hurdle, losing 2–1 to West Bromwich Albion in the third round tie played at The Hawthorns.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City began its Europa League campaign in much better style, clocking up three back-to-back wins in its first three games. In the first leg 1–0 away victory over Timișoara in the play-off round, Mario Balotelli scored the single winning goal on his debut, but also incurred a serious knee injury that required surgery, putting him out of action for the next three months. Balotelli was not the only one of City's new crop of high-profile summer signings to fall victim to an early serious injury, with Jérôme Boateng missing out on the first six weeks of the new season due to a knee injury he picked up playing for Germany in an international friendly match against Denmark back in mid-August, while Aleksandar Kolarov seriously damaged his ankle ligaments in the opening match of the season against Tottenham Hotspur. The loss of Boateng and Kolarov – taken together with recent injuries to Micah Richards (hamstring), Wayne Bridge (thigh injury coming right on the back of a prolonged absence due to a cracked foot bone) and Joleon Lescott (groin) – meant that Roberto Mancini found himself without five of his eight main back four defenders going into City's home match against Chelsea, causing him to claim that he had a defensive injury crisis for that game, which nevertheless City still managed to win convincingly due to a stellar defensive performance from the back four (Dedryck Boyata, Kolo Touré, Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta) that Mancini was able to field.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Umbro made a new set of kits for Manchester City whilst they were in their second year of contract with the club.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 2 February 2011, there was a minor "kit "faux pas"" when the Manchester City team wore its regular home team kit for its away fixture against Birmingham City at St Andrew's, a fixture that usually required the visiting Manchester City team to use one of its alternative strips (in this case, its third team kit since the midnight blue away kit also represented a colour clash), as the primary home team colours of both sides combined a blue shirt with white shorts. No explanation had ever come as to why this mix-up occurred (because as per which kits were to be worn in which fixtures was determined before the season even began), or why the referee, Kevin Friend, allowed two teams so similarly clad onto the pitch rather than insist that one of them first change its kit, although Birmingham's 2010–11 home shirt features large elements of white. Since then, there have been multiple instances of City wearing sky blue against teams in royal blue.


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: "Awarded monthly to the manager that was chosen by a panel assembled by the Premier League's sponsor."


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: "Awarded to the player that receives the most votes in a poll conducted each month on the official website of Manchester City."


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: "Awarded annually since 2003 by the Italian daily sports newspaper to the young player (on an initial short list of 40 'under 21' players) that receives the most votes from a panel consisting of 30 sports journalists selected from across the whole of Europe."


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: "Awarded annually at a meeting of the Institute of Groundsmanship organisation as a result of voting by professional football grounds management teams from the whole of the UK."


title: 2010–11 Manchester City F.C. season

text: This 'loan watch' report provided the latest progress update on most of the players listed above that were out on loan at other clubs.


title: Citroën C6

text: The Citroën C6 is an executive car produced by the French car maker Citroën since 2005. The Citroën C6 was inspired by the Citroën C6 Lignage concept car with a fastback saloon like styling.


title: Citroën C6

text: Inspired by the Citroën C6 Lignage prototype, which was first shown at the Geneva Motor Show in the spring of 1999, but differs from the concept car's styling in minor details (like not having rear suicide doors for easy access). The C6 was intended as a replacement for the XM, and Citroën was intent on launching it before the end of 2000.


title: Citroën C6

text: At the time, it was hoped that the C6 would go into production by the end of 2000, as the replacement for the ageing XM, which was first produced in May 1989.


title: Citroën C6

text: In July 2007, "Car" ran a 2.7 litre V6 on its long term fleet and rated it for its "waftability" and comfortable interior but felt it was a car that the driver needed time to adjust to. In isolation, the car’s acceleration was regarded as "effortless" but not up to the standards set by similarly priced and equipped vehicles, such as the BMW 535d.


title: Citroën C6

text: The Citroën C6 Lignage formed the basis of the Citroën C6, which was launched in November 2005, five years later than Citroën had originally planned. The XM ceased production in June 2000, and the first C6 rolled off the production line almost six years later.


title: Citroën C6

text: In October 2006 a 2.2 L "HDi" producing with FAP, four cylinders and a dual turbo was introduced. Land Rover used the DW12 engine in the Freelander 2 and Range Rover Evoque, where it generates .


title: Citroën C6

text: The C6 has a fastback saloon profile which is due in part to the concave rear window, similar to the Citroën CX and some models of Dodge in the 60s. However, the C6 is a conventional saloon with a classic trunk, and not a hatchback like its XM predecessor.


title: Citroën C6

text: The C6 was aimed as a stylish alternative to executive cars, like the BMW 5 Series and the Audi A6, and it has been described as "spaceship that rides on air", "charmingly idiosyncratic" and "refreshingly different".


title: Citroën C6

text: Citroën hoped that the C6's selling points would be its innovative technology, which includes a head-up display, a lane departure warning system, xenon directional headlamps (also available on the Citroën C4 and Citroën C5), Hydractive 3+ suspension with electronically controlled springing and damping, and a rear spoiler which automatically adjusts to speed and braking.


title: Citroën C6

text: The C6 was the first car to obtain four stars in the pedestrian test rating of EuroNCAP, due to the inventive design, where the bonnet pops up by 65 mm using a pyrotechnic mechanism if a person/animal is hit, thus increasing the gap between the deformable bonnet, and the non deformable engine components below.


title: Citroën C6

text: On an episode of "Top Gear", Jeremy Clarkson tested the C6's Hydractive suspension by mounting a camera on it and driving it on the infield of Towcester Racecourse while filming a horse race. Despite the bumps and potholes on the infield, the C6 managed to provide a comfortable ride and stable video coverage of the race while moving at .


title: Citroën C6

text: At the same time, a BMW 5 Series (with M Sport package) performed the same test, but its suspension could not keep the camera upright.


title: Citroën C6

text: The C6 immediately became a prominent vehicle among the fleet of executive cars of the Élysée Palace. Former Presidents of France, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, have chosen the Citroën C6 as their official car. Chirac, in particular, used a pre series car before the model was introduced.<ref name="drive.com.au/"></ref>


title: Citroën C6

text: At launch, sales expectations across the model's lifespan were given as 20,000 per year. In July 2008, the C6 car configurator on Citroën UK's website no longer offered black as a colour choice for the popular Exclusive trim levels.


title: Citroën C6

text: By October 2008, the manual transmission and the intermediate Lignage specification were no longer offered. Polar white was added to the colour options (replacing Deep Red). The standard navigation system, named until then "NaviDrive", was renamed "Concert Pack". The 3.0 V6 petrol engine was discontinued in February 2009 – only the 2.2 and 2.7 HDi options with six speed automatic gearboxes were offered, in base C6 or C6 Exclusive trim. In June 2009, the 2.7 HDi engine was replaced by the new 3.0 V6 HDi.


title: Citroën C6

text: As of 2010, only the 3.0 HDi (240) Exclusive trim was offered in some markets, such as the United Kingdom. Options were limited to Sunroof, Lounge Pack (TGV rear seats) and "WiFi on Board", a 3G connectivity solution for the car that is little more than a MiFi box and is unrelated to the onboard telephony of the car.


title: Citroën C6

text: In May 2012, Citroën ceased production of cars in RHD, and rumours suggested the C6 was to be replaced by the Citroën DS9, based on the Citroën Numero 9 concept car, which would eventually go into production in 2020. The replacement of the Citroën C6 is the DS 9. Citroën ceased production of the C6 in December 2012, after 23,384 units had been built.


title: Citroën C6

text: A new car named C6 is sold in China since the end of 2016, and is based on the PSA EMP2 platform. Prices in China starts from ¥189,900 yuan to ¥279,900 yuan. Citroën reused the C6 name. It is based on the platform of the 1st generation Peugeot 508.


title: Castries

text: Castries is the capital and largest city of Saint Lucia, an island country in the Caribbean. The urban area has a population of approximately 20,000, while the eponymous district has a population of 70,000, as at May 2013. The city stretches over an area of .


title: Castries

text: Castries is on a flood plain and is built on reclaimed land. It houses the seat of government and the head offices of many foreign and local businesses. The city is laid out in a grid pattern. Its sheltered harbour receives cargo vessels, ferries and cruise ships. It houses duty-free shopping facilities such as Point Seraphine and La Place Carenage. The city is well served by a bus system and taxi service. St Lucia's main post office is in Castries.


title: Castries

text: Castries is the birthplace of Arthur Lewis, winner of the 1979 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, as well as of Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature.


title: Castries

text: In 1650, the fort "aupres du Petit Cul-de-Sac et de la riviere du Carénage" was founded by a group of 40 Frenchmen led by de Rousselan, when St. Lucia was purchased by Capt. du Parquet and Monsieur Houel from the French West India Company. The capital was moved to the south side of the harbor in 1769 by Gov. Baron de Micoud. In 1785, the village of Carénage was renamed Castries, after Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix, marquis de Castries, the French Minister of the Navy and Colonies.


title: Castries

text: In 1835, the British built the western wharf in 1642 to facilitate the coal trade and the first steamship arrived in 1841, the RMS "Solway".


title: Castries

text: During World War II on 9 March 1942, the German U-161 sailed into Castries harbor at night and sank two allied ships, including the Canadian ocean liner RMS "Lady Nelson", which was subsequently refloated in the harbour and taken to Canada to be converted to a hospital ship.


title: Castries

text: Castries has been rebuilt many times, following major fires on 15 October 1805, 6 April 1813, and most notably on 19 June 1948.


title: Castries

text: One of the major tourist areas in St. Lucia, Castries is a port of call for cruise ships. They dock at Pointe Seraphine, to the north of the harbour.


title: Castries

text: Landmarks include the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Derek Walcott Square (renamed from Columbus Square to honor the island's Nobel Prize-winning poet, Derek Walcott), the City Library, the Government House, and Fort Charlotte, at the top of Morne Fortune (an hill). Beaches include Vigie Beach, Malabar Beach, Choc Beach, and La Toc Beach.


title: Castries

text: Castries is served by George F. L. Charles Airport, also known as Vigie Airport. Passengers on longer flights arrive at Hewanorra International Airport, near Vieux-Fort. The drive between Hewanorra and Castries can take an hour and a half. Helicopter service between the airports shortens travel time.


title: Castries

text: Ferries run between Castries and Fort-de-France, Martinique. Yachts may dock in Castries, though they must clear customs first. When the customs area is full, yachts must anchor at the quarantine dock to wait; those that do not are fined. Afterward, yachts may anchor in front of Castries Town or Vigie Creek.


title: Castries

text: Standard bus routes run from Castries to all outlying districts on the island. The buses are private (not subsidized by government) bearing green license plates with numbers that start with an "M"—for example, "M456". The buses line up in designated areas to pick up passengers. The bus fronts displays a route band, a luminescent sign that indicates which part of the island the bus is traveling to.


title: Castries

text: As well as being the capital city of Saint Lucia, Castries hosts the secretariat of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. Castries also hosts the headquarters of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.


title: Castries

text: In October 2008, the American Chamber of Commerce, Saint Lucia, was established. The establishment of a chamber was encouraged by the U.S. Embassy, Barbados. Hugh W. Jones was elected and installed as its first president.


title: Castries

text: A number of international embassies and consulates keep their headquarters in Castries. They include the Organization of American States, British High Commission, Mexican Embassy, embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (in Rodney Bay), Dominican Republic Consulate, French Embassy, Italian Vice Consulate, Jamaican Consulate, Netherlands Consulate, Norwegian Consulate, Brazilian Embassy and Venezuelan Embassy.


title: European Union law

text: European Union law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples". The EU has political institutions, social and economic policies, which transcend nation states for the purpose of cooperation and human development. According to its Court of Justice the EU represents "a new legal order of international law".<ref name="Case 26/62">"Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen" (1963) Case 26/62</ref>


title: European Union law

text: The EU's legal foundations are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, currently unanimously agreed on by the governments of 27 member states. New members may join if they agree to follow the rules of the union, and existing states may leave according to their "own constitutional requirements". Citizens are entitled to participate through the Parliament, and their respective state governments through the Council in shaping the legislation the EU makes. The Commission has the right to propose new laws (the right of initiative), the Council of the European Union represents the elected member-state governments, the Parliament is elected by European citizens, and the Court of Justice is meant to uphold the rule of law and human rights. As the Court of Justice has said, the EU is "not merely an economic union" but is intended to "ensure social progress and seek the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples".


title: European Union law

text: Democratic ideals of integration for international and European nations are as old as the modern nation state. Ancient concepts of European unity were generally undemocratic, and founded on domination, like the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or the Catholic Church controlled by the Pope in Rome. In the Renaissance, medieval trade flourished in organisations like the Hanseatic League, stretching from English towns like Boston and London, to Frankfurt, Stockholm and Riga. These traders developed the "lex mercatoria", spreading basic norms of good faith and fair dealing through their business. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation triggered a hundred years of crisis and instability. Martin Luther nailed a list of demands to the church door of Wittenberg, King Henry VIII declared a unilateral split from Rome with the Act of Supremacy 1534, and conflicts flared across the Holy Roman Empire until the Peace of Augsburg 1555 guaranteed each principality the right to its chosen religion ("cuius regio, eius religio"). This unstable settlement unravelled in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), killing around a quarter of the population in central Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648, which brought peace according to a system of international law inspired by Hugo Grotius, is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the nation-state system. Even then, the English Civil War broke out and only ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by Parliament inviting William and Mary from Hannover to the throne, and passing the Bill of Rights 1689. In 1693 William Penn, a Quaker from London who founded Pennsylvania in North America, argued that to prevent ongoing wars in Europe a "European dyet, or parliament" was needed.


title: European Union law

text: The French diplomat, Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, who worked negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of Spanish Succession proposed, through "Perpetual Union", "an everlasting peace in Europe", a project taken up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant after him. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutions of 1848 in the 19th century, Victor Hugo at the International Peace Congress in 1849 envisioned a day when there would be a "United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas". World War I devastated Europe's society and economy, and the Versailles Treaty failed to establish a workable international system in the League of Nations, any European integration, and imposed punishing terms of reparation payments for the losing countries. After another economic collapse and the rise of fascism led to a Second World War, European civil society was determined to create a lasting union to guarantee world peace through economic, social and political integration.


title: European Union law

text: To "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice.. brought untold sorrow to mankind", the United Nations Charter was passed in 1945, and the Bretton Woods Conference set up a new system of integrated World Banking, finance and trade. Also, the Council of Europe, formed by the Treaty of London 1949, adopted a European Convention on Human Rights, overseen by a new transnational court in Strasbourg in 1950. Already in 1946, Winston Churchill, who had been defeated as UK Prime Minister in 1945, had called for a "United States of Europe", though this did not mean the UK would sever its ties to the Commonwealth. In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed that, beginning with integration of French and German coal and steel production, there should be "an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of Europe", where "solidarity in production" would make war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". The Treaty of Paris 1951 created the first European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed by France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy, with Jean Monnet as its president. Its theory was simply that war would be impossibly costly if ownership and production of every country's economy was mixed together. It established an Assembly (now the European Parliament) to represent the people, a Council of Ministers for the member states, a Commission as the executive, and a Court of Justice to interpret the law. In the East, the Soviet Union had installed dictatorial governments, controlling East Germany, and the rest of Eastern Europe. Although Stalin died in 1953 and the new general secretary Nikita Khrushchev had denounced him in 1956, Soviet tanks crushed a democratic Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and repressed every other attempt of its people to win democracy and human rights.


title: European Union law

text: In the West, the decision was made through Treaty of Rome 1957 to launch the first European Economic Community. It shared the Assembly and Court with the Coal and Steel Community, but set up parallel bodies for the Council and Commission. Based on the Spaak Report of 1956, it sought to break down all barriers to trade in a common market for goods, services, labour and capital, and prevent distortion of competition and regulate areas of common interest like agriculture, energy and transport. A separate treaty was signed for a European Atomic Energy Community to manage nuclear production. In 1961 the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway applied for membership only to be vetoed in 1963 by France's Charles de Gaulle. Spain also applied and was rejected as it was still led by the Franco dictatorship. The same year, the Court of Justice proclaimed that the Community constituted a "new legal order of international law". The Merger Treaty finally placed the ECSC and Euratom within the EEC. Shortly after, de Gaulle boycotted the commission, which he believed was pressing supranationalism too far. The Luxembourg compromise in 1966 agreed that France (or other countries) could veto issues of "very important national interest", particularly relating to the Common Agricultural Policy, instead of making decisions by "qualified majority". But after the May 1968 events in France and de Gaulle's resignation, the way was free for the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark to join in 1973. Norway had rejected joining in a 1972 referendum, while the UK confirmed its membership in a 1975 referendum.


title: European Union law

text: Aside from the European Economic Community itself, the European continent underwent a profound transition towards democracy. The dictators of Greece and Portugal were deposed in 1974, and Spain's dictator died in 1975, enabling their accession in 1981 and 1986. In 1979, the European Parliament had its first direct elections, reflecting a growing consensus that the EEC should be less a union of member states, and more a union of peoples. The Single European Act 1986 increased the number of treaty issues in which qualified majority voting (rather than consensus) would be used to legislate, as a way to accelerate trade integration. The Schengen Agreement of 1985 (not initially signed by Italy, the UK, Ireland, Denmark or Greece) allowed movement of people without any border checks. Meanwhile, in 1987, the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev announced policies of "transparency" and "restructuring" ("glasnost" and "perestroika"). This revealed the depths of corruption and waste. In April 1989, the People's Republic of Poland legalised the Solidarity organisation, which captured 99% of available parliamentary seats in June elections. These elections, in which anti-communist candidates won a striking victory, inaugurated a series of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe that eventually culminated in the fall of communism. In November 1989, protestors in Berlin began taking down the Berlin Wall, which became a symbol of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, with most of Eastern Europe declaring independence and moving to hold democratic elections by 1991.


title: European Union law

text: The Treaty of Maastricht renamed the EEC as the "European Union", and expanded its powers to include a social chapter, set up a European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and limit government spending. The UK initially opted out of the social provisions, and then monetary union after the 1992 sterling crisis ("Black Wednesday") where speculators bet against the British currency. Sweden, Finland and Austria joined in 1995, but Norway again chose not to do so after its 1994 referendum, instead remaining part of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and thus the European Economic Area (EEA), abiding by most EU law but without any voting rights. At the Treaty of Amsterdam, with a new Labour government, the UK joined the social chapter. A newly confident EU then sought to expand. First, the Treaty of Nice made voting weight more proportionate to population. Second, the Euro currency went into circulation in 2002. Third came the accession of Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Fourth, in 2005 a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was proposed. This proposed "constitution" was largely symbolic, but was rejected by referendums in France and the Netherlands. Most of its technical provisions were inserted into the Treaty of Lisbon, without the emotive symbols of federalism or the word "constitution". In the same year, Bulgaria and Romania joined.


title: European Union law

text: During the subprime mortgage crisis and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, European banks that were invested in derivatives were put under severe pressure. British, French, German, and other governments were forced to turn some banks into partially or wholly state-owned banks. Some governments instead guaranteed their banks' debts. In turn, the European debt crisis developed when international investment withdrew and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland saw international bond markets charge unsustainably high interest rates on government debt. Eurozone governments and staff of the European Central Bank believed that it was necessary to save their banks by taking over Greek debt, and impose "austerity" and "structural adjustment" measures on debtor states. This exacerbated further contraction in the economies. In 2011 two new treaties, the European Fiscal Compact and European Stability Mechanism were signed among the nineteen Eurozone states. In 2013, Croatia entered the union. However a further crisis was triggered after the UK's Conservative government chose to hold a referendum in 2016, and campaigners for "leave" (or "Brexit") won 51.89 per cent of votes on a 72.2 per cent turnout. This referendum was politically inconclusive given the UK's system of Parliamentary sovereignty, with no agreement after the 2017 election, until the 2019 UK general election brought a Conservative majority with a manifesto commitment to drive through Brexit. The UK left EU membership in February 2020, with uncertain economic, territorial and social consequences.


title: European Union law

text: Although the European Union does not have a codified constitution, like every political body it has laws which "constitute" its basic governance structure. The EU's primary constitutional sources are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which have been agreed or adhered to among the governments of all 27 member states. The Treaties establish the EU's institutions, list their powers and responsibilities, and explain the areas in which the EU can legislate with Directives or Regulations. The European Commission has the right to propose new laws, formally called the right of legislative initiative. During the ordinary legislative procedure, the Council (which are ministers from member state governments) and the European Parliament (elected by citizens) can make amendments and must give their consent for laws to pass.


title: European Union law

text: The Commission oversees departments and various agencies that execute or enforce EU law. The "European Council" (rather than the Council, made up of different government Ministers) is composed of the Prime Ministers or executive presidents of the member states. It appoints the Commissioners and the board of the European Central Bank. The European Court of Justice is the supreme judicial body which interprets EU law, and develops it through precedent. The Court can review the legality of the EU institutions' actions, in compliance with the Treaties. It can also decide upon claims for breach of EU laws from member states and citizens.


title: European Union law

text: The Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) are the two main sources of EU law. Representing agreements between all member states, the TEU focuses more on principles of democracy, human rights, and summarises the institutions, while the TFEU expands on all principles and fields of policy in which the EU can legislate. In principle, the EU treaties are like any other international agreement, which will usually be interpreted according to principles codified by the Vienna Convention 1969. It can be amended by unanimous agreement at any time, but TEU itself, in article 48, sets out an amendment procedure through proposals via the Council and a Convention of national Parliament representatives. Under TEU article 5(2), the "principle of conferral" says the EU can do nothing except the things which it has express authority to do. The limits of its competence are governed by the Court of Justice, and the courts and Parliaments of member states.


title: European Union law

text: As the European Union has grown from 6 to 27 member states, a clear procedure for accession of members is set out in TEU article 49. The European Union is only open to a "European" state which respects the principles of "human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities". Countries whose territory is wholly outside the European continent cannot therefore apply. Nor can any country without fully democratic political institutions which ensure standards of "pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail". Article 50 says any member state can withdraw in accord "with its own constitutional requirements", by negotiated "arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union". This indicates that the EU is not entitled to demand a withdrawal, and that member states should follow constitutional procedures, for example, through Parliament or a codified constitutional document. Once article 50 is triggered, there is a two-year time limit to complete negotiations, a procedure which would leave a seceding member without any bargaining power in negotiations, because the costs of having no trade treaty would be proportionally greater to the individual state than the remaining EU bloc.


title: European Union law

text: Article 7 allows member states to be suspended for a "clear risk of a serious breach" of values in article 2 (for example, democracy, equality, human rights) with a four-fifths vote of the Council of the European Union, and the consent of the Parliament. Within the treaties' framework, sub-groups of member states may make further rules that only apply to those member states who want them. For example, the Schengen Agreements of 1985 and 1990 allow people to move without any passport or ID checks anywhere in the EU, but did not apply to the UK or Ireland. During the European debt crisis, the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism 2012 and the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance 2012 (the "Fiscal Compact") were adopted only for member states who had the Euro (i.e. not Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania or Bulgaria). This required, among other things, a pledge to balance the government budget and limit structural deficits to 0.5 per cent of GDP, with fines for non-compliance. The jurisdiction for these rules remains with the Court of Justice.


title: European Union law

text: The European Commission is the main executive body of the European Union. Article 17(1) of the Treaty on European Union states the commission should "promote the general interest of the Union" while Article 17(3) adds that Commissioners should be "completely independent" and not "take instructions from any Government". Under Article 17(2), "Union legislative acts may only be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal, except where the Treaties provide otherwise". This means that the commission has a monopoly on initiating the legislative procedure, although the council or Parliament are the ""de facto" catalysts of many legislative initiatives".


title: European Union law

text: The commission's President ( Ursula von der Leyen) sets the agenda for its work. Decisions are taken by a simple majority vote, often through a "written procedure" of circulating the proposal and adopting it if there are no objections. In response to Ireland's initial rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon, it was agreed to keep the system of one Commissioner from each of the member states, including the President and the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy (currently Josep Borrell) The Commissioner President is elected by the European Parliament by an absolute majority of its members, following the parliamentary elections every five years, on the basis of a proposal by the European Council. The latter must take account of the results of the European elections, in which European political parties announce the name of their candidate for this post. Hence, in 2014, Juncker, the candidate of the European People's Party which won the most seats in Parliament, was proposed and elected.


title: European Union law

text: The remaining commissioners are appointed by agreement between the president-elect and each national government, and are then, as a block, subject to a qualified majority vote of the council to approve, and majority approval of the Parliament. The Parliament can only approve or reject the whole commission, not individual commissioners but conducts public hearings with each of them prior to its vote, which in practice often triggers changes to individual appointments or portfolios. TFEU art 248 says the president may reshuffle commissioners, though this is uncommon, without member state approval. A proposal that the commissioners be drawn from the elected Parliament, was not adopted in the Treaty of Lisbon, though in practice several invariable are, relinquishing their seat in order to serve.


title: European Union law

text: Commissioners have various privileges, such as being exempt from member state taxes (but not EU taxes), and having immunity from prosecution for doing official acts. Commissioners have sometimes been found to have abused their offices, particularly since the Santer Commission was censured by Parliament in 1999, and it eventually resigned due to corruption allegations. This resulted in one main case, "Commission v Edith Cresson" where the European Court of Justice held that a Commissioner giving her dentist a job, for which he was clearly unqualified, did in fact not break any law. By contrast to the ECJ's relaxed approach, a Committee of Independent Experts found that a culture had developed where few Commissioners had 'even the slightest sense of responsibility'. This led to the creation of the European Anti-fraud Office. In 2012 it investigated the Maltese Commissioner for Health, John Dalli, who quickly resigned after allegations that he received a €60m bribe in connection with a Tobacco Products Directive.


title: European Union law

text: Beyond the commission, the European Central Bank has relative executive autonomy in its conduct of monetary policy for the purpose of managing the euro. It has a six-person board appointed by the European Council, on the Council's recommendation. The president of the council and a commissioner can sit in on ECB meetings, but do not have voting rights.


title: European Union law

text: While the Commission has a monopoly on initiating legislation, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have powers of amendment and veto during the legislative process. According to the Treaty on European Union articles 9 and 10, the EU observes "the principle of equality of its citizens" and is meant to be founded on "representative democracy". In practice, equality and democracy are still in development because the elected representatives in the Parliament cannot initiate legislation against the commission's wishes, citizens of smallest countries have greater voting weight in Parliament than citizens of the largest countries, and "qualified majorities" or consensus of the council are required to legislate. This "democratic deficit" has encouraged numerous proposals for reform, and is usually perceived as a hangover from earlier days of integration led by member states. Over time, the Parliament gradually assumed more voice: from being an unelected assembly, to its first direct elections in 1979, to having increasingly more rights in the legislative process. Citizens' rights are therefore limited compared to the democratic polities within all European member states: under TEU article 11, citizens and associations have the right to publicise their views and the right to submit an initiative that must be considered by the Commission if it has received at least one million signatures. TFEU article 227 contains a further right for citizens to petition the Parliament on issues which affect them.


title: European Union law

text: Parliament elections, take place every five years, and votes for Members of the European Parliament (MEP) in member states must be organised by proportional representation or a single transferable vote. There are 750 MEPs and their numbers are "degressively proportional" according to member state size. This means – although the council is meant to be the body representing member states – in the Parliament citizens of smaller member states have more voice than citizens in larger member states. MEPs divide, as they do in national Parliaments, along political party lines: the conservative European People's Party is currently the largest, and the Party of European Socialists leads the opposition. Parties do not receive public funds from the EU, as the Court of Justice held in "Parti écologiste "Les Verts" v European Parliament" that this was entirely an issue to be regulated by the member states. The Parliament's powers include calling inquiries into maladministration or appoint an Ombudsman pending any court proceedings. It can require the Commission respond to questions and by a two-thirds majority can censure the whole Commission (as happened to the Santer Commission in 1999). In some cases, the Parliament has explicit consultation rights, which the Commission must genuinely follow. However its participation in the legislative process still remains limited because no member can actually or pass legislation without the Commission and Council, meaning power ("kratia") is not in the hands of directly elected representatives of the people ("demos"): in the EU it is not yet true that "the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few".


title: European Union law

text: The second main legislative body is the Council, which is composed of different ministers of the member states. The heads of government of member states also convene a "European Council" (a distinct body) that the TEU article 15 defines as providing the 'necessary impetus for its development and shall define the general political directions and priorities'. It meets each six months and its President (currently former Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel) is meant to 'drive forward its work', but it does not itself exercise 'legislative functions'. The Council does this: in effect this is the governments of the member states, but there will be a different minister at each meeting, depending on the topic discussed (e.g. for environmental issues, the member states' environment ministers attend and vote; for foreign affairs, the foreign ministers, etc.). The minister must have the authority to represent and bind the member states in decisions. When voting takes place it is weighted inversely to member state size, so smaller member states are not dominated by larger member states. In total there are 352 votes, but for most acts there must be a qualified majority vote, if not consensus. TEU article 16(4) and TFEU article 238(3) define this to mean at least 55 per cent of the Council members (not votes) representing 65 per cent of the population of the EU: currently this means around 74 per cent, or 260 of the 352 votes. This is critical during the legislative process.


title: European Union law

text: To make new legislation, TFEU article 294 defines the "ordinary legislative procedure" that applies for most EU acts. The essence is there are three readings, starting with a Commission proposal, where the Parliament must vote by a majority of all MEPs (not just those present) to block or suggest changes, and the Council must vote by qualified majority to approve changes, but by unanimity to block Commission amendment. Where the different institutions cannot agree at any stage, a "Conciliation Committee" is convened, representing MEPs, ministers and the commission to try to get agreement on a joint text: if this works, it will be sent back to the Parliament and Council to approve by absolute and qualified majority. This means, legislation can be blocked by a majority in Parliament, a minority in the council, and a majority in the commission: it is harder to change EU law than for it to stay the same. A different procedure exists for budgets. For "enhanced cooperation" among a sub-set of at least member states, authorisation must be given by the Council. Member state governments should be informed by the Commission at the outset before any proposals start the legislative procedure. The EU as a whole can only act within its power set out in the Treaties. TEU articles 4 and 5 state that powers remain with the member states unless they have been conferred, although there is a debate about the "Kompetenz-Kompetenz" question: who ultimately has the "competence" to define the EU's "competence". Many member state courts believe they decide, other member state Parliaments believe they decide, while within the EU, the Court of Justice believes it has the final say.


title: European Union law

text: The judiciary of the EU has played an important role in the development of EU law. It interprets the treaties, and has accelerated economic and political integration. Today the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is the main judicial body, within which there is a higher Court of Justice that deals with cases that contain more public importance, and a General Court that deals with issues of detail but without general importance, and then a separate Court of Auditors. Under the Treaty on European Union article 19(2) there is one judge from each member state in the Court of Justice and General Court (27 on each at present). Judges should "possess the qualifications required for appointment to the highest judicial offices" (or for the General Court, the "ability required for appointment to high judicial office"). A president is elected by the judges for three years. While TEU article 19(3) says the Court of Justice is the ultimate court to interpret questions of EU law, in practice, most EU law is applied by member state courts (e.g. the English Court of Appeal, the German Bundesgerichtshof, the Belgian Cour du travail, etc.). Member state courts can refer questions to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling. The CJEU's duty is to "ensure that in the interpretation and application of the Treaties the law is observed", although realistically it has the ability to expand and develop the law according to the principles it develops consistently with democratic values. Examples of landmark, and frequently controversial judgments, include "Van Gend en Loos" (holding EU law to created a new legal order, and citizens could sue for treaty rights),<ref name="1963 Case 26/62">(1963) Case 26/62</ref> "Mangold v Helm" (establishing equality as a general principle of EU law), and "Kadi v Commission" (confirming international law had to conform with basic principles of EU law). Until 2016, there was the European Union Civil Service Tribunal, which dealt with EU institutions' staff issues.


title: European Union law

text: The Statute of the Court and TFEU require judges are appointed only if they have no political occupation, with independence "beyond doubt". They are selected for renewable six-year terms by "common accord" of governments, with the advice of seven EU or member state judges that the Council and Parliament selects. The Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, article 11, says the court is usually organised into chambers of 3 or 5 judges each. A "grand chamber" of 15 more senior judges sit on questions of "difficulty or importance", or those requested by member states. The court's president and vice-president are elected by other judges for renewable 3-year terms by secret ballot. Judges can only be dismissed if all other judges and Advocate Generals unanimously agree. Advocate Generals are appointed by the court to give reasoned submissions on cases, especially involving new points of law. Unlike judges on the Court, they write opinions as themselves, rather than collectively, and often with a command of prose and reason, and while not binding are often followed in practice. In addition, each judge has secretaries or "referendaires" who research and write. Unlike the UK where judges always write their own opinions, "referendaires" often assist drafting the judgments in the Court of Justice. The Court's Translation Directorate will translate every final judgment into the 24 official languages of the European Union. The three main kinds of judgments the Court of Justice gives following (1) preliminary rulings, requested by the courts of member states, (2) enforcement actions, brought by the commission or Member States, against the EU, a member state, or any other party that is alleged to violate EU law, and (3) other direct actions, where the EU or member state is involved as a party to the dispute, and gives final rulings. The Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, modelled on the International Court of Justice, begin with submission of written cases to the court, followed by a short oral hearing. In each case a judge is designated to actively manage the hearing (called a "rapporteur") and draft the judgment (probably with help from "referendaires"). The court always deliberates and votes before the final opinion is written and published. Cases in the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice on points of law. While there is no formal appeal procedure from the Court of Justice, in practice its actions are subject to scrutiny by both the supreme courts of member states and the European Court of Human Rights, even if the final balance of power is unresolved.


title: European Union law

text: Since its founding, the EU has operated among an increasing plurality of member state and globalising legal systems. This has meant both the European Court of Justice and the supreme courts of the states have had to develop principles to resolve conflicts of laws between different systems. Within the EU itself, the Court of Justice's view is that if Union law conflicts with a provision of State law, then Union law has primacy. In the first major case in 1964, "Costa v ENEL", a Milanese lawyer, and former shareholder of an energy company, named Mr Costa refused to pay his electricity bill to Enel, as a protest against the Nationalization of the Italian energy corporations. He claimed the Italian nationalisation law conflicted with the Treaty of Rome, and requested a reference be made to both the Italian Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice under TFEU article 267. The Italian Constitutional Court gave an opinion that because the nationalisation law was from 1962, and the treaty was in force from 1958, Costa had no claim. By contrast, the Court of Justice held that ultimately the Treaty of Rome in no way prevented energy nationalisation, and in any case under the Treaty provisions only the commission could have brought a claim, not Mr Costa. However, in principle, Mr Costa was entitled to plead that the Treaty conflicted with national law, and the court would have a duty to consider his claim to make a reference if there would be no appeal against its decision. The Court of Justice, repeating its view in "Van Gend en Loos", said member states "have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves" on the "basis of reciprocity". EU law would not "be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed... without the legal basis of the community itself being called into question". This meant any "subsequent unilateral act" of the member state inapplicable. Similarly, in "Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v Simmenthal SpA", a company, Simmenthal SpA, claimed that a public health inspection fee under an Italian law of 1970 for importing beef from France to Italy was contrary to two Regulations from 1964 and 1968. In "accordance with the principle of the precedence of Community law", said the Court of Justice, the "directly applicable measures of the institutions" (such as the Regulations in the case) "render automatically inapplicable any conflicting provision of current national law". This was necessary to prevent a "corresponding denial" of Treaty "obligations undertaken unconditionally and irrevocably by member states", that could "imperil the very foundations of the" EU. But despite the views of the Court of Justice, the national courts of member states have not accepted the same analysis.