title: Meagen Fay

text: She has also had recurring roles on "Malcolm in the Middle" and "The Bernie Mac Show", and has guest starred on "Six Feet Under", "Nip/Tuck", "Desperate Housewives", "The Big Bang Theory", and as Chelsea's mother on several episodes of "Two and a Half Men".


title: Meagen Fay

text: She made her directorial debut with playwright Jeffrey Sweet's play "Kunstler" at the 59 East 59 Theaters in Manhattan.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Sylvia Beach (14 March 1887 – 5 October 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: She is known for her Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where she published James Joyce's book, "Ulysses" (1922), and encouraged the publication of and sold copies of Hemingway's first book, "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923).


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Beach was born in her father's parsonage in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, on 14 March 1887, the second of three daughters of Sylvester Beach and Eleanor Thomazine Orbison. She had an older sister, Holly, and a younger sister, Cyprian. Although named Nancy after her grandmother Orbison, she later decided to change her name to Sylvia. Her maternal grandparents were missionaries to India, and her father, a Presbyterian minister, was descended from several generations of clergymen. When the girls were young the family lived in Baltimore and in Bridgeton, New Jersey. Then in 1901, the family moved to France upon Sylvester Beach's appointment as assistant minister of the American Church in Paris and director of the American student center.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Beach spent the years 1902–1905 in Paris, returning to New Jersey in 1906 when her father became minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton. Beach made several return trips to Europe, lived for two years in Spain, and worked for the Balkan Commission of the Red Cross. During the last years of the Great War, she was drawn back to Paris to study contemporary French literature.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: While conducting research at the Bibliothèque Nationale, in a French literary journal Beach read of a lending library and bookshop, "La Maison des Amis des Livres" at 7 rue de l'Odéon, Paris VI. There she was welcomed by the owner who, to her surprise, was a plump fair-haired young woman, Adrienne Monnier. Monnier was wearing a garment that looked like a cross between a peasant's dress and a nun's habit, "with a long full skirt … and a sort of tight-fitting velvet waistcoat over a white silk blouse. She was in gray and white like her bookshop." Although Beach was dressed in a Spanish cloak and hat, Monnier said later she knew immediately that Beach was American. At that first meeting, Monnier declared, "I like America very much". Beach replied that she liked France very much. They later became lovers and lived together for 36 years until Monnier's suicide in 1955.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Beach immediately became a member of Monnier's lending library, where she regularly attended readings by authors such as André Gide, Paul Valéry and Jules Romains. Inspired by the literary life of the Left Bank and by Monnier's efforts to promote innovative writing, Beach dreamed of starting a branch of Monnier's book shop in New York that would offer contemporary French works to American readers. Since her only capital was US$3,000 which her mother gave her from her savings, Beach could not afford such a venture in New York. However, Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Monnier's help, Beach opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company. Four years before, Monnier had been among the first women in France to found her own bookstore. Beach's bookstore was located at 8 rue Dupuytren, Paris VI.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers, including aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books. As the franc dropped in value and the favorable exchange rate attracted a huge influx of Americans, Beach's shop flourished and soon needed more space. In May 1921, Shakespeare and Company moved to 12 rue de l'Odéon, just across the street from Monnier's "Maison des Amis des Livres".


title: Sylvia Beach

text: In July 1920, Beach met Irish writer James Joyce at a dinner party hosted by French poet André Spire. Soon after, Joyce joined Beach's lending library. Joyce had been trying, unsuccessfully, to publish his manuscript for his masterpiece, "Ulysses", and Beach, seeing his frustration, offered to publish it. Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published "Ulysses" in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after she had bankrolled, and suffered severe losses from, the publication of "Ulysses".


title: Sylvia Beach

text: Shakespeare and Company experienced financial difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s but remained supported by wealthy friends, including Bryher. In 1936 when Beach thought that she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company. Subscribers paid 200 francs a year to attend readings at Shakespeare and Company. Although subscriptions were limited to a select group of 200 people (the maximum number the store could accommodate), the renown of the French and American authors participating in readings during those two years attracted considerable attention to the store. Beach recalled that by then, "we were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business". Violette Leduc describes meeting her and the ambiance of the shop in her autobiography "La Bâtarde". Shakespeare and Company remained open after the Fall of Paris, but by the end of 1941, Beach was forced to close.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: She was interned for six months during World War II at Vittel until Tudor Wilkinson managed to secure her release in February 1942. Following her release she occasionally assisted the American member of the French Resistance, Drue Leyton, in sheltering allied airmen shot down in France. Beach kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment upstairs at 12 rue de l'Odeon. Ernest Hemingway symbolically "liberated" the shop in person in 1944, but it never re-opened for business.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: In 1956, Beach wrote "Shakespeare and Company", a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud, Thornton Wilder, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue, George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: After Monnier's suicide in 1955, Beach had a relationship with Camilla Steinbrugge. Although Beach's income was modest during the last years of her life, she was widely honored for her publication of "Ulysses" and her support of aspiring writers during the 1920s. On June 16, 1962 she opened the Martello Tower in Sandycove in Dublin (where the opening scene of Ulysses is set) as a museum. She remained in Paris until her death in 1962, and was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Her papers are archived at Princeton University.


title: Sylvia Beach

text: American George Whitman opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called "Le Mistral", but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of the late Sylvia Beach. Since his death in 2011, it has been run by his daughter Sylvia Whitman.


title: Wakaliwood

text: Wakaliwood, also known as Ramon Film Productions, is a film studio based in Wakaliga, a slum in Uganda's capital of Kampala. Its founder and director is Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey Nabwana, a.k.a. Nabwana I.G.G., who has been called Uganda's Quentin Tarantino, after the gratuitous violence in his films. Wakaliwood is best known for its ultra-low budget (estimated to be in the region of $200) action movies, such as "Who Killed Captain Alex?", "Bad Black", "Tebaatusasula", and the upcoming crowdsourced film "Tebaatusasula: Ebola".


title: Wakaliwood

text: Isaac Nabwana spent his childhood during the brutal regime of Idi Amin in the 1970s. While the rest of Uganda was stricken with violence and ethnic cleansing, the farmland that Nabwana's grandfather owned was relatively peaceful. His inspirations for filmmaking came from reruns of "Hawaii Five-O" and "Logan's Run", as well as his love of Hollywood action movies and martial arts films from his childhood. As he had never been in a theatre, he relied mostly on his brothers and friends' descriptions of films that were just released theatrically. In 2005, after taking a computer course on video editing and watching video tutorials on filmmaking, Nabwana founded Ramon Film Productions, naming it after his grandmothers, Rachael and Monica.


title: Wakaliwood

text: Alan Hofmanis, a film festival director based in New York City, traveled to Uganda after a friend who worked at an NGO showed him a trailer for "Who Killed Captain Alex?" on YouTube. After meeting Nabwana and producing a documentary on Ramon Film Productions, Hofmanis has since moved to Uganda to help promote Wakaliwood cinema worldwide. He was also given a starring role in Nabwana's 2016 film "Bad Black" and has been called "the first Mzungu Ugandan action movie star."


title: Wakaliwood

text: The studio makes props and jibs out of DIY parts, which commentators have compared to the early days of Hollywood. Among the studio's props is a full sized helicopter frame that has become a staple in all Wakaliwood films. Nabwana shoots and edits his films using old computers that he assembles. Squibs and theatrical blood, used to simulate bloody gunshots, are made from condoms filled with red food coloring and tied to fishing lines before being taped to the actors' chests. Nabwana had previously used cow blood, but was forced to discontinue its use after one of his actors developed brucellosis.


title: Wakaliwood

text: Upon a film's completion, the actors sell DVD copies door-to-door in a one-week time window to ensure they make money before the film is bootlegged.


title: Wakaliwood

text: In Uganda, audiences go to video halls where VJs narrate over a feature film, translating the dialogue and adding their own commentary – making low budget films with VJ commentary like cult films.


title: Wakaliwood

text: On March 2, 2015, Wakaliwood set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise US$160 for the film "Tebaatusasula: Ebola". The studio was able to receive over US$13,000 from 374 backers by April 1. "Tebaatusasula: Ebola" serves as the direct sequel to "Who Killed Captain Alex?" and a remake of the 2010 film "Tebaatusasula", which was lost after a massive power surge destroyed the hard drive that contained the film. In September of that year, the Wakaliwood crew attended the Nyege Nyege Festival in Jinja and spent two days shooting "Attack on Nyege Nyege" with the festival attendees as extras.


title: Wakaliwood

text: "Bad Black" was a critical and audience favorite at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2017. The film earned an encore presentation on the last day of the festival, making the total number of screenings four. The Seattle audience question and answer session with the director was conducted over Skype. In 2020, Wakaliwood collaborated with German melodic death metal band Heaven Shall Burn to direct the music video for "Eradicate", from their album "Of Truth and Sacrifice". As artist group, Wakaliga Uganda was invited to documenta fifteen in 2022.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Monkey Shines (also known as Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear) is a 1988 American psychological horror film written and directed by George A. Romero and starring Jason Beghe, Kate McNeil, John Pankow, and Joyce Van Patten. Its plot follows a young athlete who becomes a paralyzed quadriplegic, and develops a bond with an intelligent service monkey named "Ella" who becomes homicidal after she is injected with an experimental serum of human brain tissue. It is based on the 1983 British novel of the same title by Michael Stewart.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Producers Peter Grunwald and Charles Evans of Orion Pictures acquired the rights to Stewart's novel in 1985, and began production two years later, with Romero assigned to direct. The film marked Romero's first major studio feature, and was his second-most expensive film at that time, with a budget of $7 million. The setting was changed from Oxford, England, where the novel was set, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city in which Romero had long resided and often set his films. Principal photography of "Monkey Shines" took place in Pittsburgh in the late summer and early fall of 1987. It had a protracted post-production and editing process, as Romero shot more film than he had on any of his previous projects, particularly due to the use of live monkeys.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: "Monkey Shines" was released theatrically by Orion Pictures in July 1988, receiving mixed reviews and a lackluster box-office reception, grossing $5.3 million against its $7 million budget. In the intervening years, the film has been noted by critics as an offbeat entry in Romero's filmography, and has earned status as a minor cult film.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Law student and athlete Allan Mann is struck by a truck and rendered quadriplegic following surgery. As his overbearing mother and strict nurse try helping him, Allan, now in a SNP-equipped wheelchair, struggles to adjust. His friend, Geoffrey Fisher, suggests he get a Capuchin monkey as a service animal to lift his spirits and help around the house. Geoffrey has an ulterior motive: he is a research scientist under pressure to produce results. Geoffrey has dosed a monkey in his lab with a serum to boost its intelligence, and believes the serum's effects will be amplified if the monkey is around humans.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Geoffrey enlists Melanie Parker, a specialist in training helper monkeys. Geoffrey provides the Capuchin he has been experimenting on, claiming it is normal. Allan names the monkey Ella, and he and Melanie work closely training her. Initially, Ella is a huge help to Allan. Allan grows very close to Melanie.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Allan grows short-tempered and resentful. Ella, too, becomes aggressive. Allan dreams of running through the grass at night, and believes he has a telepathic link with Ella, whom he suspects can escape the house. Geoffrey finds evidence confirming this but, pleased with Ella's intelligence, does not tell Allan and Melanie. After the pet bird of Allan's nurse pesters him, Allan wishes it was dead - that night, Ella kills the bird and leaves it in the nurse's slipper; causing the nurse to quit.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Allan gets a second opinion about his paralysis and discovers he may have been misdiagnosed; another surgery may enable him to walk again. Before attempting the risky surgery, the doctor needs Allan to demonstrate some ability to move an appendage. Rather than feeling happy at this news, Allan is angry with his original surgeon, who may have purposely misdiagnosed him and is now dating Allan's former girlfriend. He fantasizes about burning the man's cabin down, and that night, Ella kills the surgeon and his girlfriend by burning down the cabin with a pack of stolen matches.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: After seeing the fire in a vision and having it confirmed by his mother, the horrified Allan believes that Ella is carrying out his dark impulses. He also realizes that when he is around Ella, he becomes easily enraged. Allan demands that Geoffrey take Ella away. With Ella gone, Allan becomes more relaxed; he spends the weekend at Melanie's house and the two have sex.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Allan returns home and tries to mend bridges with his mother, but feels a burst of rage at her disapproval of Melanie. Allan realizes that Ella must be nearby. Allan's mother ignores his desperate warnings that she leave, and instead takes a bath. Ella kills her by dropping a hairdryer into the tub, electrocuting her. Allan briefly answers a call from Melanie before Ella disables the phone; concerned, Melanie departs for Allan's house.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Geoffrey arrives and confesses that Ella was an experimental subject. The enraged Allan demands Geoffrey leave, upset at being used for an experiment yet concerned for his safety with Ella around. Instead, Geoffrey pursues Ella around the house; intending to put her down with one of the syringes of sodium pentobarbitone he has brought. Ella gets hold of one of the syringes and injects it into Geoffrey, killing him.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Ella returns to Allan, who is filled with self loathing because he believes that Ella is acting out his own impulses. He screams at Ella, but the monkey responds by urinating on him. Melanie arrives and Ella attacks her. This convinces Allan that Ella is not simply carrying out his desires. Melanie falls and is knocked unconscious. As Allan rages at Ella, she ignores him and prepares to inject Melanie with one of Geoffrey's syringes. Allan calms himself and moves his right arm to engage his tape deck. As peaceful music plays he lovingly summons Ella to cuddle close to him, and she complies. When Ella comes near enough, Allan bites her on the neck and slams her body against the back of his wheelchair, killing her.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Allan undergoes successful spinal surgery. Melanie arrives at the hospital to pick him up, and Allan stands up from his wheelchair and gets into the van with her.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Film scholar Tony Williams interprets "Monkey Shines" as a "complex film dealing with the ambiguous nature of human motivations," and humans' inability to deal with the consequences of their own desires.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Journalist Michael Wilmington notes that the film's thematic weight rests in the presentation of the antagonistic monkey, Ella: "The audience that rejects her as a little toy-terror--or the movie as a piece of icy misanthropy which perversely trashes women, animals and quadraplegics--misses the point. Watching this movie, one loves Ella, bleeds for her, wishes desperately to preserve her from harm. But hell and humanity carry their own demands."


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: United Artists had originally optioned Michael Stewart's novel, "Monkey Shines" (1983), for a film adaptation in 1984, having purchased the rights for $20,000. The option included film rights to another novel by Stewart, "Far Cry" (1984). However, seven months later, in 1985, the option expired, after which producer Charles Evans purchased the rights to the novel.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Executive producer Gerald Paonessa commented that he had wanted George A. Romero to direct, as he felt he "had a wonderful, dark sense of humor." Romero was convinced to direct after being shown script treatments of the project.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: "Monkey Shines" marked Romero's second feature film produced with a major studio, after 1982's "Creepshow", as well as the second most-expensive. The production budget was approximately $7 million. The film was shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with principal photography beginning on July 31, 1987. Romero, a longtime resident of Pittsburgh who set most of his prior films there, chose the location. Additional filming occurred at the Mellon Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a private barn in Murrysville, which was converted into the monkey training center which Melanie operates. Interiors of Allan's house were constructed by set designer Cletus Anderson, a longtime collaborator of Romero's.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: The film's shooting schedule was extensive, consisting of twelve-hour days. Romero's wife and assistant, Christine (who also appears in the film) commented that it was the "toughest shoot we've ever had." For filming Boo, the capuchin monkey portraying Ella, Romero required multiple monkey doubles. Additionally, four puppets of the monkey were designed by Tom Savini, one of which was remote-controlled, each adorned with yak fur. Helping Hands, a service animal program from Boston, assisted with the monkeys featured in the film. Filming concluded in October 1987.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: At the time of filming, Romero commented that "Post-production on this will be very heavy. I hope to be finished by the end of March. It's a huge edit. I'm shooting more film than I ever have because of the monkeys...  As our budgets grow, everything takes longer." The film's distributor, Orion Pictures, was desperate for a hit, as it was in financial difficulty. First, the studio forced Romero to add a happy ending to the picture, a plot device which the director had long avoided in favor of more ambiguous endings; originally, Romero had intended to conclude the film in the same manner as its source novel, in which Allan does not recover from his accident. Second, after poor previews, the studio recut the film without Romero's knowledge to add a "shock" ending.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Another issue was the film's overall length, as Romero had completed a very long and involved shooting script that numbered over 240 pages. This resulted in a first cut of which 40 to 50% of the shot footage met the cutting room floor in the need to get the film reduced to a practical length. Upset with the way his project had been handled, Romero returned to independent films.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: The original intended ending of the film was unreleased until 2014, when it was included as a bonus feature on its debut Blu-ray release. In the original ending, prior to Dorothy and Geoffrey's deaths, Geoffrey's boss Dean Harold Burbage (Stephen Root) steals the remaining brain tissue serum and injects it into all of Geoffrey's remaining test monkeys. After Allan regains his ability to move on his own, Burbage is assaulted by animal rights protesters who had earlier attacked Geoffrey for experimenting on monkeys. Burbage insults them then returns to the lab where it's discovered that all of the remaining monkeys have completely taken control of his mind.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: "Monkey Shines" was released theatrically in the United States on July 29, 1988, opening in 1,181 theaters. It grossed $1.9 million during its opening weekend. It eventually went on to gross a total of $5.3 million in the United States over its 22-week theatrical run.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Several critics praised "Monkey Shines" for its portrayal of its philosophical themes: David Kehr of the "Chicago Tribune" heralded it as Romero's "most complex and challenging creations... [Romero's] is a style of philosophical fiction that seems hardly to belong to the 20th Century at all, but rather to the 18th Century school of Swift, Diderot and Voltaire. Like those authors, he uses satire as one of his principal tools and principal weapons," concluding that, ""Monkey Shines" is an extremely thoughtful, provocative film; it's also a damn good horror movie."


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Other critics, such as the "Los Angeles Times"s Michael Wilmington, commented on the film's characterization of Ella, and the relationship between her and Allan; comparing Ella to King Kong, Wilmington noted: "The story’s dark pivot is the symbiosis between Allan and Ella: a match made in hell. Ella, preternaturally sensitive to all her master’s desires, becomes infected with his hatreds--just as, in the lab, she’s been made addicted to a serum containing human brain tissue. It’s not a matter of the beast emerging against the human--but of humans perverting the beast." Richard Harrington of "The Washington Post" made similar observations about the character dynamic: "Alternating between comfort and revenge, [Ella] seems the ultimate victim, an unwitting pawn. Her scenes with Beghe are at once tender and terrifying as they battle it out to see who's the boss. Some closeups make Ella seem as ferocious as King Kong, but at other times she looks as if she's just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden."


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic about the film, awarding it two and a half out of a possible four stars; the film's main flaw, wrote Ebert, was its being overlong with too many subplots: "Romero loses momentum in the closing passages because he has too many loose ends to keep track of. Somewhere within this movie's two hours or so is hidden an absolutely spellbinding 90-minute thriller." Caryn James of "The New York Times" panned the film, writing that the screenplay "wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic," also criticizing the film for its "calm, and tedious, exposition."


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: The film was met with criticism from some disability rights organizations such as ADAPT and Adapting Society, due to a depiction of a toy monkey in a wheelchair in initial promotional materials. Members of ADAPT formed a picket line in wheelchairs at the Hollywood Pacific Theater the Saturday of the film's opening weekend. Bill Bolte, a member of Adapt California, commented: "The idea of a monkey attendant turning into a monster is appalling." On August 10, Orion Pictures issued a public apology, removing the content from media advertisements for the film, promising to consult disability experts for promotional materials of upcoming projects.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: "Monkey Shines" holds a 56% approval rating on the internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 32 critic reviews, with its consensus reading: "While not one of horror legend George Romero's more evolved efforts, "Monkey Shines" delivers enough primal fear to satisfy more forgiving genre enthusiasts." The film possesses a score of 71 on Metacritic based on 14 reviews. Contemporary film scholar John Kenneth Muir deemed "Monkey Shines" a "harrowing and fascinating film," and praised its realistic depiction of the monkey, Ella.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment released the film on DVD on September 28, 1999. Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in November 2014. In November 2019, Scream Factory announced this Blu-ray would be going out of print in 2020.


title: Monkey Shines (film)

text: One of the trailers showed a toy monkey banging its cymbals while sitting in a wheel chair. This trailer is known for its poem.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: Showcase is a Canadian English-language specialty channel owned by Corus Entertainment. Launched on January 1, 1995, the channel primarily airs scripted and dramatic television series.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: Licensed in 1994, Showcase was a venture between Alliance Communications (prior to its merger with Atlantis), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and a number of smaller independent Canadian producers, and was intended to be a showcase for "the best of independently-produced movies, drama, comedy and mini-series from Canada and around the world", with limited content from the United States. It launched at midnight on January 1, 1995, with a short introductory montage and its first program, "Monty Python's Life of Brian", shown as part of its program "The Showcase Revue".


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: Showcase later spawned two digital television services, the male-oriented Action (formerly Showcase Action, which was replaced by the Canadian version of Adult Swim in April 2019) and the more female-oriented Showcase Diva (which rebranded to a Canadian version of Lifetime in 2012). On December 19, 2006, Alliance Atlantis launched a high definition simulcast of Showcase, available through all major television providers in Canada.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: After several acquisitions over the years, Alliance Atlantis gained full control of Showcase. On January 18, 2008, a joint venture between Canwest and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners known as CW Media bought Alliance Atlantis and gained AAC's interest in Showcase. Following its acquisition by Canwest, the channel's new management felt that Showcase's adult programming was alienating viewers and advertisers. On August 31, 2009, Showcase underwent a major rebranding, introducing a new programming lineup with a greater focus on hit dramas and films. At the same time, Showcase Diva was given a new look and Showcase Action was rebranded as simply Action. Canwest executives hoped that the new lineup would make the channel more attractive to viewers and advertisers.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: While Showcase continues to air a thematically broad range of drama programming, its most recent successes, especially in original programming, have been with science fiction and fantasy programming. In 2010, a new original series, the supernatural crime drama "Lost Girl", brought the channel its highest-rated series premiere ever with around 400,000 viewers. This was bested less than two years later by the debut of another original sci-fi series, "Continuum", which had an average audience of 900,000 viewers. On October 27, 2010, ownership changed again as Shaw Communications gained control of Showcase as a result of its acquisition of Canwest and Goldman Sachs' interest in CW Media.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: For the Fall 2013 season, Showcase unveiled a new tagline and branding campaign: "Character is Everything". The four-week marketing campaign was highlighted by promos narrated by characters from Showcase's series in first-person. An interactive website was created by Stitch Media. On it, viewers can create their own trailers for Showcase programming based on their own character.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: On March 30, 2015, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the network's launch, Showcase underwent a brand refresh, including a new logo — an updated version of the network's logo from 1995 — and a new slogan: "Beyond Ordinary".


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: From the beginning, Showcase has aired reruns of Canadian series, with the lineup changing from year to year, along with foreign series and independent films. It's known for carrying numerous TV series from American cable channels such as TNT and Syfy. In recent years, the channel has also increasingly aired second window repeats of both premium and network television series (the latter primarily sourced from one of its sister television networks, Global TV).


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: Showcase has also aired first-run Canadian series, dubbed "Showcase Originals". In the past, these have included "Paradise Falls", "KinK", and "Naked Josh". Another of these shows, the low-budget "Trailer Park Boys" became a bona fide national phenomenon, spawning DVDs, merchandising tie-ins, and two feature films ("" and ""). The success of "Trailer Park Boys" led to the increasing prominence of edgy and risqué programming on Showcase (which at the time used the tagline "Television Without Borders"), including a block consisting entirely of its eroticism-themed shows known as "Fridays Without Borders". In recent years, Showcase has partaken in international co-productions.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: The channel was formerly subject to a condition of licence obligating it to air 100% Canadian content between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. in the time zone of the originating feed (currently Eastern Time only). While some foreign programming did air in the late afternoon prior to this window, any foreign programming subject to watershed restrictions was required to air at 10:00 p.m. EST or later. For a few years beginning in fall 2005, when the channel was drawing most of its highest ratings for programming acquired from U.S. cable networks, Showcase promoted 10:00 p.m. as its flagship timeslot, even hiring branded taxis in major markets to drive people home for free by 10:00 p.m. In March 2015, the CRTC announced it would no longer enforce conditions of licence related to nature of service; shortly thereafter, Showcase began airing foreign content in the 7-10 p.m. EST window for the first time.


title: Showcase (Canadian TV channel)

text: The channel previously operated two timeshifted feeds operating on Eastern and Pacific Time Zone schedules. The West feed was discontinued on August 24, 2012, along with that of TVTropolis; since then, much of the channel's primetime programming has been rebroadcast on a three-hour delay to facilitate consistent promotion to both time zones (for example, if a program broadcasts at 9:00 p.m. EST and rebroadcasts at midnight EST, it would be promoted as airing at "9:00 p.m. E/P").


Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Qingming Shanghe Tu) is a handscroll painting by the Song dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145) and copied many times in the following centuries. It captures the daily life of people and the landscape of the capital, Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng) during the Northern Song. The theme is often said to celebrate the festive spirit and worldly commotion at the Qingming Festival, rather than the holiday's ceremonial aspects, such as tomb sweeping and prayers. Read right to left, as a viewer unrolled it, successive scenes reveal the lifestyle of all levels of the society from rich to poor as well as economic activities in rural areas and the city, and offer glimpses of period clothing and architecture. The painting is considered to be the most renowned work among all Chinese paintings, and it has been called "China's "Mona Lisa"."


title: Along the River During the Qingming Festival

text: As an artistic creation, the painting has been revered and artists of subsequent dynasties made hundreds of replicas, copies of copies, and even forgeries of well-regarded copies, each following the overall composition and the theme of the original but differing in detail and technique. Over the centuries, the Song original was kept by private collectors before it eventually returned to public ownership. The painting was a particular favorite of Puyi, China's Last Emperor, who took it with him when he was forced to leave the Forbidden City in 1924. It was recovered in 1945 and kept at the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City. The Song original and later versions are regarded as national treasures and are exhibited only for brief periods every few years.


text: The original painting is celebrated as the most famed work of art from the Song dynasty. However, little was directly known about its painter, who is generally presumed to be Zhang Zeduan, since records were destroyed when the Jin dynasty overthrew the Northern Song dynasty. There is continued debate and research over its creator, the date and location of where it was painted, and the intended meaning of the work. The earliest attribution to Zhang Zeduan is an inscription dated 1186, which was added on the basis of an earlier catalog by the Jin imperial curator, Zhang Zhu (active late 12th century) to the original scroll:


text: The scroll is in height and long. In its length there are 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 buildings, 20 vehicles, 8 sedan chairs, and 170 trees. Only about twenty women appear in the Song dynasty original, and only women of low social rank are visible out of doors unless accompanied by men.


text: The countryside and the densely populated city are the two main sections in the picture, with the river meandering through the entire length. The right section is the rural area of the city. There are crop fields and unhurried rural folk—predominately farmers, goatherds, and pig herders—in bucolic scenery. A country path broadens into a road and joins with the city road. The left half is the urban area, which eventually leads into the city proper with the gates. Many economic activities, such as people loading cargoes onto the boat, shops, and even a tax office, can be seen in this area. People from all walks of life are depicted: peddlers, jugglers, actors, paupers begging, monks asking for alms, fortune tellers and seers, doctors, innkeepers, teachers, millers, metalworkers, carpenters, masons, and official scholars from all ranks.


text: Outside the city proper (separated by the gate to the left), there are businesses of all kinds, selling wine, grain, secondhand goods, cookware, bows and arrows, lanterns, musical instruments, gold and silver, ornaments, dyed fabrics, paintings, medicine, needles, and artifacts, as well as many restaurants. The vendors (and in the Qing revision, the shops themselves) extend all along the great bridge, called the Rainbow Bridge (虹橋 "Hong Qiao") or, more rarely, the Shangdu Bridge (上土橋).


text: Where the great bridge crosses the river is the center and main focus of the scroll. A great commotion animates the people on the bridge. A boat approaches at an awkward angle with its tow-mast not completely lowered, threatening to crash into the bridge. The crowds on the bridge and along the riverside are shouting and gesturing toward the boat. Someone near the apex of the bridge lowers a rope to the outstretched arms of the crew below. In addition to the shops and diners, there are inns, temples, private residences, and official buildings varying in grandeur and style, from huts to mansions with grand front- and backyards.


text: People and commodities are transported by various modes: wheeled wagons, beasts of labor (in particular, a large number of donkeys and mules), sedan chairs, and chariots. The river is packed with fishing boats and passenger-carrying ferries, with men at the river bank, pulling the larger ships.


text: Many of these details are roughly corroborated by Song dynasty writings, principally the "Dongjing Meng Hua Lu", which describes many of the same features of life in the capital.


text: The original painting was a pride of the imperial collections for centuries. It was frequently copied by later artists of successive periods and it became familiarized among the nobles, scholar officials, urban residents and merchants. Many scholars thought of the Song original as the "masterpiece", and gave little respect to later versions, which they called mere copies, forgeries, reproductions, reinterpretations or elaborations, more than a hundred of which are now in museums in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, North America, and France. The significance and value of these "copies," however, has recently been recognized.


text: An early copy, generally considered to be faithful to the original, was made by Zhao Mengfu during the Yuan dynasty.


text: The Ming dynasty (14th to 17th centuries) painter Qiu Ying is credited with several copies, which have considerable differences from the original. One version came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1947. Another has a length of 6.7 meters, longer than the original. It also replaced the scenery from the Song dynasty to that of the Ming dynasty based on contemporary fashions and customs, updating the costumes worn by the characters and the styles of vehicles (boats and carts). The Song wooden bridge is replaced with a stone bridge in the Ming remake. The arc of the stone bridge is much taller than that of the wooden original, and where the original had a boat about to crash into the bridge, the reinterpretation has a boat being methodically guided under the bridge by ropes, pulled by men ashore, several other large boats dutifully waiting their turn, undisturbed. Another 12 meter long copy from the late Ming period is kept in the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna in Austria.


text: In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, dozens of copies were made by little-known professional painters in Suzhou, usually carrying the (forged) signature of either Zhang Zeduan or Qiu Ying. The scholar Chang Su-chen argues that these paintings should not be dismissed as mere "copies." These painters, she says, created “distinctive paintings that visualized pre-modern viewers’ various conceptions of a “great age,” an ideal society from the traditional Chinese perspective.”


text: Quite different was the painting, known as the "Qing Court Version," commissioned by the Yongzheng Emperor, which was completed only after his death by five court painters (Chen Mu, Sun Hu, Jin Kun, Dai Hong and Cheng Zhidao). These five artists worked from a draft scroll in ink, also shown below, by Shen Yuan, another court painter, who apparently worked under the emperor's personal supervision. It was presented to the Qianlong Emperor on January 15, 1737. This is distinguished by its innovative modern style, high degree of detail, and intact preservation. This version, shown below, was later moved, along with major portions of the imperial collection, to the National Palace Museum in Taipei in 1949. There are many more people, over 4,000, in this remake, which also is much larger (at 11 metres by 35 cm, or 37 ft by 1 ft). The leftmost third of this version, which does not appear in the Song version, is within the palace, with buildings and people appearing refined and elegant. Most people within the castle are women, with some well-dressed officials.


text: In April 1742, the Qianlong Emperor composed a poem to be added to the right-most end of the 1737 scroll. The calligraphy is in the running script style, and is in the hand of Liang Shizheng (梁詩正), a prominent court official and companion of the emperor. The poem reads as follows:


text: In a rare move, the Song original was exhibited in Hong Kong from June 29 to mid-August 2007 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's transfer to the People's Republic of China. It is estimated that the costs of shipping the painting ran into tens of millions of dollars in addition to an undisclosed cost of insuring this piece of priceless art.


text: From January 2–24, 2012, the painting was exhibited in the Tokyo National Museum as the centerpiece of a special exhibition to mark the 40th anniversary of normalized diplomatic relations between China and Japan, with the Japanese museum officials providing the "highest security standards" for the work.


text: For a three-month period in the World Expo 2010 presented at the China Pavilion, the original painting was remade into a 3D animated, viewer-interactive digital version, titled "River of Wisdom"; at 128 × 6.5 m, it is roughly 30 times the size of the original scroll. The computer-animated mural, with moving characters and objects and portraying the scene in 4-minute day and night cycles, was one of the primary exhibitions in the Chinese Pavilion, drawing queues up to two hours with a reservation. Elaborate computer animation gives life to the painting.


text: After the Expo, the digital version was on display at the AsiaWorld–Expo in Hong Kong from November 9 to 29, 2010, where it was a major commercial success. It was then exhibited at the Macau Dome in Macau from March 25 to April 14, 2011. The digital painting also traveled to Taiwan and displayed at the Expo Dome in Taipei from July 1 to September 4, 2011. From December 7, 2011 to February 6, 2012, in an exhibition titled "A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty As Living Art", the digital reproduction was exhibited at the Singapore Expo. Today, it is on permanent exhibition at the China Art Museum, Shanghai.


text: Scholars have studied the painting carefully in the second half of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century but do not agree on many basic points. Scholars question the accuracy of the translation of the painting's name; the word "Qingming" may refer to either "peace and order" or to the Qingming Festival. Other translations have been suggested:


text: During the late 1960s, the Taipei Palace Museum released a series of books (later digitized as CD-ROM), videos, and stamps about the scroll that translated it loosely as "A City of Cathay".


text: There is further discussion of the painting's meaning and content, questioning three things that had been accepted about the original Song dynasty painting: that the city depicted is Kaifeng; it was painted before the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127, and it depicts the Qingming Festival.


text: Some scholars have further suggested that the city depicted is an idealized non-existent city; that it was painted after the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127; and that it depicts a scene in early autumn. However, another study replied that the city depicted is indeed Kaifeng, but that the painting depicts a day in the Qingming solar term of the Chinese calendar, but not the Qingming Festival itself.


text: An interpretation published in 2013 proposed that the painting was a subtle entreaty to the emperor to recognize dangerous trends beneath the surface of prosperity. Since Kaifeng depended on grain from the far south, the painting showed only a lowly official was on duty at the docks, only a few guards were stationed at the city gate and the docks and did not appear to be alert. The term "Qingming" did not refer to the solar term but was taken from the phrase 清明之世 ("A bright and enlightened era") from the "Book of the Later Han", and the name of the painting was ironic.


text: The wooden bridge depicted in the original version was reconstructed by a team of engineers and documented by the PBS television show "NOVA" during their "Secrets of Lost Empires" series.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: Dominion is an Australian documentary film released in 2018 by animal rights activist, Chris Delforce. The film is centred on a realistic stance about animal agricultural practices to educate public perceptions about animal agriculture by presenting real graphic footage secretly filmed using hidden cameras and aerial drones. The film focuses on six topics: farmed animals, wild animals, companion animals, entertainment animals, fur animals, and animal experimentation.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: The film, and its related Dominion movement, is managed by an animal protection and animal rights organisation, Farm Transparency Project, previously known as Aussie Farms. The movie was filmed to be a feature-length documentary sequel to Lucent (2014), which mostly focused on the Australian pig farming industry.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: "Dominion" describes, in 18 chapters, how different animal species are used and misused in different ways. The film is divided into segments covering different species: pigs, laying hens and meat chickens, turkeys, ducks, cows, sheep, goats, fish, rabbits, mink, foxes, dogs, horses, camels, mice, exotic animals, seals and dolphins, and a conclusion from the narrators.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: The documentary was produced as part of two crowdfunding campaigns that raised US$19,796 and €57,710, respectively, and it received funding from the Australian animal rights organization Voiceless.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: The film features narration by the actors Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and Sadie Sink, as well as the singer Sia. It premiered in Melbourne on 29 March 2018.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: Animal rights activists have called it a powerful documentary. It has been called the "New "Earthlings"," and has the joint support of many local animal rights groups.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: Animal rights activists participated in the temporary shutdown of a slaughterhouse in Benalla, Victoria, on 26 March, to coincide with the film's premiere in Melbourne. On 8 April 2019, a series of protest actions were held across Australia to mark the one year anniversary of the film. Protests included the storming of abattoirs and the halting of traffic at Melbourne's busiest intersection during peak hour. Activists held signs promoting the movie.


title: Dominion (2018 film)

text: The Australian Meat Industry Council Chief Executive, Patrick Hutchinson, has said, "“What the film shows is not representative of the practices of the wider industry. The vast majority of businesses and the vast majority of their employees are deeply committed to ensuring the most humane experience possible for animals,"


title: Gift card

text: A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a particular store or related businesses. Gift cards are also given out by employers or organizations as rewards or gifts. They may also be distributed by retailers and marketers as part of a promotion strategy, to entice the recipient to come in or return to the store, and at times such cards are called cash cards. Gift cards are generally redeemable only for purchases at the relevant retail premises and cannot be cashed out, and in some situations may be subject to an expiry date or fees. American Express, MasterCard, and Visa offer generic gift cards which need not be redeemed at particular stores, and which are widely used for cashback marketing strategies. A feature of these cards is that they are generally anonymous and are disposed of when the stored value on a card is exhausted.


title: Gift card

text: From the purchaser's point of view, a gift card is a gift, given in place of an object which the recipient may not need, when the giving of cash as a present may be regarded as socially inappropriate. In the United States, gift cards are highly popular, ranking in 2006 as the second-most given gift by consumers, the most-wanted gift by women, and the third-most wanted by males. Gift cards have become increasingly popular as they relieve the donor of selecting a specific gift. In 2012, nearly 50% of all US consumers claimed to have purchased a gift card as a present during the holiday season. In Canada, $1.8 billion was spent on gift cards, and in the UK it is estimated to have reached £3 billion in 2009, whereas in the United States about US$80 billion was paid for gift cards in 2006. The recipient of a gift card can use it at their discretion within the restrictions set by the issue, for example as to validity period and businesses that accept a particular card.


title: Gift card

text: Gift card sales are not limited to banks or retailers; such other companies as airlines, cruise ships, hotels, barber shops, train companies, theme parks, restaurants and other type of companies may offer gift cards as well.


title: Gift card

text: Neiman Marcus introduced the first gift card using a payments infrastructure in late 1994, though Blockbuster Entertainment was the first company to do so on a wide scale, test-marketing them in 1995 and launching them around the country the next year. In the beginning, the Blockbuster gift card replaced gift certificates that were being counterfeited with recently introduced color copiers and color printers. Blockbuster's first gift card transactions were processed by what was then Nabanco of Sunrise, Florida. Nabanco was the developer of the first third-party platform for the processing of gift cards using existing payment infrastructure.


title: Gift card

text: Neiman Marcus and Blockbuster were later followed by the Mobil gas card, which initially offered prepaid phone value provided by MCI. Kmart was next with the introduction of the Kmart Cash Card, which in the early generations provided prepaid phone time with AT&T. Later Kmart and Mobil dropped this feature, as it was not profitable for them. The Kmart Cash Card was the first replacement for cash returns when a shopper did not have a receipt for a gift. This practice of giving a cash card in place of cash for non-receipted returns is commonplace today with most merchants. From these early introductions, other retailers began to adapt a giftcard program to replace their gift certificate programs.


title: Gift card

text: A gift card may resemble a credit card or display a specific theme on a plastic card the size of a credit card. The card is identified by a specific number or code, not usually with an individual name, and thus could be used by anybody. They are backed by an on-line electronic system for authorization. Some gift cards can be reloaded by payment and can be used thus multiple times.


title: Gift card

text: Cards may have a serial number, barcode, magnetic strip, which is read by an electronic credit card machine. Many cards have no value until they are sold, at which time the cashier enters the amount which the customer wishes to put on the card. This amount is rarely stored on the card but is instead noted in the merchant's database, which is cross linked to the card ID. Gift cards thus are generally not stored-value cards as used in many public transport systems or library photocopiers, where a simplified system with no network stores the value only on the card itself. To thwart counterfeiting, the data is encrypted. The magnetic strip is also often placed differently than on credit cards, so they cannot be read or written with standard equipment. Other gift cards may have a set value and need to be activated by calling a specific phone number.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards can also be individually custom tailored to meet specific needs. By adding a custom message or name on the front of the card, it can make for an individualized gift or be used as a gesture of appreciation towards an employee.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards are divided into open loop or network cards and closed loop cards. The former are issued by banks or credit card companies and can be redeemed by different merchants, the latter by a specific store or restaurant and can be only redeemed by the issuing provider. The latter, however, tend to have fewer problems with card value decay and fees. Card value decay is less of an issue since the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act was passed by the US Congress in 2009. Inactivity fees and card expirations are both limited by the new law.


title: Gift card

text: In either case the giver would buy the gift card and may have to pay an additional purchase or activation fee, and the recipient of the card would use the value of the card at a later transaction. A third form is the hybrid closed loop card whose issuer has bundled a number of closed loop cards; an example is free gift cards for a specific shopping mall.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards differ from scrip gift certificates, in that the latter are usually sold as a paper document with an authorized signature by a restaurant, store, or other individual establishment as a voucher for a future service; there is no electronic authorization. A gift certificate may or may not have an expiration date and generally has no administrative fees.


title: Gift card

text: Bank issued gift cards may be used in lieu of checks as a way to disburse rebate funds. Some retailers use the gift card system for refunds in lieu of cash thereby assuring that the customer will spend the funds at their store.


title: Gift card

text: A charity gift card allows the gift giver to make a charitable donation and the gift recipient to choose a charity that will receive the donation.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards can also be country-specific, and can be used to access USA-specific programming and media when outside the United States.


title: Gift card

text: Mobile gift cards are delivered to mobile phones via email or SMS, and phone apps allow users to carry only their cell phone.


title: Gift card

text: Virtual gift cards are delivered via email to the recipient, the benefits being that they cannot be physically lost and that the consumer does not has to spend the additional time needed to buy a physical gift card in a brick and mortar store making it more convenient. Gift cards of this type can also be purchased quicker, which is especially attractive if a gifting occasion is on the horizon.


title: Gift card

text: Other companies have introduced virtual gift cards that users redeem on their smartphones. As the merchant is not involved in the loop, it is considered a cash transfer rather than a traditional gift card.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards can have many different designs, including for, holidays, special occasions, sports teams, cartoons, and more. Some hardcore collectors collect different variations of each card, and or prefer where the pin number is not scratched off. Even more desirable are brand new unused gift cards even ones still attached to the retail backers. Most gift cards are plastic, some variances include clear plastic, shaped cards, and paperboard cards. Recently most Starbucks and Chipotle gift cards are now paperboard instead of plastic. A partial list of popular retailers with collectors who have released gift cards worldwide with many different designs and or variations include:


title: Gift card

text: According to the "Guinness Book of World Records", the largest gift card collection in the world, as of 2021, belonged to Canadian-American brothers Aaron and David Miller of Scarsdale, New York. By 2013, the brothers had amassed an estimated 3,125 different cards.


title: Gift card

text: In addition, some online collecting websites have pages dedicated to gift card listings for collectors.


title: Gift card

text: It has been argued that holiday giving destroys value due to mismatching gifts. The most efficient way to keep value in gifting would be to give cash; however, giving cash in most cultures is not socially acceptable, except with children. Gift cards, to a degree, may overcome this problem, but have certain pitfalls. Some feel that the absence of the thought of selecting a specific gift makes a gift card a worse choice than a poorly executed but individual gift. New products in the gift card industry are evolving to tackle this "impersonal" pitfall of gift cards; new services launched by some service providers allows for customization and personalization of gift cards.


title: Gift card

text: Gift cards have been criticized for the issuers ability to set rules that are detrimental to the purchaser or card recipient. For example, gift cards may be subject to an expiry date, administrative fees, restrictions on use, and absence of adequate protection in case of fraud or loss. Over time fees may render the value of a gift card zero. However, these issues have been addressed in recent years in some jurisdictions. In the United States, many jurisdictions limit or prohibit all fees or expiration dates for gift cards. Furthermore, because of the negative impact on sales that such policies can have, most merchants have adopted and even advertise a no fee, no expiration policy for their gift cards, whether or not state laws require it. In 2011, an estimated 2.5% of gift cards were subject to an expiration date and 2.7% to post sale fees.


title: Gift card

text: A quarter of gift card recipients still have not spent gift cards a year after receiving them, according to a Consumer Reports survey, and a majority of people say they end up spending more than the value of the card once they get to the store. On the other hand, consumers may try to use as much of a gift card as possible while avoiding spending money out of pocket, usually resulting in small values remaining on the card. Consumer laws in some places have addressed this. In Australia, a gift card can be exchanged for cash if there is a remaining amount that the business believes can't be "conveniently used."


title: Gift card

text: In the event of the bankruptcy of the issuing retailer, the outstanding value on gift cards is considered unsecured debt, and as such gift cards may become valueless. If the company intends to continue trading, gift cards may be honoured even in bankruptcy.


title: Gift card

text: Another issue regarding gift cards is the growing concerns from retailers and other businesses about what can be done to prevent gift cards from being exploited by fraudsters. Gift card information can either be stolen from their rightful owners by fraudsters or they can be purchased with stolen credit card information. In recent years, cyber criminals have increased their efforts to take advantage of fraudulent gift cards as they are simple to exploit with automated brute-force bot attacks. The most common form of gift card fraud is committed through the act of stealing card information for activated cards with an existing balance by attacking a retailer's systems which store gift card data. Once a gift card has been compromised, the fraudster will then check the balance through online customer portals before using the funds or reselling on the secondary gift card market.


title: Gift card

text: Not all gift cards are redeemed. The card may be lost, there may be time decay expiration and fees or complex rules of redemption, or the recipient may not be interested in the store that accepts the card or be under the false assumption that not using it will save money for the giver. It has been estimated that perhaps 10% of cards are not redeemed, amounting to a gain for retailers of about $8 billion in the United States in 2006.


title: Gift card

text: In 2012, over $100 billion in gift cards will be purchased in the United States, where over 20% of those gift cards will go unredeemed or unused. This has amassed a large opportunity in the secondary market, similar to the secondary ticket market in the early 2000s. Some companies have created a business in the secondary gift card market that allow consumers to sell their unused gift cards or buy discounted gift cards to their favorite brands. This has helped their users recoup their share of some $55 million per day that goes unredeemed in the United States every year.


title: Gift card

text: All Canadian provinces have legislations passed to ban expiry dates and fees collected on gift cards. However, provincial gift card legislations do not apply to sectors that are regulated under federal laws. For example, gift cards that resemble credit cards i.e. with American Express, MasterCard, or Visa branding and phone cards are regulated by the federal government. Under the federal "Prepaid Payment Products Regulations", effective 1 May 2014, federally regulated gift cards may only charge maintenance fees under certain conditions and may not set an expiry date for funds on those cards.


title: Gift card

text: In the past, uniform standards concerning gift cards did not exist. This was set to change as an addendum to the Credit CARD Act of 2009 directs the federal government to create consumer-friendly standards pertaining to gift cards. Most notably, the new regulations prohibit retailers from setting expiration dates unless they are at least five years after the card's date of issue or the date on which funds were last added to the card. In addition, retailers are no longer able to assess dormancy, inactivity, or service fees unless the card has been inactive for at least 12 months, and if fees are added after that period, the details of such fees must be clearly disclosed on the card. Additionally, retailers are unable to levy more than one fee per month. The new provisions took effect on 22 August 2010.


title: Gift card

text: Open loop cards are governed by rules of the Comptroller of the Currency; however, oversight has been criticized. Closed loop gift cards are subject to rules set by different state regulations, and issuing authorities vary widely in the rules they set for the consumer. Moreover, rules can be changed by the issuer without notifying the consumer.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Javier Sotomayor Sanabria (; born October 13, 1967) is a Cuban retired track and field athlete, who specialized in the high jump and is the current world record holder. The 1992 Olympic champion, he was the dominant high jumper of the 1990s; his personal best of makes him the only person ever to have cleared eight feet (2.44 m).


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor is a two-time gold medallist at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, and also won two silver medals at the competition. At the IAAF World Indoor Championships he won four gold medals between 1989 and 1999. In addition, he won three straight titles at the Pan American Games from 1987 to 1995. He is regarded as the best high jumper of all time. After Cuban boycotts of the Olympics in 1984 and 1988 and an injury in 1996 cost him chances at additional Olympic medals, he won the silver medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. He retired in 2001.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor was born October 13, 1967, in Limonar, Matanzas Province. The son of a day-care worker and a sugar factory maintenance man, Sotomayor was first sent to a Cuban sports school as a prospective basketball player because of his height. At age 14, coaches made him a high jumper and by 19, he was ranked No. 5 in the world.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor listed his competition weight at 80 kilograms (176 pounds). He is tall. Sotomayor is engaged to Amaya Gonzalez, sharing private and professional life. He has four sons. One of his sons, Javier Sotomayor García, has also competed in the high jump.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor was only 14 when he first cleared 2 meters (6' 6 3/4") and by the end of 1983 he had a best of 2.15 m. He then set the junior world record on 19 May 1984 by clearing 2.33 metres (7 feet 7 3/4 inches) at a meet held in Havana. He was not able to go to Los Angeles, California for the 1984 Olympics due to the boycott by Cuba (and most communist nations). In 1985 he took silver in the World Indoor Championships in Paris, with a best jump of 2.30 metres on 19 January, and then improved his personal best two months later outdoors in Havana, with a jump of 2.34 on 20 March 1985. He continued to improve the following year with a best jump of 2.36 m at a meet in Santiago de Cuba on 23 February 1986. He won his first international title in 1987, at the Pan American Games, and established a new personal best of 2.37 m (7 feet 9 1/2 inches) at a meet in Athens, Greece on 20 June 1987.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: On 8 September 1988, at a meet held in Salamanca, Spain – just four days before the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Summer Olympics – he set a world record of 2.43 metres (7 feet 11 and three-quarter inches). However, Sotomayor was again denied the chance to compete in the Olympics in Seoul due to another Cuban boycott of the Olympics. Sotomayor's leap of 2.43 broke, by one centimeter, the record of 2.42 set the previous summer (30 June 1987) by Sweden's Patrik Sjöberg in Stockholm.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor twice increased the world record, to on July 29, 1989, in the Central American and Caribbean Championships, held in San Juan and to the current record of 2.45 m (8 feet and one-half inch) on July 27, 1993, in Salamanca. The July 1989 record of 2.44 m, which he cleared on his second attempt, was a historic jump for Imperial-measure fans, as that was the first jump over 8 feet.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: After setting the record at 2.44 m in July 1989, Sotomayor became inconsistent the following year. He missed much of the 1990 outdoor season after surgery to remove scar tissue in his knee and heel. Competing before an adoring Cuban public at the Pan American Games in Havana on Saturday 10 August 1991, Sotomayor defeated his principal rival, American Hollis Conway, with a jump of 2.35 m (7' 8 1/2"). He then thrilled the crowd by having the bar raised 10 cm to a new world record of 2.45, but in each of his three attempts he jumped into the bar, striking it with his shoulders on the way up each time. Afterwards he said, "My physical condition is better, but psychologically I am not well prepared."


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: The 1993 record set at the Salamanca Invitational track meet was remarkable in that Sotomayor required only four jumps: he took his first jump at , passed at 2.35, cleared on his first attempt, then had the bar raised to a record height of 2.45, which he missed on his first attempt and then succeeded on his second attempt, lightly brushing the bar. Videos of his record-setting leap show his unique, galloping approach with two elongated strides in the middle of his 14-step run, and a powerful left leg take-off as he pumps both of his arms: he begins his approach with three short steps, builds up speed, then takes exaggerated strides on steps 8 and 9, and then re-accelerates over his last five strides.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: After setting the record in Salamanca, Sotomayor told reporters, "I wanted to set the record here because it is a small city in which I feel like I am in Cuba. The people recognize me in the street and ask how I'm doing, the children surround me and I find myself in a good mental state."


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: He broke the record during the 1989 IAAF World Indoor Championships, clearing 2.43 on his first attempt (and fifth jump overall). At this competition, Sotomayor was one of four men to clear 2.35 m, at which point he stood in third place, trailing Dietmar Mögenburg (Germany) and Dalton Grant (Great Britain) who each succeeded on their first attempts, while Sotomayor and Patrik Sjöberg (Sweden) each needed two tries. In Budapest, he took his first jump of the competition at , passed at 2.33, missed his initial try at then cleared on his second attempt; made a huge first attempt clearance at ; passed at 2.39; then had the bar raised for a record attempt at , clearing on his first try, just brushing the bar with the back of his thighs on the way down. Germany's Carlo Thränhardt, who had set the indoor record of 2.42 m one year earlier (26 February 1988) in Berlin, finished fifth at Budapest with a jump of 2.33 m.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: When he was finally able to compete in the Summer Olympics he won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympics and then the silver medal at the 2000 Olympics (after the reversal of a drug suspension for drug usage). Between the games he won the 1993 and 1997 World Championship.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: At the Barcelona Olympics, Sotomayor won the high jump on the basis of his ability to jump "clean" (no misses) at the highest height. Five men cleared the winning height of , but Sotomayor was the only one to clear the bar on his first attempt. All five competitors then failed at the next height, 2.37. Jumping last in the round, Sotomayor failed on his first two attempts at 2.37. When everyone else missed on their third attempts, Sotomayor was assured of the gold medal and therefore passed up his third attempt, opting for one try at a record height of 2.39, which he missed. Sotomayor was declared the victor on the basis of the tie-breaker: Patrik Sjöberg (Sweden) won the silver medal having cleared 2.34 on his second attempt, while Artur Partyka (Poland), Tim Forsyth (Australia) and Hollis Conway (USA) tied for the bronze medal.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Less than one month after setting the world record of at Salamanca (on 27 July), Sotomayor won the 1993 World Championships held at Stuttgart, Germany on 22 August. He outjumped the competition, establishing a new World Championships record of : the second-place jumper, Artur Partyka (Poland) jumped 2.37.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: The last time he would clear 2.40 meters was on 25 March 1995 at the Pan American Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina. A healthy Sotomayor attempted to defend his title at the 1995 World Championships, held in Gothenburg, Sweden. He cleared the winning height of on 8 August, but finished second to Troy Kemp (Bahamas) on the basis of missed jumps. Partyka finished third, at 2.35.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: At the 1997 World Championships in Athens, Greece, Sotomayor again won the gold medal on 6 August, defeating Partyka with a 1997 world-leading jump of 2.37 m (on his second attempt), to the Partyka's 2.35 m (his best of the season to that date.)


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor had a good start to 1996 during the indoor season, but was plagued by injury during the outdoor season. At the 1996 Summer Olympics he attempted to defend his Olympic title in Atlanta. He qualified for the finals with a jump of 2.28 on Friday, but in the finals on Sunday July 28, he could manage only his opening jump of , clearing on his first attempt. He then "passed" at the next height , and then failed in all three of his attempts at 2.32 (7' 7 1/4"). His 2.25 clearance left him in equal 11th position. This was a full 10 cm (4 inches) short of what was required to medal at Atlanta: American Charles Austin won the gold medal, breaking the Olympic record with a leap of .


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor underwent treatment for knee and heel injuries after his poor showing in the Atlanta Olympics and skipped the 1997 indoor season. He began training in Puerto Rico in spring 1997 for the outdoor season, but Cuban sports officials announced on 30 May 1997 that although Sotomayor was "in good form", he was withdrawing from the season's first big meet in Toronto and would instead make his season debut the following week at a track meet in France.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor won the gold medal at the 1999 Pan American Games, held in Winnipeg. Just a few days after his victory, Games officials announced that his urine test tested positive for an illegal drug, cocaine (a stimulant), and on 4 August he was stripped of his medal and was sent home to Cuba in disgrace. At the time, this was widely regarded as the biggest drug scandal in the sport of track and field in over a decade (since Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics). In 1999 Sotomayor was a national celebrity, a well-known anti-drug crusader and the pride of Cuba's sports system. Mario Granda, Cuba's chief of sports medicine, reacted to the shocking news by saying the 31-year-old Sotomayor had "passed more than 60 drug tests" in his career and suggested that Sotomayor was the victim of sabotage.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor was allowed to participate in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney despite his two-year drug suspension from 1999. His suspension was upheld in June 2000, but in August the IAAF cut the penalty in half – effectively to time served – and allowed him to compete at Sydney at the age of 32. The finals of the men's high jump were held on Sunday September 24, in rainy, windy conditions which worsened as the event progressed. The wet surface greatly impacted the results. Seven men cleared before the light rain began to worsen, and Russian Sergey Klyugin was the only jumper able to clear the next height, , doing so before the rain and wind peaked. Sotomayor was awarded silver on the count-back, having taken only two jumps with no misses (at and 2.32): all other competitors had at least one failed attempt. The favorite to win the competition, Vyacheslav Voronin (Russia) managed to clear only in the rain, after having cleared one month before. Another medal favorite, Stefan Holm (Sweden), finished fourth and complained that the IAAF should not have reduced Sotomayor's two-year suspension.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor has a rare dominance in the history of this event. At the time he retired he had 17 of the top 20 jumps of all time. Only 13 men in history have jumped 2.40 meters or higher, and only 5 have done it more than once. Sotomayor did it 24 times (in 21 different competitions between September 1988 – March 1995). He is the only person to have cleared 2.44 m (8 ft) (which he did twice). Following his world record in September 1993, he had his greatest year in 1994, when he (again) was the only jumper to scale 2.40 m or better, doing so ten times that year: two during the indoor season in February, and seven times outdoors, starting at Seville on 5 June 1994, where he cleared 2.40 before recording the year's best jump of . Besides dominating the event on the Grand Prix circuit, Sotomayor recorded wins at the Goodwill Games in St Petersburg on 29 July, and at the World Cup in London on 11 September, where his best jump of 2.40 m was a record 12 centimeters above the next-best performance. The last time he would clear 2.40 meters was on March 25, 1995, at the Pan American Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Only Bohdan Bondarenko and Mutaz Essa Barshim have jumped higher outdoors since, although four men equaled the mark.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: During his career, Sotomayor was ranked by "Track & Field News" in the "Top 10" in the men's high jump in ten different years, and was ranked #1 eight of those ten years: in 1988, 89, 1992, 93, 94, 95, 97 and 1998. By comparison, the jumper with second-most #1 rankings over a career is Russian Valeriy Brumel in five consecutive years (1961–65). For his career Sotomayor accumulated 123 ranking points, while the jumper with the second-most career points, American Dwight Stones has 90 points and four consecutive #1 rankings (1973–76.)


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: Sotomayor tested positive for cocaine at the 1999 Pan American Games, which Cuban president Fidel Castro claimed was a set-up by the Cuban-American Mafia. Sotomayor claimed his innocence. After months of hearings, an IAAF arbitration panel upheld the two-year ban on June 27, 2000. The Cuban federation continued to appeal his case, citing a clause in the IAAF rulebook that allows drug bans to be modified under "exceptional circumstances". In a controversial decision announced on August 2, the IAAF shortened the suspension to one year – which had elapsed on July 30 – thereby allowing him to compete in the 2000 Summer Olympics. IAAF's motivation for this action was that Sotomayor had done a great deal for the sport, had passed hundreds of drug tests during his long career, and acted exemplarily throughout. Two weeks after his suspension was lifted, Sotomayor returned to competition at a small track meet in Montauban, France, which he won with a jump of . Four days later he won a Golden League meet held in Monaco by clearing . Interviewed on French television immediately after his victory, Sotomayor said: "I was not fantastic today. I was very tired because I have been practicing a lot, and I also have a new baby since July, which is another reason why I'm a little tired. But I should be able to clear 2.36 or 2.37 at the Olympics. I just hope nobody else does 2.40."


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: In September 2001, Sotomayor announced that he would end his career, following another positive drug test during a training camp in June, this time for the anabolic steroid nandrolone. He avoided a lifetime ban that would normally follow a second positive test. This second test disqualified his fourth-place finish in his last World Championship. Once again, Sotomayor claimed he was innocent and that mistakes had been made during the handling of his doping test.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: These allegations never gained strong support in his home country Cuba, although former IAAF Vice President and Doping Commission Chairman Arne Ljungqvist asserted these were both "crystal clear cases" in a Swedish interview.


title: Javier Sotomayor

text: In a February 2004 interview for Cuban news, Sotomayor said that injury had forced his retirement, not the doping scandal. An Achilles tendon problem hampered his performance, he said, and reduced his run-up from nine steps to seven and then just five.


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: His television work includes the role of Ben Swain in political comedy "The Thick of It", the lead role in Channel 5 sitcom "Respectable", roles in "Black Books", "Endeavour", "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", "The Old Guys", "Skins", "Secret Diary of a Call Girl", "The Trip", "Veep"", "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle", and "Black Mirror" amongst many others. He won an RTS Award in 2014 for Best Male Actor for his performance in "Father Brown" ("The Daughters of Jerusalem").


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: He has played Jeremy Clarkson three times for television, twice for" Harry & Paul", and once for "Murder in Successville". In 2016 he played Mr Rumbold in the BBC remake of "Are You Being Served?"


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: His film work includes the role of Charles Vernon in Whit Stillman's "Love & Friendship", Spartak Sokolov in "The Death of Stalin", John Forster in "The Man Who Invented Christmas", Inept Policemen in both "Paddington" and "Thor 2", a fop in "The Duchess", Leo in "Yesterday", and as Giant Haystacks and Gan in Tim Plester's short films "World of Wrestling" and "Blakes Junction Seven".


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: Edwards is a regular voice on BBC Radio 4, having appeared on "The News Quiz", "Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive", "Cabin Pressure", "The Odd Half Hour", "Kevin Eldon Will See You Now", "Double Science", "Mr Blue Sky" and "Listen Against" amongst many others. He hosted five series of "Newsjack", the topical sketch show on Radio 4 Extra and wrote and performed in Miles Jupp's radio sitcom "In and Out of the Kitchen". In 2016 he played Anthony Trollope in "Trollope And The Labours of Hercules". In 2017, he headed up the cast of "Rum Bunch", with Mel Giedroyc and Dave Mounfield, and starred alongside Meera Syal in "Mrs Sidhu Investigates".


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: His theatre work includes "Twitstorm" at the Park Theatre, "The Rivals" at the Arcola Theatre, "The Opinion Makers" at the Colchester Mercury, "Art" at the Holders Festival in Barbados, and the role of Rasputin in "I Killed Rasputin" at the Assembly Theatre in Edinburgh. In January 2018 he joined the cast of "The Ferryman" as Tom Kettle and reprised the role for the Broadway production which opened in October 2018. In 2020 he joined the RSC to play Antipholus of Ephesus in "The Comedy of Errors".


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: Edwards won the Perrier Award (Best Newcomer) at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a member of the sketch trio The Consultants, alongside Neil Edmond and James Rawlings. They went on to write and record four series for BBC Radio 4. As booze-sodden children's entertainer Jeremy Lion he performed four acclaimed live shows at the Edinburgh Festival and Melbourne Comedy Festival, and was nominated four years running for the Chortle Awards as best character act, winning in 2006 and 2004. He was nominated for the Perrier Award in 2005 and 2006 he had a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival with his one-man musical show "Unaccompanied As I Am".


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: He was one of the main writers and performers on the BAFTA-nominated children's show "Sorry, I've Got No Head" as well as co-devising and writing the CBBC sitcom "Pixelface" and writing for "Horrible Histories". He wrote and starred in the sitcoms "Double Science" (with Ben Willbond) and "Buy Me Up TV" for Radio Four, and one of his episodes of "In and Out of the Kitchen" won the BBC Audio drama Award for Best Scripted Comedy Drama in 2015.


title: Justin Edwards (actor)

text: Born in Southampton, Hampshire, Edwards studied Drama at the University of Manchester before training at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. He is married to Lucy Porter and they have two children.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: Jae'Sean Tate (born October 28, 1995) is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten Conference. Tate is represented by Beyond Athlete Management.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: Tate is the oldest son of Jermaine Tate, who played basketball at Ohio State in 1996–97 before transferring to Cincinnati and playing professionally overseas. His mother, Cori Key, was stabbed to death by her boyfriend Damiene Boles on July 31, 2004. Boles was convicted of the murder three years later. After his mother's death, Tate was raised by his father and stepmom Jenice alongside their three children. Tate went through anger management to process his emotions and has a tattoo of a key on his leg.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: Tate attended Pickerington High School Central, where he excelled at basketball and football. He played defensive end and tight end before a shoulder injury cut his junior season short, and he focused on basketball from then on. On the hardwood, Tate was a teammate of Caris LeVert and made the game-winning tip-in in a playoff win over Columbus Marion-Franklin as a freshman. As a sophomore, his team went 26–2 and won the 2012 Division I championship defeating Toledo Witmer in the final game. In both his junior and senior years, Tate went on to be a first-team all-conference player. He injured his shoulder as a junior, shortening his season, but still averaged 22.3 points, 12 rebounds, and three assists per game. Tate ended his high school career as the number 1 ranked player in Ohio and the 15th ranked forward in the nation in the ESPN top 100.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: As a freshman, Tate posted 8.8 points and 5 rebounds per game. His averages climbed to 12.1 points and 5.5 rebounds per game since becoming a full-time starter against Northwestern on January 22, 2015. Tate was a Big Ten All-Freshman Team selection. Despite standing 6'4", Tate sometimes played center on a Buckeyes team that featured 6'5" point guard D'Angelo Russell. Tate averaged 11.7 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game as a sophomore. He missed the final seven games with a shoulder injury. He was a Big Ten Honorable Mention selection.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: Tate was an Honorable Mention All-Big Ten selection as a junior. As a junior, Tate led the Buckeyes in scoring with 14.3 points per game, taking the primary role on offense due to an injury to Keita Bates-Diop. Toward the end of his junior season, Tate contemplated giving up basketball and walking on to Ohio State's football team. He described a locker room situation in which players had completely given up on the team and did not even want to play in the NIT. A conversation with coach Thad Matta and assistant coach Greg Paulus persuaded Tate to return to the floor for his senior year. He had second thoughts after Matta was fired in favor of Chris Holtmann, but Holtmann and Tate developed a strong relationship.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: As a senior, Tate was a captain alongside a healthy Bates-Diop, and had some impressive moments including setting an Ohio State record going 10-for-10 from the field in a win over Northeastern in November 2017. Tate scored 14 points going 6-for-11 from the field in a comeback victory over Michigan in December. He averaged 12.3 points and 6.2 rebounds per game as a senior on an NCAA Tournament squad that finished 25-9. He was named to the Second Team All-Big Ten by the coaches and honorable mention all-conference by the media. Tate finished as Ohio State’s 19th-leading scorer with 1,512 points. After the season, he worked with coach Joey Burton to improve his shooting technique in preparation for a professional career.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: After going undrafted in the 2018 NBA draft, Tate joined the Milwaukee Bucks for the 2018 NBA Summer League. However, he was unable to play for the Bucks due to a fractured finger on his right hand. On August 20, 2018, he signed in Belgium with the Antwerp Giants. While with the Antwerp Giants, Tate was a Belgian League all-star and helped lead the Giants to their first Belgian Cup title in 12 years. In 42 league games, he averaged 10.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 1.7 assists per game. He also averaged 13.0 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 1.6 assists in 24 BCL games.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: On July 22, 2019, Tate signed with the Sydney Kings of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL) for the 2019–20 NBL season. He averaged 16.4 points, 2 assists, and 5.8 rebounds per game and was named to the All-NBL First Team.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: On November 26, 2020, Tate signed with the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Tate made his NBA debut on December 26, playing 37 minutes against the Portland Trail Blazers; he recorded 13 points, four rebounds, and two assists in the overtime loss. He started a team-high 58 games during the season and averaged 11.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.5 assists. Tate was selected to the NBA All-Rookie First Team at the end of the season, becoming only the second undrafted player to claim such honors.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: On December 1, 2021, Tate scored an NBA career-high 32 points while also adding 10 rebounds, 7 assists, 5 blocks, and 2 steals in a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, becoming only the second Houston Rockets player after Hakeem Olajuwon to achieve these totals in a single game.


title: Jae'Sean Tate

text: Standing at , Tate plays the small forward and power forward positions. During his rookie season with the Houston Rockets, Tate gained a reputation as a strong defender, with his play often compared to PJ Tucker. A predominately left-handed player with a strong drive, Tate finishes well at the rim, scoring 69% of his attempts as a rookie.


title: Vinča symbols

text: The Vinča symbols, sometimes known as the Danube script, Vinča signs, Vinča script, Vinča–Turdaș script, Old European script, etc., are a set of untranslated symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennium BC) artifacts from the Vinča culture and related "Old European" cultures of Central Europe and Southeastern Europe. Whether this is one of the earliest writing systems or simply symbols of some sort is disputed. They have sometimes been described as "pre-writing" or "proto-writing". The symbols went out of use around 3500 BC.


title: Vinča symbols

text: In 1875, archaeological excavations directed by the Hungarian archaeologist Baroness Zsófia Torma (1840–1899) at Tordos (present Turdaș, Romania) unearthed marble and fragments of pottery inscribed with previously unknown symbols. At the site, on the Mureş river, a feeder into a tributary of the Danube, female figurines, pots, and artifacts made of stone were also found. In 1908, a similar cache was found during excavations directed by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić (1869–1956) in Vinča, a suburb of Belgrade (Serbia), some 245 km from Turdaș. Later, more such fragments were found in Banjica, another part of Belgrade. Since 1875, over 150 Vinča sites have been identified in Serbia alone, but many, including Vinča itself, have not been fully excavated. Thus, the culture of the whole area is called the Vinča culture, and the symbols are often called the Vinča–Turdaș script.


title: Vinča symbols

text: The discovery of the Tărtăria tablets in Romania by a team directed by Nicolae Vlassa in 1961 revived the debate. Vlassa believed the inscriptions to be pictograms. Other items found at the site of the discovery were subsequently radiocarbon-dated to before 4,000 BC, 1,300 years earlier than the date Vlassa expected and pre-dating the writing systems of the Sumerians and Minoans. However, the circumstances of their discovery and authenticity of the tablets themselves is disputed.


title: Vinča symbols

text: Although a large number of symbols are known, most artifacts contain so few symbols that they are very unlikely to represent a complete text. Possibly the only exception is the Sitovo inscription in Bulgaria, the dating of which is disputed; regardless, even that inscription has only around 50 symbols.


title: Vinča symbols

text: Most of the inscriptions are on pottery, with the remainder appearing on ceramic spindle whorls, figurines, and a small collection of other objects. The symbols themselves consist of a variety of abstract and representative pictograms, including zoomorphic (animal-like) representations, combs or brush patterns and abstract symbols such as swastikas, crosses and chevrons. Over 85% of the inscriptions consist of a single symbol. Other objects include groups of symbols, of which some are arranged in no particularly obvious pattern, with the result that neither the order nor the direction of the signs in these groups is readily determinable. The usage of symbols varies significantly between objects; symbols that appear by themselves tend almost exclusively to appear on pots, while symbols that are grouped with other symbols tend to appear on whorls. Quantitative linguistic analysis leads to the conclusion that 59% of the signs share the properties of pottery marks, 11.5% are part of asymmetric ornaments typical for whorls of the Vinca culture, and 29.5% may represent some sort of symbolic (semasiographic) notation.


title: Vinča symbols

text: These findings are important because the bulk of the Vinča symbols were created between 4500 and 4000 BC, with the symbols on the Tărtăria clay tablets possibly dating back to around 5300 BC (controversially dated by association). This means that the Vinča finds predate the proto-Sumerian pictographic script from Uruk (modern Iraq), which is usually considered to be the oldest known writing system, by more than a thousand years. Analyses of the symbols showed that they have little similarity with Near Eastern writing, resulting in the opinion that these symbols and the Sumerian script probably arose independently.


title: Vinča symbols

text: The nature and purpose of the symbols is a mystery. Although attempts have been made to interpret the symbols, there is no agreement as to what they might mean.


title: Vinča symbols

text: Some researchers, such as and Dragoslav Srejović, have suggested that the symbols were potter's marks or owner's marks, meaning "this belongs to X". Some symbols, principally those restricted to the base of pots, are wholly unique and such signs may denote the contents, provenance/destination or manufacturer/owner of the pot. However, some of the symbols have been repeatedly found throughout the territory of the Vinča culture, hundreds of years apart and in locations kilometers away from each other.


title: Vinča symbols

text: Some of the "comb" or "brush" symbols, which collectively constitute as much as a sixth of all the symbols so far discovered, may represent a form of prehistoric counting. The Vinča culture appears to have traded its wares quite widely with other cultures, as demonstrated by the widespread distribution of inscribed pots, so it is possible that the "numerical" symbols conveyed information about the value of the pots or their contents. Other cultures, such as the Minoans and Sumerians, used their scripts primarily as accounting tools; the Vinča symbols may have served a similar purpose.


title: Vinča symbols

text: Some have suggested that the symbols may have been used for religious purposes in a traditional agricultural society. If so, the fact that the same symbols were used for centuries with little change suggests that the ritual meaning and culture represented by the symbols likewise remained constant for a very long time, with no need for further development. The use of the symbols seems to have been abandoned (along with the objects on which they appear) at the start of the Bronze Age, suggesting that the new technology brought with it significant changes in social organization or population, and beliefs.


title: Vinča symbols

text: One argument in favour of the ritual explanation is that the objects on which the symbols appear do not seem to have had much long-term significance to their owners – they are commonly found in pits and other refuse areas. Certain objects, principally figurines, are most usually found buried under houses. This is consistent with the supposition that they were prepared for household religious ceremonies in which the signs incised on the objects represent expressions: a desire, request, vow, etc. After the ceremony was completed, the object would either have no further significance (hence would be disposed of) or would be buried ritually (which some have interpreted as votive offerings).


title: Vinča symbols

text: Some researchers have suggested that the markings represent an early form of writing, often as part of a broader tradition of literacy referred to as the "Danube script" by the archaeo-semiologist Marco Merlini and the "Old European script" by the anthropologist Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas reconstructed a hypothetical pre-Indo-European "Civilization of Old Europe", which she defines as having occupied the area between the Dniester valley and the Sicily-Crete line. She incorporated the Vinča markings into her model of Old Europe, suggesting that they might either be the writing system for an Old European language, or, more probably, a kind of symbolic "pre-writing" system. However, this has been generally met with skepticism. Vinča symbols themselves have not been found on an area wider than southeastern Hungary, western Romania, and western Bulgaria, as described by Winn.


title: Filemon Vela Jr.

text: Filemón Bartolomé Vela Jr. ( ; born February 13, 1963) is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2013 until his resignation in 2022. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Vela was also vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, having been nominated by President Joe Biden. In March 2022, Vela resigned in the middle of his term to work at Akin Gump, the largest lobbying firm in the U.S.


title: Filemon Vela Jr.

text: Vela was born in Harlingen, Texas, and raised in nearby Brownsville. His father, Filemon Vela Sr., was a long-serving United States federal judge. The Reynaldo G. Garza–Filemon B. Vela United States Courthouse in Brownsville is named in Judge Vela's honor. His mother, Blanca Sanchez Vela, served as Brownsville's first female mayor from 1999 to 2003.


title: Filemon Vela Jr.

text: Filemon attended Saint Joseph Academy in Brownsville, and earned his Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University in 1985. During his time at Georgetown, he served as an intern at the Federal Judicial Center, the research and education agency of the federal judicial system. He also served as an intern in Solomon P. Ortiz's office in Washington, D.C. Vela earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 1987.


title: Filemon Vela Jr.

text: In "Edinburg School District v. Landmark", Vela represented Edinburg to fight for more funding. In "Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District v. Landmark", he represented the district in fighting contractors accused of building a poorly constructed school facility.