title: Tort reform

text: In addition to reforms aimed at limiting plaintiff's abilities to claim particular categories of compensation, tort reform measures aimed at reducing the prevalence of lawsuits for negligence, the most commonly alleged tort, aim to revise the doctrine of comparative negligence. Comparative negligence is a partial legal defence that reduces the amount of damages that a plaintiff can recover in a negligence-based claim based upon the degree to which the plaintiff's own negligence contributed to cause the injury, which progressively displaced the erstwhile traditional doctrine of contributory negligence over the twentieth century which had precluded any damages being awarded in cases in which the plaintiff was deemed to be even partially at fault. Under standard or "pure" comparative negligence, a plaintiff can seek damages regardless of the portion of liability they bear, even where they are found to be more at fault than the respondent. As a tort reform measure aimed at combatting the perceived unfairness of allowing a party to seek extra-contractual damages where they are primarily at fault, many common law jurisdictions have adopted a "modified" doctrine of comparative negligence in which a party may only recover damages if it bears less than half the liability or if the other party bears more than half the liability. More radically, the American states of Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia continue to use contributory negligence, thus precluding a party who is even partly at fault from recovering damages for negligence.


title: Tort reform

text: Procedural reforms to the tort system aim to dissuade or prevent litigants from filing suit without directly altering the damages they may receive.


title: Tort reform

text: One type of procedural reform is to reduce the time to sue—the statute of limitations of actions. New York law now requires that:


title: Tort reform

text: Another type of procedural reform is imposing restrictions on class action lawsuits in jurisdictions where they are available. Mass actions are lawsuits where a group of claimants band together to bring similar claims all at once. Class actions are lawsuits where counsel for one or more claimants bring claims on behalf of similarly situated claimants. While class actions originated and are most common in the United States and Canada, similar procedures are increasingly common in other common law jurisdictions. Class actions are justified on the basis that they ensure equal treatment of similarly situated victims, avoid the risk of conflicting judgments on similar issues, and allow an efficient resolution of a large number of claims. In the US, class actions have been used (and by some views abused) in order to overcome the differences applicable in different jurisdictions, including the perceived predispositions of judges, juries, and differences in substantive or procedural law. So if one claimant lives in State X, where courts and laws are unfavourable to their claim, but another claimant lives in the more favourable jurisdiction of State Y, they may bring a class action together in State Y. Strictly speaking, State Y must not adjudicate the claim unless it is found that the applicable law is similar or identical in both states, but as a practical matter this rule is often disregarded in favour of efficient resolution of claims. More broadly, addressing perceived forum shopping has become a contentious aspect of tort reform, notably with defamation cases and libel tourism.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocate Common Good has proposed creating specialised medical courts (similar to distinct tax courts) where medically trained judges would evaluate cases and subsequently render precedent-setting decisions. Proponents believe that giving up jury trials and scheduling noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering would lead to more people being compensated, and to their receiving their money sooner. Critics of the health courts concept contend that it is ill-conceived, that it would be unfair to patients, that it would be unlikely to achieve its objectives, and that much of its goals as are reasonable can be achieved more fairly and with greater efficiency under the existing civil justice system. In addition, experts have suggested that health courts would be inevitably biased towards physicians, and that the bureaucracy needed to introduce safeguards against such bias would negate any cost savings. Still, a number of groups and individuals have supported this proposal.


title: Tort reform

text: Another type of procedural reform is to modify the criteria related to a defendant's state of mind in order to increase the burden of proof imposed on the plaintiff. Tort reform in Texas changed the definition of negligence in the context of emergency room treatment to include only "willful and wanton" acts. This has been interpreted as including only acts intended to harm the patient.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reformers have had the most legislative success in limiting the common law rule of joint and several liability, often replacing it with a rule of proportionate liability. Of the forty-six states that had a joint and several liability rule, thirty-three states have abolished or limited the rule. Opponents of tort reform contend that the elimination of the rule would under-compensate people who had the misfortune to be hurt by more than one person, if at least one of the defendants does not have the financial means to pay his or her share of proportionate liability.


title: Tort reform

text: The abolition of the collateral source rule (i.e. the principle that a respondent in a tort action cannot use the fact that a plaintiff has already been compensated as evidence) is another common proposal of tort reform advocates in jurisdictions where the rule exists. They argue that if the plaintiff's injuries and damages have already been compensated, it is unfair and duplicative to allow an award of damages against the respondent. As a result, numerous states have altered or partially abrogated the rule by statute.


title: Tort reform

text: Regulation of contingent fees; as well as rules regarding barratry, champerty and maintenance, or litigation funding more generally; is another aspect of procedural policies and reforms designed to reduce the number of cases filed in civil court.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocates frequently contend that too many of the lawsuits filed in the United States each year are "frivolous" lawsuits. The term "frivolous lawsuit" has acquired a broader rhetorical definition in political debates about tort reform, where it is sometimes used by reform advocates to describe legally non-frivolous tort lawsuits that critics believe are without merit, or award high damage awards relative to actual damages. In the United States, tort reform is a contentious political issue. US tort reform advocates propose, among other things, procedural limits on the ability to file claims, and capping the awards of damages. Opponents of tort reform argue that reformers have misstated the existence of any real factual issue and criticise tort reform as disguised corporate welfare.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocates argue that the present tort system is too expensive, that meritless lawsuits clog up the courts, that per capita tort costs vary significantly from state to state, and that trial attorneys too often receive an overly large percentage of the punitive damages awarded to plaintiffs in tort cases. (The typical contingent fee arrangement provides for the lawyer to retain one-third of any recovery.) A Towers Perrin report indicates that U. S. tort costs were up slightly in 2007, are expected to significantly increase in 2008, and shows trends dating back as far as 1950. More recent research from the same source has found that tort costs as a percentage of GDP dropped between 2001 and 2009, and are now at their lowest level since 1984. High-profile tort cases are often portrayed by the media as the legal system's version of a lottery, where trial lawyers actively seek the magic combination of plaintiff, defendant, judge, and jury. Advocates of tort reform complain of unconstitutional regulation caused by litigation, and that litigation is used to circumvent the legislative process by achieving regulation that Congress is unwilling or unable to pass.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform is also proposed as one solution to rapidly increasing health care costs in the United States. In a study published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 93% of physicians surveyed reported practicing defensive medicine, or "[altering] clinical behavior because of the threat of malpractice liability." Of physicians surveyed, 43% reported using digital imaging technology in clinically unnecessary circumstances, which includes costly MRIs and CAT scans. Forty-two percent of respondents reported that they had taken steps to restrict their practice in the previous 3 years, including eliminating procedures prone to complications, such as trauma surgery, and avoiding patients who had complex medical problems or were perceived as litigious.


title: Tort reform

text: A few of the changes frequently advocated include limits on punitive damages, limits on non-economic damages, limiting the collateral source doctrine, use of court-appointed expert witnesses, elimination of elections for judges, reducing appeal bond requirements for defendants faced with bankruptcy, "venue reform", which limits the jurisdictions within which one can file a lawsuit, limits on contingency fees, the adoption of the English Rule of "loser pays" (the defeated party must pay both the plaintiff's and the defendant's expenses), and requiring that class action lawsuits with nationwide plaintiffs be tried in federal courts, eliminating awards for pre-judgment interest.


title: Tort reform

text: Many of these measures tend to benefit defendants; others, such as the English rule, sanctions for delay, and early-offer settlement requirements, could have benefits to plaintiffs in some cases.


title: Tort reform

text: Not all tort reform supporters support all proposed tort reforms. For example, there is a split over whether the collateral source doctrine should be abolished, and there is a healthy debate over whether it would be beneficial to further restrict the ability of attorneys to charge contingent fees.


title: Tort reform

text: While tort reform is frequently associated with the Republican Party, both support of and opposition to tort reform is found across the political spectrum in America. Reform of defamation torts, contrary to the general assumption that tort reform is a primarily Republican or conservative issue, is a popular cause among Democrats and liberals more generally who are concerned with lawsuits brought by wealthy corporations and individuals against critics. The United States Supreme Court sometimes weighs in on tort reform debates, but here too, the justices do not always vote according to their predicted ideological stereotypes. In the seminal case of "BMW v. Gore", the court ruled that the Constitution placed limits on punitive damages, with liberal justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens in the majority and Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, some expect the court to be more likely to take cases that could resolve tort reform debates.


title: Tort reform

text: In March and April 2012, the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas was hit with two severe hailstorms. "Texas Monthly" wrote, "Windows were shattered. Hail knocked holes in rooftops. Unfortunate animals were beaten to death." Insurers paid out $556 million in claims to homeowners and $47 million to car owners. After the storms, thousands of lawsuits were filed against insurers and adjusters. The lawsuits were based on allegations of "low-ball payments on claims." As a reaction, a state senator introduced legislation (Senate Bill 1628) to reform hailstorm litigation. The bill represented "an almost visceral fight between the insurance industry, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and trial lawyers whose symbolic leader in storm-damage claims in Steve Mostyn of Houston." By 2014, there had been 2,000 lawsuits filed in Hidalgo County, Texas. "One local attorney had erected a billboard ‘evoking fire and brimstone’ to remind homeowners that they had to file a claim within two years." According to "Texas Monthly", "By May [of 2014], there had been 5,972 lawsuits filed, with Mostyn and members of his firm filing 1,612 of them." Mostyn "had pioneered" lawsuits for storm damage after Hurricane Ike. He made over $86 million in legal fees. In February 2017, a bill was introduced in the Texas state Senate that would aim "at ending hailstorm lawsuit abuse." Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick supported the bill (Senate Bill 10) and said during his State of the State address, "Hailstorm litigation is the newest form of lawsuit abuse." Patrick said that storm litigation rates had risen dramatically, causing insurance companies to increase premiums and reduce coverage. The bill would still allow hailstorm insurance claimants to sue their insurance company. It would allow plaintiffs to sue for either deceptive trade practices or unfair settlement, but not both. According to "SE Texas Record", "The bill also seeks to end barratry in hail litigation, as reports of lawyers employing contractors and insurance adjusters to drum up clients have continued to surface the past several years." The bill would also prevent plaintiffs from suing their individual insurance agent. An identical bill (HB 1774) was introduced in the Texas House of Representatives.


title: Tort reform

text: It is argued that extraordinary damage awards in the United States are a result of the jury system. In federal courts in the United States, the right to a jury trial in most civil cases is entrenched in the Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many state constitutions have similar clauses to protect the right to a jury trial in state court proceedings. This is in stark contrast to continental Europe and the majority of Asian, African, and Latin American jurisdictions in which juries either never existed or were abolished following decolonisation (e.g. in India, Singapore, and most former British colonies in Africa) as an anachronistic institution that routinely introduced societal biases into the judicial process. Even in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where juries are available in criminal cases, they are only permitted tort cases involving defamation, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. Even in these limited areas of tort law, there have been growing concerns about the juries' role. In particular, the disparity between awards in defamation cases (which invariably concern celebrities, politicians and the rich) and awards for personal injuries has been growing. A potential cause for the unpredictability of juries in tort cases is that individual jurors, unlike professional judges, are unfamiliar both with the law and with daily exposure to tragic accidents in tort litigation. When confronted with their first case they are thus likelier to award punitively high damages in order to 'teach' tortfeasors that "tort does not pay".


title: Tort reform

text: The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) claims that "The cost of the U.S. tort system for 2003 was $246 billion, or $845 per citizen or $3,380 for a family of four" and "The Growth of U.S. tort costs have exceeded the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2-3 percentage points in the past 50 years". This claim is based on a 2002 study by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin.


title: Tort reform

text: Opponents of tort reform deny that there has been a "litigation explosion" or "liability crisis", and contend that the changes proposed by tort reform advocates are unjustified. Records maintained by the National Center for State Courts show that population-adjusted tort filings declined from 1992 to 2001. The average change in tort filings was a 15% decrease. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), found that the number of civil trials dropped by 47% between 1992 and 2001. The DOJ also found that the median inflation-adjusted award in all tort cases dropped 56.3% between 1992 and 2001 to $28,000.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocates allege that these numbers are misleading. They claim that most liability costs come from pre-trial settlements, so the number of trials is irrelevant. Supporters further note that the number of "filings" is a misleading statistic, because modern filings are much more likely to be class actions with many more joined claims than the cases of decades ago. They also note that the choice of the 1992 start date is misleading, because the largest increase in the number of tort cases occurred between 1970 and 1992. They also argue that the use of the median, rather than the mean, is a misleading statistic for measuring the magnitude of the litigation problem.


title: Tort reform

text: Supporters frequently base their claims of an "explosion" in the costs of tort litigation based on annual studies by Tillinghast/Towers Perrin, a major consultant to the insurance industry. In 2008, Towers Perrin reported that the cost of liability litigation has outpaced the growth of the GDP growth of 9% in estimated annual tort costs between 1951 and 2007 as opposed to a 7% average annual growth in GDP—representing 2.2% of GDP in 2004 vs. just 0.6% in 1950 and 1.3% in 1970. More recent research from the same source has found that tort costs as a percentage of GDP dropped between 2001 and 2009, and are now at their lowest level since 1984.


title: Tort reform

text: The Tillinghast/Towers Perrin study has been criticised by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank: "Although TTP's estimate is widely cited by journalists, politicians, and business lobbyists, it is impossible to know what the company is actually measuring in its calculation of tort costs, and impossible to verify its figures, because TTP will not share its data or its methodology, which it claims are 'proprietary.'" Tort reform supporters claim that the Towers Perrin numbers are underestimates in many ways.


title: Tort reform

text: In 1972, New Zealand introduced the first universal no-fault insurance scheme for all accident victims, which provides benefit from the government-run Accident Compensation Corporation without respect to negligence. Its goal is to achieve equality of compensation, while reducing costs of litigation.


title: Tort reform

text: Australia and the United Kingdom drew up proposals for similar no-fault schemes, but they were never implemented.


title: Tort reform

text: Critics of tort reform contend that the real purpose of the proposed changes is to shield businesses, especially large corporations, from having to pay just compensation to consumers, patients and clients for damages incurred from fraud, negligence, medical malpractice or other legitimate tort claims. They contend that limitations on punitive damages and other restrictions on plaintiff's traditional rights will reduce corporate accountability. Because corporations typically engage in a cost-benefit analysis before considering whether to stop a wrongful action (such as polluting or not enacting proper measures for safety), they contend that corporations will decide that the cost of changing a wrongful practice would be greater than the cost of continuing it, unless there is the chance that the cost of continuing will be made greater by a successful lawsuit. In this view, the prospect of paying a small damage award would have little or no effect in correcting the wrongdoing, and would essentially allow the corporation to continue an unsafe practice unless state or federal regulators interceded.


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform supporters argue that this precisely describes the problem: lawsuits over socially beneficial practices increase the costs of those practices, and thus improperly deter innovation and other economically desirable activity. They further suggest that small businesses are hurt worse by the threat of litigation than large corporations are, because the legal expenses from a single lawsuit can bankrupt a small businessperson.


title: Tort reform

text: Proponents of the existing tort system contend that tort reform advocates exaggerate the costs and ignore the benefits of the current tort system. For example, consumer advocates and legal scholars contend that lawsuits encourage corporations to produce safer products, discourage them from selling dangerous products such as asbestos, and encourage more safe and effective medical practices. Beginning in the early 1980s, Professor Stephen Teret and other faculty at The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health argued that tort litigation was an important tool for the prevention of injuries. While Teret acknowledged that the primary purpose of tort lawsuits usually is to recover money damages for the injured persons, as compensation for their medical and other costs, he identified several ways that litigation can also enhance safety for everyone, including:


title: Tort reform

text: In contrast, a 2006 study by Emory University professors Paul Rubin and Joanna M. Shepherd argued that tort reform actually saved tens of thousands of lives because "lower expected liability costs result in lower prices, enabling consumers to buy more risk-reducing products such as medicines, safety equipment, and medical services, and as consumers take additional precautions to avoid accidents." They also concluded that "caps on noneconomic damages, a higher evidence standard for punitive damages, product liability reform, and prejudgment interest reform lead to fewer accidental deaths, while reforms to the collateral source rule lead to increased deaths."


title: Tort reform

text: Tort reform advocates cite a 1990 study of auto safety improvements by Harvard University professor John D. Graham for a conference at the Brookings Institution found that


title: Tort reform

text: However, design improvements to increase safety cannot be used against manufacturers in court to show that the product was unsafe. Rule 407 of the Federal Rule of Evidence specifically states, "evidence of the subsequent measures is not admissible to prove: negligence; culpable conduct; a defect in a product or its design; or a need for a warning or instruction." This means that evidence of changing the design of a product after an accident cannot be used in court against the manufacturer to prove it is liable for the damage.


title: Tort reform

text: It is true, however, that the evidence could be introduced to prove "ownership, control, or the feasibility of precautionary measures." But, a lawyer representing the manufacturer could concede ownership and control, and thus prevent the evidence from being introduced for that purpose. And a lawyer for the manufacturer could seek to prevent the introduction of the evidence to show feasibility of precautionary measures if he/she argued such evidence would violate Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of evidence. Rule 403 bars evidence that is relevant, but overly prejudicial.


title: Tort reform

text: Another presenter at the same Brooking Institution conference, Murray Mackay of the University of Birmingham, claimed safety (and other) innovations were inhibited by fear of lawsuits:


title: Tort reform

text: The effect of tort reform on medical outcomes has been studied with mixed results. A 2008 study found worse childbirth outcomes for mothers and infants in states with caps on non-economic damages. The Klick/Stratman paper cited above found several effects of specific tort reforms on infant mortality that lost statistical significance when looked at more closely—that is, correlation with other state-specific factors wiped out apparent increases in mortality from joint and several liability reform but also wiped out apparent decreases in mortality from capping economic damages and restrictions on contingency fees. The only tort reform effect that proved robust was a negative effect of collateral source reform on black infant mortality.


title: Tort reform

text: Proponents of tort reform counter by pointing to data from New Zealand, which has abolished its medical tort system but has medical error rates close to those in the United States. Tort reform advocates, including Paul Offit, also argue that litigation has driven from the US marketplace many useful and safe medical advances, including Bendectin (the withdrawal of which has led to a doubling of hospital admissions for morning sickness) and vaccines for Lyme disease and Group B Streptococcal disease, which kills one hundred infants per year.


title: Tort reform

text: Some supporters of tort reform posit that reforms can significantly reduce the costs of doing business, thus benefiting consumers and the public in the long run. Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter stated: "product liability is so extreme and uncertain as to retard innovation. The legal and regulatory climate places firms in constant jeopardy of costly and ... lengthy product suits. The existing approach goes beyond any reasonable need to protect consumers, as other nations have demonstrated through more pragmatic approaches." A commission by the American Insurance Association and co-authored by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz to look at the effects of bankruptcies from asbestos litigation on workers in the asbestos industry; the study estimated that 52,000 jobs were lost.


title: Tort reform

text: Critics of the tort reform movement dispute the claim that the current tort system has a significant impact on national or global economies. The Economic Policy Institute wrote that the effect on the economy of job loss resulting from lawsuits is negligible: In an April 2002 paper, the CEA (President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors) examined the economic impacts of the tort system in somewhat greater depth. But that paper, too, failed to demonstrate any employment effects of the tort system and made no prediction about the impact of tort law change. Even if we assume that asbestos liability legislation could somehow have prevented the loss of 2,500 jobs per year resulting from asbestos-related bankruptcies (by, for example, limiting compensation for non-economic damages to the victims or their survivors, or by denying awards of punitive damages), the effect on overall employment and the national unemployment rate in an economy with more than 130 million payroll jobs would have been imperceptible (a change of less than two-thousandths of 1%).


title: Tort reform

text: Critics of tort reform also contend that the real purpose of the proposed changes is to shield businesses, especially large corporations, from having to pay just compensation to consumers, patients and clients for the harm incurred from fraud, negligence, medical malpractice, product liability or other legitimate tort claims.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center has close ties to public and private agencies, and regularly meets with elected officials of the United States and foreign governments and with diplomats and heads of state. It is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center is named in honor of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal had nothing to do with its operation or activities other than giving its name, but he remained supportive of it. "I have received many honors in my lifetime," Wiesenthal once said, "when I die, these honors will die with me. But the Simon Wiesenthal Center will live on as my legacy."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center is headed by Hier, its dean and founder, Rabbi Abraham Cooper the associate dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda and Rabbi Meyer May, the executive director. Hier's wife, Marlene Hier, is the Director of Membership development. Shimon Samuels is the Director for International Relations.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in Los Angeles. However, there are also international offices located in New York City, Miami, Toronto, Jerusalem, Paris, Chicago, and Buenos Aires.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: According to Charity Navigator the center's total revenue and expenses was $25,359,129 and $26,181,569 in 2018. 52.8% of the revenue came from contributions, gifts and grants, 31.4% from fundraising events and 15.8% from government grants.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In its 2013 survey of Jewish charity compensation, the Jewish-American magazine "The Forward" singled out Hier as "by far the most overpaid CEO" earning double the amount of what would be expected. He and his family members received nearly $1.3 million in 2012 from the center. In 2017, "The Forward" again rated Hier as the most overpaid Jewish charity leader with a total salary of $818,148. Family members of his earned over $600,000 from the organization.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Hier was born and raised in New York City and became an ordained rabbi at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School. At the age of 22 he moved to Vancouver, Canada and became the rabbi of the city's orthodox synagogue. He became friends with the mostly non-Orthodox Belzberg family who would help him fund the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In 1977, he moved to Los Angeles and bought a building on Pico Boulevard using a $500,000 donation from Samuel Belzberg which was matched with another half a million from Toronto-based real estate maven Joseph Tannenbaum. In the building he founded a yeshiva (religious Jewish school, today known as Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles) and a small Holocaust museum, with Belzberg as founding chairman. Famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was convinced to bless the museum with his name. Edward Norden, writing for "Commentary", dismissed the museum as "a low-tech affair fashioned by and for Jews and holding nothing against the Gentiles back—an outsized portrait of Pius XII was given a prominent place among pictures of those who ‘didn’t care.’ The message was that Jews have enemies, murderous enemies, and should look out."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Hier, a skillful fundraiser, networked with the Hollywood célébrité, local politicians, and businessmen and raised large sums of money which he used to expand his operations.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In 1985, the center was incorporated separately from the yeshiva in order to bid for state funding for the construction of a bigger Holocaust museum. This bid was vociferously opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League and secular Jewish organizations due to the unclear separation between the yeshiva and the center. At the time, the same persons sat on the board of both the center and the yeshiva.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Another reason for the opposition was that Los Angeles already had a Holocaust museum; the Martyrs' Memorial Museum (later renamed to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust) and Hier's bid was seen as undue competition by parts of Los Angeles Jewish community which also criticized him for exploiting the memory of the Holocaust. Fred Diament, president of the Holocaust survivor group 1939 Club who helped establish the competing Martyrs' Memorial, blasted the organization in an interview with the "Los Angeles Times" in 1985:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of the Hillel Jewish Student Union at UCLA, in an interview with the same paper in 1990 claimed that he confronted Hier about the unwelcome competition:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Despite the opposition and by using the connections with the Los Angeles elite Hier had formented, he secured a grant for $5 million from the state. According to Karl Katz, designer of the museum, over 10,000 Californians sent messages to the state Senate in support of the grant. The Center later netted an additional $5 million through a bill introduced by Democratic Representative Henry Waxman.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: One reason for the approval of the funding was that Hier in 1985 had promised to commemorate the Armenian genocide in the museum. California's governor at the time George Deukmejian was of Armenian descent and the legislation which approved the funding explicitly referred to the Armenian genocide: "which have so adversely affected the lives and well-being of so many human beings, through such mass murder as the Armenian genocide and the Nazi Holocaust and other genocides." In interviews Hier repeatedly assured people that the Armenian genocide would be featured. This drew the ire of some parts of Los Angeles Jewish community because of the precarious situation for Jews in Turkey, which doesn't recognize the Armenian genocide. Hier took the position that the Armenian genocide did happen and that it should be included, regardless of any diplomatic issues. Michael Berenbaum of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington praised Hier for not allowing the "rewriting of history to the exclusion of Armenian genocide." But to the Armenian community's dismay, the exhibits commemorating the Armenian genocide were removed in 1997.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The museum finally opened in 1993, in an 8-story building on Pico Boulevard opposite to Hier's yeshiva. It was given the English name the Museum of Tolerance and the Hebrew name Beit HaShoah, the House of the Holocaust. The total construction costs amounted to some $50 million, with the majority of the funding coming from donations and $10 million from government funding. Today the museum hosts 350,000 visitors annually, among them 110,000 schoolchildren. Branches of the Museum have been built in New York and Jerusalem.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The Center and its Museum of Tolerance is one of many partner organizations of the Austrian Service Abroad (Auslandsdienst) and the corresponding Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst).


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: From the very start, the center grew rapidly. In 1985 the museum claimed to have 25,000 visitors annually and the center 273,000 contributing members, including 47,000 Californians. Between 1984 and 1990 the center published seven volumes of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, that focused on the scholarly study of the Holocaust. In 1990, it had become one of the largest Jewish organizations in America with 380,000 members. The same year, Sheldon Teitelbaum and Tom Waldman profiled Hier in the "Los Angeles Times", describing him as the "unorthodox rabbi", and characterized his success as follows:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Between 1984 and 1990 the center published seven volumes of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, that focused on the scholarly study of the Holocaust, broadly defined. This series is .


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The archives of the center in Los Angeles have grown to a collection of about 50,000 volumes and non-print materials. Moreover, the archives incorporates photographs, diaries, letters, artifacts, artwork and rare books, which are available to researchers, students and the general public.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In 2005, the New York branch of the Museum of Tolerance opened to the public under the name "New York Tolerance Center", providing tolerance training to police officers, prosecutors, schoolteachers and teenagers. In its first four years, over 10,000 people, mostly law enforcement officers, underwent tolerance training at the facility.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In April 2016, the New York City Council stopped funding the Tolerance Center following the arrest of a former board member who has been accused of raising $20 million from a city correctional officers' union through kickbacks. The Center stated that the member had resigned from its board on June 15, and that it was unaware of any unethical or illegal activities regarding its donors.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: A branch museum in Jerusalem, expected to be completed in 2021, sparked protests from the city's Muslim population. The museum is being built on a thousand-year-old Muslim graveyard called the Mamilla Cemetery, much of which has already been paved over. The complaints were rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, leading to a demonstration by hundreds of people in November 2008. On November 19, 2008, a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a letter to the Wiesenthal Center urging it to halt the construction of the museum on the site.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery. The courts ruled that the compound had been neglected as a spiritual site by the Muslim community, in effect not functioning as a cemetery for decades (while simultaneously used for other purposes), and was thus "mundra", i.e. abandoned, under Muslim laws.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center used to hunt Nazi war criminals, often in collaboration with Simon Wiesenthal. Its first claim to fame came in 1979 when it successfully petitioned West Germany to revoke a statute of limitations on Nazi war criminals.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal Center and he is also the author of its annual (since 2001) "Status Report" on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which includes a "most wanted" list of Nazi war criminals.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the name of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities. The names were the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive launched that year by the center to track down former Nazis for World War II-era crimes before they die of old age.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: According to the center, about 2,000 Nazi war criminals obtained Canadian citizenship by providing false documents, but the Canadian government largely ignored their presence until the mid-1980s. They also claim that when they were exposed the government made their deportations harder to carry out. One example is Vladimir Katriuk, who the center said was involved in the Khatyn massacre in 1943 and who came to Canada in 1951. Katriuk, who denied the allegations, died in 2015 before he could be extradited to Russia to face charges.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Moriah Films, also known as the Jack and Pearl Resnick Film Division of the SWC, was created to produce theatrical documentaries to educate both national and international audiences, with a focus on contemporary human rights and ethical issues and Jewish experience. Two films produced by the division, "Genocide" and "The Long Way Home" have received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Moriah Films has worked with numerous actors to narrate their productions. Including but not limited to Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Douglas, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Stewart, and Sandra Bullock.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Since 2010, the center publishes an annual lists of individuals who they consider to have uttered the most antisemitic or anti-Israel "slurs" for the year. The rankings have often been criticized for labeling criticism of Israel anti-Semitism. Examples include Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström's call for an investigation into "extra-judicial killings" by Israeli police during the Knife intifada in 2015 which the center ranked as the eight worst slur that year, and Berlin's mayor Michael Müller who the center considered placing on the list in 2016 for "mainstreaming the BDS movement that never contributes to the daily life of Palestinians. BDS is widely recognized as anti-Semitic."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Below follows an incomplete list of organizations, individuals and phenomena who featured on the center's lists per year.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center hosts dinners during which it awards people the prizes Humanitarian Award and the less presiguous Medal of Valor. It is one of the center's main fundraising events. The winners of the Humanitarian Award for each year were:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Controversies include aiding Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder in a lawsuit against the Washington City Paper.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Hier was skeptical of the reunification of Germany because he feared that anti-Semitism might reemerge in a reunified Germany. On February 9, 1990, he sent a letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl and in it, he expressed his fears: "I am not among those in the cheering section applauding the rush towards German reunification." In his reply to Hier's letter three weeks later, Kohl expressed his disappointment "at how little many opponents of German unity take note of the fact that for decades now especially the young generation in the free part of Germany has been informed without any taboos of the causes and consequences of the National Socialist tyranny: in schools, universities, church or other educational institutions and the media." He added that East Germans are "immune to any new totalitarian temptations" and he also emphasized the fact that hate crimes are punishable with fines or prison sentences. However, the last communist premier of East Germany, Hans Modrow, wrote a letter to Hier and in it, he wrote that Hier's fears were "definitely justified in the light of the formation of a multi-party landscape." Hier welcomed the frankness of Modrow's reply, adding that "[t]he legacy of the Holocaust in a united Germany should be institutionalized. It should be on the conscience of every German from cradle to grave in a formalized way."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Later, in the early stages of the First Gulf War, the center released a report which accused Western companies of complicity in Iraq's chemical weapons program. The report said that 207 companies, 86 of which were West German, had supplied Iraq with chemical weapons components as late as 1989. German companies had sold Zyklon-B to Iraq and they also helped it build gas chambers - modeled on those which were used by the Nazis - to exterminate Iranian prisoners of war, according to the report. Kenneth R. Timmerman, who prepared the report, wrote: "The picture beginning to emerge is of a vast Iraqi pillage of the treasures of West German technology, aided and abetted by the West German authorities in their lust to increase the nation's export earnings." Despite the allegations in the report, fully endorsed by Hier, the relationship between him and Kohl remained cordial.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center is very critical of the annual World Economic Forum-alternative the World Social Forum. In 2002, the center's Shimon Samuels published in essay titled "With a Clenched First and an Outstretched Arm: Antisemitism, Globalization, and the NGO Challenge in the International Area" in the journal "Jewish Political Studies Review" run by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. In the essay, he claimed that the WSF was an amalgamation of "anti-Globalism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism." Since then, the center has on several occasions referred to WSF as an "Anti-Israel Hatefest."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center was a harsh critic of president Barack Obama's Middle Eastern policy. In May 2011, Obama proposed that "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" which implied that Israel should withdraw from most of the territory it occupied in the Six-day war in 1967. The proposal drew ire from the center which claimed that such a withdrawal "would be Auschwitz borders for Israel," alluding to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In December 2016 it ranked the Obama administrations refusal to veto a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction as the most anti-semitic/anti-Israel incident that year. The center wrote "The most stunning 2016 U.N. attack on Israel was facilitated by President Obama when the U.S. abstained on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In 2017, Hier faced harsh criticism from the Jewish-American community for accepting an invite by the Trump campaign to hold a prayer at the president elect's inauguration. Hier defended his decision by saying that he had offered his blessings to presidential candidates before. That didn't placate his critics who claimed that Trump was a different kind of president who targeted minorities and had at times used tropes considered by many to be antisemitic. Criticism came from Peter Beinart writing in "The Forward" that "they will reserve a special mention for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Marvin Hier. Last week, Trump rewarded him by asking him to offer an inaugural prayer."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In an interview in The Times of Israel in 2019 Hier praised Trump for his decision to relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli territory: "Speaking as a Jew, so many presidents talked about making Jerusalem the capital of Israel. They made nice speeches, but in the end they couldn’t deliver. Trump delivered."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center has also at times criticized Trump. In January 2018 it asked the president to withdraw his statements about wanting more immigration from places from Norway, rather than from "shithole countries" like Haiti and those in Africa.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Meir and the Kushner family who are Trump's in-laws (related via Jared Kushner) have known each other for decades. The Kushner family has made several large donations to the center via the Charles and Seryl Kushner Family Foundation.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In 2013, the SWC released a report on the BDS movement which calls for boycotting Israel until it stops the occupation and discrimination against Palestinian citizens, and allows the Palestinian refugees to return. The report claimed that BDS is a "thinly-disguised effort to coordinate and complement the violent strategy of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim 'rejectionists' who have refused to make peace with Israel for over six decades, and to pursue a high-profile campaign composed of anti-Israel big lies to help destroy the Jewish State by any and all means". The report also said that BDS attacks Israel's entire economy and society, holding all (Jewish) Israelis as collectively guilty.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: On March 8, 2007, the head of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stanley Trevor Samuels, was convicted (and later acquitted in an appeal) of defamation by a Paris courthouse for accusing the French-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) of sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In its filing of the suit, the CBSP labelled the accusations "ridiculous", stating that its charitable work consisted of providing aid to some 3,000 Palestinian orphans. The court ruled that documents produced by the Wiesenthal Center established no "direct or indirect participation in financing terrorism" on the part of the CBSP, and that the allegations were "seriously defamatory".


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In the spring of 2006, Douglas Kelly, the editor of the Canadian "National Post" found a column by Iranian in exile, Amir Taheri, alleging that the Iranian parliament might force minorities to wear identifiable clothing. Kelly phoned the center and spoke with Abraham Cooper and Hier who both confirmed the story as "absolutely true." On May 18, 2006, one day before Kelly's story was to be published, the center wrote a letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the international community to pressure Iran to drop the measure. The letter characterized Taheri as "a well known and well respected analyst on Iranian affairs" and claimed that "a consensus has developed regarding color badges to be worn by non-Moslems: yellow for Jews, red for Christians, blue for Zoroastrians and other colors for other religions." At that point, neither Cooper nor Hier had actually tried to verify the story.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The day after, Taylor Marsh called Aaron Breitbart, a researcher at the center to verify the story. He too said that the story was "very true" and "very scary." He added that Hier had been on the phone for four hours to confirm the story, something Marsh found odd and she wondered how the confirmation could have taken four hours.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The same day the story was published, several Iranian experts doubted its veracity and it was soon found out to have been a complete fabrication by Taheri. The newspaper that published the story retracted it and apologized for it, but the center never did apologize and refused to admit any mistake on their part.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In January 2004, Shimon Samuels of the Paris branch of the center published an open letter to the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, requesting the "Irish Museum of the Year Award" recently given to the Hunt Museum in Limerick to be retracted, until the conclusion of a demanded inquiry into the provenance of a significant number of items in the collection. In the letter he alleged that the founders of the museum, John and Gertrude Hunt, had close ties to the head of the Nazi Party (NSDP-AO) in Ireland, among others, and that the British had suspected the couple of espionage during the Second world war. The center also claimed, 'The "Hunt Museum Essential Guide" describes only 150 of the over 2000 objects in the Museum's collection and, notably, without providing information on their provenance – data that all museums are now required to provide in accordance with international procedure.'


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: This essentially accused the Hunt Museum in Limerick of keeping art and artifacts looted during the Second World War, which was described as "unprofessional in the extreme" by the expert Lynn Nicholas that cleared the museum of wrongdoing. The claim was taken so seriously that the examination was supervised by the prestigious Royal Irish Academy, whose 2006 report is available online. McAleese, who had been written to by the center, then criticized Samuels for "a tissue of lies", adding that the center had diminished the name of Simon Wiesenthal. The center said that it had prepared its own 150-page report in May 2008 that would be published after vetting by its lawyers, but had not done so as of November 2008. The report was finally made on December 12, 2008.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The Simon Wiesenthal Center opposed the construction of Park51, a Muslim community center in Manhattan in New York, because the planned location was only two blocks away from Ground Zero where the September 11 attacks had taken place. The executive director of the center's Museum of Tolerance in Manhattan, Meyer May said it was "insensitive" to locate the centre there. "The Jewish Week" noted that the center itself was accused of intolerance when it built a museum in Jerusalem on land that was once a Muslim cemetery, after gaining approval from Israeli courts.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The Center criticized Hugo Chávez for various statements, including a statement in his Christmas speech in 2005:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The reference was to Simon Bolívar, a South American folk hero who led several countries to independence from Spain in the 19th century. But the center in its press release omitted the reference to Bolívar and quoted Chávez as follows: "the world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, have taken over all the wealth of the world." It asserted that he was referring to Jews, and denounced the remarks as antisemitic by way of his allusions to wealth. The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela defended Chávez, stating that he was speaking not of Jews, but of South America's white oligarchy. The center's representative in Latin America replied that Chávez's mention of Christ-killers was "ambiguous at best" and that the "decision to criticize Chávez had been taken after careful consideration".


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center has on two occasions criticized bands for wearing attire resembling Nazi uniforms or using Nazi symbolism.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In 2011, Abraham Cooper, condemned the Japanese band Kishidan for wearing uniforms resembling those of the SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party. The band wore military-inspired uniforms, adorned with the German medal Iron Cross and Nazi insignia such as the death skull and SS eagle on MTV Japan's primetime program "Mega Vector." Cooper said in a written protest to the band's management company Sony Music Artists, MTV Japan and the Japanese entertainment group Avex (Kishidan's label at the time being and also the current one) that "there is no excuse for such an outrage" and that "many young Japanese are "woefully uneducated" about the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany and Japan during the second world war, but global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better".


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: As a result, Sony Music Artists and Avex issued a joint statement of public apology on their respective websites.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: On November 11, 2018, Cooper denounced the South Korean band BTS with the following statement: "Flags appearing on stage at their concert were eerily similar to the Nazi Swastika. It goes without saying that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology." The band's management responded to the charge and offered their "sincerest apologies" but claimed that the similarities with Nazi symbols were unintentional.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor the center is named after, remained a strong suppoter of Hier and his center. In an interview with the "Los Angeles Times" in 1990 he said: "The man is never quiet. He is always trying to do things no one else has ever tried. I know that he makes other Jewish organizations nervous. This center is young and aggressive. I hope this aggressivity will survive me."


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Wendy Brown in her 2009 dissertation criticized the use of tolerance for what she identify as a "Zionist political agenda of the Wiesenthal Center", and the museum, for offering a one-sided view of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: Lawrence Swaim in 2012 criticized the center for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and for lying, comparing it to its eponym Simon Wiesenthal:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: In "Beyond Chutzpah", Norman Finkelstein accuses the center of exaggerating and fabricating anti-Semitism for monetary gain:


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center's 2021 edition of its "Global Anti-Semitism Top Ten" list included in seventh place the entire country of Germany, particularly , the commissioner against antisemitism of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, alleging that he had liked a 2019 Facebook post equating Zionism with Nazism. Blume told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview that he has no recollection of liking any such post, and that it was possible that the post had been edited after he had liked it; he also described himself as a "friend and ally" of Israel who believes that "Zionism is fully legitimate" and that "anti-Zionism equates [to] antisemitism, pure and simple". The European Union's coordinator for combatting antisemitism, , said that by including Blume on its list, the center "discredit[s] the invaluable legacy of Simon Wiesenthal". Blume's inclusion was also criticised by representatives of Baden-Württemberg's Jewish community and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.


title: Simon Wiesenthal Center

text: The center is featured in the movie "Freedom Writers." An exterior view of the center is given, and there are scenes inside the museum, showing simulation entrances to gas chambers in death camps.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: The flag of the Republic of Kosovo (, ) was adopted by the Assembly of Kosovo immediately following the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo of 17 February 2008. The flag design emerged from an international competition, organized by the United Nations-backed Kosovo Unity Team, which attracted almost one thousand entries. The winning design was proposed by Muhamer Ibrahimi. It shows six white stars in an arc above a golden map of Kosovo, all on a blue field. The stars symbolize Kosovo's six major ethnic groups: Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Turks, Romani, and Gorani.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Before the declaration of independence, Kosovo had come under the administration of the United Nations and used the UN flag for official purposes. The Serb and Albanian populations had used their own national flags since the 1945–1992 Socialist Yugoslavia period. The Serbs use a red, blue and white tricolor, which also forms the basis of the flag of Serbia. The Albanian population have used the flag of Albania since the 1960s as their ethnic flag. Both these flags can still be seen in use within Kosovo.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Serbia has not recognized the independence of Kosovo and claims the area as the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. Unlike the case of the autonomous province of Vojvodina, the Serbian authorities have not adopted a unique flag to represent this claimed province, using the flag of Serbia instead.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: The flag of Kosovo has a blue background, charged with a map of Kosovo and six stars. The stars are officially meant to symbolize Kosovo's six major ethnic groups: Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Turks, Romani (often grouped with the Ashkali and Egyptians) and Gorani. Unofficially, the stars are sometimes said to represent the six regions, which according to Albanian ultra-nationalist ideology, make up Greater Albania: Albania, Kosovo, western parts of North Macedonia, parts of northern Greece, parts of Montenegro and Preševo Valley in southern Serbia. The flag of Kosovo resembles that of Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of colors and shapes used (white stars and yellow shape of the country on a blue field). The flag is unusual among national flags in using a map as a design element; the flag of Cyprus is the only other to do so. The ratio of the flag was announced during the contest as 2:3; with the passage of a diplomatic protocol law in Kosovo in April 2009, the ratio was set as 1:1.4 (5:7 when put in whole numbers). The colors and construction of the Kosovo flag have not yet been defined; however, an official government document does give the colors of the flag using CMYK. The unofficial RGB values of the flag have been manually extracted since 2009. The use of the Kosovo flag is regulated by the law: "Law on the Use of Kosovo State Symbols". However, the Serbian government objects to the use of the Kosovo flag at international meetings and gatherings.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Serbia does not recognize the 2008 secession of Kosovo and considers it a United Nations-governed entity within its sovereign territory, the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, as defined by the 2006 Constitution of Serbia.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Even months after Kosovo's declaration of independence, the Serbian flag was still seen at official government buildings until officially replaced by the Kosovo government. Flags of Serbia and Serbian Orthodox Church were used in protests against Kosovo independence and still can be seen in Serb-majority areas in the north.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: However, a person was sentenced by a panel of EULEX judges on 19 November 2009, for inciting hatred by raising a Serbian flag on a mosque in the southern part of Mitrovica (among other charges of discord/intolerance and attempted aggravated murder of a police officer).


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Until 2008, Kosovo did not have a flag of its own. However, during different periods of history, different flags were flown in Kosovo. Before 1969, the only flags that could legally fly over Kosovo (then an autonomous province) were those of SFR Yugoslavia and SR Serbia. If a nationalist flag were flown, such as Albanian, Serbian or Croatian, a person could go to prison for doing so.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: In 1969, the Kosovar Albanian population was able to use a variant of the Albanian flag as its ethnic flag. However, the flag had to be charged with a red star, since this was a common symbol of the Yugoslav nation. Even without this requirement, the flag of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania at the time had a red star, outlined in gold, above the double headed eagle. Later on, different nationalities in Kosovo could use their own national flags in accordance with legislation.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Before the death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and the breakup of SFR Yugoslavia, there were calls for the Albanian flag to be banned because residents in Kosovo did not want to live under a foreign flag. This sentiment culminated in the "Petition of the 2016", which called for, among other items, a greater statehood status for Serbia and the removal of all Albanian symbols. The Serbian side also began to remove the red star from the Yugoslav flag, using it for protests to counterbalance the Albanian population and to promote a Greater Serbia.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: When Kosovo was under the administration of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the UN flag was flown in Kosovo for official purposes. The Constitutional Framework for Self Government in Kosovo, promulgated in May 2001, allowed institutions to use approved symbols if authorized by UNMIK.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Specific flags and emblems were authorized for used by the Kosovo Police Service, Kosovo Protection Corps and the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government. Some municipalities in Kosovo also adopted official symbols during the period of administration by UNMIK. The NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR, also used a distinctive flag during this period.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: However, many Kosovo Albanians usually used the Albanian flag. The Albanian flag was also used on public buildings, even though it was against UN regulations. Regulations stated only the UN flag and other authorized flags, like those of institutions and cities, could fly on public buildings. If the Albanian flag was flown, then the Serbian flag was to have been flown too, according to these regulations. However, this was rarely done in practice and the flag of Albania was ever-present in Kosovo during the UNMIK period.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Prior to the declaration of independence, Kosovo used a flag featuring a map of Kosovo against a blue background, similar to the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the flag of Cyprus.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: A competition for a new flag, held in June 2007, received 993 entries. Under the terms of UN talks, all such symbols would have to reflect the multi-ethnic nature of Kosovo, avoiding the use of the Albanian or Serbian double-headed eagles or the use of solely red and black or red, blue and white color schemes. Red and black are the colors used on the Albanian flag; red, blue and white are the main colors used on the Serbian flag. Additionally, all entries had to be rectangular and have a 2:3 proportion. The Kosovo Symbols Commission eventually selected three designs, which were then voted on by the Assembly of Kosovo (with a two-thirds majority required for approval), when independence was declared after the status talks. The three proposals selected were forwarded to the Assembly on 4 February 2008.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Representatives of the people of Kosovo voted on 17 February 2008 to use a variant of the first proposal. The modified version has an additional star, makes the stars equal in size, switches the colors of the stars and map, makes the map bigger, and arranges the stars in a curve above the map.


title: Flag of Kosovo

text: Ibrahim Rugova, the first president of Kosovo, introduced the "flag of Dardania" on October 29, 2000. The flag was blue, inscribed with a red disc with a golden ring. Inside the red disc is the Albanian eagle. The eagle is holding a ribbon with the legend "Dardania" inscribed. This flag did not gain much popularity, Dardania is the name of an ancient region in the same general area as Kosovo. It was occasionally used at cultural and sports events during the UNMIK period and was also used at Rugova's funeral to cover his coffin. It was used as a presidential standard and by the two Rugovan political parties, the Democratic League of Kosovo and the Democratic League of Dardania. The flag of Dardania is shown as the Presidential Flag on the Kosovo presidency website, making it official. Since the election of Vjosa Osmani as the President of Kosovo, the Dardania Flag has again featured heavily in the institution of the presidency.


title: Ronni Hawk

text: Ronni Hawk is an American actress. She is known for playing Rachel Diaz in the Disney Channel comedy series "Stuck in the Middle", and for playing Olivia on the Netflix comedy series "On My Block".


title: Ronni Hawk

text: Hawk began dancing at the age of five. When she turned twelve, she began to appear in various commercials. She soon began modeling in Florida until her coach suggested she expand into acting, so she and her family moved to Los Angeles to pursue roles.


title: Ronni Hawk

text: After starring in a series of short films, in 2016, Hawk landed the role of Rachel Diaz in the Disney Channel series "Stuck in the Middle", a role she found relatable as she herself came from a large family. She was part of the main cast for the first two seasons, then part of the way through the series' third season, she left the show with her character having left to attend college in Paris while doing a fashion internship.


title: Ronni Hawk

text: In 2018, Hawk was cast as Olivia in the Netflix series "On My Block", which she played during its first season. In the same year, she appeared as Tiffany in an episode of the crime-drama series "S.W.A.T".


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX Corporation is an American holding company focused on rail transportation and real estate in North America, among other industries. The company was established in 1980 as part of the Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries merger. The various railroads of the former Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries that are now owned by CSX Corporation were eventually merged into a single line in 1986 and it became known as CSX Transportation. CSX Corporation currently has a number of subsidiaries beyond CSX Transportation. Previously based in Richmond, Virginia after the merger, the corporation moved its headquarters to Jacksonville, Florida, in 2003. CSX is a Fortune 500 company.


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX Transportation is a Class I railroad operating in the eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles (34,000 km) of track.


title: CSX Corporation

text: As of December 30, 2016, CSX Transportation served population centers in 23 states east of the Mississippi River, the District of Columbia and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Also as of that date, it had access to over 70 ocean, river and lake port terminals along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway.


title: CSX Corporation

text: Conrail was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name (Consolidated Rail Corporation), and while it no longer operates trains it continues to do business as an asset management and network services provider in three Shared Assets Areas that were excluded from the division of its operations during its acquisition by CSX Corporation and the Norfolk Southern Railway.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The federal government created Conrail to take over the lines of multiple bankrupt carriers, including the Penn Central Transportation Company and Erie Lackawanna Railway. After railroad regulations were lifted by the 4R Act and the Staggers Act, Conrail began to turn a profit in the 1980s and was privatized in 1987. The two remaining Class I railroads in the East, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), agreed in 1997 to acquire the system and split it into two roughly-equal parts (alongside three residual shared-assets areas), returning rail freight competition to the Northeast by essentially undoing the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad that created Penn Central. Following approval by the Surface Transportation Board, CSX and NS took control in August 1998, and on June 1, 1999 began operating their respective portions of Conrail.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The old company remains a jointly-owned subsidiary, with CSX and NS owning respectively 42 percent and 58 percent of its stock, corresponding to how much of Conrail's assets they acquired. Each parent, however, has an equal voting interest. The primary asset retained by Conrail is ownership of the three Shared Assets Areas in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Both CSX and NS have the right to serve all shippers in these areas, paying Conrail for the cost of maintaining and improving trackage. They also make use of Conrail to perform switching and terminal services within the areas, but not as a common carrier, since contracts are signed between shippers and CSX or NS. Conrail also retains various support facilities including maintenance-of-way and training, as well as a 51 percent share in the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The Winston-Salem Southbound Railway is a short-line railroad jointly held by CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway, which provides it with equipment. It connects with Norfolk Southern at the north end in Winston-Salem, CSX at the south end in Wadesboro, and in between with NS at Lexington and Whitney, the subsidiary High Point, Thomasville and Denton Railroad at High Rock, and the Aberdeen, Carolina and Western Railway at Norwood. Originally owned jointly by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Norfolk and Western Railway, predecessors to CSX and NS, it was completed in November 1910.


title: CSX Corporation

text: Commodities commonly carried by the railroad are grain, sand, gravel, stone, forest products, paper products, coal, coke, cement, clay fertilizer, aluminum, chemicals, iron, and steel. Its principal shippers are Corn Products Company of Winston-Salem, a manufacturer of corn syrup and related products, and Owens Brockway Glass Company of Eller, a manufacturer of glass products.


title: CSX Corporation

text: Formerly Four Rivers Transportation, Inc., P&L is based in Wilmington, Delaware. It is a railroad holding company in the United States. It is jointly owned by the management of the P&L Railway, as well as CSX Corporation, the latter of which holds a majority.


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX is organized into two operating regions: the West Region and the East Region. Each primary region is divided into two sub-regions:


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX Corporation was formed on November 1, 1980, by combining the railroads of the former Chessie System with Seaboard Coast Line Industries.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The name came about during merger talks between Chessie System and SCL, commonly called "Chessie" and "Seaboard". The company chairmen said it was important for the new name to include neither of those names because it was a partnership. Employees were asked for suggestions, most of which consisted of combinations of the initials. At the same time, a temporary shorthand name was needed for discussions with the Interstate Commerce Commission. "CSC" was chosen but belonged to a trucking company in Virginia. "CSM" (for "Chessie-Seaboard Merger") was also taken. The lawyers decided to use "CSX", and the name stuck. In the public announcement, it was said that "CSX is singularly appropriate. C can stand for Chessie, S for Seaboard, and X, which actually has no meaning." However, an August 9, 2016, article on the "Railway Age" website stated that " ... the 'X' was for 'Consolidated' ". The T had to be added to CSX when used as a reporting mark because reporting marks that end in X means that the car is owned by a leasing company or private car owner. The company introduced its current slogan, "How Tomorrow Moves", in 2008.


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX Corporation sold two-thirds of its control of water transport company American Commercial Barge Line in 1998, citing a desire to focus more on rail operations.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The founding chairman of CSX Corporation was Prime F. Osborn III of Seaboard, for whom Jacksonville's Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center is named. The first CEO and second chairman was Hays T. Watkins Jr. of Chessie. Watkins was succeeded by John W. Snow as CEO in 1989 and as chairman in 1991. When Snow left the company in 2003 to become United States Secretary of the Treasury, Michael J. Ward, who then headed CSX Transportation, was promoted to succeed him. Overall in 2003, Ward took on the positions of chairman, president, and CEO. When president Oscar Munoz left CSX in September 2015 after obtaining the role earlier that year from Ward, the company underwent several management changes, with Clarence Gooden appointed president.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The company went through major leadership changes in 2017 when activist investor Mantle Ridge, a hedge fund that held 4.9% of CSX's stock, demanded a change in the board, that Michael Ward step down as CEO, that the company cut middle management, and that the company hire Hunter Harrison, known for leading the turnaround three other railroads, as CEO. Within months of Harrison's hiring in spring 2017, several members of CSX's executive management team stepped down. Harrison died on December 16, 2017 and shortly thereafter Chief Operating Officer James M. Foote was named president and chief executive officer.


title: CSX Corporation

text: In March 2018, Foote, said CSX would follow-through on Harrison's plans to transform the company and move it from a traditional railroad model to a scheduled railroad model in order to reduce costs and improve the quality of service. Part of this effort includes reducing the number of locomotives in service from 3,000 in late 2017 to between 2,370 and 2,420 in 2020. The company also plans to reduce the number of rail cars it owns from 136,000 in late 2017 to between 104,000 and 109,000 in 2020. In 2017, CSX cut its workforce by 3,300 employees. In 2018, roughly 2,200 jobs were cut. A further reduction of 4,000 positions is planned by 2020. CSX estimates that after these cuts it will have a workforce of about 21,000 people.


title: CSX Corporation

text: CSX is also trying to increase profits by monetizing some of its real estate. As of early 2018, the company planned to generate $800 million by 2020 by selling off some railroad lines and other real estate. As of the same date, CSX held real estate in 23 states, the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces.


title: CSX Corporation

text: At the end of 2018, CSX Corporation's total shareholder's equity was reported as US$12.58 billion and total assets were valued at $36.729 billion. Total revenue for 2018 was $12.25 billion, an increase from $11.408 billion the previous year. Operating income was $4.869 billion, up from $3.72 billion in 2017, while earnings before income taxes were $4.304 billion, compared to $3.142 billion the previous year.


title: CSX Corporation

text: The CSX Transportation Building is a high-rise office building in Jacksonville, Florida. Completed in 1960, the building currently serves as headquarters for CSX Corporation. The building is located in the Northbank area of Downtown Jacksonville, along the banks of the St. Johns River. Its former names include the Atlantic Coast Line Building and the Seaboard Coastline Railroad Building. Designed by KBJ Architects, the CSX Transportation Building is a LEED certified building and an example of mid-century modern and international style architecture.


title: Galerkin method

text: In mathematics, in the area of numerical analysis, Galerkin methods, named after the Russian mathematician Boris Galerkin, convert a continuous operator problem, such as a differential equation, commonly in a weak formulation, to a discrete problem by applying linear constraints determined by finite sets of basis functions.


title: Galerkin method

text: Often when referring to a Galerkin method, one also gives the name along with typical assumptions and approximation methods used:


title: Galerkin method

text: We first introduce and illustrate the Galerkin method as being applied to a system of linear equations formula_1 with the following symmetric and positive definite matrix


title: Galerkin method

text: to the Galerkin equation formula_8, which we finally uplift to determine the approximate solution to the original equation as


title: Galerkin method

text: In this example, our original Hilbert space is actually the 3-dimensional Euclidean space formula_10 equipped with the standard scalar product formula_11, our 3-by-3 matrix formula_12 defines the bilinear form formula_13, and the right-hand-side vector formula_14 defines the bounded linear functional formula_15. The columns


title: Galerkin method

text: of the matrix formula_17 form an orthonormal basis of the 2-dimensional subspace of the Galerkin projection. The entries of the 2-by-2 Galerkin matrix formula_18 are formula_19, while the components of the right-hand-side vector formula_20 of the Galerkin equation are formula_21. Finally, the approximate solution formula_22 is obtained from the components of the solution vector formula_23 of the Galerkin equation and the basis as formula_24.


title: Galerkin method

text: Let us introduce Galerkin's method with an abstract problem posed as a weak formulation on a Hilbert space formula_17, namely,


title: Galerkin method

text: Here, formula_28 is a bilinear form (the exact requirements on formula_28 will be specified later) and formula_30 is a bounded linear functional on formula_17.


title: Galerkin method

text: We call this the Galerkin equation. Notice that the equation has remained unchanged and only the spaces have changed.


title: Galerkin method

text: Reducing the problem to a finite-dimensional vector subspace allows us to numerically compute formula_35 as a finite linear combination of the basis vectors in formula_36.


title: Galerkin method

text: The key property of the Galerkin approach is that the error is orthogonal to the chosen subspaces. Since formula_32, we can use formula_38 as a test vector in the original equation. Subtracting the two, we get the Galerkin orthogonality relation for the error, formula_39 which is the error between the solution of the original problem, formula_40, and the solution of the Galerkin equation, formula_41


title: Galerkin method

text: Since the aim of Galerkin's method is the production of a linear system of equations, we build its matrix form, which can be used to compute the solution algorithmically.


title: Galerkin method

text: Let formula_43 be a basis for formula_44. Then, it is sufficient to use these in turn for testing the Galerkin equation, i.e.: find formula_45 such that


title: Galerkin method

text: We expand formula_41 with respect to this basis, formula_48 and insert it into the equation above, to obtain


title: Galerkin method

text: Due to the definition of the matrix entries, the matrix of the Galerkin equation is symmetric if and only if the bilinear form formula_28 is symmetric.


title: Galerkin method

text: While this is not really a restriction of Galerkin methods, the application of the standard theory becomes much simpler. Furthermore, a Petrov–Galerkin method may be required in the nonsymmetric case.


title: Galerkin method

text: The analysis of these methods proceeds in two steps. First, we will show that the Galerkin equation is a well-posed problem in the sense of Hadamard and therefore admits a unique solution. In the second step, we study the quality of approximation of the Galerkin solution formula_41.


title: Galerkin method

text: By the Lax-Milgram theorem (see weak formulation), these two conditions imply well-posedness of the original problem in weak formulation. All norms in the following sections will be norms for which the above inequalities hold (these norms are often called an energy norm).


title: Galerkin method

text: Since formula_32, boundedness and ellipticity of the bilinear form apply to formula_44. Therefore, the well-posedness of the Galerkin problem is actually inherited from the well-posedness of the original problem.


title: Galerkin method

text: is as close to the original solution formula_40 as any other vector in formula_44. In particular, it will be sufficient to study approximation by spaces formula_44, completely forgetting about the equation being solved.


title: Galerkin method

text: Since the proof is very simple and the basic principle behind all Galerkin methods, we include it here:


title: Galerkin method

text: by ellipticity and boundedness of the bilinear form (inequalities) and Galerkin orthogonality (equals sign in the middle), we have for arbitrary formula_70:


title: Galerkin method

text: For simplicity of presentation in the section above we have assumed that the bilinear form formula_74 is symmetric and positive definite, which implies that it is a scalar product and the expression formula_75 is actually a valid vector norm, called the "energy norm". Under these assumptions one can easily prove in addition Galerkin's best approximation property in the energy norm.


title: Galerkin method

text: Dividing by formula_77 and taking the infimum over all possible formula_70 proves that the Galerkin approximation formula_33 is the best approximation in the energy norm within the subspace formula_32, i.e. formula_33 is nothing but the orthogonal, with respect to the scalar product formula_74, projection of the solution formula_40 to the subspace formula_44.


title: Galerkin method

text: studied the application of the Galerkin method to stepped structures. They showed that the generalized function, namely unit-step function, Dirac’s delta function, and the doublet function are needed for obtaining accurate results.


title: Galerkin method

text: The approach is usually credited to Boris Galerkin. The method was explained to the Western reader by Hencky and Duncan among others. Its convergence was studied by Mikhlin and Leipholz Its coincidence with Fourier method was illustrated by Elishakoff et al. Its equivalence to Ritz's method for conservative problems was shown by Singer. Gander and Wanner showed how Ritz and Galerkin methods led to the modern finite element method. One hundred years of method's development was discussed by Repin. Elishakoff, Kaplunov and Kaplunov show that the Galerkin’s method was not developed by Ritz, contrary to the Timoshenko’s statements.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: The 2022 State of the Union Address was given by the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, on March 1, 2022, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 117th United States Congress. It was Biden's first State of the Union Address, and his second speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, accompanied by Kamala Harris, the vice president, in her capacity as the president of the Senate.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: Biden's speech was primarily focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began six days earlier, as well as his touting of major policy achievements and goals surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, and social issues.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: Referring to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukrainian territory, Biden called for worldwide solidarity with the Ukrainian people. At one point all in attendance gave a standing ovation to the Ukrainian ambassador who was in attendance, with many lawmakers wearing or holding Ukrainian flags in support. The recent invasion prompted the White House to drastically alter the speech just days before as events unfolded in Ukraine. However, in a widely-reported gaffe, Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainians as the "Iranian people" while addressing Congress. Biden rebuked calls to defund the police, saying "the answer is not to defund the police. It's to fund the police". This drew criticism from some Black Lives Matter activists, including Democratic representative Cori Bush.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: The date of the address, March 1, is approximately one month later than usual; all State of the Union addresses since 1934 have occurred in either January or early February. The cause of the delay was attributed to the spread of the Omicron variant during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, along with the United States’ participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics. Additionally, Clare Foran and Kevin Liptak stated in an article published by CNN that the delay "would give Biden more time to try to accomplish some of his legislative goals before addressing Congress and the nation". Although the Constitution of the United States requires the president to give Congress information about the "State of the Union", it does not specify when or how frequently this must occur, only "from time to time".


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: GOP Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert disrupted Biden during his speech at one point, with both chanting the Trumpist political slogan "Build the wall". Boebert also criticized the American presence in Afghanistan by shouting "You put them in, 13 of them", in reference to the 13 service members who died in the 2021 Kabul airport attack. A number of lawmakers booed Representative Boebert in response to her interruption of the President. Boebert was harshly condemned for the interruption, with many labeling it as “disrespectful”.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: Iowa governor Kim Reynolds gave the Republican response to the State of the Union address. She mentioned the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She also criticized the president's approach to foreign policy as "too little, too late." Relating to domestic policy, she criticized high inflation rates. She also criticized mask mandates and Democrats' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. She said that as Governor of Iowa, her state was the first to reopen schools. She also criticized Biden's border policy.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: North Carolina Senate candidate Matthew Hoh gave the Green Party's response to the State of the Union Address. He drew parallels between the United States invasion of Afghanistan and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he claimed "has verily nearly everything to do with liquid natural gas markets, and other commercial concerns, and with the megalomania of those in DC, Moscow, London, and Kyiv." He argued that wars and the failure to stymie the COVID-19 pandemic are evidence that the government puts profit over people, and that "our government will respond to the climate crisis" in a similar manner.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: The chair of the Libertarian National Committee Whitney Bilyeu gave the Libertarian response to the State of the Union Address. While she agreed with Biden's sanction of top level Russia politicians, she criticized the sanctions placed on Russia as a whole as she believe it would hurt common Russian people the most. She also took a general anti-war and isolationist stance toward the invasion of Ukraine, opposing military involvement of U.S. troops. She criticized mask mandates imposed by the Biden administration, seeing it as ineffectual and intrusive on personal liberty. She mentioned the inflation seen under the Biden administration and thinks it is an effect of long term adoption of Keynesian economics in U.S. government and plans to solve it through laissez-faire capitalism. She also briefly beseeches Biden to immediately pardon Edward Snowden.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: Representative Rashida Tlaib gave the Working Families Party response to the State of the Union address. Representative Colin Allred gave the Congressional Black Caucus response to the State of the Union, the first time ever that the caucus offered an official response to the event. Over 30 young leaders representing 26 states gave the Youth Response to the State of the Union, as part of the Young People Address the Nation event series.


title: 2022 State of the Union Address

text: The speech was carried live in the United States by NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Newsmax TV, CNBC, NewsNation, and Black News Channel. In addition, Spanish-language networks Univision, Telemundo, and CNNe aired the speech.


title: Brave Search

text: Brave Search is a search engine developed by Brave Software, Inc. and is set as the default search engine for Brave browser users in certain countries.


title: Brave Search

text: Brave Search is a search engine developed by Brave Software, Inc. and released in Beta in March 2021, following the acquisition of Tailcat, a privacy-focused search engine from Cliqz. Brave Search aims to use its independent index to generate search results. However, the user can allow the Brave browser to anonymously check Google for the same query.


title: Brave Search

text: Brave Search claims it will eventually offer ad-supported free search as well as ad-free paid search options. It hopes to explore bringing BAT revenue sharing to these ads in a similar fashion to the Brave ads platform.


title: Brave Search

text: In October 2021, Brave Search was made the default search engine for Brave browser users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom (replacing Google Search), France (replacing Qwant) and Germany (replacing DuckDuckGo).


title: Brave Search

text: In June 2022, Brave Search ended its beta stage and was fully released. In addition to the launch, the new Goggles feature was added allowing users to apply their own rules and filters to search queries.


title: Brave Search

text: Brave search does implement some level of data-collection, but only when users opt-in. This is done through the Web Discovery Project. The project is a methodology and system developed by Brave Software, Inc. to collect data generated by their users while protecting their privacy and anonymity. Users can opt-in at any time while using the search engine by modifying the settings, no account is required for this function.


Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold is a 1986 American adventure comedy film directed by Gary Nelson and released in West Germany on December 18, 1986, and in the United States on January 30, 1987. It is loosely based on the 1887 novel "Allan Quatermain" by H. Rider Haggard. It is the sequel to the 1985 film "King Solomon's Mines".


title: Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

text: The role of Allan Quatermain is reprised by Richard Chamberlain as is that of Jesse Huston by Sharon Stone, who was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress for this role, for which she lost to Madonna for "Who's That Girl". The film also starred James Earl Jones as Umslopogaas, Henry Silva as Agon, Aileen Marson as Queen Nyleptha, Cassandra Peterson as Queen Sorais and Chamberlain's then real-life partner Martin Rabbett as Robeson Quatermain.


text: After surviving their expedition to King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain and Jesse have settled down in colonial Africa. They are engaged to be married and Jesse plans that they will travel to America for the wedding. But Allan is restless.


text: A man chased by two strange masked men emerges from the jungle, and is recognised as one of Quatermain's friends. He is delirious and is cared for by Jesse and Allan, but at night, his pursuers return and kill him.


text: Before he dies, he tells Allan that his brother, supposedly lost, is alive, and that they have found the legendary 'Lost City of Gold'. Quatermain immediately starts preparing for an expedition to find his lost brother. Jesse is furious and stalks off, but then realises how important this is to Allan.


text: Allan and Jesse are assisted by Umslopogaas, a fearless warrior and old friend of Allan's, to put together an expedition. Swarma, a spiritual guru, and five Askari warriors, accompany them. The group crosses a desert and reaches the Walls of Japora; two Askari are lost when Swarma trips a boobytrap that opens a pit under the road to the city. Another member of the party is lost when savage Eshowe warriors attack the group. Many spears are thrown at Quatermain and his friends, but Umslopogaas deflects most of them with his giant axe. The remaining askaris are lost in a subterranean river.


text: Quatermain and his friends indeed discover the city. The inhabitants, both black and white, are friendly, and Allan meets his brother Robeson, seemingly in good health and at peace in the society. The city has two queens — the noble and beloved, Nyleptha and her power-hungry sister, Sorais. But the real leader is the evil High Priest, Agon, feared by all.


text: Allan raises the population against Agon and Sorais, who musters an army to recover the city by force. Allan realizes that they can make all the weapons they need out of gold, which is mined by the population. The final battle ends when, atop the temple, during a lightning storm, Allan uses Umslopogaas' axe to channel the lightning and melt the gold, causing it to flow off the side of the structure and pour over the attacking horde, turning Agon and his army into gold statues.


text: The film was made simultaneously with its predecessor, "King Solomon's Mines", although it was released a couple of years later. Despite the tremendous liberties both films took with the source material, being more similar in tone to the "Indiana Jones" film series, "Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold" was loosely based, mostly, on the book sequel of Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines", entitled simply "Allan Quatermain". In that book, which depicts Quatermain's last adventure (although it's just the second in the series of novels), the character and his associates go searching for a lost white tribe in Africa, and end up involved in a war between the rival queens of the kingdom.


text: The film features just over half an hour of original music written by Michael Linn; for financial reasons, the producers reused material composed by Jerry Goldsmith for the first film (although Linn's score does use Goldsmith's main theme), supplemented with music composed for other productions from Cannon Films.


text: The score was initially released by Silva Screen in 1988 on a CD with cues from "Manifesto" (scored by Nicola Piovani), "Making the Grade" (Basil Poledouris), "Doin' Time on Planet Earth" (Dana Kaproff) and "The Seven Magnificent Gladiators" (Dov Seltzer); in 2009 it was issued on its own album by La-La Land Records. Cues in italics contain material composed by Jerry Goldsmith.


text: It was a box office disappointment, one of several that led to Cannon Films reporting a loss in early 1987. The other box office disappointments for the company included "Assassination", "The Hanoi Hilton", "Over the Top" and "Street Smart".


text: "I know it went through town pretty fast", said Richard Chamberlain. "I know my family didn't like it much. My father was too ill to see it, but my mother said, 'Richard, the advertising was all wrong. They should have told people it was funny.' But I don't think it hurt my chances for other movies. I know a lot of people who do a lot of movies, and some of them are good and some of them aren't. Michael Caine's one example. He's wonderful in some movies and forgettable in others. I think as long as you're doing generally good work that you enjoy, things will be okay."


text: "The Boston Globe" film critic wrote " there's nothing new under the broiling afternoon sun. It's the same: washed-out scenery, stale dialogue and lackluster performances... Except for the presence of James Earl Jones doing a depressing turn as a native chieftain, "Allan Quatermain" is just for folks who don't mind mining for fool's gold." "The New York Times" said the film was "of minor academic interest. Those who take the Spielberg special effects for granted are sure to learn a lot by watching these same tricks done badly... Fortunately, Richard Chamberlain is professional and then some, since the film would otherwise be virtually unwatchable." The "Los Angeles Times" said the "movie seems largely aimed at fans who can't wait for the next installment of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Unfortunately, most of the battle scenes were... ineptly staged... Chamberlain has none of the breezy, irreverence that made Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones such a delightful hero. In his Banana Republic khaki duds and a bullet-proof undershirt, he exudes the dashing spirit of a game-show host. The rest of the cast is good largely for unintentional laughs."