title: Kellas cat

text: The Kellas cat is a large black cat found in Scotland. It is an interspecific hybrid between the Scottish wildcat ("Felis silvestris silvestris" syn. "Felis silvestris grampia") and the domestic cat ("Felis catus"). Once thought to be a mythological wild cat, with its few sightings dismissed as hoaxes, a specimen was killed in a snare by a gamekeeper in 1984 and found to be a hybrid between the Scottish wildcat and domestic cat. It is not a formal cat breed, but a landrace of felid hybrids. It is named after the village of Kellas, Moray, where it was first found. The purported first live cat was caught by the Tomorrows World team and featured in the 1986 programme 'On the Trail of the Big Cat'. The historian Charles Thomas speculated that the Pictish stone at Golspie may depict a Kellas cat. The Golspie stone, now held at the Dunrobin Castle Museum, shows a cat-like creature standing on top of a salmon which may allude to the characteristics ascribed to a Kellas cat of catching fish while swimming in the river.


title: Kellas cat

text: A researcher at the National Museum of Scotland examined eight Kellas cat specimens. One carcass was already in the Museum's collection; the remaining seven were supplied by Di Francis, who is described by Thomas as a "writer, researcher and practical naturalist". He identified one of the animals as a melanistic wildcat; this juvenile male was the first wildcat ever documented as melanistic in Scotland. Most of the other specimens examined were concluded to be hybrids but more closely aligned to the Scottish wildcat; only one hybrid leaned more towards a domestic cat.


title: Kellas cat

text: The Kellas cat is described as being long, with powerful and long hind legs and a tail that can grow to be around long; its weight ranges from . The animal snared in 1984 was to shoulder height and in length. A specimen is kept in a museum in Elgin. The Zoology Museum of the University of Aberdeen also holds a mounted specimen that was found during 2002 in the Insch area of Aberdeenshire.


title: Kellas cat

text: The folklore of the cat-sìth may have been inspired by the Kellas cat. The Cat-sìth is a fairy creature from Celtic mythology, said to resemble a large black cat with a white spot on its chest. Legend has it that the ghostly cat haunts the Scottish Highlands. The legends surrounding this creature are more common in Scottish mythology, but a few occur in Irish mythology.


title: 2022 FIA World Rallycross Championship

text: The 2022 FIA World Rallycross Championship was the ninth season of the FIA World Rallycross Championship, an auto racing championship recognized by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) as the highest class of international rallycross.


title: 2022 FIA World Rallycross Championship

text: Johan Kristoffersson won the drivers' championship for the fifth time. Kristoffersson Motorsport won the teams' championship for the first time under that name.


title: 2022 FIA World Rallycross Championship

text: On 15 December 2021, the provisional 2022 calendar was announced during the FIA World Motorsport Council decisions: The updated calendar was released on 21 March. It included one unconfirmed event. The calendar was updated again on 29 June on the FIA World Motorsport Council, in which World RX of Sweden was cancelled for RX1e, and World RX of Catalunya returned to the calendar provisionally. Another calendar update was announced on 7 July. The World RX of Germany was postponed to allow RX1e teams more time to prepare for the season.


title: Plantigrade

text: In terrestrial animals, plantigrade locomotion means walking with the toes and metatarsals flat on the ground. It is one of three forms of locomotion adopted by terrestrial mammals. The other options are digitigrade, walking on the toes with the heel and wrist permanently raised, and unguligrade, walking on the nail or nails of the toes (the hoof) with the heel/wrist and the digits permanently raised. The leg of a plantigrade mammal includes the bones of the upper leg (femur/humerus) and lower leg (tibia and fibula/radius and ulna). The leg of a digitigrade mammal also includes the metatarsals/metacarpals, the bones that in a human compose the arch of the foot and the palm of the hand. The leg of an unguligrade mammal also includes the phalanges, the finger and toe bones.


title: Plantigrade

text: Among extinct animals, most early mammals such as pantodonts were plantigrade. A plantigrade foot is the primitive condition for mammals; digitigrade and unguligrade locomotion evolved later. Among archosaurs, the pterosaurs were partially plantigrade and walked on the whole of the hind foot and the fingers of the hand-wing.


title: Plantigrade

text: The primary advantages of a plantigrade foot are stability and weight-bearing ability; plantigrade feet have the largest surface area. The primary disadvantage of a plantigrade foot is speed. With more bones and joints in the foot, the leg is both shorter and heavier at the far end, which makes it difficult to move rapidly.


title: Plantigrade

text: In humans and other great apes, another possible advantage of a plantigrade foot is that it may enhance fighting performance by providing a more powerful stance for striking and grappling.


title: Plantigrade

text: Plantigrade foot occurs normally in humans in static postures of standing and sitting. It should also occur normally in gait (walking). Hypertonicity, spasticity, clonus, limited range of motion, abnormal flexion neural pattern, and a plantar flexor (calf) muscle contracture, as well as some forms of footwear such as high heeled shoes may contribute to an individual only standing and/or walking on their toes. It would be evident by the observable heel rise.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: The Oracle is a fictional character in "The Matrix" franchise. She was created by The Wachowskis, and portrayed by Gloria Foster in the first and second film and Mary Alice in the third film. The character also appears in the video game "Enter the Matrix" and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game "The Matrix Online".


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: In the first film, the Oracle is depicted as a cheerful old lady who smokes cigarettes and bakes cookies. She possesses the power of foresight, which she uses to advise and guide the humans attempting to fight the Matrix. Later, she is revealed to be a sapient program who is integral to the very nature of the Matrix itself.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: The Oracle is played by Gloria Foster in "The Matrix" and "The Matrix Reloaded", and by Mary Alice in "The Matrix Revolutions" and "Enter the Matrix", one of the franchise's video games. In reality, Mary Alice played the Oracle because Gloria Foster died of complications from diabetes before her role in "Matrix Revolutions" was shot. In "The Matrix Revolutions" and "Enter the Matrix", it is explained that Kamala and Rama Kandra, the parents of Sati, traded with the Merovingian, giving the Oracle's termination code in exchange for their daughter's passage into the Matrix as an Exile via the Trainman.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: Neo meets the Oracle in two different locations over the course of the film series. In "The Matrix", he finds her in an apartment filled with various "potentials"—children whose ability to control their surroundings suggests that they may be The One. During "Reloaded", he returns to the apartment only to find it empty, then later finds her waiting for him in a paved courtyard between city buildings. She has with her a purse filled with candies that resemble the red pill Neo took to free himself from the Matrix. In "Revolutions", the two meet in the kitchen of the apartment, sometime after Morpheus and Trinity seek her advice in the living room.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: In the first film, Agent Smith revealed that the first Matrix was a failure because it was too perfect for humans to accept. This has been revealed in "The Matrix Online" continuity as the "Paradise" version of the Matrix. The Architect confirms this (and his own responsibility for its creation) in the second film, adding that he also created a second failed Matrix based on human history and nature (as he perceived it without the Oracle), which has come to be known as the "Nightmare" version of the Matrix. By including the Oracle, whose investigations into the human psyche yielded the answer to creating a functional simulation that humans would accept, a stable System was created with the third version of the Matrix, while the Prophecy of the One made to ensure its continuity in cycles.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: In "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", the Oracle succeeds in unbalancing the Matrix (seeing the simultaneous rise of both Neo and Smith) to the extent that it is almost destroyed. In doing so, she manages to bring about a resolution in which the machines and the humans can coexist in peace. The Architect tells her she "played a very dangerous game" helping the humans (or, more accurately, creating Smith with the ability to duplicate himself without limit, like a cancer, both inside the Matrix and within the larger machine world and creating Neo—the only thing with the potential to contain Smith), to which she replies that "change always is [dangerous]". The Architect also promises to the Oracle that the humans desiring to be free from the Matrix will gain their freedom as part of the peacemaking between the humans and the machines. When asked whether Neo will return, she says she suspects that they will see him again, indicating that he may still be alive, that he may be reincarnated, or most probably, that Neo is part human and part software and the software part of Neo continues on.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: In between the events of "The Matrix Revolutions" and "The Matrix Resurrections", the Oracle is one of many programs who is purged by the Machines before the new Matrix is uploaded. Niobe later tells a resurrected Neo that the last message that they received from her was that a new power was rising. Despite this, the Oracle still appears in "The Matrix Resurrections" in the form of flashbacks.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: Whether the Oracle's power of prediction is deterministic or not is a concept given much treatment in all three films. She herself claims that she lacks the ability to see past her own choice, explaining that no one, including herself, can see past a choice they do not understand. It becomes clear in the films that her power cannot be used to predict the ultimate consequences of Neo, who possesses free will when he defies the Architect.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: Her power of foresight, on the other hand, is probably not a foresight based on knowledge of a pre-determined future, but rather a calculation; The Architect revealed the Oracle to be "a program designed to investigate the human psyche"; thus, allowing the Matrix to become more accustomed for the majority of the human population to accept. She exhibits a trait for predicting events directly relevant to the nature and/or programming of the Matrix, and natural human responses according to her knowledge of them; this is most clear in her prediction of Neo's choice between Morpheus' life and his own. While the Oracle knew that the Agents would be searching for Morpheus as he was searching for 'the One', and seeing Cypher's actions and reactions (such as his conversation with Agent Smith), she predicted the most likely event. Another example is her prediction about Neo's choice in the second movie, "The Matrix Reloaded"; she had existed throughout five versions, and regardless of the One's ability to exhibit free will, she had experienced a series of events that had and would occur and push the One to the Source.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: In "Revolutions", the Oracle hints at her true purpose, which is to bring imbalance to the equations that form the Matrix. In this purpose she is opposed to her counterpart, the Architect, whose goal is to balance those same equations.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: As the Architect explains in "Reloaded", he and the Oracle have very different roles to play in maintaining the stability of the Matrix. The Oracle spreads a prophecy of The One's final victory over the machines, and those humans who choose to follow this belief are allowed to disconnect from the system voluntarily. They create the real-world settlement of Zion; when its population grows large enough to become a threat to the Matrix's stability, the Architect takes action. He launches a machine offensive campaign to destroy Zion and reunite The One with the Source, rebooting the Matrix and keeping control over the humans for one more cycle. When Neo and the Architect meet, this cycle is about to complete its sixth repetition.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: This Yin-Yang relationship is a form of balance between opposing forces, so it becomes obvious that the Architect and the Oracle are the two balancing forces of the Matrix itself: the fallible human factor and the logic of the machines. This idea is even hinted in the films as the Oracle is wearing yin-yang earrings throughout the third film. This process of balance between opposing forces is even more realized in the conflict between Smith and Neo at the end of the third "Matrix" movie, wherein they annihilate one another, suggesting a collision between matter and anti-matter.


title: The Oracle (The Matrix)

text: The Oracle is discussed by sociologist Matthew Hughey as an example of the Magical Negro stock character. He writes that the Matrix is mostly presented as a "clean and bright" city full of white people, but when Neo is brought to the Oracle, who sets him on his path to becoming a hero, she is shown to be chain-smoking and baking cookies—which marks her as a stereotypical "welfare queen". According to Tani Dianca Sanchez, the personification of the Oracle by a black woman, who is robbed of her essence and existence by Agent Smith yet ultimately survives his destruction, is a rare reference in mainstream media to womanist theories of black women as liberators and saviors through their own suffering. Sanchez writes that while the Oracle embodies aspects of the black mammy stereotype in caring for white children, she ultimately represents "a radical transformation of Western denigration of black women" by acting as an othermother and teacher who challenges Western ideals of feminine beauty and wisdom; by suggesting a connection between the ancient Greek oracles and black cultures, the character also undermines traditional assumptions that white, Western culture developed independently of other cultures and races. Nicola Rehling writes that in opposition to the Architect's espousal of fate and inevitability, the Oracle introduces choice into the Matrix and "complicates the association of cyberspace with normative white masculinity" through her nature as a sentient computer program.


title: Umwelt

text: In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German "Umwelt" meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal". The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different "umwelten", even though they share the same environment. The term "umwelt", together with companion terms "Umgebung" (an Umwelt as seen by another observer) and "Innenwelt" (the mapping of the self to the world of objects), have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians because they offer a potential solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater.


title: Umwelt

text: Each functional component of an "umwelt" has a meaning that represents the organism's model of the world. These functional components correspond approximately to perceptual features, as described by Anne Treisman. It is also the semiotic world of the organism, including all the meaningful aspects of the world for any particular organism. It can be water, food, shelter, potential threats or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates and reshapes its own "umwelt" when it interacts with the world. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The "umwelt" theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. Because of the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism, the "umwelten" of different organisms differ. When two "umwelten" interact, this creates a semiosphere.


title: Umwelt

text: As a term, "umwelt" also unites all the semiotic processes of an organism into a whole. Internally, an organism is the sum of its parts operating in functional circles and, to survive, all the parts must work cooperatively. This is termed the "collective "umwelt"" which models the organism as a centralised system from the cellular level upward. This requires the semiosis of any one part to be continuously connected to any other semiosis operating within the same organism. If anything disrupts this process, the organism will not operate efficiently.


title: Umwelt

text: Uexküll's writings show a specific interest in the various worlds that he believed to exist ('conceptually') from the point of view of the "umwelt" of different creatures such as ticks, sea urchins, amoebae, jellyfish, and sea worms.


title: Umwelt

text: The biosemiotic turn in Jakob von Uexküll's analysis occurs in his discussion of the animal's relationship with its environment. The "umwelt" is for him an environment-world which is, according to Agamben, ""constituted by a more or less broad series of elements [called] 'carriers of significance' or 'marks' which are the only things that interest the animal"". Agamben goes on to paraphrase Uexküll's example of the tick, saying:


title: Umwelt

text: "...this eyeless animal finds the way to her watchpoint [at the top of a tall blade of grass] with the help of only its skin’s general sensitivity to light. The approach of her prey becomes apparent to this blind and deaf bandit only through her sense of smell. The odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals, works on the tick as a signal that causes her to abandon her post (on top of the blade of grass/bush) and fall blindly downward toward her prey. If she is fortunate enough to fall on something warm (which she perceives by means of an organ sensible to a precise temperature) then she has attained her prey, the warm-blooded animal, and thereafter needs only the help of her sense of touch to find the least hairy spot possible and embed herself up to her head in the cutaneous tissue of her prey. She can now slowly suck up a stream of warm blood."


title: Umwelt

text: Thus, for the tick, the "umwelt" is reduced to only three (biosemiotic) carriers of significance: (1) the odor of butyric acid, which emanates from the sebaceous follicles of all mammals; (2) the temperature of 37°C (corresponding to the blood of all mammals); and (3) the hairy topography of mammals.


title: Umwelt

text: Uexküll's application of the notion of "umwelt" to the human person has been contested. In "Welt und Umwelt" and "Die Wahrheit der Dinge", the philosopher and sociologist Josef Pieper argued that reason allows the human person to live in "Welt" (world) while plants and animals do indeed live in an Umwelt—a notion he traces back far beyond Uexküll to Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: "Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)" was a hit song in 1986, by Cameroonian makossa group Golden Sounds. Due to popularity of the song, the group changed its name to "Zangaléwa" following mainstream success. Most of the band members were in the Cameroonian Army during World War II.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: The languages present in the song's lyrics (Douala, French, Jamaican Patois, and the pidgin English of some parts of West Africa) make clear the song originates from the area of Cameroon, but the circumstances surrounding the time of the song's origin are less clear. Some sources indicate that the lyrics are a lament from the point of view of a single soldier.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: Other aspects of the song, including its frequent performances, have led to conflicting claims that the song is a tribute to African soldiers of World War II or a criticism of Africans who collaborated with European colonial authorities.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: The song is still used today in Africa by soldiers, policemen, boy scouts, sportsmen, and their supporters, usually during training or for rallying. It is particularly popular in Cameroon, where it is used as a marching song or rallying cry.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: The song was popularized in Colombia under the name "the Military" and "El sacalengua" ("The one who sticks out his tongue", due to the similarity to the phrase, " Saca la lengua" which means "stick out your tongue") by DJs fond of African music based in Barranquilla and Cartagena.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: In the music video for the 1986 release, and in other performances of the song, performers often dress in military uniforms. The performers wear pith helmets and stuff their clothes to give the appearance of being well-off and associated with European colonial authorities. This appearance and the lyrics, according to some music historians, is a criticism of African military officers who were in league with the Europeans and profited from the oppression of their own people during the era of European imperialist colonization.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: Some elements of the song incorporate Cameroonian slang and Cameroonian military jargon from World War II.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: According to Jean Paul Zé Bella, the lead singer of Golden Sounds, the chorus came "from Cameroonian sharpshooters who had created a slang for better communication between them during the Second World War"; the band initially recreated the fast pace of the military communication in their first arrangements of the song.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: The song became popular worldwide when the international pop star Shakira released a variant (as a tribute to African music) titled "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)" in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.


title: Zamina mina (Zangaléwa)

text: Before "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)" was released in 2010, the song was sampled or covered by other artists, including:


The Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland (previously bill no. 29 of 2018) is an amendment to the Constitution of Ireland which permits the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion. The constitution had previously prohibited abortion unless there was a serious risk to the life of the mother.


title: Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

text: The proposal is often described as the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment, referring to the 1983 constitutional amendment which guaranteed the right to life of the unborn, making abortion illegal unless the pregnancy was life-threatening. The 2018 amendment replaces Article 40.3.3° of the Constitution, which was added in 1983 and amended in 1992.


text: The bill was introduced to the Oireachtas on 9 March 2018 by the Fine Gael minority coalition government, and completed its passage through both houses on 27 March 2018. It was put to a referendum on 25 May 2018 and approved by 66.4% of voters. The amendment took effect once signed into law by President Michael D. Higgins on 18 September 2018.


text: The British Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which made "unlawful procurement of a miscarriage" a crime, remained in force after Irish independence in 1922. The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution adopted in 1983, which declares "the right to life of the unborn ... equal [to the] right to life of the mother", was instigated by the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign for fear that the 1861 prohibition might be weakened by liberal legislators or activist judges. In 1992, Supreme Court ruled in the "X case" ("Attorney General v. X") that abortion is permitted where pregnancy threatens a woman's life, including by risk of suicide. No regulatory framework within the limited scope of the X case judgement was passed until the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, impelled by "A, B and C v Ireland" (2010) in the European Court of Human Rights and death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012 after miscarriage. The 2013 Act repealed the 1861 Act, and makes "destruction of unborn human life" a crime. In the three years 2014–2016, a total of 77 legal abortions were performed under the 2013 Act.


text: Illegal surgical abortions in Ireland have been practically unknown since the UK's Abortion Act 1967 allowed Irish women to travel to Great Britain for a legal abortion. The 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution, passed in 1992 after the X case, guarantee the right to information about foreign abortions and to travel abroad for an abortion. The number of women at UK abortion clinics giving Irish addresses peaked at 6,673 in 2001, and was 3,265 in 2016. The decline is partly due to unregulated use of abortion pills illegally delivered from online pharmacies.


text: While left-wing parties and feminists opposed the 1983 amendment, and have advocated its repeal, this was not supported by the two largest parties for most of the interim: Fianna Fáil, and Fine Gael. In the 2010s, while both parties' leadership opposed broad liberalisation, some accepted the argument for abortion in cases like fatal foetal abnormalities and pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, which are not permitted by the 1983 amendment. These became the focus of campaigning after the 2013 Act. The Abortion Rights Campaign, a pro-choice alliance formed in 2012, holds an annual "March for Choice" in Dublin. Anti-abortion groups have countered with a "Rally for Life". In the run up to the 2016 general election, a number of parties committed to a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment (Labour, Green Party, Social Democrats, Sinn Féin, and Workers' Party) and a group of feminist law academics published model legislation to show what a post-Eighth Amendment abortion law could look like.


text: A Fine Gael–led government under Taoiseach Enda Kenny took office after the 2016 election with a programme which promised a randomly selected Citizens' Assembly to report on possible changes to the Eighth Amendment, which would be considered by an Oireachtas committee, to whose report the government would respond officially in debates in both houses of the Oireachtas. Leo Varadkar replaced Enda Kenny as Taoiseach on 14 June 2017 and promised to hold a referendum on abortion in 2018. The Citizens' Assembly, chaired by Supreme Court judge Mary Laffoy, discussed the issue from November 2016 to April 2017 with invited experts and stakeholders, and voted to recommend repealing the existing text and replacing it with an explicit mandate for the Oireachtas to legislate on abortion. It also made recommendations for the consequent legislation, which were more liberal than media commentators had expected. The assembly's report was considered from September to December 2017 by a special Oireachtas committee of 21 members, which also discussed the issue with invited experts; its recommendations by majority vote were broadly similar to those of the assembly. However, it said that because of difficulties legislating for rape and incest, abortion should be legal up to 12 weeks' gestation without restriction; on the other hand, it did not favour socio-economic grounds for abortion after 12 weeks. In January 2018, Minister for Health Simon Harris opened the Dáil debate on the committee's report by listing the numbers from each county who travelled to Great Britain for an abortion in 2016. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin declared that he had changed his view on the issue and gave his support for Repeal of the Eighth Amendment and for the committee's recommendations.


text: Further action was called into question by a July 2016 High Court ruling that a foetus was a child within the meaning of Article 42A of the Constitution, which guarantees children's rights. The Supreme Court agreed to expedite the government's appeal of the decision, and on 7 March 2018 overturned the High Court judgement, ruling that a foetus was not a child and had no rights other than the right to life mentioned in Article 40.3.3°.


text: The Department of Health published a policy paper on "Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy" on 9 March 2018. This provided an outline of the policies for legislation which would repeal and replace the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 if the Amendment of Constitution Bill was passed in a referendum. Under this scheme, abortion would be permissible in circumstances where:


text: On 26 March 2018, Tánaiste Simon Coveney announced he would support legislation on the lines of the policy paper, but suggested that this should be entrenched by requiring a two-thirds supermajority in the Dáil for any later amendment. This was aimed at voters prepared to accept the policy-paper regulations, but wary of subsequent liberalisation. Coveney's proposal was dismissed as unconstitutional. On 27 March 2018, the cabinet agreed the general scheme of the proposed "Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bill 2018", which health minister Simon Harris summarised that evening in the Seanad. The scheme was published online the following day.


text: Even after the referendum had passed, "Abortion [would] remain illegal in almost all circumstances until the Oireachtas passes legislation providing otherwise". Health Minister Simon Harris, speaking a few days before the referendum, said the Government hoped to introduce the bill in the Dáil in the autumn and to have passed it by the end of 2018.


text: The Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill was introduced by Minister for Health Simon Harris. The debate on the Second Stage began on 9 March 2018. The Bill passed all stages in the Dáil on 21 March.


text: The main vote on the bill was at second stage, with 110 in favour and 32 against. Of the 16 who did not vote at second stage, five voted in favour in subsequent votes. At committee stage, there were votes on Section 2 of the bill (98–18) and the short title (96–20); there was also a vote on the final stage (97–25). Fianna Fáil TDs had a free vote although Micheál Martin was reported to be upset at how many voted against the bill. Fine Gael also gave a free vote, including for ministers.


text: In the Seanad, the second stage was held on 27 March, with a 35–10 vote in favour. Remaining stages were the following day, with the bill passed 39–8 at committee stage and 40–10 at final stage. Eight of the thirteen Fianna Fáil senators voted against, as did two of nineteen from Fine Gael, and independent Rónán Mullen.


text: On 9 March 2018, Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government Eoghan Murphy established the statutory Referendum Commission to oversee the referendum campaign, with High Court judge Isobel Kennedy as chair.


text: Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil had allowed their TDs a free vote on the issue in the Dáil. However, although Fine Gael "cannot adopt an official party position because members have been afforded a freedom of conscience vote on issues to do with the referendum", on 21 April, Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar launched a Fine Gael "Vote Yes" campaign for Yes-supporting party members, along with party colleagues, including Minister for Health Simon Harris and Fine Gael referendum coordinator, Josepha Madigan.


text: On 8 May 2018, due to controversy over the origin, number, content, and targeting of adverts on social media, Facebook announced that it would block advertisements placed by foreign entities, most of whom are in the United States, and limit them to adverts placed by Irish organisations. On 9 May, Google announced that it was blocking all adverts on the referendum from its advertising platform and YouTube, citing concerns around the integrity of elections.


text: On 9 May, the fund-raising web pages of Together for Yes, Amnesty Ireland and Termination for Medical Reasons were subjected to a denial-of-service attack.


text: On 20 May, the parents of Savita Halappanavar called for a Yes vote, her father saying, "I hope the people of Ireland will vote yes for abortion, for the ladies of Ireland and the people of Ireland. My daughter, she lost her life because of this abortion law, because of the diagnosis, and she could not have an abortion. She died." After the Yes vote won, Halappanavar's father thanked the people of Ireland.


text: On 23 May, CNN reported that American-based anti-abortion groups, such as "Let Them Live", have flown to Ireland, in order to sway voters to vote No to the amendment. They entered into Ireland by lying to Irish border control about their reason for coming to Ireland, claiming they were only in Ireland to document the event and nothing more.


text: On 24 May, "The New York Times" reported that thousands of Irish citizens living outside the country were travelling back to Ireland to vote in the referendum – postal or absentee voting is not generally allowed. While some travelled short distances from cities like London or Edinburgh, others, often supporting the measure, returned from distant locations like Istanbul, Los Angeles, São Paulo, and Tokyo. These voters coalesced online under the social media hashtag "#HomeToVote" and in-person during their transport. The journeys resembled a similar movement in advance of the 2015 Irish constitutional referendums that resulted in the approval of the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland concerning same-sex marriage. In some cases, the travelling voters may have been in breach of Irish law, which removes the right to vote in a referendum from most non-residents, as only those who have lived away for less than 18 months were legally entitled to take part in the referendum. The use of the #HomeToVote hashtag was part of a larger campaign effort from activists who utilised social media, particularly Twitter, to connect and communicate with citizens. Together for Yes used social media to highlight the lived experiences of women endangered by the abortion ban, placing what was viewed as a private issue into the public to "mobilise emotions" online, in the hope that they would vote "Yes".


text: When respondents were asked if they would support the amendment, opinion polls showed the following results:


text: During the course of the referendum campaign some surveys asked if respondents supported the proposed legislation allowing termination for any reason for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The following results were recorded:


text: Polls opened at 07:00 IST (UTC+1) and closed at 22:00 IST on 25 May 2018. Twelve offshore islands voted the day before, to allow for possible delays delivering ballot boxes to the count centres. Counting began at 09:00 on 26 May. All Irish citizens entered on the electoral register were eligible to vote. A total of 3,229,672 people were on the annual electoral register (as of 15 February 2018) and an additional 118,389 electors were added to the supplementary register by the closing date of 8 May 2018, an unusually high number of late registrations. Dáil constituencies were used to organise the voting, with the returning officer for each appointed by the city or county council, and results sent to the national returning officer in Dublin. Although a close result had been expected by observers, an exit poll conducted by "The Irish Times" predicted a 68% Yes result, while one conducted by RTÉ predicted a similar Yes result of 69.4%. The day after the vote, Save the 8th campaign conceded defeat.


text: The turnout of voters, at 2,159,655, was the highest thus far in any Irish constitutional referendum. This beat the previous record, which had been held by the 2015 marriage equality referendum, by 209,930 votes.


text: According to exit polls by "The Irish Times" and by RTÉ, every age group voted Yes, except those aged 65 and over, with the highest Yes vote being from the youngest age groups. The details were:


text: According to the exit polls, both genders voted Yes, with women doing so somewhat more heavily than men. The details were:


text: According to the exit polls, both urban and rural voters voted Yes, with urban voters doing so more heavily than rural ones. The details were:


text: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: "I think what we've seen today really is the culmination of a quiet revolution that's taken place in Ireland for the past 10 or 20 years. This has been a great exercise in democracy, and the people have spoken. The people have said we want a modern constitution for a modern country, that we trust women, and we respect them to make the right decision, the right choices about their own health care."


text: Tánaiste Simon Coveney said: "For me, the margin of victory is important, but equally important is that there is no Dublin versus the rest or no urban/rural divide – in virtually every part of the country, people have voted in big numbers to allow the government and the Oireachtas to change Ireland for the better."


text: Orla O'Connor, director of the National Women's Council and co-director of Together for Yes, thanked "Yes" voters, saying: "This is phenomenal. This was a grass-roots, people campaign, and I think what today will show is that this is a people's referendum. Presuming that these exit polls are correct, the public haven't just spoken, this is a resounding roar from Irish people about the horrors of the Eighth and how women should no longer be treated as second-class citizens in our society."


text: Cora Sherlock, of the LoveBoth campaign, said: "This is a very sad day for Ireland, that people have voted for abortion. We need to remember what they have won. All that is being offered is abortion. There has been no talking about why Irish woman travel, what options could have been put on the table."


text: Declan Ganley tweeted: "I've been thinking about conscientious objection. I will not pay for the killing of Ireland's unborn children, I cannot be a party to it. So, there will need to be a way to exempt conscientious objectors taxes from paying for them in any way, shape, or form."


text: Catholic Bishop Kevin Doran said: "While the Catholic Church is a family, and nobody ever gets struck off, what I'd say to a Catholic who voted Yes is this: If you voted Yes, knowing and intending that abortion would be the outcome, then you should consider coming to Confession."


text: UK Prime Minister Theresa May contacted Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and posted to Twitter, saying: "The Irish Referendum yesterday was an impressive show of democracy which delivered a clear and unambiguous result. I congratulate the Irish people on their decision and all of #Together4Yes on their successful campaign." However, she later reiterated her position that abortion is considered a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, and, accordingly, that the UK government would not intervene. This followed a statement from Arlene Foster, leader of the Northern Ireland's anti-abortion DUP, whose votes were needed to give May's Conservative Government its Parliamentary majority, that the issue should be decided by the Northern Ireland Assembly.


text: Senior Conservatives, such as Commons Health Committee chairperson Sarah Wollaston and education minister Anne Milton, backed calls for a free vote on the issue, while Labour MP Stella Creasy said she would table an amendment on the matter to the Domestic Violence Bill and said that over 150 parliamentarians had expressed support for the change, and Labour's shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti called the issue a test for May's feminism. May's spokesperson refused to say whether Conservative MPs would be given a free vote in such a "hypothetical" situation, but said that there had been free votes on the abortion issue in the past.


text: The result re-opened the debate about the legality of abortion in Northern Ireland. In all constituent countries of the United Kingdom but Northern Ireland, abortion is legal in many circumstances under the Abortion Act 1967. Abortion in Northern Ireland has historically been considered a devolved matter, to be decided by the Northern Ireland Assembly.


text: In Belfast, a rally took place advocating for the liberalisation of abortion laws in Northern Ireland, where there were calls for the UK government to step in. UK intervention to liberalise abortion laws in Northern Ireland is opposed by the Democratic Unionist Party, then largest party in Northern Ireland and which supported the then-minority Conservative government in the UK.


text: The Provisional Referendum Certificate was signed by Barry Ryan, the Referendum Returning Officer, on 28 May 2018, and published in "Iris Oifigiúil" on 29 May. Challenges against the validity of the referendum must be brought within seven days of publication.


text: Three petitions challenging the result were made within the deadline, by Joanna Jordan, Charles Byrne, and Ciarán Tracey. These alleged variously that the Referendum Commission information booklet was biased and that the electoral register was unreliable, with unexplained deletion of older voters' details and failure to delete those of emigrants who were thus able to travel back to vote despite being ineligible. Jordan's unsuccessful petition against the children's rights amendment delayed its enactment from 2012 until 2015. Enactment of the 2015 marriage equality amendment was similarly delayed for three months.


text: The applications seeking leave to bring judicial review proceedings were heard in the High Court from 26 to 29 June. Tracey withdrew and leave was refused for another man, Diarmaid McConville, to take over his application. On 20 July, Justice Peter Kelly ruled against the other two applicants, saying they had failed to provide "prima facie" evidence of anything likely to have changed the result of the vote, but left them a week to challenge this in the Court of Appeal. Costs were awarded against both applicants. Byrne did not appeal, while Jordan's appeal was heard on 17 August.


text: Separately, on 31 July, the Court of Appeal rejected McConville's appeal against the refusal to allow him to take over Tracey's petition application, but gave him time to apply to the Supreme Court, which on 16 August denied him leave to appeal. On 27 August, the Court of Appeal dismissed Jordan's challenge, with Justice George Birmingham stating that "Jordan's assertions were so entirely devoid of substance that we can only conclude they were made with reckless and irresponsible abandon". Before the 31 August deadline, Jordan applied to the Supreme Court for leave to appeal; the court decided on 7 September to refuse to hear the appeal, thus allowing the amendment to be signed into law by President Higgins on 18 September 2018.


text: Even though the referendum had been carried, abortion remained "illegal in almost all circumstances until the Oireachtas passes legislation providing otherwise", which the Government originally hoped to introduce into the Dáil in the autumn, and to have passed by the end of 2018. However, after the referendum, there were calls for the process to be sped up, and health minister Simon Harris said that the bill would be introduced before the summer recess and become law by the autumn. "The Irish Times" reported on 6 June that the Dáil second stage would begin on 11 July, possibly extending the Dáil term, and that remaining Oireachtas stages would be in September and October. The introduction of legislation was held up until after the processing of the petitions against the referendum result.


text: Media had speculated before the vote that a narrow Yes majority would encourage No-supporting legislators to obstruct or weaken the legislative provisions compared to the draft published in March. Conversely, media said afterwards that the large majority made such moves unlikely; in particular, Fianna Fáil opponents would not "stand in the way" of the "will of the people".


text: An updated general scheme of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill 2018 was published by the Department of Health on 10 July. The final text was agreed by the cabinet at a meeting on 27 September and published the same day. Its second reading in the Dáil was introduced by minister Simon Harris on 4 October.


text: On 5 December, the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill passed final stages in the Dáil, where it was approved by 90 votes to 15 (with 12 abstentions). On 13 December, Seanad Éireann approved the bill by 27 votes to 5.


text: On 20 December 2018, President Michael D. Higgins signed the bill into law, officially legalising abortion in Ireland for the first time for non-life-threatening reasons.


title: Bonita Granville

text: Bonita Gloria Granville Wrather (February 2, 1923 – October 11, 1988) was an American actress and producer.


title: Bonita Granville

text: The daughter of vaudevillians, Granville began her career on the stage at age three. She initially began as a child actress, making her film debut in "Westward Passage" (1932). She rose to prominence for her role in "These Three" (1936), which earned her an Academy Award nomination at age fourteen. Her prominence continued with the "Nancy Drew" film series, and roles in "Now, Voyager" (1942) and "Hitler's Children" (1943).


title: Bonita Granville

text: After marrying Jack Wrather in 1947, Granville transitioned into producing with her husband on series such as "Lassie" (1959–1973). She also worked as a philanthropist and a businesswoman, most notably owning and operating Disneyland Hotel with her husband. She was appointed to the John F. Kennedy Center Board of Trustees by president Richard Nixon in 1972 and for another term by president Ronald Reagan in 1982.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In addition to her Oscar nomination, Granville received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for her contributions to the film industry. She and her husband were posthumously named Disney Legends in 2011.


title: Bonita Granville

text: Granville was born on February 2, 1923, in Manhattan, New York City, the daughter of Rosina (née Timponi; 1892–1984) and Bernard Granville (1888–1936). Both of her parents were stage performers. She was raised Roman Catholic.


title: Bonita Granville

text: She made her film debut at the age of nine in "Westward Passage" (1932), and appeared in a credited but nearly wordless supporting role as the young dancer Fanny Bridges in "Cavalcade" (1933), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Over the next few years, she played uncredited supporting roles in such films as "Little Women" (1933) and "Anne of Green Gables" (1934). She next played the role of Mary Tilford in the 1936 film adaptation of Lillian Hellman's 1934 stage play "The Children's Hour". Renamed "These Three", the film told the story of three adults (played by Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, and Joel McCrea) who find their lives almost destroyed by the malicious lies of an evil, attention-seeking child. For her role as that child, Granville was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, then the youngest person to be nominated for an Oscar.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In 1938, Granville was cast by Warner Bros. to play the role of girl detective Nancy Drew in a series of B movies based on the novels. The films were meant to resemble the popular Torchy Blane film series starring Glenda Farrell. Granville co-starred in the films with John Litel as her father Carson Drew, and Frankie Thomas, Jr. as Ted Nickerson. All four films — "Nancy Drew... Detective" (1938), "Nancy Drew... Reporter" (1939), "Nancy Drew... Trouble Shooter" (1939), and "Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase" (1939) — would play continuously in theaters over the next several years. Also in 1938, Granville appeared as the saucy, mischievous daughter in the multiple Academy Award-nominated hit comedy film "Merrily We Live", and starred as the title character in "The Beloved Brat". She also had "Angels Wash Their Faces" (1939) alongside Ronald Reagan, who would become a lifelong friend of hers.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In late 1939, Granville left Warner Bros. and signed a contract with MGM. However, found herself continued to be relegated to supporting roles in "The Mortal Storm" (1940) and "H. M. Pulham, Esq." (1941), and less substantial leading roles in "Those Were the Days!" (1940) and "Down in San Diego" (1941). She and MGM soon parted ways.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In 1941, Granville signed with RKO Pictures and immediately found more substantial supporting roles in "The Glass Key" (1942) and "Now, Voyager" (1942), for which she was loaned out to Paramount and Warner Bros. Following her leading role in "Seven Miles from Alcatraz" (1942), director Edward Dmytryk, soon cast her in RKO's World War II anti-Nazism film "Hitler's Children" (1943). The film was a commercial and critical success, becoming one of the studio's highest-grossing films of the year, and one of the highest-grossing for both RKO and 1943; it was also reportedly Granville's favorite film of hers. However, the studio relegated her to B-films such as "Youth Runs Wild" (1944) and "The Truth About Murder" (1946). She continued to be loaned out to other studios, such as MGM loaned for two Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney, "Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble" (1944) and "Love Laughs at Andy Hardy" (1946), as well as a leading role in "Song of the Open Road" (1944); Universal for "The Beautiful Cheat" and "Senorita from the West" (both 1945); and United Artists for "Breakfast in Hollywood". Following being loaned out to Monogram Pictures for "Suspense" (1946) and "The Guilty" (1947), Granville informally retired from films, only appearing in "Strike It Rich" (1948) and "Guilty of Treason" (1950).


title: Bonita Granville

text: On February 5, 1947, Granville married Jack Wrather at the Bel-Air Hotel, having met him while he produced "The Guilty". He formed the Wrather Corporation, and bought the rights to the characters from both "The Lone Ranger" and "Lassie". Granville worked as a producer for several film and television productions featuring these characters, including the 1954 TV series "Lassie".


title: Bonita Granville

text: She appeared in the film version of "The Lone Ranger" in 1956, and made her final screen appearance in a cameo role in "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" (1981). Their children are daughters Molly and Linda, and sons Jack and Christopher. Jack and Molly were from Wrather's previous marriage to Mollie O'Daniel, a daughter of Governor of Texas and U.S. Senator W. Lee O'Daniel. The marriage lasted until Wrather's death in 1984, shortly after release of the movie "The Magic of Lassie", a movie co-produced by Granville and starring Wrather's friend James Stewart.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In 1949, she appeared with Rod Cameron in the comedy film "Strike It Rich," filmed about Tyler, Kilgore, and Lindale in East Texas.


title: Bonita Granville

text: Granville died on October 11, 1988, of lung cancer at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 65. She was buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.


title: Bonita Granville

text: Granville has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6607 Hollywood Boulevard, for her contributions to motion pictures. She was honored at the Disneyland Hotel, which she and her husband owned until The Wrather Company was sold to the Walt Disney Company after Granville's death. The Bonita Tower and the Granville's Steak House were named in her honor. In 2011, Disney honored the Wrathers posthumously by inducting them into the Disney Legends.


title: Bonita Granville

text: In 1942, Granville's image was used as the heroine of the novel "Bonita Granville and the Mystery of Star Island". The story, written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, was published by Whitman Publishing Company in 1942. The story was written for a young teenaged audience, and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941 and 1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: Gregorio "Gringo" Ballesteros Honasan II (, born March 14, 1948), is a Filipino politician and a cashiered Philippine Army officer who led unsuccessful coups d'état against President Corazon Aquino. He played a key role in the 1986 EDSA Revolution that toppled President Ferdinand Marcos.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: After 1986, he led a series of unsuccessful but violent coup attempts against the administration of Corazon Aquino. President Fidel Ramos granted him amnesty in 1992. He entered politics and became a senator from 1995 to 2004, and again from 2007 to 2019. He ran for vice president of the Philippines, being Jejomar Binay's running-mate in 2016, but both were respectively defeated by Leni Robredo and Rodrigo Duterte.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: On November 22, 2018, President Duterte appointed then-Senator Honasan as Secretary of Department of Information and Communications Technology, which took effect after the latter's senatorial term, with Eliseo Rio serving as acting secretary.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: Gregorio Honasan was born in Baguio to Colonel Romeo Gillego Honasan and Alicia "Alice" Masip Ballesteros, both from Sorsogon province. He has six siblings. Honasan spent his elementary days at San Beda College from Kindergarten to Grade 6. After which, he went to Taiwan and studied at the Dominican School, Taipei, Taiwan. He then returned to the Philippines and finished his high school at Don Bosco Technical College. He attained his Bachelor of Science degree at the Philippine Military Academy, where he received the title of "Class Baron", the academy's highest leadership award.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: After graduating in 1971, he joined the Philippine Army's special forces, Scout Ranger Regiment and went into combat against separatist and communist insurgents in Luzon and Mindanao. He was wounded in action at battles in Lebak and Jolo. Making his way up through the armed forces, he became aide-de-camp to Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in 1974, and later became the Defense Ministry's Chief of Security.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: Concurrent with his position as security chief, he was a board member of the Northern Mindanao Development Bank and president of the Beatriz Marketing Company.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: In 1986, Honasan and a cabal of colonels, backed by Enrile, tried to use popular unrest to overthrow the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. When the plot was uncovered, the conspirators sought refuge in the military headquarters and called on civilians, the media, and the Catholic Church for protection. Hundreds of thousands of people served as human shields to protect Honasan and his men from Marcos' forces, sparking the 1986 People Power Revolution that led to Marcos' fall from power and the installation of Corazon Aquino as president.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: Aquino awarded Honasan a Distinguished Conduct Star for the EDSA Revolution and the Presidential Government Medal in 1986. Under the new government, he was head of a special group in the defense ministry. Using his position, he was covertly involved in various coup attempts against Aquino.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: On August 28, 1987, fighting broke out in the streets and Honasan ordered his men to attack government installations, resulting in the deaths of dozens, including many civilians. The attack was put down by government forces, but Honasan was able to escape. He was later captured and imprisoned on a Navy ship in Manila Bay. He later escaped once again by convincing his guards to join his cause.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: Philippine President Fidel Ramos, who was elected in 1992, granted amnesty to Honasan, who utilized his rebel infamy to enter politics in 1995, becoming the second independent candidate in Philippine history to win a seat in the Senate after Magnolia Antonino. He was re-elected in 2001, filling the vacant seat left by Senator Teofisto Guingona Jr., who was appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as Vice President. From April 30 to May 1, 2001, together with Juan Ponce Enrile, Miriam Defensor Santiago, Panfilo Lacson and Vicente Sotto III, he led the EDSA III protests in support of deposed President Joseph Estrada. On May 1, 2001, the protesters stormed Malacañang Palace.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: He left the Senate when his term expired in 2004. In the general election held in May 2007, he was again elected to the Senate. Running as an independent candidate, he polled some 11.6 million votes, finishing 10th out of 37 candidates for 12 Senate vacancies. He took up his post on June 30. He was reelected during the 2013 elections, placing 12th with 13,211,424 votes, his fourth term.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: In June 2015, Justice Undersecretary Jose Justiniano amended the complaint against Senator Honasan for his alleged part in the Pork Barrel Scam involving allegations of corrupt malversation of public funds.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: During the 2016 Philippine general elections, Honasan was Jejomar Binay's running mate under the United Nationalist Alliance party. Honasan placed 6th in the vice presidential race, garnering only 788,881 or 1.92% of votes.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: On November 22, 2018, President Duterte appointed Honasan as secretary of Department of Information and Communications Technology. Acting Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr. held the position until the end of Honasan's Senate term. Honasan was sworn into the office on July 1, 2019 and confirmed by the Commission on Appointments on September 11, 2019.


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: In January 2020, the Department was flagged by the Commission on Audit of the Philippines for worth of cash advances of confidential funds under Honasan. Undersecretary of Operations Eliseo Rio Jr. also questioned the cash advances as he resigned from his position. Secretary Honasan and Undersecretary Rio later issued a joint statement to state that the confidential expenses were "lawful and legitimate" and that "Undersecretary Rio’s resignation was due to personal reasons, and not due to any rift with the Secretary, nor to any anomaly in the Confidential Expense."


title: Gregorio Honasan

text: On October 8, 2021, Honasan filed his Certificate of Candidacy to run once again for senator in 2022, effectively ending his time as Secretary of Information and Communications Technology. His candidacy was endorsed by President Rodrigo Duterte, making him part of the PDP–Laban senatorial slate, although he was an independent. He was also named to the senatorial slate of tickets led by presidential aspirants Panfilo Lacson and Bongbong Marcos (under UniTeam Alliance), respectively. However, he lost his bid with 10,668,886 votes, ranking 18th out of the 12 seats up for election. He conceded from the race on May 11, 2022.


title: Little Bo-Peep

text: "Little Bo-Peep" or "Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 6487.


title: Little Bo-Peep

text: As with most products of oral tradition, there are many variations to the rhyme. The most common modern version is:


title: Little Bo-Peep

text: Common variations on second-line include "And can't tell where to find them." The fourth line is frequently given as "Bringing their tails behind them", or sometimes "Dragging their tails behind them". This alternative version is useful in the extended version, usually of four further stanzas. The melody commonly associated with the rhyme was first recorded in 1870 by the composer and nursery rhyme collector James William Elliott in his "National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs".


title: Little Bo-Peep

text: The earliest record of this rhyme is in a manuscript of around 1805, which contains only the first verse which references the adult Bo Peep , called 'Little' because she was short and not because she was young. There are references to a children's game called "bo-peep", from the 16th century, including one in Shakespeare's "King Lear" (Act I Scene iv), for which "bo-peep" is thought to refer to the children's game of peek-a-boo, but there's no evidence that the rhyme existed earlier than the 18th century. The additional verses are first recorded in the earliest printed version in a version of "Gammer Gurton's Garland or The Nursery Parnassus" in 1810, published in London by Joseph Johnson.


title: Little Bo-Peep

text: The phrase "to play bo peep" was in use from the 14th century to refer to the punishment of being stood in a pillory. For example, in 1364, an ale-wife, Alice Causton, was convicted of giving short measure, for which crime she had to "play bo peep thorowe a pillery". Andrew Boorde uses the same phrase in 1542, "". Nevertheless, connections with sheep are early; a fifteenth-century ballad includes the lines: " // In every corner they play boe-peep".


title: Bhuvaneshvari

text: Bhuvaneshvari (Sanskrit: भुवनेश्वरी, IAST: "Bhuvaneśvarī") is a Hindu goddess. She is the fourth amongst the ten Mahavidya goddesses in Shaktism, and one of the highest aspects of "Mahadevi". She is identified as Adi Parashakti in the Devi Bhagavatam.


title: Bhuvaneshvari

text: The word Bhuvaneśwari is a compound of the words "Bhuvana Iśwari", meaning "Goddess of the world" or "Queen of the universe", where the worlds are the "tri-bhuvana" or three regions of "bhūḥ" (Earth), "bhuvaḥ" (atmosphere) and "svaḥ" (Heavens).


title: Bhuvaneshvari

text: According to the Devi Bhagavata Purana, the goddess offers the five manifestations of the Pancha Prakriti:


title: Bhuvaneshvari

text: There are several temples dedicated to Bhuvaneshvari across India. In South India most of the Srividhya tradition upasaka worship her. In Kerala she is also popular among Shaktas.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The G1 Climax 32 was a professional wrestling tournament promoted by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). The tournament commenced on July 16 and concluded on August 18, 2022. It was the thirty-second edition of G1 Climax and the forty-eighth edition of the tournament counting its previous forms under different names.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: Considered NJPW's most important tournament, the G1 Climax featured twenty-eight wrestlers, divided into four blocks of seven ("A", "B", "C", and "D"). Each participant faced all six other wrestlers within the same block in singles matches. The winner of each block was determined via a point system, with two points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a defeat. Each night of the event saw one match from each block between two members. On the final two days of the event, the winners of each block entered a four-man playoff to determine the winner of the tournament, who also receives a future match for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestle Kingdom. The event was broadcast live on TV Asahi and Fighting TV Samurai in Japan, and New Japan Pro-Wrestling World worldwide.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: For the first time in three years, the block returned to the summer, moving away from the previous years where it was held in the fall between September–October due to the 2020 Summer Olympic Games being held in Japan, while coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. At twenty-eight participants, it was the largest field in G1 Climax history and the most competitors since 2014. The tournament also ran in a four-block round-robin format for the first time since 2000.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The event saw the G1 Climax debuts of Tom Lawlor, Jonah, El Phantasmo, Aaron Henare, and David Finlay.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The tournament features twenty-eight wrestlers, divided into four blocks of seven ("A", "B", "C", and "D"). Each participant faces all six other wrestlers within the same block in singles matches. The winner of each


title: G1 Climax 32

text: block is determined via a point system, with two points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss; each night of the event sees one match from each block between two members competing for the tournament. In case of several wrestlers sharing the top score, the results of the matches those wrestlers had when facing each other in the tournament act as tiebreaker, with the one having the most wins over the other top-scorers determining the winner of the block.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: On the final two days of the event, the respective winners of each block enter a four-man single-elimination playoff to determine the winner of the G1 Climax, who would gain a future match for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, NJPW's top championship, at Wrestle Kingdom, NJPW's biggest yearly event; if the IWGP Heavyweight Champion himself wins, he selects his opponent at Wrestle Kingdom. The Young Lion matches have a fifteen-minutes time limit, while the matches of the tournament have a 30-minutes time limit (with the time limit being reached resulting in a tie); the semifinal (block winners) and final (semifinal winners) matches, where a winner must be determined, have no time limit.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: On April 9, 2022, at Hyper Battle '22, NJPW announced that the 2022 edition of the G1 Climax would take place from July to August, returning to the summer for the first time since 2019. During Dominion 6.12 in Osaka-jo Hall on June 22, NJPW announced the participants for the G1 Climax.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The event includes matches that result from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portray heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that build tension and culminate in a wrestling match or series of matches.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The first night of the tournament took place on July 16, 2022, at Hokkai Kitayell in Toyohira-ku, Sapporo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The second night of the tournament took place on July 17, 2022, at Hokkai Kitayell in Toyohira-ku, Sapporo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The third night of the tournament took place on July 20, 2022, at Xebio Arena Sendai in Sendai, Miyagi.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The fourth night of the tournament took place on July 23, 2022, at Ota City General Gymnasium in Ōta, Tokyo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The fifth night of the tournament took place on July 24, 2022, at Ota City General Gymnasium in Ōta, Tokyo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The eighth night of the tournament took place on July 30, 2022, at Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium in Nagoya, Aichi.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The ninth night of the tournament took place on July 31, 2022, at Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium in Nagoya, Aichi.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The tenth night of the tournament took place on August 2, 2022, at Hamamatsu Arena in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The eleventh night of the tournament took place on August 5, 2022, at Item Ehime in Matsuyama, Ehime.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The twelfth night of the tournament took place on August 6, 2022, at Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium in Namba, Osaka.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The thirteenth night of the tournament took place on August 7, 2022, at Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium in Namba, Osaka.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The fourteenth night of the tournament took place on August 9, 2022, at Hiroshima Sun Plaza in Nishi-ku, Hiroshima.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The fifteenth night of the tournament took place on August 10, 2022, at Hiroshima Sun Plaza in Nishi-ku, Hiroshima.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The sixteenth night of the tournament took place on August 13, 2022, at Machida Municipal Gymnasium in Machida, Tokyo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The seventeenth night of the tournament took place on August 14, 2022, at White Ring in Nagano, Nagano.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The eighteenth night of the tournament took place on August 16, 2022, at Nippon Budokan in Chiyoda, Tokyo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The nineteenth night of the tournament took place on August 17, 2022, at Nippon Budokan in Chiyoda, Tokyo.


title: G1 Climax 32

text: The final night of the tournament took place on August 18, 2022, at Nippon Budokan in Chiyoda, Tokyo.


title: Ivor Novello Awards

text: The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy (formerly the BASCA) since 1956, and over 1,000 statuettes have been awarded.


title: Ivor Novello Awards

text: The award itself is a solid bronze sculpture of Euterpe, the muse of lyric poetry. It was designed in 1955 by Hazel Underwood.


title: Fading

text: In wireless communications, fading is variation of the attenuation of a signal with various variables. These variables include time, geographical position, and radio frequency. Fading is often modeled as a random process. A fading channel is a communication channel that experiences fading. In wireless systems, fading may either be due to multipath propagation, referred to as multipath-induced fading, weather (particularly rain), or shadowing from obstacles affecting the wave propagation, sometimes referred to as shadow fading.


title: Fading

text: The presence of reflectors in the environment surrounding a transmitter and receiver create multiple paths that a transmitted signal can traverse. As a result, the receiver sees the superposition of multiple copies of the transmitted signal, each traversing a different path. Each signal copy will experience differences in attenuation, delay and phase shift while traveling from the source to the receiver. This can result in either constructive or destructive interference, amplifying or attenuating the signal power seen at the receiver. Strong destructive interference is frequently referred to as a deep fade and may result in temporary failure of communication due to a severe drop in the channel signal-to-noise ratio.


title: Fading

text: A common example of deep fade is the experience of stopping at a traffic light and hearing an FM broadcast degenerate into static, while the signal is re-acquired if the vehicle moves only a fraction of a meter. The loss of the broadcast is caused by the vehicle stopping at a point where the signal experienced severe destructive interference. Cellular phones can also exhibit similar momentary fades.


title: Fading

text: Fading channel models are often used to model the effects of electromagnetic transmission of information over the air in cellular networks and broadcast communication. Fading channel models are also used in underwater acoustic communications to model the distortion caused by the water.


title: Fading

text: The terms "slow" and "fast" fading refer to the rate at which the magnitude and phase change imposed by the channel on the signal changes. The coherence time is a measure of the minimum time required for the magnitude change or phase change of the channel to become uncorrelated from its previous value.


title: Fading

text: In a fast-fading channel, the transmitter may take advantage of the variations in the channel conditions using time diversity to help increase robustness of the communication to a temporary deep fade. Although a deep fade may temporarily erase some of the information transmitted, use of an error-correcting code coupled with successfully transmitted bits during other time instances (interleaving) can allow for the erased bits to be recovered. In a slow-fading channel, it is not possible to use time diversity because the transmitter sees only a single realization of the channel within its delay constraint. A deep fade therefore lasts the entire duration of transmission and cannot be mitigated using coding.


title: Fading

text: The coherence time of the channel is related to a quantity known as the Doppler spread of the channel. When a user (or reflectors in its environment) is moving, the user's velocity causes a shift in the frequency of the signal transmitted along each signal path. This phenomenon is known as the Doppler shift. Signals traveling along different paths can have different Doppler shifts, corresponding to different rates of change in phase. The difference in Doppler shifts between different signal components contributing to a signal fading channel tap is known as the Doppler spread. Channels with a large Doppler spread have signal components that are each changing independently in phase over time. Since fading depends on whether signal components add constructively or destructively, such channels have a very short coherence time.


title: Fading

text: where formula_2 is the coherence time, formula_3 is the Doppler spread. This equation is just an approximation, to be exact, see Coherence time.


title: Fading

text: Block fading is where the fading process is approximately constant for a number of symbol intervals. A channel can be 'doubly block-fading' when it is block fading in both the time and frequency domains. Many wireless communications channels are dynamic by nature, and are commonly modeled as block fading. In these channels each block of symbol goes through a statistically independent transformation. Typically the slowly-varying channels based on jakes model of Rayleigh spectrum is used for block fading in an OFDM system.


title: Fading

text: Selective fading or frequency selective fading is a radio propagation anomaly caused by partial cancellation of a radio signal by itself — the signal arrives at the receiver by two different paths, and at least one of the paths is changing (lengthening or shortening). This typically happens in the early evening or early morning as the various layers in the ionosphere move, separate, and combine. The two paths can both be skywave or one be groundwave.


title: Fading

text: Selective fading manifests as a slow, cyclic disturbance; the cancellation effect, or "null", is deepest at one particular frequency, which changes constantly, sweeping through the received audio.


title: Fading

text: As the carrier frequency of a signal is varied, the magnitude of the change in amplitude will vary. The coherence bandwidth measures the separation in frequency after which two signals will experience uncorrelated fading.


title: Fading

text: Since different frequency components of the signal are affected independently, it is highly unlikely that all parts of the signal will be simultaneously affected by a deep fade. Certain modulation schemes such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and code-division multiple access (CDMA) are well-suited to employing frequency diversity to provide robustness to fading. OFDM divides the wideband signal into many slowly modulated narrowband subcarriers, each exposed to flat fading rather than frequency selective fading. This can be combated by means of error coding, simple equalization or adaptive bit loading. Inter-symbol interference is avoided by introducing a guard interval between the symbols called a cyclic prefix. CDMA uses the rake receiver to deal with each echo separately.


title: Fading

text: Frequency-selective fading channels are also "dispersive", in that the signal energy associated with each symbol is spread out in time. This causes transmitted symbols that are adjacent in time to interfere with each other. Equalizers are often deployed in such channels to compensate for the effects of the intersymbol interference.


title: Fading

text: The effect can be counteracted by applying some diversity scheme, for example OFDM (with subcarrier interleaving and forward error correction), or by using two receivers with separate antennas spaced a quarter-wavelength apart, or a specially designed diversity receiver with two antennas. Such a receiver continuously compares the signals arriving at the two antennas and presents the better signal.


title: Fading

text: Upfade is a special case of fading, used to describe constructive interference, in situations where a radio signal gains strength. Some multipath conditions cause a signal's amplitude to be increased in this way because signals travelling by different paths arrive at the receiver in phase and become additive to the main signal. Hence, the total signal that reaches the receiver will be stronger than the signal would otherwise have been without the multipath conditions.


title: Fading

text: Fading can cause poor performance in a communication system because it can result in a loss of signal power without reducing the power of the noise. This signal loss can be over some or all of the signal bandwidth. Fading can also be a problem as it changes over time: communication systems are often designed to adapt to such impairments, but the fading can change faster than the adaptations can be made. In such cases, the probability of experiencing a fade (and associated bit errors as the signal-to-noise ratio drops) on the channel becomes the limiting factor in the link's performance.


title: Fading

text: The effects of fading can be combated by using diversity to transmit the signal over multiple channels that experience independent fading and coherently combining them at the receiver. The probability of experiencing a fade in this composite channel is then proportional to the probability that all the component channels simultaneously experience a fade, a much more unlikely event.


title: Fading

text: Diversity can be achieved in time, frequency, or space. Common techniques used to overcome signal fading include:


title: Fading

text: Besides diversity, techniques such as application of cyclic prefix (e.g. in OFDM) and channel estimation and equalization can also be used to tackle fading.


title: McMuffin

text: McMuffin is a family of breakfast sandwiches sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. The Egg McMuffin is the signature sandwich, which was invented in 1972 by Herb Peterson to resemble eggs Benedict, a traditional American breakfast dish with English muffins, ham, eggs and hollandaise sauce.


title: McMuffin

text: In the US and Canada the standard McMuffin consists of a slice of Canadian bacon, a griddle-fried egg, and a slice of American cheese on a toasted and buttered English muffin. The round shape of the egg is made by cooking it in a white plastic ring surrounded by an outer metal structure.


title: McMuffin

text: The sandwich was invented in 1972. Former McDonald's President Ray Kroc wrote that Herb Peterson and his assistant, Donald Greadel, the operator of a McDonald’s Santa Barbara franchise in Goleta, California, asked Kroc to look at something, without giving details because it was:


title: McMuffin

text: One reason the sandwich was served open-faced was that a small tub of strawberry preserves was provided, along with a knife. The sweet and savory approach did not catch on (at least in the USA), although a packet of strawberry preserves will still be provided upon request.


title: McMuffin

text: The first McDonald's corporate-authorized Egg McMuffin was served at the Belleville, New Jersey, McDonald's in 1972.


title: Common genet

text: The common genet (Genetta genetta) is a small viverrid indigenous to Africa that was introduced to southwestern Europe. It is widely distributed north of the Sahara, in savanna zones south of the Sahara to southern Africa and along the coast of Arabia, Yemen and Oman. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.


title: Common genet

text: The common genet has a slender, cat-like body, a small head with a pointed muzzle, large oval ears, large eyes and well-developed whiskers up to in length. Its legs are short, with cat-like feet and semi-retractile claws. Its fur is dense and soft, and the coat is pale grey, with numerous black markings. The back and flanks are marked with about five rows of black spots, and a long black stripe runs along the middle of the back from the shoulders to the rump. There is also a black stripe on the forehead, and dark patches beneath the eyes, which are offset against the white fur of the chin and throat. The tail is striped, with anything from eight to thirteen rings along its length. Its body is long with a long tail. Males weigh an average of and are about 10% larger than females. It has an erectile crest of hair from the shoulder to the base of the tail, a white tail tip and black hind feet.


title: Common genet

text: In North Africa, the common genet occurs along the western Mediterranean coast, and in a broad band from Senegal and Mauritania in the west throughout the savannah zone south of the Sahara to Somalia and Tanzania in the east. On the Arabian Peninsula, it was recorded in coastal regions of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman. Another discontinuous population inhabits Southern Africa, from southern Angola across Zambia, Zimbabwe to Mozambique. It inhabits a wide range of deciduous and evergreen habitats that provide plentiful shelter such as rocky terrain with caves and dense scrub land, but also come close to settlements and agricultural land.


title: Common genet

text: It is common in Morocco and Algeria but rare in Libya, Egypt and Zambia. In South Africa, it is common in west-central KwaZulu-Natal, in the Cape Province, and in QwaQwa National Park in the Free State province.


title: Common genet

text: It was brought to the Mediterranean region from Maghreb as a semi-domestic animal about 1,000 to 1,500 years ago. It spread from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balearic Islands and southern France. Its range in Europe has historically been considered bounded by the rivers Loire and Rhône, which were believed to form barriers to its expansion north and east, respectively; specimens encountered beyond the southwest of France have consequently been considered escapees from captivity instead of signs of breeding populations. However, genets have been recorded east of the Rhône in numbers too large to be accounted for through the casual dispersal of escaped exotic pets. Due to this and the presence of large breeding populations of genets at the edge of their traditional range, the trans-Rhône specimens are believed to represent established populations descended from specimens that crossed the river using bridges built in urban areas. Sporadic sightings have been recorded as far east as Italy, where individuals have been sighted in mountainous areas in the Piedmont region and in the Aosta Valley. Individuals sighted in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands are still considered to have escaped or been released from captivity. In southwestern Europe, it thrives in oak and pine forests, but also lives in olive groves, riparian zones, ash groves, rocky areas, and shrublands. It is rare in open areas, marshes, and cereal croplands. Despite its abundance along watercourses, presence of water is not considered essential. Specimens have been encountered in high altitude areas in the Alps, but it is not clear if this demonstrates casual occurrence or true habit suitability.


title: Common genet

text: It prefers to live in areas with dense vegetation, such as bushes, thickets, and evergreen oak forests.


title: Common genet

text: As resting sites it uses trees with dense foliage in the canopy and dense thickets overgrown with climbing plants.


title: Common genet

text: In Manzanares Park in central Spain, it lives foremost in areas of elevation with many rocks and shrubs. It tolerates proximity to settlements.


title: Common genet

text: The common genet and wood mouse share the same habitats and niches, specifically Mediterranean forests.


title: Common genet

text: In the East Sudanian Savanna, it was recorded in the transboundary Dinder–Alatash protected area complex during surveys between 2015 and 2018. In northern Ethiopia, it was recorded in the mountainous Degua Tembien district.


title: Common genet

text: The common genet is solitary. Adults are nocturnal and crepuscular, with their highest levels of activity following sunset and just prior to sunrise; juveniles may be active during the day. They rest during the day in hollow trees or among thickets, and frequently use the same resting sites. In southern Spain, adult individuals occupy home ranges of about in average. The ranges of males and females overlap, but those of members of the same sex do not.


title: Common genet

text: During a study in northeastern Spain, males have been found to be more active than females at night because of their greater size, which indicates that males have greater energy requirements to satisfy their physiological needs. Females typically weigh less, and they have been found to be less active overall. Females' home ranges are also smaller than those of males. Males had a mean annual home range of , and females of . While males have larger home ranges in all seasons, the differences between males' and females' territories are most significant during the winter. Their home ranges are slightly larger during the spring because they are more active, not only nocturnally, but in seeking a mate. Because of their increased activity, they require more energy and are more active to acquire the necessary sustenance.


title: Common genet

text: Both male and females scent mark in their home ranges. Females mark their territory using scent glands on their flanks, hind legs, and perineum. Males mark less frequently than females, often spraying urine, rather than using their scent glands, and do so primarily during the breeding season. Scent marks by both sexes allow individuals to identify the reproductive and social status of other genets. Common genets also defecate at specific latrine sites, which are often located at the edge of their territories, and perform a similar function to other scent marks.


title: Common genet

text: Five communication calls have been reported. The hiccup call is used by males during the mating period and by females to call the litter. Kits purr during their first week of life and, during their dependent weeks, moan or mew. Kits also growl after the complete development of predatory behavior and during aggressive interactions. Finally, genets utter a "click" as a threat. Threatening behavior consists of erection of the dark central dorsal band of hair, an arched-back stance, opening the mouth, and baring the teeth.


title: Common genet

text: The common genet uses five distinct calls. The "hiccup" call is used to indicate friendly interactions, such as between a mother and her young, or between males and females prior to mating. Conversely, clicks, or, in younger individuals, growls, are used to indicate aggression. The remaining two calls, a "mew" and a purr, are used only by young still dependent on their mother.


title: Common genet

text: It has a varied diet comprising small mammals, lizards, birds, bird eggs, amphibians, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, insects and fruit, including figs and olives. The wood mouse is a favourite prey item, It also prey on red squirrels ("Sciurus vulgaris") and dormice ("Eliomys quercinus"). Genets locate their prey primarily by scent, and kill with a bite to the neck, like cats. Small rodents are captured by the back and killed with a bite at the head, then eaten starting with the head.


title: Common genet

text: In Spain, common genets can suffer from infestation of parasitic helminths, as well as ticks, fleas ("Hippobosca"), and lice. Common genets also host the phthirapteran "Eutrichophilus genettae" and "Lorisicola (Paradoxuroecus) genettae".


title: Common genet

text: In Africa, predators include leopard, serval, caracal, ratel and large owl species. Potential predators are also red fox and northern goshawk.


title: Common genet

text: In Spain, common genets breed between January and September, with a peak in February and March and another one in the summer. Mating behaviour and development of young has been studied in captive individuals. Copulation lasts about two to three minutes, and is repeated up to five times in the same night. After a gestation period of 10 to 11 weeks, up to four young are born. Newborn common genets weigh . They start eating meat at around seven weeks of age, and are fully weaned at four months of age. When five months old, they are skilled in hunting on their own. When 19 months old, they start marking, and are thought to be sexually mature at the age of two years. Captive common genets have lived up to 13 years.


title: Common genet

text: No major threats to common genets are known. In North Africa and some localities in southern Africa, they are hunted for their fur. In Portugal, they get killed in predator traps. On Ibiza, urbanization and development of infrastructure cause loss and fragmentation of habitat.


title: Common genet

text: "Genetta genetta" is listed on Appendix III of the Bern Convention and in Annex V of the Habitats and Species Directive of the European Union.


title: Common genet

text: "Genetta felina" has been reclassified as a species based on morphological diagnoses comparing 5500 Viverrinae specimens in zoological collections.


title: Common genet

text: Along with other viverrids, genets are among living carnivorans considered to be the morphologically closest to the extinct common ancestor of the whole order.


title: GN Store Nord

text: GN Store Nord A/S is a Danish manufacturer of hearing aids (GN ReSound/GN Hearing) and headsets (Jabra (GN Audio)). GN Store Nord A/S is listed on NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen (ISIN code DK0010272632).


title: GN Store Nord

text: The company was founded as The Great Northern Telegraph Company (Det Store Nordiske Telegrafselskab A/S) in Denmark in June 1869. It was set up as a merger of three recently established telegraph companies initiated by Danish industrial mogul Carl Frederik Tietgen. The aim of the firm was to create a worldwide telegraph company.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The starting point of The Great Northern Telegraph Company (now GN Store Nord) was a concession agreement, which C.F. Tietgen made with the Russian Tzar in 1869. The agreement gave The Great Northern Telegraph Company exclusive rights – and obligations – to establish and run a telegraph line in Russia. This represented a great pioneer task for the company in establishing connections from Europe to the Far East. The Russian authorities ran the actual construction work in Russia. They had already set up a telegraph line in parts of Siberia but were looking for a business partner to cover China and Japan before continuing the Russian line all the way east to Vladivostok. Thus, The Great Northern Telegraph Company was given the responsibility to establish and run its own telegraph line in Asia and additionally assist the Russians with operations, maintenance, technical assistance, and education.


title: GN Store Nord

text: In the following years, the telegraph line expanded massively – both in Europe and in Asia. First, Oslo, London and Paris were covered. Later, operations took place along the coast of China ranging from Hong Kong to Shanghai and further into Japan, where the first telegraph station opened in Nagasaki in 1897. In addition to the telegraph line, telegraph stations and offices opened at several locations.


title: GN Store Nord

text: In 1897, negotiations began about a potential connection going from Scotland to the United States through the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. In 1906, the cable was established, although without the final connection to the United States, which had to wait for almost 60 years to become a reality. When the transatlantic connection was finally established, however, it represented a remarkable expansion, which significantly facilitated communication between people around the world.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The beginning of the 20th century was characterized by several wars and disputes, which affected the company's operations. World War I and largely the Russian Revolution changed the map of Europe, but this only meant an increase in demand for telegraphy. Thus, the company succeeded in prolonging its concession agreement in 1921, signed by Lenin.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The 1920s and the early 1930s represented great decades for The Great Northern Telegraph Company as it had managed to acquire a reputation as being one of the leading international telecommunication companies in the world. The late 1930s, however, presented great challenges as competition from wireless telegraphy was becoming increasingly severe. In addition, World War II caused great damage to the telegraph lines around the world, which meant that in 1945 the company had only two lines left; the England-Faroes-Iceland line and the Sweden-Finland line. Although broken lines were repaired and re-established after the war, the company had to acknowledge that an era was over.


title: GN Store Nord

text: Thus, the new strategy was to focus on a broader segment by investing in various companies across sectors. This strategy was initiated in 1939 with the investment in the battery factory Hellesens. Over the following decades, The Great Northern Telegraph Company balanced between investing in the telecommunications industry and other industries. On the industry side, it invested in companies such as Lauritz Knudsen, which produced electrical goods, and in 1947, the radiotelephone production company Storno (a contraction of Store Nordiske (Great Northern)) was founded. Other acquisitions were Telematic, which produced telephones, Elmi, which produced measuring equipment, and Danavox, which produced hearing aids.


title: GN Store Nord

text: In 1985, The Great Northern Telegraph Company changed its name to GN Store Nord (GN = Great Nordic) with the aim of creating a new group identity and organizing its businesses. In this process, all subsidiaries were renamed to include GN: GN Danavox, GN NetTest, GN Automatic, etc. A major change happened in 1991 when GN was assigned the attractive GMS concession from the national Danish telecommunication authorities. In March 1992, GN's new subsidiary Sonofon opened the first private mobile telephone network in Denmark. Although GN was not the only investor in Sonofon, it owned the majority of the shares. With the blossoming of the data communications and telephony industry, and under CEO Jørgen Lindegaard, GN was back on track and enjoyed big success in the late 1990s. In 2000, the company sold Sonofon to Norwegian telecom operator Telenor for a price of DKK 14,7 billion.


title: GN Store Nord

text: A large amount was invested in the GN subsidiary NetTest, which had evolved from the former Elmi and considered GN's prospective core business. It was decided to let NetTest acquire the French company Photonetics for a price of DKK 9,1 billion. The optimistic view of the future was also reflected in the share price, which had increased fivefold in only one year, from September 1, 1999, to September 1, 2000. Same year the American Jabra Corporation was acquired.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The focus and investment in NetTest, however, resulted in a serious downturn since GN had misjudged the market development of NetTest's products. In 2001, net profit ended at DKK -9,2 billion, followed by a share price decline equivalent to previous years’ gains. Thereby major parts of the yield from Sonofon was lost within one year, and shareholders were raging in the media and at the annual general meeting.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The following years’ turbulence led to the company selling most of its subsidiaries and leaving Tietgen's old headquarters in 1893 at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. GN Store Nord's headquarter currently resides in Ballerup North of Copenhagen, Denmark. GN continued focusing on its two core businesses; hearing aids and headsets, produced by GN Hearing and GN Audio, respectively.


title: GN Store Nord

text: On October 2, 2006, GN announced its decision to divest GN Hearing (formerly GN ReSound) and GN Otometrics (a company producing audio measuring equipment) to Swiss competitor Sonova (formerly known as Phonak). The deal, however, was annulled after being blocked by the German Cartel Office. After this, GN announced that it intended to keep the two companies but filed an appeal against the court ruling. The case is still pending.


title: GN Store Nord

text: The blocked deal, however, left GN challenged to the extreme with two underperforming businesses, a thin product pipeline, a heavy debt position, and facing a highly adverse macroeconomic environment. Nonetheless, with comprehensive restructuring and management efforts, the company managed to survive. Since then, GN has gradually fought its way back.


title: GN Store Nord

text: In 2009, GN Audio (then GN Netcom) made a decision to globally market all its products under the same brand, Jabra (a company that GN had acquired in 2000). The purpose of consolidating all products under the same brand was to strengthen the company's position as the world's leading supplier of headsets.


title: GN Store Nord

text: Today, GN Audio is a world leader in Unified Communications headsets, and within the last couple of years, the company has managed to be the first at introducing a number of innovative products on the market. In 2014, the company launched the world's first sports headset with a built-in heart rate monitor. In addition, a series of noise cancellation headsets with a concentration zone has been launched, which are specially designed to improve employees’ ability to concentrate in noisy open offices.


title: GN Store Nord

text: GN Hearing also got back on track. In 2010, the company launched the world's first hearing aid with 2.4 GHz technology – the new wireless technology was groundbreaking compared to the previous inductive technology. In 2014, GN Hearing changed the industry once more with the introduction of the world's first Made for iPhone hearing aid, which, based on the 2.4 GHz technology enables the streaming of sound directly from an iPhone without any body-worn devices.


title: GN Store Nord

text: In October 2016, GN Audio acquired VXi Corporation, the manufacturer of both the VXi and BlueParrott headset brands.


title: GN Store Nord

text: Today, the GN Group consists of GN Store Nord A/S, GN Hearing A/S, and GN Audio A/S. GN develops and manufactures intelligent hearing, audio, video, and gaming solutions. GN's offerings are marketed by the brands ReSound, Jabra, SteelSeries, Beltone, Interton, Danavox, and Falcom in more than 100 markets globally.


title: Courtland Mead

text: Courtland Robert Mead (born April 19, 1987) is an American actor, noted for his performances on-screen during the 1990s.