title: The Wedding Present

text: Following Gedge's split from Murrell in 2003, and with the increasing inclusion of Wedding Present songs in Cinerama's live sets (in previous years Gedge had good-naturedly refused calls from the audience to play Wedding Present songs, frequently replying "that's another band" or "you're at the wrong gig"), Gedge effectively renamed Cinerama in 2004, keeping the line up, reflecting the change in sound over the years to the more familiar territory of The Wedding Present.


title: The Wedding Present

text: News came in early September 2004 that Cinerama would be rebranded as The Wedding Present. The line-up was to be the same as the last line-up of Cinerama, which included Simon Cleave. The first new single, "Interstate 5", was issued on 15 November 2004, to lead off the new album, "Take Fountain", which was released on 14 February 2005. A second single, "I'm From Further North Than You", was released on 11 April 2005. Third and final single "Ringway to SeaTac" was released on 24 October 2005.


title: The Wedding Present

text: All singles, their B-sides and acoustic versions from this period were compiled on the 2006 compilation "". The release came with a bonus DVD compiling the videos for "Don't Touch That Dial" (a Cinerama single re-recorded for "Take Fountain"), "Interstate 5", "I'm From Further North Than You", "Ringway to SeaTac" and others.


title: The Wedding Present

text: The Wedding Present toured Europe and North America in the Spring of 2005 (with John Maiden on drums) and again in Europe towards the end of 2005 (this time, with Simon Pearson on drums). During Christmas 2006, guitarist Simon Cleave left the group and was replaced by the group's sound engineer Chris McConville - who played on the 2006 tours of North America (with Charlie Layton on drums) and Europe (with Graeme Ramsay on drums).


title: The Wedding Present

text: Until 2009 the line-up remained stable with Gedge, De Castro, McConville, and Ramsay co-writing. They recorded 17 songs with Steve Albini in January 2008, some of which have been played live at gigs in recent years. Titles include "I've Lost the Monkey", "Soup", "Drink You Eat You", "Model, Actress, Whatever...", "The Thing I Like Most About Him Is His Girlfriend", "Twenty Jackies", "Swingers", "Peek-a-boo", "Hulk Loves Betty", "Boo Boo", "Palisades", "Santa Ana Winds", "Pinch Pull Twist Release", "The Trouble With Men", "Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk" and "Spider-Man in Hollywood".


title: The Wedding Present

text: The album "El Rey" was released on 20 May 2008 in North America and 26 May 2008 in Europe, accompanied by the digital download-only single "The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend". A compilation of singles and remixes "How The West Was Won" was released towards the end of 2008 and accompanied by a single "Holly Jolly Hollywood". The Wedding Present also covered The Cure's "High" for American Laundromat Records tribute "Just Like Heaven - a tribute to The Cure".


title: The Wedding Present

text: Some months before a short tour of the UK and Japan in March 2009, Chris McConville left the band and was replaced by former guitarist Simon Cleave, who left the band again later that year. Graeme Ramsay subsequently moved from drums to guitar and Charles Layton once again became their drummer.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In 2009 two The Wedding Present songs, "I'm From Further North Than You", and "Ringway to SeaTac" appeared in the award-winning Monty Miranda directed independent film "Skills Like This". The director was praised for his use of music in an integrated soundtrack.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In August 2010 it was announced that De Castro would not be touring with The Wedding Present for the Autumn 21st anniversary tour of "Bizarro", and that her last gig would be at 28 August 2010 at Gedge's mini festival "At the Edge of the Sea" in Brighton. This marked the end of a 12-year association with Gedge, stretching back to when Cinerama was formed. She was replaced by Pepe le Moko.


title: The Wedding Present

text: A new Wedding Present album, "Valentina" was released in March 2012. Shortly before its release, guitarist Graeme Ramsay left the band after six years. and was replaced by Patrick Alexander (ex-The Young Playthings and The Pipettes).


title: The Wedding Present

text: During 2012, The Wedding Present toured a set which usually featured the whole of "Seamonsters", performed live and in album order. The rest of the set was a mixture of songs from "Valentina" and the back catalogue. In April of the year, The Wedding Present toured Australia for the first time, playing concerts in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne.


title: The Wedding Present

text: On 25 October 2012, the "4 Songs" Extended Player was released on download only. These four new songs ("Journey Into Space", "Pain Perdu", "1000 Fahrenheit" & "Can You Keep a Secret") recorded during the Valentina sessions could be downloaded following the purchase of 'Valentina: The Story of a Wedding Present, a book documenting the making of the long player itself. Valentina itself was re-released in May 2015 after being re-interpreted and re-recorded by David Gedge's other band Cinerama.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In early 2013 the band started a world tour including taking in the US, Australia and for the first time New Zealand. The Wedding Present played 'George Best' and 'The Hit Parade' in their entirety on this tour celebrating the 25th and 21st 'birthday' of these albums respectively.


title: The Wedding Present

text: 2017 saw the 30th anniversary of the release of "George Best", an anniversary tour and a feature-length documentary about the record titled "The Wedding Present: Something Left Behind".


title: The Wedding Present

text: In mid-2019, the band issued a completely re-recorded version of 1988 compilation "Tommy", plus their first picture disc - a 10" single featuring two new songs.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In late 2019, the band toured playing "Bizarro" in its entirety. During this tour the band were joined on guitar by Jon Stewart of Sleeper and Chris Hardwick from My Life Story on drums.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, the band recorded various acoustic versions of the bands' tracks, with each musician recording their part of the song from home. The songs were released on the band's social media accounts. Twelve tracks including a duet of a previously unrecorded Sleeper song called "We Should Be Together", recorded as a duet with Louise Wener, were released in February 2021 as "Locked Down and Stripped Back".


title: The Wedding Present

text: In December 2020 the band, and various ex-members and collaborators released an album of James Bond theme cover versions called "Not From Where I’m Standing", for the mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In April 2021, the band re-released a 30th anniversary version of "Seamonsters" including the b-sides to the singles released to promote the original 1991 album and tracks from a John Peel Session.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In October 2021, the band announced that in 2022 they would release a 7" single per month, featuring 2 new songs, for the duration of 2022, repeating their one single per month approach of 1992. This "24 Songs" project will see songs written by David Gedge and Sleeper guitarist Jon Stewart, collaborating together to write tracks for the first time in the band's history.


title: The Wedding Present

text: In May 2022 the band announced they would release "Locked Down and Stripped Back Volume Two", the second album of acoustic home recordings of Wedding Present and Cinerama classics, recorded by band and former band members.


title: H.D.

text: Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded the avant-garde Imagist group of poets with American expatriate poet and critic Ezra Pound. During this early period, her minimalist free verse poems depicting Classical motifs drew international attention. Eventually distancing herself from the Imagist movement, she experimented with a wider variety of forms, including fiction, memoir, and verse drama. Profoundly affected by her experiences in London during the Blitz, H.D.'s poetic style from World War II until her death pivoted towards complex long poems on esoteric and pacifist themes.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to wealthy and educated parents who relocated to Upper Darby in 1896. Discovering her bisexuality she had her first same-sex relationship while attending Bryn Mawr College between 1904 and 1906. After years of friendship, H.D. became engaged to Pound and followed him to London in 1911 where he championed her work, but their relationship soon fell apart, with H.D. instead marrying the Imagist poet Richard Aldington in 1913. In 1918 she met the novelist Bryher, who became her romantic partner and close friend until her death. An associate literary editor of the "Egoist" journal between 1916 and 1917, H.D. was published by the "English Review" and "Transatlantic Review". During World War I, both her brother and father died, and she separated from Aldington. She was treated by Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, looking to understand both her war trauma and bisexuality.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. was keenly interested in Ancient Greek literature and published numerous Greek translations. Throughout her career, her poems routinely drew from Greek mythology and classical poets, from her earliest Imagist lyrics which depicted natural landscapes using Hellenistic motifs, to her 1950s long poem "Helen in Egypt" which reinterpreted the myth of the Trojan War. Raised Moravian by her family, and first introduced to occult and esoteric religious ideas by Pound in her youth, H.D. gradually developed a unique syncretic spiritual worldview. H.D.'s spiritual devotion intensified during and after World War II, and these ideas became a central concern of her late writing.


title: H.D.

text: While H.D. wrote in a wide range of genres and modes over career, during her lifetime she was known almost exclusively for her early Imagist poems. Following a reappraisal by feminist critics in the 1970s and 1980s, the significance of her late long poems and prose works was increasingly recognized, and she has come to be understood as a central figure in the history of modernist literature.


title: H.D.

text: Hilda Doolittle was born on September 10, 1886, into the Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her father, Charles, was professor of astronomy at Lehigh University, and her mother, Helen ( Wolle), was a member of the Moravian brotherhood. Hilda was their only daughter in a family with five sons. When Charles was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania to take charge of the Flower Observatory, they moved to Upper Darby. She attended Friends' Central School in Philadelphia and graduated in 1905, delivering a commencement address entitled "The Poet's Influence". She enrolled at Bryn Mawr College in 1905 to study Greek literature, where she met the poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams. After three terms of poor grades, H.D. withdrew from the college, studying at home until 1910.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. met poet Ezra Pound as a teenager in 1901. He became a life-long friend and played a formative role in her development as a writer. In 1905, Pound and H.D. began an on-and-off relationship which included at least two engagements. Although his parents were in favor of the relationship, her parents strongly objected. In 1907, Pound gave her "Hilda's Book", a handmade vellum binding of twenty-five of his earliest love poems, which he dedicated to her.


title: H.D.

text: In 1910, Doolittle began a relationship with Frances Josepha Gregg, a young female art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Inspired by Gregg, H.D. wrote her first published poems, modeled after the work of Theocritus. Some of her early work, including some children's stories about astronomy, was published in New York newspapers and Presbyterian newsletters.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. traveled to London in May 1911 to holiday with Gregg and Gregg's mother; Gregg returned home, but H.D. stayed to develop a career as a writer. Pound introduced her to his friends, including English writer Brigit Patmore. Patmore introduced her to Richard Aldington, who became her husband in 1913. The three lived in Church Walk, Kensington—Pound at no. 10, Aldington at no. 8, and H.D. at no. 6—and gathered to work daily in the British Museum Reading Room.


title: H.D.

text: Pound had already begun to meet with other poets in London to discuss ideas for reforming contemporary poetry, and like all modernists in different artistic fields, "make it new". They achieved this through the incorporation of free verse, the brevity of the tanka and haiku forms, and the removal of unnecessary verbiage. Pound, H.D. and Aldington became known as the "three original Imagists" and published a three-point manifesto proclaiming the edicts of Imagism. According to Pound:


title: H.D.

text: During a 1912 conversation with Pound, H.D. told him that she found "Hilda Doolittle" to be an old fashioned and "quaint" name; he suggested the signature H.D., an abbreviation she kept for the remainder of her career. After he "scrawled the name "H.D. Imagiste"" at the bottom of the page of her poem "Hermes of the Ways", she adopted H.D. as a pen. Privately he called her "Dryad".


title: H.D.

text: Under the rubric "Imagiste", in October 1912 Pound submitted a selection of H. D.'s poems to Harriet Monroe, founder of the magazine "Poetry". Three of her poems were published in the January 1913 issue—"Hermes of the Ways" (Pound said "this is poetry" after reading), "Priapus: Keeper of Orchards" (later renamed "Orchard"), and "Epigram"—alongside three by Aldington. These early poems are informed by her reading of Classical Greek literature, especially of Sappho, an interest shared with Aldington and Pound. Her Imagist poetry is characterized by sparse language and a classical, austere purity, exemplified by one of her earliest and best-known poems, "Oread" (1915).


title: H.D.

text: The style was not without its critics. In a dedicated Imagist issue of "The Egoist" magazine in May 1915, the English poet and critic Harold Monro named H.D. as the "truest Imagist", but dismissed her early work as "petty poetry", denoting "either poverty of imagination or needlessly excessive restraint". In contrast, a 1927 review by the British modernist author and critic May Sinclair described "Oreads brevity as a "miracle" and criticized Monro for not recognizing it.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. married Aldington in 1913 and the following year Pound married the English artist Dorothy Shakespear. H.D. and Aldington's only child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1915. He enlisted in the army, and she took his place as assistant editor of "The Egoist", serving for the next year. The couple drifted apart: he reportedly took a mistress in 1917, and she started a close but platonic relationship with the English writer D. H. Lawrence.


title: H.D.

text: In 1918, H.D.'s brother Gilbert was killed in action. She moved to Cornwall that March with the Scottish composer Cecil Gray, a friend of Lawrence. She became pregnant with Gray's child, but by the time she realized she was expecting, the relationship had cooled and Gray had returned to London. H.D. learned that her father died, having never recovered from Gilbert's death. Despondent and sick with the Spanish flu, she came close to death during the birth of their daughter Perdita Aldington in 1919.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. and Aldington tried to salvage their relationship but failed, in part because of his post-war post-traumatic stress disorder, but especially because of her pregnancy with Gray. They became estranged but did not divorce until 1938.


title: H.D.

text: She began a relationship with the wealthy English novelist Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) after meeting in Cornwall in July 1918 . Bryher was younger than H.D. by several years, a lesbian, and equally non-conformist. Both women were unusually tall, a fact that made H.D. self-conscious, and they made for a striking couple at social occasions. They lived together on and off until 1950, and although both had numerous other partners, Bryher was H.D.'s lover for the rest of her life. Bryher entered a marriage of convenience with the American writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, allowing him to use some of her wealth to fund his Paris-based Contact Press publishing house. In 1923, H.D. and Bryher traveled to Egypt for the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb, before settling in Switzerland.


title: H.D.

text: H.D.'s first book, "Sea Garden", was published in 1916. She wrote one of her few known statements on poetics, "Notes on Thought and Vision", in 1919, although it was not published until 1982. In it, she speaks of poets (including herself) as belonging to a kind of elite group of visionaries with the power to "turn the whole tide of human thought".


title: H.D.

text: Poetry and novella cycles are a feature of H.D.'s early 1920s writing. The first, "Magna Graeca", consists of the poems "Palimpsest" (1921) and "Hedylus" (1928), which use classical settings to explore the role of a poet, particularly a female's value in a patriarchal literary culture. The following cycles, "HERmione", "Bid Me to Live", "Paint It Today", and "Asphodel" are largely autobiographical and preoccupied with the development of the female artist and the conflict between heterosexual and lesbian desire. The novellas "Kora and Ka" and "The Usual Star" from the "Borderline" cycle were published in 1933, followed by "Pilate's Wife", "Mira-Mare" and "Nights".


title: H.D.

text: Her mother died in 1927. Bryher divorced McAlmon that year to marry Kenneth Macpherson, then H.D.'s male lover. Bryher, Macpherson and H.D. lived and traveled together through Europe together in what the New York School poet Barbara Guest termed a "menagerie of three". Bryher adopted H.D.'s daughter, Perdita, while still married Macpherson: leading to the change of name to Perdita Macpherson. Later, Bryher named Perdita as heir to her will. They moved to the shores of Lake Geneva where they lived in a Bauhaus villa. H.D. became pregnant in 1928 and got an abortion.


title: H.D.

text: In 1927, Bryher and Macpherson founded the monthly magazine, "Close Up", as a venue for the discussion of cinema. That year the independent film cinema group POOL or Pool Group was established (largely funded with Bryher's inheritance) and was managed by all three. In the 1930 POOL film "Borderline", the actors were H.D. and Bryher and the couple Paul and Eslanda Robeson, the latter appearing as wife and husband. The film explores extreme psychic states, racism, and interracial relationships. H.D. wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany the film.


title: H.D.

text: Although not published until 1960, in 1927 H.D. wrote the thinly disguised roman à clef "Bid Me to Live." Some characters are recognizable as members of the wartime Bloomsbury Group, including Lawrence and his wife Frieda, Pound, and Captain Jack White—the Irish revolutionary drifter with whom H.D. herself appears caricatured in the Lawrence novel "Aaron's Rod" (1922).


title: H.D.

text: H.D. began psychoanalysis in 1928 with the Freudian Hanns Sachs and traveled to Vienna in 1933 for analysis with Sigmund Freud. She became interested in Freud's theories since 1909 after reading his works in the original German, and was referred by Bryher's psychoanalyst because of her apparent paranoia about the rise of Adolf Hitler. World War I had left her feeling shattered: she lost her brother in action; her father died in reaction to the loss of his son; her husband was traumatized by combat; and she believed that the shock at hearing of the sinking the RMS "Lusitania" indirectly caused the miscarriage of her child. H.D. undertook two series of analysis with Freud (March to May 1933 and October to November 1934) and on his request wrote "Bid me to Live" (published 1960), in which she details her traumatic war experiences. "Writing on the Wall", an impressionistic memoir of the sessions and a reevaluation of the importance of his psychoanalysis, was written concurrently with "Trilogy" and published in 1944; in 1956 it was republished together with "Advent", a journal of the analysis, under the title "Tribute to Freud".


title: H.D.

text: Hilda and Bryher spent World War II in London. While there, her daughter Perdita became a secretary of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Between 1941 and 1943 H.D. wrote "The Gift", a short memoir of her childhood in Bethlehem that details the people and events that shaped her. She began the "Trilogy" series in 1942, comprising three long, unrhyming, and complex volumes of poems: "The Walls do not Fall" (1944), "Tribute to the Angels" (1945) and "The Flowering of the Rod" (1946). H.D. wrote the first while living in London and details her reactions to the Blitz and World War II. The following two books compare the ruins of London to those of ancient Egypt and classical Greece; the former of which she had seen during a 1923 visit. The opening lines of "The Walls do not Fall" clearly and immediately signal her break with her earlier work:


title: H.D.

text: H.D.'s relationship with Bryher ended just after the war, although they remained in contact. She moved to Switzerland where she had a severe mental breakdown in the spring of 1946 and took refuge in a clinic until the autumn of that year. She lived in Switzerland for the rest of her life. In the late 1950s, she underwent further treatment with the psychoanalyst Erich Heydt, who supported her while she wrote "End to Torment", a memoir of her relationship with Pound.


title: H.D.

text: H.D.'s later work drew heavily from her eclectic blend of Christianity, Ancient Greek and Egyptian religion, Spiritualism, Hermeticism, Martinism and Cabala via the works of Robert Ambelain, alchemy, tarot, astrology, and Freudian psychoanalysis. She used the medium of the long poem to explore and communicate this mix of spiritualities.


title: H.D.

text: H.D. wrote her longest poem, "Helen in Egypt", between 1952 and 1955 when she was in her 60s. However, it was not published until just before her death in 1961. It is based Euripides' trilogy drama "Helen", but imagines Helen of Troy's life after the fall of Troy and her relocation to Egypt. The poem reconstructs the source material into a feminist reinterpretation, and has thus been described as "exploring ... [but] ... concluding" the themes as her earlier work. "Helen in Egypt"s long form and wide historical span has been seen as a response to Pound's "Cantos", which she admired. In "End to Torment" she approved of Norman Holmes Pearson's labeling of "Helen in Egypt" as "her 'cantos.


title: H.D.

text: A compilation of her late poems were published posthumously in 1972 under the title "Hermetic Definition". The book takes as its starting points her love for a man 30 years her junior and the line "so slow is the rose to open" from Pound's "Canto 106". "Sagesse", which she wrote in bed having broken her hip in a fall, serves as a coda to "Trilogy", being partly written in the voice of a young female Blitz survivor who finds herself living in fear of the atom bomb. "Winter Love" was written during the same period as "End to Torment" and uses as narrator the Homeric figure of Penelope to restate the material of the memoir in poetic form. At one time, H.D. considered appending this poem as a coda to "Helen in Egypt."


title: H.D.

text: She returned to the U.S. in 1960 to collect the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, becoming the first woman to be granted the award for poetry.


title: H.D.

text: H.D was left gravely ill after a stroke in July 1961 and was taken to the Klinik Hirslanden in Zürich, where she died on September 27. She was survived by Bryher and her daughter Perdita. Her ashes were brought to Bethlehem, where they were buried in the family plot in the Nisky Hill Cemetery on October 28, 1961. Her headstone is inscribed with lines from her early poem "Epitaph":


title: H.D.

text: During her career, H.D. wrote a large number of works in a variety of styles and formats. They evolved from lyrics written in the 1910s (such as "Sea Garden"), through her early period Imagist poems and free verse, to her complex long poems "Trilogy" (1944), "Helen in Egypt" (1955), "Vale Ave" (1957), and the 1971 collection "Hermetic Definition", consisting of the title poem (1961), "Sagesse" (1957), and "Winter Love" (1959). However, during her lifetime, the later poems, novels and numerous translations of classical works were rarely studied or taught, and only her early poems (especially "Oread" and "Heat") appeared in anthologies. For decades, her reputation was as an Imagist who peaked in the 1920s; a consignment the literary critic Susan Friedman believes placed H.D. as "a captive and in prison". In 1972, Hugh Kenner wrote that assigning her as just an Imagist poet was similar to evaluating "five of the shortest pieces in "Harmonium" [as equal to] the life's work of Wallace Stevens". Although Pound claimed in the 1930s that he formed the Imagist movement "to launch H.D. and Aldington before either had enough stuff for a volume", many the of foundational poets within the group, including Amy Lowell, viewed H.D. as the main focal point and innovator in achieving the group's "revolution in taste".


title: H.D.

text: H.D. was aware early on that both the strictures of Imagism and Pound's controlling temperament would constrain her creative voice, and by the mid-1920s her work had developed beyond Imagism. In 1990, the feminist scholar Gertrude Reif Hughes described her as "physically fragile-looking in a traditionally feminine way". H.D. understood the danger of objectification, particularly as the only woman in a group of men in her circle. She worried about being perceived merely as their private muse, which she feared affected her public image and standing as a poet and prominent intellectual in her own right. Female objectification is explored in "HER", where she writes of "a classic dilemma for woman: the necessity to choose between being a muse to another or being an artist oneself". Although Pound was a lifelong champion, a number of other early Imagists, including Aldington and Lawrence, attempted to diminish her importance and consign her to a minor role. Similarly, while her mid-period poems and writings explore mysticism, esotericism and the occult, in a similar manner to poets such as W.B. Yeats (with whom she was personally acquainted), H.D. was rarely read before the 1970s.


title: H.D.

text: Although the critic Linda Wagner wrote in 1969 that one of the "ironies of contemporary literature [is] that H.D. is remembered chiefly for her Imagist work given that few contemporary writers have written so much in their maturity"; her reappraisal only began in the 1970s and 1980s. This coincided with the emergence of feminist interest in her work, followed by queer studies scholars. Specifically, critics such as Friedman (1981), Janice Robertson (1982) and Rachel DuPlessis (1986) began to challenge the standard view of English-language literary modernism as based on only the work of male writers, and gradually restored H.D. to a more significant position in the movement. In 1990, Hughes wrote that H.D. mid-century poems, like those of Gwendolyn Brooks, anticipate second-wave feminism, and explore issues raised in Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book "The Second Sex". According to Hughes, H.D.'s work challenges patriarchal privilege and seeks to "revise the mentalities that sponsor them". She notes in particular how in "Helen in Egypt", H.D. positions Helen as "the protagonist, instead of the pawn", in such a way as to counter the "conservative and often misogynistic" tendencies which Hughes finds in the modernism of Pound and T. S. Eliot.


title: H.D.

text: H.D.'s writings have served as a model for a number of more recent female poets working in the modernist and post-modernist traditions, including Barbara Guest, the Black Mountain poet Hilda Morley and the "Language" poet Susan Howe. The Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov wrote of her deep appreciation for H.D., particularly for her long poems on mystical themes, writing that H.D. "showed the way to penetrate mystery, [...] to "enter into" darkness, mystery, so that it is experienced". Her influence is not limited to female poets; many male writers and poets, including Robert Duncan, have acknowledged their debt. Duncan placed H.D. at the center of his lengthy study of modernist poetry in general, titled "The H.D. Book", and frequently lectured on her work. The Dutch poet H.C. ten Berge wrote his 2008 "Het vertrapte mysterie" ("The Trampled Mystery") in memory of H.D.


title: H.D.

text: Passages from "Trilogy" were widely shared across electronic discussion lists in the days following the September 11th attacks.


title: H.D.

text: During World War II, her daughter Perdita was involved in breaking codes at Bletchley Park and later worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the OSS, she served with Graham Greene and James Angleton. H.D.'s grandchildren include the author and Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner.


title: H.D.

text: H.D.'s fictional and nonfictional prose writings are difficult to distinguish with much certainty. Her novels and short stories are often "romans-a-clef", and her memoirs and essays are often experimental.


title: Heron Tower

text: Salesforce Tower, 110 Bishopsgate (formerly Heron Tower) is a commercial skyscraper in London. It stands tall including its mast making it the second tallest building in the City of London financial district and the fifth tallest in Greater London and the United Kingdom, after the Shard in Southwark and One Canada Square at Canary Wharf. 110 Bishopsgate is located on Bishopsgate and is bordered by Camomile Street, Outwich Street and Houndsditch.


title: Heron Tower

text: Construction of the building started in 2007 and was completed in 2011. It is owned by Heron International and is still popularly known as Heron Tower, though following a naming dispute in 2014 involving the tenant Salesforce.com the City of London planning committee made it clear they would rule in favour of the property being officially named 110 Bishopsgate, although the application was withdrawn before it went to committee. The tower initially struggled to attract tenants in the depths of the Great Recession, but is now fully let.


title: Heron Tower

text: Designed by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, the height of 110 Bishopsgate was planned to be only , identical to that of Tower 42, the City of London's then tallest building since 1980.


title: Heron Tower

text: It attracted some controversy when first announced due to its proximity to St Paul's Cathedral when viewed from Waterloo Bridge. English Heritage was notably vocal in expressing concerns. A public inquiry was subsequently held, the outcome of which was decided by deputy prime minister John Prescott, who ruled in the developers' favour. The tower was given final approval for construction in July 2002.


title: Heron Tower

text: Three years later, the project had yet to begin construction. In September 2005 the Heron Property Corporation submitted a planning application to increase the height of its approved building. Heron's revised plans now proposed a tall tower topped by a mast, giving it a total height of . Although the design was largely identical to the previous scheme, the tower's crown and southern façades were refined. In January 2006, the revised project was approved by the City of London Corporation.


title: Heron Tower

text: In February 2013 it was revealed in "The Times" that backers of the tower included Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, a son of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.


title: Heron Tower

text: 110 Bishopsgate was designed to feature a concierge-style entrance and reception area, incorporating a aquarium containing around 1,200 fish. The aquarium is the largest privately owned example in the United Kingdom and contains over 60 species of fish in an entirely sustainable ecosystem; the species were selected by expert biologists and animal curators to ensure compatibility and adaptability to the environment. The tank is attended to by a team of two full-time fish attendants, who feed the fish a diet rich in natural ingredients according to their requirements and monitor the tank for water chemistry and fish health, and two to three part-time divers who clean the rockwork and glass regularly.


title: Heron Tower

text: A bar-restaurant called The Drift occupies part of the ground and first floors. There is a restaurant and "sky bar" leased to Sushi Samba and Duck & Waffle, both open to the public, on floors 38–40. Situated above the City and accessed by scenic lifts from a dedicated entrance on Bishopsgate, the restaurant and bar also have external terraces.


title: Heron Tower

text: The building uses photovoltaic cells to generate renewable energy, allowing it to achieve a BREEAM rating of 'excellent' in January 2010.


title: Heron Tower

text: In March 2007, it was confirmed that Heron had signed a funding deal with the State General Reserve Fund of Oman to provide the equity for the development. The works were carried out by Skanska and completed in January 2011.


title: Heron Tower

text: The tower's first confirmed tenant was the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, which signed up in July 2010 while the building was still under construction. However, in a difficult lettings market the building struggled to find enough tenants to fill it and in September 2013 only 59% of the available office space had been let. As a result, the project required refinancing, with Starwood Capital Group stepping in to provide a £288 million refinancing facility to avoid the project going into receivership.


title: Heron Tower

text: Subsequent agreed tenants included the pensions company Partnership Assurance, investment fund manager Securis Investment Partners, stockbroker Westhouse Securities, POWA, recruitment firm Harvey Nash, Openwork, and Salesforce.com, the software firm. As part of Salesforce's deal to take an additional 50,000 sq ft on levels 28-31 on a 15-year lease, it reportedly purchased naming rights to the tower, just as it had for its headquarters building in San Francisco. After much deliberation with the City of London planners, the building's official name was confirmed as 110 Bishopsgate, with Salesforce Tower able to be used as an informal name.


title: Heron Tower

text: Landmark has offered serviced office space from floors 17-19 of the tower since 2011, achieving above-average occupancy rates for London. The top floors of the building are occupied by the Sushi Samba and Duck & Waffle restaurants.


title: Heron Tower

text: The London office of the Interactive Brokers, a U.S. low cost online brokerage platform, is also present on level 20.


title: Heron Tower

text: The tower was designed to form the centrepiece of a larger Heron Plaza development, incorporating new public spaces and a network of squares and gardens. In July 2009, Heron International confirmed that it had signed heads of terms with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts to develop a mixed-use project adjacent to 110 Bishopsgate. In January 2011, Heron announced that planning permission for the development had been secured. In August 2014, Heron sold the site, with planning permission, to UOL Group, who said it would push ahead with the scheme and operate the hotel under its 'Pan Pacific' brand.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Kawasaki Ki-100 (キ100) is a single-seat single-engine monoplane fighter aircraft used by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service during World War II. The Japanese Army designation was . It was not assigned an Allied code name.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: 275 Ki-100s were modified from Ki-61s as an emergency measure to accept a 14-cylinder Mitsubishi Ha-112-II radial engine in place of the original Kawasaki Ha-40 inverted V-12 inline engine which resulted in one of the best interceptors used by the Army during the war. It combined excellent power and maneuverability, and from the first operational missions in March 1945 until the end of the war, it performed better than most IJAAF fighters against both United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers and North American P-51 Mustang fighters as well as U.S. Navy Grumman F6F Hellcat carrier fighters.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: A newly built variant, the Ki-100-Ib, was produced with a cut down rear fuselage during the last months of the war which equipped five home defence "sentai". High-altitude performance was further improved with the final variant, the Ki-100-II, however only three of these were produced before the war ended and this final variant never saw operational service.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Ki-100 was a stressed-skin cantilever low-wing single-seat enclosed-cockpit radial engine monoplane fighter with retractable undercarriage. Control surfaces were fabric covered.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: In mid-1944, the Ki-61 was one of the best fighters of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service. It was also the only production Japanese fighter to have an inline powerplant, the V-12 Kawasaki Ha-40, a Japanese adaptation of the German Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine, as well as one of the first with factory-installed armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. It also had a respectable performance, in line with contemporary American designs, with speed and rate of climb emphasized instead of manoeuvrability and range. It was an effective design, but suffered from engine shortages and reliability problems. These problems led to the development of an improved model, the Ki-61-II (later Ki-61-II-KAI), powered by the improved Kawasaki Ha-140 inverted V-12 engine, which was heavier than the Ha-40 it replaced. Maximum speed increased from and aside from the rate of climb, general performance was improved as well. However, it never performed as expected due to continued quality control problems with the engine, while far fewer engines were produced than required.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: At this point of the war, the IJAAF was in desperate need of effective interceptors to stop bombing raids over the Japanese mainland, so in October 1944 a decision was made to use the Mitsubishi Ha-112-II ("Kinsei" ["Venus"] 60 series), a 14-cylinder, two-row radial engine. The need for a new engine became urgent on 19 January 1945, when a bombing raid destroyed the Ha-140 production plant, leaving 275 otherwise complete Ki-61s engineless.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Mitsubishi Ha-112-II was lighter than the Ha-140 and developed the same power but with much greater reliability. Three Ki-61-II-KAIs were modified to carry this engine as prototypes. Chief engineer Takeo Doi with two other engineers redesigned the Ki-61 airframe to accept the new engine. Their solution was to use a second skin to form a fairing riveted to the fuselage to smooth out the airflow behind the cooling flaps and multiple exhaust stubs of the new engine cowling. As this engine was lighter, they were able to remove the lead counterweight in the tail that balanced out the heavier Ha-140 engine.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The new model was flown for the first time on 1 February 1945. Without the need for the heavy coolant radiator and other fittings required for a liquid-cooled engine, the Ki-100 was lighter than the Ki-61-II, reducing the wing loading from 189 kg/m (38.8 lb/ft) to 175 kg/m (35.8 lb/ft). This had a positive effect on the flight characteristics, enhancing landing and takeoff qualities as well as improving manoeuvrability and reducing the turning radius. During March and April 1945, experienced instructors from the Akeno Army Flying School flew the Ki-100 in extensive tests against the Ki-84, which was the best JAAF fighter then in operational service. Their conclusions were that, given pilots of equal experience, the Ki-100 would always win in combat.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The flight characteristics of the plane surpassed the "Hiens" in all but maximum speed, which was reduced by by the larger cross sectional area of the radial engine, and the model was ordered into production as the "Goshikisen" ("Go"=five; "shiki"=type; "sentoki"=fighter) or "Army Fighter Type 5". The company's designation for it was Ki-100-I-Ko. All Ki-100-I-Ko were converted from existing Ki-61-II Kai and Ki-61-III airframes. The integral engine mount and cowling was cut off and a tubular steel engine mount was bolted to the firewall. Some redundant fittings from the liquid-cooled engine, such as the radiator shutter actuator, were left in place. The first 271 aircraft with the original faired rear fuselage were rolled out of the factory between March and June 1945.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: In contrast to the unreliable engines used by the Kawanishi N1K-J, Kawasaki Ki-61 and Nakajima Ki-84 that were keeping many of these aircraft grounded, the new engine was much more reliable. Although its maximum speed in level flight was a bit slow for 1945, the Ki-100 could dive with North American P-51 Mustangs and maintain speed after pullout, unlike most Japanese fighters.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: Two remaining problems continued to hamper Japanese fighters towards the end of the war, these being unreliable electrical systems and poor radio equipment, and while the latter was never resolved, the Ki-100's electrical system was less of a problem than with other types.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: cowl-mounted calibre Ho-5 cannons, with 200 rounds per gun complemented by two wing-mounted Ho-103 machine guns with 250 rounds per gun.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Ki-100-I-Otsu were newly built as such, rather than being conversions, with a cut-down rear fuselage and improved canopy and 118 were produced from May through to the end of July 1945. This version also featured a modified oil cooler under the engine in a more streamlined fairing.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Ki-100-II was fitted with a turbocharged water-methanol injected engine for improved high-altitude performance, mainly to improve interception capabilities against the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses, but only three prototypes were built, and none were used operationally. Due to a lack of space, no intercooler was installed, however performance was still enhanced above .


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The Ki-100 made its combat debut on the night of 9 March 1945 and suffered its first loss a month later on the night of 7 April 1945, when a single Ki-100 of the "18th Sentai" was downed by a B-29 Superfortress after "attacking the formation again and again". Allied aircrews soon realised that they were facing a formidable new fighter. Although far fewer Ki-100s were available than Nakajima Ki-84s, it was an important fighter in the Army's inventory. A well-handled Ki-100 was able to outmanoeuvre any American fighter, including the P-51D Mustangs and Republic P-47N Thunderbolts which escorted the B-29s over Japan, and was comparable in speed, especially at medium altitudes. The Ki-100 was a tough opponent in the hands of an experienced pilot. The Ki-100 along with the Army's Nakajima Ki-84 and the Navy's Kawanishi N1K-J were equal to the latest Allied types in the final year of the Pacific War.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: Army fighter units equipped with this model included the 5th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 59th, 111th, 112th, 200th and 244th "Sentai", and the 81st Independent Fighter Company. Pilots were trained at the Akeno and Hitachi (Mito) Army Flying Schools. Many Akeno and Hitachi instructors were from operational units and between training sorties they also flew combat missions, making the most of the few fighters that were operational, but these wings were only partially re-equipped.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: During interception of high-flying B-29 Superfortresses (before the B-29s switched to low-level missions) the new fighters struggled as the engine's performance still dropped off at high altitudes. The most effective strategy against the B-29 Superfortress remained the exceedingly dangerous head-on attack, which left the fighter relatively stationary in the sights of the bomber's defensive guns, making it an easy target. In this type of combat, the Navy's Mitsubishi J2M "Raiden" remained superior.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: 111th "Sentai" Ki-100s intercepted B-29 Superfortresses attacking Kobe on 5 June 1945, claiming six bombers shot down and five 'probables'. The Americans recorded a loss of nine B-29s, including those downed by Ki-100s over the target area. Ki-100s of the same unit joined by 244th "Sentai" Ki-84s in a large-scale engagement against 506th Fighter Group P-51 Mustangs over Nagoya Bay on 16 July 1945. The Ki-100 pilots claimed six P-51s and in return, five Ki-100s were lost, with three pilots killed, although American records only show one loss.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: On 25 July 1945, 18 244th "Sentai" Ki-100 fighters clashed with 10 VF-31 Grumman F6F Hellcats from the light aircraft carrier in an air battle where the Ki-100 pilots claimed 12 victories with two losses. Claims and counter-claims for this action remain contentious. The Americans claimed two Ki-100s and admitted to losing two VF-31 F6F-5 Hellcats. These include a Ki-100 and a Hellcat which collided, killing both pilots.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: After the bombing of the Kagamigahara plant and the slow deliveries of components by satellite plants, the production rate of the Ki-100 declined, and between May and July, only 12 were delivered. Bombing would end production with only 118 of the Army Type 5 Fighter Model 1b having been delivered.


title: Kawasaki Ki-100

text: The final flights made by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service were made by two Ki-100s ferried from Komachi to Yokosuka, where they were handed over to the United States, who then shipped them back to the US for evaluation.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Gangster: A Love Story is a 2006 Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film directed by Anurag Basu. It stars Kangana Ranaut, Emraan Hashmi and Shiney Ahuja. The film is produced by Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt of Vishesh Films. The music and the soundtrack is composed by Pritam.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: "Gangster" released theatrically on 28 April 2006, and proved to be a commercial success at the box office. it received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its screenplay, soundtrack, cinematography and performances of the cast, with particular praise directed towards Ranaut's performance.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: At the 52nd Filmfare Awards, "Gangster" received 10 nominations, including Best Villain (Hashmi) and Best Male Playback Singer (Zubeen Garg for "Ya Ali"), and won Best Female Debut (Ranaut).


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Simran drowns her misery in booze. Her one friend in Seoul is Aakash (Emraan Hashmi), a singer in an Indian restaurant.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Originally a bar dancer in Mumbai, India, Simran is the girlfriend of a notorious gangster, Daya (Shiney Ahuja). 5 years ago, Daya's boss Khan (Gulshan Grover) ordered him to give Simran up. When Khan threatened Simran, Daya turned on him and Khan cut Daya loose from his gang.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: She and Daya were forced to flee to Seoul. They took a small boy named Bittu with them. After an encounter with the Mumbai police, Bittu was killed, causing a strain in the couple's relationship and pushing Simran toward alcoholism. Leaving Simran alone in Seoul, Daya went to work in Mauritius and then Dubai.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Aakash tells Simran that he cares for her despite her past, and their relationship gradually develops from friendship to love. Daya, who is still in Dubai, suddenly comes to Seoul. When he learns of Simran's affair with Aakash, he attacks and severely beats him in a fit of rage and jealousy. Daya then professes his love for her and promises to reform and fulfill her dreams of a normal life; he also tells her that if she truly loves Aakash he will not hold her back. Before Simran can respond, the police arrive in pursuit of Daya and Simran. The two flee.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Daya gives up murdering innocents and begins working odd jobs, admitting to Simran that he has found peace in doing honest work. He says that he would like to return to his village in India with her, so that they might live there peacefully. To do so he would have to perform one last crime: fake passports for him and Simran.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Simran, who is longing for Aakash, soon discovers that she is pregnant with his child. When she tells Aakash, he meets her and tells her he would like to marry her, but they will never find peace as long as Daya is at large. He says that for the sake of their unborn child, Daya must be turned in to the police and only Simran can do this. Simran, who is still emotionally attached to Daya, refuses.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Meanwhile, Daya, who has gone to forge passports for himself and Simran, is intercepted by Khan, who reminds Daya of what had occurred between them years before and says that he intends to make an example of Daya for abandoning the gang. Khan and his men severely beat and wound Daya, who is eventually able to fight back and kills Khan. He then calls Simran, warning her that the police are after them and asking her to meet him outside a Seoul train station that night.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Simran arrives at the appointed time to find Daya badly injured from his fight with Khan. He manages to crawl to Simran and takes out a box of sindoor for her. But just as he reaches and embraces her, they are surrounded by police cars. Daya realises that Simran informed the police; heartbroken and screaming, he is hauled away. Simran remains at the station until morning and then goes to meet Aakash, whom she finds is not at home. She is soon informed that he is at the Indian embassy.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: When she reaches the embassy, she enters a room full of reporters and sees a large screen showing a video of her telling Aakash about her relationship with Daya. She is thunderstruck when she sees that the one addressing the media is none other than Aakash, who is actually an undercover Indian detective hired to capture Daya. Realizing that Aakash befriended and wooed her solely to discover Daya's whereabouts, she explodes in fury in front of the media; Aakash holds her back and slaps her across the face. He tells her that he never cared for her and that his involvement with her was only a part of his duty to end organised crime and bring justice to his country. Enraged, Simran tries to attack him, but she is stopped by security. While she is being hauled away, she yells that to spread justice Aakash and his colleagues have done her an injustice and that Daya, who has never betrayed anyone, is not the gangster but Aakash and his men are. She reminds Aakash that he has betrayed the woman who is carrying his child and that he will regret his actions.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Daya, who has been arrested and taken to jail, sends Simran a letter saying that he does not blame her for what she did and that she is the one who has been betrayed; he admits that he has done many cruel and bad things but that, thanks to her, he now knows what it is like to live an honest life. He encloses her fake passport and, stating his love for her, writes that he would feel better knowing that she is living safely in India. After reading Daya's letter, Simran is left pained and guilty.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Months later, Daya admits and pleads guilty to his crimes. He is tried and sentenced to death. Simran goes to meet him in prison and asks him to forgive her; they share an emotional goodbye. She later goes to Aakash's residence and, forcefully entering his house with a gun, shoots and fatally injures him. Before he lapses into unconsciousness, Aakash shoots her in the shoulder and they are found and taken to a hospital.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Aakash dies in the hospital while Simran is transferred to the I.C.U. At dawn she escapes to the roof, where she commits suicide by jumping off the roof. At the same time, Daya is hanged. Simran is shown falling through the air. Before she reaches the ground we see her standing in a meadow and gazing at Daya, who is holding Bittu. Smiling, they hold out their arms to her; she happily runs toward them, and they embrace in heaven.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Akhtar was initially offered the role of Daya, but he turned it down saying, "Cricket is not only my profession but my obsession as well".


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Tollywood actress Koel Mallick was also initially offered the role of Simran, but she rejected it due to her discomfort towards the intimate and bold scenes in the script.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: "Gangster" received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its screenplay, soundtrack and performances of the cast, with particular praise directed towards Ranaut's performance. Raja Sen of "Rediff" awarded the film 3.5 stars (out of 5) and stated that ‘‘Ranaut is a remarkable find, the actress comes across with great conviction. Hers is the pivotal character and an extremely difficult role to essay, but she manages it well. Ranaut's nuances [of an alcoholic dancer] are disconcertingly realistic’’. Praising Hashmi's performance he further added, ‘‘His character is an understated one, and he manages to keep it that way. There is no unnecessary bluster or melodrama, and he does a pretty believable job. There is something lazy about his acting, by which I mean he makes the job look easy’’.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: The soundtrack is composed by Pritam. The complete album consisted of five original tracks and four remixes. Saregama brought the music rights of the Film. The song "Bheegi Bheegi" is a modern re-creation of the song "Prithibi Ta Naki" by Moheener Ghoraguli. Singer Zubeen Garg had first sung "Tu Hi Meri Shab hai" but later in the released version its dubbed by KK. "Ya Ali" is a rip-off of the Kuwaiti pop song "Ya Ghali" by the Kuwaiti band Guitara. Palestinian Bollywood blogger, Ahmad Rashad Arafa, who has familial ties to Kuwait, called "Ya Ali" a "Sufi-esque dud that doesn't hold a candle to the original Kuwaiti song."


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: The soundtrack was popular upon release with songs like "Ya Ali", "Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai" & "Bheegi Bheegi" topping the charts and hence were declared chartbusters within a week of their release. "Gangster" became the fifth best-selling album of 2006 in India selling over 16,00,000 units.


title: Gangster: A Love Story

text: Aakash Gandhi from "Planet Bollywood" rated the album 7.5/10 and wrote, "All in all, I would say that "Gangster" is a sure winner. It has mass appeal; it has a flavorful array of tunes to sample, and it features some fresh singers."


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense (LDA, ), commonly known as Alajuelense and nicknamed La Liga (), is a Costa Rican multisport club based in the borough of El Llano, Alajuela, Alajuela province. Although they compete in a number of different sports, Alajuelense is mostly known for its association football team. It plays in the Primera División de Costa Rica, the top tier of the Costa Rican football league system. Alajuelense is one of two clubs to have never been relegated, along with Herediano.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Alajuelense was founded on the former Paris Hall, west of Alajuela's Central Park, on June 18, 1919, by six former players of a historic city club, "Once de Abril", with the intention of uniting all the sportsmen and associations present at that time in Alajuela under a single banner. However, it wouldn't be until 1928 when Alajuelense managed to become national champions for the first time in a season that saw the club's first star: Alejandro Morera. Morera, who would later go on to become Barcelona's main striker for two seasons, is regarded as one of the finest players Costa Rica has ever produced. He would later manage Alajuelense to their second national title in 1939 as well as two others in 1941 and 1945. Since then, Alajuelense has become one of the most supported football clubs in Costa Rica.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Alajuelense is one of the most successful teams in Costa Rica and Central America, having won 30 national championships. They have also won two CONCACAF Champions League titles, one CONCACAF League, and three Copa Interclubes UNCAF. Alajuelense was the first Costa Rican club to win an official international competition when they defeated Suranamese club Transvaal in the final series in 1986. Alajuelense has also participated in the Interamerican Cup, Copa Merconorte, and Copa Sudamericana. In 1996, Alajuelense became the first club in the world to reach 100 points in any national league, finishing with a total of 102 points. This feat was repeated in 1998 and 2000 with 105 and 102 points gained, respectively.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Alajuelense plays its home matches at the Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto. Alajuelense's home kit is composed of red and black vertical striped shirts, with black shorts, accompanied by red or black socks. This combination has been used since the club's foundation. Kelme are the kit manufacturers. Alajuelense holds many long-standing rivalries, most notably against Saprissa, Herediano, and Cartaginés. It has contributed many key and famous players towards Costa Rica's FIFA World Cup squads such as José Carlos Chaves, Óscar Ramírez, Mauricio Montero, Wilmer López, Luis Marín, Jhonny Acosta, and Patrick Pemberton.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The team was created in 1919 when a group of friends that used to play in a team called the "Electra" at first and then "Once de Abril" (April the 11th) met at "Salon París". They wanted to give the city a team that could represent them at a national level. They played their first official game on August 2 of that same year against Cartaginés getting their first victory, 3–1.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Alajuelense was part of the 7 teams that built and formed the National League in Costa Rica, back in 1921, along with La Libertad, Gimnástica Española, Herediano, Cartaginés, CS Tres Rios de La Union, and Sociedad Gimnástica Limonense. They won their first championship in 1928. They are the only team to win the championship with a perfect record; in 1941 they won all 6 games. In 1960, the team made a tour around the world, leaving Costa Rica on September 17. In 78 days, the team played 24 games, winning 12, losing seven and drawing five. They scored 71 goals and allowed 47, with a remarkable performance from Juan Ulloa Ramírez, the best player and top scorer of this tour.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: Throughout their history, Alajuelense has generated a lot of great players and stunning performances. They are known as one of the best teams in the Central America area. Their best decade was the 1990s, during which they won 4 Championships and 4 sub-championships (runner up) as well. In addition to that, by the end of the 90's and the middle of the 2000s, they won a total of 5 local championships (4 of them in a row), 2 Copa Interclubes UNCAF Throphies and a CONCACAF Club Champions, being the base for the Costa Rican football team in the Korea and Japan 2002 FIFA World Cup, with 9 players.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: By November 11, 2000, and after participating in the Copa Merconorte, Alajuelense was ranked 27th in IFFHS's Club World Ranking. It is the best rank any Central American club has reached.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The club struggled with financial and administrative problems in the second part on the 2000s decade, so they decided to end contract with a lot of their regular and known players and started to build a team based on their younger divisions and make some structural changes. Nowadays the club is free of debts and with a team averaging 25-year-old players is still one of the best teams in the area and one of the teams with most fans in Costa Rica. On June 10, 2019, the club celebrated its 100th anniversary, being the second Costa Rican team to do so.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto is the home of Alajuelense and is owned and operated by La Liga Deportiva Alajuelense. It is located in "El Llano" neighborhood of Alajuela.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: On July 20, 1966, due to a motion by the Municipality of Alajuela, the stadium was renamed in honor of Alejandro Morera, nicknamed "el mago del balón", which means "the magician of the ball". He was a notable former player of Alajuelense, Barcelona, and Hércules, and for commercial purposes, in an agreement with the financial institution Scotiabank in 2011, the name Scotiabank was added.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The project to find a proper site for a permanent home started in 1938, when the director of the club, Carlos Bolaños, proposed that the club should purchase its own land. The land was purchased on October 7, 1940, but the terrain would not be football-ready until when the first game was played on January 18, 1942, when Alajuelense played against Cartaginés; the stadium only had a simple wooden stand that was previously used in the Estadio Nacional.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: On September 27, 1949, a professor from a local high school named Armando Morux Sancho started what was called "La marcha del ladrillo", meaning "The March of Bricks" in which every student would donate a brick to help build the walls and stands of the stadium. The first stands to be built were located in north, west and east around the pitch.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: On March 19, 1970, the stadium saw its first night game when Alajuelense faced Honduran club Motagua, beating them 4–1.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: In 1979, the enlargement of the stadium was initiated with the project of building a second stand on top of the existing stand and adding an additional stand over the dressing and conference rooms (south) and also adding a roof to the stands located to the east and the south. The project was fully completed in 1984. The stadium was re-inaugurated that year along with the new illuminations, which were amongst the best illuminations systems at the time.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: On 8 April 2021, the team announced plans for a new stadium, with an expected opening by January 2025.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The team is now represented by a Lion dressed with the team uniform and wearing cleats as if he was going to play.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: In every home game, the mascot comes out at the pitch before the game starts and plays on the field with fans, jokes with rival's fans, walk through the pitch with models giving away gifts from their sponsors and cheers the team with a huge team's flag. Before the game starts and during the half-time break, the Lion walks among the crowd and stands for pictures with the children.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The original mascot used to be a Mango, this because the team is located in Alajuela that is known as "La Ciudad de los Mangos" ("The Mangoes' City") because of the high amount of Mango Trees that could be located in the province due its weather, but later on in the early 80's, the mascot was changed into a Lion.


title: Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

text: The Lion was chosen years ago because it represents four main attributes of the major king of the jungle, that are reflected on the team's vision and mission: Courage, Strength, Dynamism and Fidelity.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Pa Salieu Gaye (born 1 July 1997) is a British rapper and singer. In January 2020, he released his debut single "Frontline", which was the most-played track of 2020 on BBC Radio 1Xtra. He has since featured on songs with South London's SL for "Hit the Block", Meekz, M1llionz and Teeway for "Year of the Real" and joined BackRoad Gee and Ambush for the remix to "Party Popper". He has collaborated with artists such as FKA Twigs and SL. His style is renowned for blending elements of Afro-beats, grime and UK drill. In June 2020, he released "Betty" and "Bang Out". He released his debut mixtape titled "Send Them to Coventry" on 13 November 2020.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Pa Salieu was born in Slough, where he spent the early stages of his life. His parents moved to the UK from The Gambia. He was named after his father's eldest brother, Pa Salieu, a police officer back home who died in his early twenties. His aunt is a Gambian folk singer.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Before his first birthday, his parents sent him back to The Gambia where he lived with his grandmother. There, he spent his formative years living in a household with his elder relatives. He describes his time there as the most important period in his life. At the age of 8, his mother brought him back to England. They moved to Hillfields, a suburb in the North of Coventry. His new home provided inspiration for his music career, becoming the focus of his breakout song "Frontline" released in January 2020, produced by Jevon. Through the song, he depicts life in Coventry and documents the neighbourhood that raised him.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Pa started rapping in 2017 under the name Tribal1, he released several videos with other artists in Coventry that gained a lot of buzz within the city.


title: Pa Salieu

text: During this early period of making music, he was experimenting with different sounds and soon switched up from a drill/grime take to the afro-drill sound.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Pa started taking his music career seriously when a friend, who would always encourage him to make music instead of being on the roads, was killed. He recorded his first freestyle at a friend's small home studio setup, where he would regularly visit to write and record music. In October 2019, he was the victim of a shooting in Coventry where he was shot in the head but he survived and made a full recovery.


title: Pa Salieu

text: On the 1st of September 2018, Fidel Glasgow, a friend of Salieu was fatally stabbed near a nightclub; Salieu and a group of men chased another man from the scene who was attacked by the Salieu and the group. Salieu admitted to hitting the victim with a tree branch multiple times, and smashing a bottle to defend himself. On the 2nd December 2022, Salieu was convicted of possessing a bottle as an offensive weapon & violent disorder leading to a sentence of 33 months in prison.


title: Pa Salieu

text: Salieu is signed to Warner Records. He wrote "Frontline" in 20 minutes, and the music video was released on YouTube via Mixtape Madness. Since its release, it has accumulated over two million views and over three million streams. It has also become the most played track of 2020 on BBC 1Xtra, Reprezent Radio and Rinse FM. Salieu's music has received support from Virgil Abloh, BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac and Tiffany Calver as well as OVO Sound co-founder Oliver El Khatib.


title: Pa Salieu

text: The early momentum of "Frontline" has continued with a string of feature verses. He collaborated with South London rapper SL on the song "Hit the Block", as well as Meekz, M1llionz and Teeway on "Year of the Real". He also collaborated with Backroad Gee and Ambush for the remix to their track, "Party Popper". In June 2020, Salieu released two tracks – "Betty" and "Bang Out". He was premiered by Annie Mac and DJ Target on BBC Radio 1. He was described by the London "Evening Standard" as the rapper to watch in 2020, and has received strong support from J Hus. In January 2021, he was announced as the winner of the "BBC Sound of..." 2021. On 22 January 2021, he did his debut US TV performance on Jimmy Fallon "The Tonight Show" and performed "Frontline". Pa Salieu has been selected by GQ as one of 11 "new musicians who'll make 2021 better" and he was also on the cover of NME's first issue of 2021, NME 100 edition.


title: Shadow Warrior

text: Shadow Warrior is a series of first-person shooter video games that focuses on the exploits of Lo Wang, a modern ninja warrior who fights through hordes of demons. The original series is made up of one game, "Shadow Warrior" (1997), and two expansions "Twin Dragon" (1998), and "Wanton Destruction" (2005), and a reboot with three entries: "Shadow Warrior" (2013), "Shadow Warrior 2" (2016), and third "Shadow Warrior 3". The series was originally developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive; later, Flying Wild Hog and Devolver Digital took over development and publication, respectively.


title: Shadow Warrior

text: Development of "Shadow Warrior" began in early 1994 as "Shadow Warrior 3D" by 3D Realms. Jim Norwood came up with the game idea, George Broussard designed the protagonist Lo Wang and Michael Wallin did some concept sketches. Two downloadable content packs, "Twin Dragon" and "Wanton Destruction", were released in 1998 and 2005 respectively.


title: Shadow Warrior

text: In 2013, publisher Devolver Digital and Polish developer Flying Wild Hog announced that they were collaborating with each other to produce a follow-up to the first game. "Shadow Warrior" has a larger emphasis on the story. In the game, Lo Wang goes on a quest to locate the legendary Nobitsura Kage blade with a banished demon named Hoji. The game received generally mixed reviews when it was released in September 2013 for Windows. The console versions for the game were released in October 2014.


title: Shadow Warrior

text: Flying Wild Hog returned to develop a sequel to the 2013 video game. The game features a cooperative multiplayer mode, procedural generation, large and open levels and systems similar to that of a looter shooter. In the game, Lo Wang goes on a journey to save Kamiko, the daughter of a Yakuza leader, from ZillaCorps. The game received generally positive reviews when it was released in October 2016 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.


title: Shadow Warrior

text: "Shadow Warrior 3" was released on March 1st, 2022 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In the game, Lo Wang must work with his sidekick to defeat an ancient dragon that they have accidentally unleashed.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Mexico have expanded in recent years, in keeping with worldwide legal trends. The intellectual influence of the French Revolution and the brief French occupation of Mexico (1862–67) resulted in the adoption of the Napoleonic Code, which decriminalized same-sex sexual acts in 1871. Laws against public immorality or indecency, however, have been used to prosecute persons who engage in them.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Tolerance of sexual diversity in certain indigenous cultures is widespread, especially among Isthmus Zapotecs and Yucatán Mayas. As the influence of foreign and domestic cultures (especially from more cosmopolitan areas such as Mexico City) grows throughout Mexico, attitudes are changing. This is most marked in the largest metropolitan areas, such as Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Tijuana, where education and access to foreigners and foreign news media are greatest. Change is slower in the hinterlands, however, and even in large cities, discomfort with change often leads to backlashes. Since the early 1970s, influenced by the United States gay liberation movement and the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, a substantial number of LGBT organizations have emerged. Visible and well-attended LGBT marches and pride parades have occurred in Mexico City since 1979, in Guadalajara since 1996, and in Monterrey since 2001.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 3 June 2015, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation released a "jurisprudential thesis" in which the legal definition of marriage was changed to encompass same-sex couples. Laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman were deemed unconstitutional by the court and thus every justice provider in the nation must validate same-sex unions. However, the process is lengthy as couples must request an injunction () from a judge, a process that opposite-sex couples do not have to go through. The Supreme Court issued a similar ruling pertaining to same-sex adoptions in September 2016. While these two rulings did not directly strike down Mexico's same-sex marriage and adoption bans, they ordered every single judge in the country to rule in favor of same-sex couples seeking marriage and/or adoption rights. By 26 October 2022, every state had legalized same-sex marriage by legislation (pending in four cases), executive order, or court ruling, though only twenty allowed those couples to adopt children. Additionally, civil unions are performed in Mexico City and the states of Coahuila, Campeche, Michoacán, and Tlaxcala, both for same-sex and opposite-sex couples.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Political and legal gains have been made through the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, leftist minor parties such as the Labor Party and Citizen's Movement, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, and more recently the left-wing National Regeneration Movement. They include, among others, the 2011 amendment to Article 1 of the Federal Constitution to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Acceptance of homosexuality and transgender identities has been documented among various indigenous peoples of Mexico, most notably the Isthmus Zapotecs and Yucatán Mayas. The Isthmus Zapotecs recognize a traditional third gender, known as "muxe", an intermediate between male and female. are assigned male at birth, but typically act and behave like women and do both women and men's work. Having a in the family is perceived as good luck and a blessing. They are often referred to as transgender in English language publications.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Traditionally, Mayan society was relatively tolerant of homosexuality. There was a strong association between ritual and homosexual activity. Some shamans engaged in homosexual acts with their patients, and priests engaged in ritualized homosexual acts with their gods. Similarly, the Toltecs were also "extremely sex tolerant", with public displays of sex and eroticism, including of homosexual acts.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: However, little is known about same-sex relationships in Aztec society. Some sources claim that homosexuality among young Aztec men was tolerated (homosexual acts were commonly practised in temples and before battle), but not among adult men, where the punishment could be death. The penetrated adult male (known as ) would typically be killed through anal impalement but the penetrating male would usually not suffer any punishments. On the other hand, many Aztec nobles and rich merchants had both male and female prostitutes and engaged in same-sex relations, and there were some religious rituals where homosexuality was acceptable, most notably Tezcatlipoca sacrifices. Intersex people (known as ) were regarded as "detestable women" by Aztec society and would be killed. However, some sources suggest that homosexuality was more widely practised and tolerated among the Aztecs and that most of the negativity surrounding the practice stems from Spanish records, as supposedly the Spanish had "huge problems trying to stamp out homosexuality". The Aztec god Xōchipilli is the patron of homosexuals and male prostitutes.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: During the early 1970s, influenced by the U.S. gay liberation movement and the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, small political and cultural groups were formed. Initially, they were strongly linked to the political left and, to a degree, feminist organizations. One of the first LGBT groups in Latin America was the Homosexual Liberation Front ("Frente de Liberación Homosexual"), organized in 1971 in response to the firing of a Sears employee because of his allegedly homosexual behavior in Mexico City.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action ("Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria") protested the 1983 roundups in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The onset of AIDS during the mid-1980s created considerable debate and public discussion about homosexuality. Many voices, both supportive and opposing (such as the Roman Catholic Church), participated in public discussions that increased awareness and understanding of homosexuality. LGBT groups were instrumental in initiating programs to combat AIDS, which was a shift in focus that curtailed (at least temporarily) the emphasis on gay organizing.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In 1991, Mexico hosted a meeting of the International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA), which was its first meeting outside Europe. In 1997, LGBT activists were active in constructing the political platform that resulted in Patria Jiménez (a lesbian activist in Mexico City) being selected for proportional representation in the Chamber of Deputies representing the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). LGBT rights advocate David Sánchez Camacho was also elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District (ALDF).


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In August 1999, the First Meeting of Lesbians and Lesbian Feminists was held in Mexico City. From this meeting evolved an organized effort for expanded LGBT rights in the country's capital. The following month, the PRD-controlled Legislative Assembly of the Federal District passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, the first of its kind in Mexico.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Visible (and well-attended) LGBT marches and pride parades have been held in Mexico City since 1979 and in Guadalajara since 1996, the country's largest cities. In 2001, Article 1 of the Federal Constitution was amended to prohibit discrimination based (among other factors) on sexual orientation under the vague term "preferences". On 11 June 2003, an anti-discrimination federal law took effect, creating a national council to enforce it. The same year, Amaranta Gómez ran as the first transgender congresswoman candidate affiliated with the former Mexico Posible party. In June 2011, the more precise term "sexual preferences" was inserted into Article 1 of the Constitution.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: LGBT people in Mexico have organized in a variety of ways: through local organizations, marches, and the development of the Commission to Denounce Hate Crimes. Mexico has a thriving LGBT movement with organizations in various large cities throughout the country and numerous LGBT publications (most prominently in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, and Puebla), the majority at the local level (since national efforts often disintegrate before gaining traction).


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The United Mexican States is a federation composed of thirty-one states and a federal district, also known as Mexico City. Although a Federal Civil Code exists, each state has its own code that regulates concubinage and marriage. Civil unions and same-sex marriages are not recognized at the federal level. Most states, however, have considered legislation on these issues.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In November 2013, Fernado Mayans, Senator for the state of Tabasco and representing the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), presented a proposal of changes to the Federal Civil Code in which marriage would be defined as "the free union of two people". The proposal was turned over to the Justice, Legal Studies and Human Rights commissions in the Senate to be further studied.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: A provision in the Mexican Code allows that five rulings in a state with the same outcome on the same issue override a statute and establish the legal jurisprudence to overturn it. This means that if 5 injunctions () are won in a state, the law has to be changed so that marriage becomes legal for all same-sex couples. It is also important to note that a same-sex marriage performed in any state is valid in all of the other states in Mexico, even if any particular state has no laws that allow it, according to federal law. Despite the legal requirement for the states to legalize same-sex marriage after 5 "amparo" rulings, this has often not been followed through. In Chihuahua, prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage there in 2015, almost 20 injunctions were carried out. Several states have simply chosen to ignore or delay the implementation of same-sex marriage, some times even at the cost of fines (in Tamaulipas legislators were fined for about 100 days due to their failure to legalize it).


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 14 June 2015, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared it unconstitutional to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples in all states. This did not legalize same-sex marriages nationwide, but in turn means that whenever a state government has an injunction taken out by a couple looking to get marital recognition, they will have to grant it and consider legalization when a certain number of injunctions is fulfilled.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 17 May 2016, the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, signed an initiative to change the country's Constitution, which would have legalized same-sex marriage throughout Mexico pending congressional approval. On 9 November 2016, the committee rejected the initiative 19 votes to 8. However, legislation to allow same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples is currently pending in almost every Mexican state.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The 2018 elections resulted in the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) winning a majority or plurality of legislative seats in 13 states where same-sex marriage had yet to be legalized (Baja California Sur, Durango, Guerrero, Hidalgo, México, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Zacatecas), as well as an outright majority together with the Labor Party in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and the presidency. LGBT activists have since intensified their calls to legalize same-sex marriage at the federal and state levels. Political parties supportive of same-sex marriage, including MORENA, the Labor Party, PRD and the Citizens' Movement, won a total of 303 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 81 seats in the Senate. In addition, supporters of same-sex marriage can be found in the remaining parties.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In 2000, Enoé Uranga, an openly lesbian politician and activist, proposed a bill legalizing same-sex civil unions in Mexico City under the name "Ley de Sociedades de Convivencia" (LSC). The bill would have recognized the inheritance and pension rights of two adults, regardless of sexual orientation. Because of widespread opposition from right-wing groups and Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador's ambiguity concerning the bill, the Legislative Assembly decided not to consider it. As new leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard was expected to take power in December 2006, the Legislative Assembly voted 43-17 to approve the LSC. The law took effect on 16 March 2007.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 24 November 2009, Assemblyman David Razú, a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, proposed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Mexico City. The bill was backed by the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City and over 600 non-governmental organizations, including the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, Amnesty International, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The National Action Party (PAN) announced it would either appeal the law in court or demand a referendum.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The referendum proposal was rejected by the Legislative Assembly on a 36–22 vote on 18 December 2009. On 21 December 2009, the Legislative Assembly passed the bill by a vote of 39–20 with five abstentions. Eight days later, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard signed the bill into law. It took effect on 4 March 2010. The law changed the definition of marriage in the city's Civil Code to "a free union between two people". It also granted same-sex couples the right to adopt children.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In February 2010, the Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges by six states to the Mexico City law. The Federal Attorney General, however, had separately challenged the law as unconstitutional, citing an article in the Constitution of Mexico that refers to "protecting the family". Five months later, the Supreme Court ruled 9–2 that the law did not violate the Constitution.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 11 January 2007, the Congress of the northern state of Coahuila legalized same-sex civil unions (by a 20–13 vote) under the name "pacto civil de solidaridad" (PCS), giving property and inheritance rights to same-sex couples. The PCS was proposed by Congresswoman Julieta López of the centrist PRI, whose nineteen members voted for the law. Luis Alberto Mendoza, deputy of the center-right PAN (which opposed), said the new law was an "attack against the family, which is society's natural group and is formed by a man and a woman". Apart from that, the PCS drew little opposition and was notably supported by Bishop Raúl Vera. Unlike Mexico City's law, once same-sex couples have registered in Coahuila, the state protects their rights (no matter where they live in Mexico). Twenty days after the law passed, the country's first same-sex civil union took place in Saltillo, Coahuila.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 11 April 2013, the Party of the Democratic Revolution introduced a measure to legalize civil unions in Campeche. The bill was unanimously passed on 20 December 2013, and while it covers both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, it specifically provides that it "shall not constitute a civil partnership of people living together in marriage and cohabitation." An additional distinction is that it is not filed with the Civil Registrar, but with the Public Registry of Property and Trade.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In July 2013, the Congress of Colima approved a constitutional amendment authorizing same-sex couples to legally formalize their unions by entering into marital bonds with the "same rights and obligations with respect to the contracting of civil marriage". On 5 May 2016, the civil union law was repealed in favor of same-sex marriage legislation.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In 2013, deputies of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM), Citizens' Movement (MC) and an independent deputy presented the "Free Coexistence Act" ("Ley de Libre Convivencia") to the Congress of Jalisco. The Act established that same-sex civil unions can be performed in the state, as long as they are not considered marriages. It did not legalize adoption and mandated that civil unions be performed with a civil law notary. On 31 October 2013, the Jalisco Congress approved the Act in a 20–15 vote, one abstained and three were absent. The law took effect on 1 January 2014. On 13 September 2018, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation struck down the law on procedural grounds.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 27 August 2015, the Justice and Human Rights Committee announced it would enact a civil union law for same-sex couples in Michoacán. It was approved unanimously in a 34-0 vote by the full Michoacán Congress on 7 September 2015. The law was published on 30 September 2015 in the state's official journal.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In December 2016, the Tlaxcala Congress approved a civil union bill, in an 18-4 vote. The bill went into effect on 12 January 2017.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The status of same-sex marriage in Mexico's states is complex. Currently, all states have legalized same-sex marriage. Previously, these marriages are recognized nationwide (even in states where same-sex couples could not marry) and by various federal departments and organizations. Same-sex marriage legalization has been achieved through different methods:


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The Mexican Supreme Court has limited legal power. It cannot legalize same-sex marriage in the entire nation at once. It can, however, legalize it one state at a time and under specific circumstances, through the so-called "action of unconstitutionality" process. Through this process, the Supreme Court can directly strike down a state law, rendering it unenforceable and void (and thus ordering the state to license same-sex marriages). Actions of unconstitutionality can only be filed within 30 days after the law in question has gone into effect. In the case of the five states above, their local congresses modified their marriage laws, but left intact provisions outlawing same-sex marriages. LGBT groups subsequently filed actions with the Supreme Court. It is likely the state legislatures were unaware they were setting their bans for strike-down.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: A fourth method exists. If officials in a given state repeatedly appeal "amparo" cases to a federal appeals court and lose five times in a row (note that since 2015 no court in Mexico is allowed to rule against same-sex marriage), and if the appellate court then forwards the results to the Supreme Court (SCJN), the SCJN can then force the state legislature to repeal its ban. It gives the state a deadline by which it must modify its laws, usually 90 or 180 business days. If the state fails to change its laws to allow same-sex marriage by that date, the court will issue a "General Declaration of Unconstitutionality" () and struck the law down. In these cases, the amparo is also called a "resolution". However, it is unlikely this process is as effective as the action of unconstitutionality process.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 28 November 2011, the first two same-sex marriages occurred in Quintana Roo after it was discovered that Quintana Roo's Civil Code did not explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage, but these marriages were later annulled by the Governor of Quintana Roo in April 2012. In May 2012, the Secretary of State of Quintana Roo reversed the annulments and allowed for future same-sex marriages to be performed in the state.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Mexico's Supreme Court ruled in December 2012 that Oaxaca's marriage law was unconstitutional because it limited the ceremony to a man and a woman with the goal to "perpetuate the species". In 2013, a lesbian couple became the first same-sex couple to marry after this ruling. The ruling did not legalize same-sex marriage in the state, however, but rather created jurisprudence against same-sex marriage bans.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 11 February 2014, the Congress of Coahuila approved adoptions by same-sex couples and a bill legalizing same-sex marriages passed on 1 September 2014, making Coahuila the second jurisdiction in Mexico to reform its Civil Code to allow for legal same-sex marriages. It took effect on 17 September, and the first couple married on 20 September.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 12 June 2015, the Governor of Chihuahua announced that his administration would no longer oppose same-sex marriages within the state. The order was effective immediately, thus making Chihuahua the third state to legalize such unions.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 25 June 2015, following the Supreme Court's ruling, a civil registrar in Guerrero announced that they had planned a collective same-sex marriage ceremony for 10 July 2015 and indicated that there would have to be a change to the law to allow gender-neutral marriage, passed through the state Congress before the official commencement. The registry announced more details of their plan, advising that only select registration offices in the state would be able to participate in the collective marriage event. The Governor instructed civil agencies to approve same-sex marriage licenses. On 10 July 2015, 20 same-sex couples were married by Governor Rogelio Ortega Martínez in Acapulco. However, not all municipalities in the state perform same-sex marriages.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 17 December 2015, the Congress of Nayarit approved a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. In January 2016, the Mexican Supreme Court declared Jalisco's Civil Code unconstitutional for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, effectively legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. Although the ruling was officially published in the Official Gazette of the Federation ("Diario Oficial de la Federación") on 21 April 2016 and took effect on that date, several municipalities had already begun issuing same-sex marriage licenses, including Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara and Tlaquepaque. On 12 May 2016, the Congress of Jalisco officially instructed all the state's municipalities to issue same-sex marriage certificates, but did not amend its Civil Code to be in compliance with the ruling until 6 April 2022. On 10 May 2016, the Congress of Campeche passed a same-sex marriage bill. On 18 May 2016, both Michoacán and Morelos passed bills allowing for same-sex marriage to be legal. On 25 May 2016, a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Colima was approved by the state Congress.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: In fourth separate actions of unconstitutionality, the Mexican Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Chiapas on 11 July 2017, in Puebla on 1 August 2017, in Nuevo León on 19 February 2019, and in Aguascalientes on 2 April 2019. These rulings went into force upon publication in the "Diario Oficial de la Federación". Chiapas' ruling was published on 11 May 2018, but the local Civil Registry had already started issuing same-sex marriage licenses, beginning on 30 October 2017. Puebla's and Nuevo León's rulings were published on 16 February 2018 and 31 May 2019, respectively. The Congress of Puebla amended its Civil Code in compliance with the ruling in November 2020.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 3 November 2017, the State Government of Baja California announced it would cease to enforce its same-sex marriage ban, and instructed civil registrars to begin issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples. The Congress of Baja California would later codify the decision into law and the state constitution in June 2021. Similarly, in the southern state of Oaxaca, the local Civil Registry announced in August 2018 that it would accept applications for same-sex marriage licenses from throughout the state, and the state congress later amended the civil code to permit same-sex marriage in August 2019.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 21 May 2019, same-sex marriage became legal in San Luis Potosí, after the state Congress legalized such marriages in a 14-12 vote 5 days prior. A same-sex marriage law in the state of Hidalgo was approved on 14 May 2019, and took effect on 11 June. Likewise, a same-sex marriage bill was approved in Baja California Sur on 27 June 2019, and came into force two days later.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: The Congress of Tlaxcala passed a law allowing same-sex marriage on 8 December 2020. Same-sex marriage was also approved by the Congress of Sinaloa on 15 June 2021 and in Zacatecas later that year. The Congress of Yucatán passed a constitutional amendment allowing same-sex marriage on 7 September 2021 and amended secondary legislation to permit it on 1 March 2022. The Congress of Veracruz passed a law allowing same-sex marriage on 2 June 2022, three days after the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation struck down a law forbidding it. The Governor of Durango issued a decree legalizing same-sex marriage in the state on 18 September 2022. The Congress of the State of Mexico passed a law allowing same-sex marriage and concubinage on 11 October 2022. The Congress of the state of Guerrero passed a law allowing same-sex marriage and concubinage on 25 October 2022. The Congress of the state of Tamaulipas passed a same-sex marriage law on 26 October 2022; it was the final state to legalize same-sex marriage.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Married same-sex couples are not allowed to adopt children in every state in Mexico, despite married couples being allowed to adopt. Mexico City, along with the states of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, and Veracruz allow for same-sex couples to adopt children jointly. The law does not specifically bar same-sex couples from adopting in Durango, but none has as of June 2022.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: Mexico City legalized same-sex adoptions in March 2010, when its same-sex marriage law took effect. On 24 November 2011, the Coahuila Supreme Court struck down the state's law barring same-sex couples from adopting. The state complied with the ruling in February 2014 and legalized such adoptions. According to the Chihuahua National System for Integral Family Development, the Office of the Defense of Children and the Family in the state performs the same protocol for all couples seeking to adopt regardless of their sexual orientation.


title: LGBT rights in Mexico

text: On 11 August 2015, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled, in a 9-1 decision, that Campeche's ban on same-sex couples adopting children was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court struck down Article 19 of Campeche's civil union law which outlawed adoption by couples in civil unions. Children's rights were cited as the main reason for the Court's decision. The ruling set a constitutional precedent, meaning all bans in Mexico forbidding same-sex couples from adopting are unconstitutional and discriminatory. On 23 September 2016, the Mexican Supreme Court finalized the ruling in the adoption case against Campeche and issued a nationwide jurisprudence which binds all lower court judges to rule in favor of same-sex couples seeking adoption and parental rights. Campeche lifted its adoption ban three days later.