Background.

By 1924, Bulgakov was relatively well known as a writer. He had published several short stories, including "Dyavoliada", in some ways a precursor to "Master and Margarita", and started publishing his first novel, "The White Guard". "The Fatal Eggs" was finished in early October 1924 and published in the "Nedra" journal in February 1925; a shortened edition was also published in May–June 1925 in the "Krasnaya Panorama" journal, under the title "The Ray of Life" (Russian: "Луч жизни"). Bulgakov also read the novel on several occasions to various social gatherings, where it met with favorable reception.

Plot summary.

"The Fatal Eggs" can be described as a satirical science fiction novel. Its main protagonist is an aging zoologist, Vladimir Ipatyevich Persikov, a specialist in amphibians. The narration begins in Moscow of 1928, which seems to have overcome the destructive effects of the Russian Civil War and is quite prosperous. After a long period of degradation, research at the Zoological Institute has revived. After leaving his microscope for several hours, Persikov suddenly noticed that the out-of-focus microscope produced a ray of red light; amoeba left under that light showed an impossibly increased rate of binary fission, reproducing at enormous speeds and demonstrating unusual aggression. Later experiments with large cameras — to produce a larger ray — confirmed that the same increased speed of reproduction applied to other organisms, such as frogs, which evolved and produced a next generation within two days. Persikov's invention quickly becomes known to journalists, and eventually to foreign spies and to the GPU, the Soviet secret service. At the same time, the country is affected by an unknown disease in domesticated poultry, which results in a complete extinction of all chickens in the Soviet Russia, with the plague stopping at the nation's borders. A sovkhoz manager Aleksandr Semenovich Rokk (whose name is also a pun on the novel's title, "Rok" meaning "fate") receives an official permission to confiscate Persikov's equipment, and use the invention to attempt to restore the chicken populace to the pre-plague level. However, the chicken eggs which are imported from outside the country are, by a mistake, sent to Persikov's laboratory while the reptile eggs destined for the professor end up in the hands of the farmers. As a result, Rokk breeds an enormous quantity of large and overly aggressive snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles which start attacking people. In the panic that follows, Persikov is killed by a mob — which blames him for the appearance of the snakes — and his cameras are smashed. The Red Army attempts to hold the snakes back, but only the coming of sub-zero weather in August—described as a deus ex machina—puts a stop to the snake invasion. In an earlier draft the novel ends with the scene of Moscow's complete destruction by the snakes.

Analysis and critical reception.

A number of influences on the novel can be detected. One of the sources behind "The Fatal Eggs" was H. G. Wells's 1904 novel "The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth", where two scientists discover a way to accelerate growth — which at first results in a plague of gigantic chickens, and eventually in an all-out war between people affected by growth and those who are not. The novel is in fact referenced in the text of the novel in a conversation between Persikov and his assistant. It has also been noted that the death of the snakes from cold weather though they successfully resisted the military force is reminiscent of the death of aliens from a pathogen bacteria in "The War of the Worlds". Other influences may include rumours of "a giant reptile [in the Crimea], to capture which a regiment of Red Guards was deployed".  The events of "The Fatal Eggs" were usually seen as a critique of Soviet Russia. Indeed, there was a case to be made for Professor Persikov's identification with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (note the similarity in names), as both of them can be said to have unleashed destruction on Russia, and there seem to be similarities between them both in appearance and character. Chicken plague and the sanitary cordons that foreign countries established against it were seen as a parody of the ideas of internationalism and the policy of the Entente against it. Although Bulgakov was not repressed, from 1925 he was questioned by the GPU several times and was never allowed to leave the Soviet Union, possibly as a result of his negative image which was at least partly due to the publication of "The Fatal Eggs". Although there were positive responses, upon the whole the novel was viewed as dangerous and anti-Soviet.  Bulgakov was aware that the story might be displeasing to the authorities – after presenting the story at a literary evening in late 1924, he wrote in his diary: 'Is it a satire? Or a provocative gesture?... I'm afraid that I might be hauled off... for all these heroic feats.'

English translations.

There are a number of English translations of "The Fatal Eggs", including but not limited to the following:

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations.

A film adaptation directed by Sergei Lomkin was released in 1996. Cast included Oleg Yankovsky.  On April 17, 1981 the CBC Radio program Nightfall broadcast an adaptation.  A two-part Italian TV adaptation was broadcast by RAI in 1977.

The Fatal Eggs (, ) is a satirical science-fiction novella by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Soviet novelist and playwright whose most famous work is "The Master and Margarita". It was written in 1924 and first published in 1925. The novel became quite popular, but was much criticised by most Soviet critics as a mockery of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the leadership of Soviet Russia.


History.

With its origin in the Georgetown machine translation effort, SYSTRAN was one of the few machine translation systems to survive the major decrease of funding after the ALPAC Report of the mid-1960s. The company was established in La Jolla in California to work on translation of Russian to English text for the United States Air Force during the Cold War. Large numbers of Russian scientific and technical documents were translated using SYSTRAN under the auspices of the USAF Foreign Technology Division (later the National Air and Space Intelligence Center) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The quality of the translations, although only approximate, was usually adequate for understanding content.  The company was sold in 1986 to the Gachot family, based in Paris, and is now traded publicly on the French stock exchange. Its company headquarters is in Paris, while its U.S. headquarters is still in La Jolla.  During the dot-com boom, the international language industry started a new era, and SYSTRAN entered into agreements with a number of translation integrators, the most successful of these being WorldLingo.  In 2014, the company was acquired by CSLi (Korea).

Business situation.

Most of SYSTRAN's revenue comes from a few customers. 57.1% comes from the 10 main customers and the three largest customers account for 10.9%, 8.9%, and 8.9% of its revenues, respectively. Revenues had been declining in the early 2000s: 10.2 million euros in 2004, 10.1 million euros in 2005, 9.3 million euros in 2006, 8.8 million euros in 2007, and 7.6 million euros in 2008, before seeing a rebound in 2009 with 8.6 million euros.

Languages.

The following is a list of the source and target languages with which SYSTRAN works. Many of the pairs are to or from English or French.

SYSTRAN, founded by Dr. Peter Toma in 1968, is one of the oldest machine translation companies. SYSTRAN has done extensive work for the United States Department of Defense and the European Commission.


Overview.

The design of the building was decided by means of an architectural competition. The competition was announced on 7 January 2002. The organisers received 1557 entries from 82 countries, making it the second largest architectural competition in history. In the second stage of the competition, 20 entries were asked to submit additional information. Judging was complete by 2 June 2003. The competition was won by the company Heneghan Peng from Dublin, Ireland, winning 250,000 dollars. Second place was awarded to Coop Himmelblau. Héctor Vigliecca and Luciene Quel (Brazil), Ruben Verdi (Italy), Michael Zimmermann, Engel und Zimmermann (Germany), Fernando Pardo Calvo y Bernardo Garcia Tapia, Nuno Filipe Morais Monteiro (Portugal) and Martin Roubik (Czech Republic) received Honorable Mention. The building is designed by Heneghan Peng Architects, Buro Happold and Arup. The exhibition masterplan, exhibition design and museology is by Atelier Brückner.  The building is shaped like a chamfered triangle in plan. It sits on a site two kilometers west of the pyramids, near a motorway interchange. The building's north and south walls line up directly with the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Menkaure. In front of the building is a large plaza, filled with date plants. One of the main features of the museum is the translucent stone wall, made of alabaster, that makes up the front facade of the building. Inside the main entrance is a large atrium, where large statues will be exhibited.  On 2 February 2010, Hill International announced that Egypt's Ministry of Culture had signed a contract with a joint venture of Hill and EHAF Consulting Engineers to provide project management services during the design and construction of the Grand Egyptian Museum.  The total estimated project cost is US$550m, US$300m of which will be financed from Japanese loans, the remaining will be financed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, other donations and international funds.  The new museum is designed to include the latest technology, including virtual reality. The museum will also be an international center of communication between museums, to promote direct contact with other local and international museums. The Grand Egyptian Museum will include a children's museum, conference center, training center, and workshops similar to the old Pharaonic places.

Progress.

On 5 January 2002, then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak laid the foundation stone of the Grand Egyptian Museum. On 25 August 2006 the Statue of Ramesses II was moved from Ramses Square in Cairo to the Giza Plateau, in anticipation of construction of the museum. The Statue of Ramesses II, estimated to be approximately 3,200 years old and was moved to the entrance of the museum in January 2018.  In 2007, GEM secured a $300 million loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The Egyptian Government will fund $147 million while the remaining $150 million will be funded through donations and international organisations.  In late August 2008, the design team submitted over 5,000 drawings to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Following this, the construction tender was announced in October 2008. Earthmoving has begun to excavate the site for the building.  Tendering was due in September 2009, with an estimated completion date of 2013.  On 11 January 2012, a joint venture between Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) and the Belgian BESIX Group was awarded the contract for phase three of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), a deal valued at $810 million.  The Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh al-Damaty announced in May 2015 that the museum will be partially opened in May 2018.  On 29 April 2018, a fire broke out near the entrance of the GEM but artifacts were not damaged and the cause of the fire was unknown.  In May 2018, the last of King Tutankhamun's chariots was moved to GEM. In November 2018, the estimate for a full opening was pushed back to last quarter of 2020, according to Tarek Tawfik, GEM's director.  In April 2020, the planned opening of the museum was pushed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  The GEM is available for private tours in advance of its official opening.

Exhibits.

The exhibition will cover about one third of the total museum grounds displaying 50,000 artifacts. The main attraction will be the first exhibition of the full tomb collection of King Tutankhamun. The collection includes about 5000 items in total and will be relocated from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Other objects will be relocated from storages and museums in Luxor, Minya, Sohag, Assiut, Beni Suef, Fayoum, the Delta, and Alexandria.

The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), also known as the Giza Museum, is a planned museum of artefacts of ancient Egypt. Described as the largest archaeological museum in the world, construction on the museum was set to be complete in the first quarter of 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum is now scheduled to open in 2021. The museum plans to exhibit the full Tutankhamun collection with many pieces to be displayed for the first time. The museum is sited on of land approximately two kilometers from the Giza pyramids and is part of a new master plan for the plateau.


Specifications.

Based on an all-aluminium construction, the A110 is powered by a 1.8-litre turbocharged gasoline direct injection 4 valves per cylinder inline-four engine mated to 7-speed dual clutch automatic transmission manufactured by Getrag. Developed by Renault–Nissan and reworked by Alpine engineers, the engine has an output of at 6,000 rpm and of torque at 2,000–5,000 rpm. According to Alpine, the A110 can accelerate from in 4.5 seconds, and has an electronically limited top speed of.  The A110 is available in three trims: Pure, Première and Legende. The Pure cars, the base trim, have 17-inch alloy wheels. The Première trim cars are technically the launch edition models which were limited to 1,955 units and were equipped with amenities such as forged alloy wheels, quilted leather Sabelt bucket sports seats, a reversing camera and metallic blue exterior colour as standard. The Legende trim cars come with six way adjustable sports seats, black or brown leather interior upholstery and an upgraded hi fi sound system along with specially designed wheels exclusive to this trim. All of the three trims share the same powertrain and transmission.

A110S.

Introduced in June 2019, the A110S is a high performance and lightweight variant of the A110. The A110S benefits from increased power output (from ) from its 1.8-litre turbocharged four cylinder engine as well as stiffer springs, new anti-rollbars, dampers and carbon ceramic brakes as sassed equipment. The ride-height is lowered by and the car is fitted with special Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres having a stickier compound contributing to more grip on the tarmac.  The engine was retuned by installing a larger turbocharger. The peak power is achieved at 400 rpm higher than the standard engine. The 7-speed dual-clutch transmission remains unchanged. The new springs and anti-rollbars are 50 and 100 percent stiffer than the standard car. The ESC system has also been retuned to improve handling and comes with a full-defeat mode.  Aesthetic changes include flag motifs, orange brake calipers and optional matte grey paintwork and lighter Fuchs alloy wheels. An optional carbon fibre roof with a gloss finish reduces from the total weight of the car which is.  The A110S can accelerate to in 4.4 seconds (0.1 seconds faster than standard car) and has an electronically limited top speed of.

Motorsport.

The Alpine A110 Cup was revealed in October 2017. This track-only version of the A110 utilizes the same chassis as the road car but has been modified to include a roll cage, adjustable suspension and racing brakes. The 1.8 L turbocharged engine is also similar to the street car but power has been upped to 270 hp that is transferred to the track through a bespoke racing sequential gearbox and Michelin racing tires. The car is designed for use in the new Alpine Elf Europa Cup series that will visit 6 tracks in Europe for its inaugural season. Only 20 cars will be built in its debut season and they are priced around €100,000 each.  At the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, Alpine revealed a new GT4 version of the Alpine A110 Cup. This upgraded version of the A110 Cup comes with more power as well as revised aerodynamics highlighted by an extremely aggressive front splitter and a large rear wing. Customers of the original A110 Cup car are able to upgrade their cars to GT4 spec for a fee. The A110 GT4 began racing in the second half of 2018 so teams could test their new car in preparation for a championship hunt in the 2019 season.

Other media.

The car attracted some attention in February 2018, when a company-provided car caught fire while being filmed for an episode of the British television programme, "Top Gear". The responding fire personnel were not able to control the fire, and the car was burnt to destruction. This was due to a fuel failure when driver Chris Harris said “There’s a red light on the dashboard, smoke, smoke, smoke!”  James May remarked on the Alpine A110, pronounced (‘Alpeen’), "It has 248bhp, weighs the square root of diddly, and is the greatest thing to come out of France since the Mouli cheese grater." May eventually bought an Alpine in mid 2018 referring to it as his car of the year.  The A110 Premiere Edition appeared in "Gran Turismo Sport" via a February update alongside the original model.  The 2017 A110 was introduced as a playable car to "Forza Horizon 4" with the Season 17 Update which arrived on December 12, 2019.  The A110 was runner up for the 2019 European Car of the Year award. It received the same number of points as the eventual winner (the Jaguar I-Pace) but with fewer first-place votes.

The Alpine A110 is a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive sports car introduced by French car manufacturer Alpine at the 87th Geneva International Motor Show in March 2017.


Early life and education.

Dzúr was born in Plostin, Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia, on 12 July 1919. His parents were peasants. From 1937 to 1939 he studied woodworking. In the late 1940s he graduated from a military school, a higher academic course and the General Staff Academy, Kliment Voroshilov, in Moscow.

Career and activities.

Dzúr joined the Slovak army for military draft service in 1941. However, he left the Slovak army and defected to the Soviet Union in January 1943. He joined both Soviet forces and the then-illegal Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1943. Then he began to serve in the 119th brigade of the Red Army. Following World War II he became a captain in the Soviet-assisted Czechoslovak independent brigade in 1946.  In 1959, he was made deputy defense minister. He was appointed defense minister under President Ludvík Svoboda in April 1968, replacing Bohumír Lomský in the post. Four months after Dzúr's appointment the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968.  In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Dzúr was arrested in his office by two Soviet military officers. Ivan Yershov, Soviet chief of staff during the invasion, stated in 1989 that Dzúr initially refused to take orders from the Soviets, arguing that only Alexander Dubček, leader of the Czechoslovak communist party, could give orders to him. However, Andrei Grechko, the former commander of the Warsaw Pact, told Dzúr on telephone that "if a single Czechoslovak soldier fired so much as one shot, he would personally hang Dzur from the first tree." Dzúr was allowed only to call Dubček to inform the invasion. On 28 September 1968 Dzúr increased the number of Czech military areas accessible to Soviet troops.  Dzúr was elected to the communist party's central committee in 1971. His term as defense minister ended on 11 January 1985 when he retired from office due to ill health. Milán Václavík replaced him in the post.

Views.

Dzúr was close to Alexander Dubček. The 1970 CIA report describes Dzúr as a moderate like Dubček.

Honours and awards.

Dzúr was awarded the highest Soviet prize, the Order of Lenin, in 1983.

Death.

Only four days after his removal from office Dzúr died of "a long and serious illness" in Prague on 15 January 1985.

Martin Dzúr (12 July 1919 – 15 January 1985) was a Slovak military officer and a communist politician, who served as defense minister from 1968 to 1985.


History.

The idea of Greater Paris was originally proposed by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as "a new global plan for the Paris metropolitan region" It first led to a new transportation master plan for the Paris region and to plans to develop several areas around Paris. The "Métropole du Grand Paris" was defined by the law of 27 January 2014 on the modernization of public territorial action and affirmation of cities as part of Act III of decentralization. The plans were considerably modified in December 2015, and the passage into action in two competences, economic development and protection of the environment, was delayed from 2016 to 2017.  The plan was first announced on 17 September 2007 during the inauguration of "La Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine", when Sarkozy declared his intent to create a "new comprehensive development project for Greater Paris". The project was organized by the French state, with the Minister of Culture and Communication charged with coordinating the consultation process.  In 2008 an international urban and architectural competition for the future development of metropolitan Paris was launched. Ten teams gathering architects, urban planners, geographers, landscape architects will offer their vision for building a Paris metropolis of the 21st century in the post-Kyoto era and make a prospective diagnosis for Paris and its suburbs that will define future developments in Greater Paris for the next 40 years.  The architects leading the ten multi-disciplinary teams were: Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc, Antoine Grumbach, Roland Castro, Yves Lion, Djamel Klouche, Richard Rogers, Bernardo Secchi, Paola Vigano, Finn Geipel, Giulia Andi, and Winy Maas.  Early versions of the plan proposed reforms to the local government structure of the Paris region by creating an integrated urban community encompassing the City of Paris and the surrounding Petite Couronne, However, these were largely abandoned due to strong opposition from the socialist Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, and the socialist head of the Île de France region, Jean-Paul Huchon.

Objectives.

The original plan for the Métropole declared these objectives; "The Métropole of Grand Paris is established in order to define and implement metropolitan action to improve the quality of life of its residents, reduce inequalities between regions within it, to develop an urban, social and economic sustainability model, tools to improve attractiveness and competitiveness for the benefit of the entire national territory. The Métropole of Grand Paris is developing a metropolitan project. The residents are associated with its development according to the guidelines determined by the metropolitan council as laid down by the development council. This metropolitan project defines the general guidelines of the policy pursued by the Métropole of Grand Paris. It forms part of the implementation of the overall scheme of the Ile-de-France region. It includes a general, social, economic and environmental analysis of the metropolitan area, the strategic guidelines for the development of the metropolis as well as priority areas for intervention. The Metro project can be developed with the support of the Land and Technical Agency of the Paris Region, the International Workshop on Greater Paris, the Urban Planning Agencies and any other useful body. "

Transportation.

Independently to the process described above, a position of Minister for Le Grand Paris was created and Christian Blanc was appointed to occupy it. Blanc and his team prepared a transportation plan, announced on April 29, 2009. The Île-de-France region had already published its own transportation plan. Later, the architects of the consultation joined together to present a third transportation plan. After much negotiation, a compromise between the national government the Île-de-France regional government was announced in January 2011 and the final plan subsequently approved.  The transport plan will be carried out in ten years, at a cost of 35 billion euros funded by the state, local governments and new debt. An important part of the project is a driverless subway linking important business and residential poles such as Versailles and the Charles de Gaulle airport but also banlieues like Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois through a figure-eight track 140 km long and operating 24-hour, which will alone cost 21 billion euros. Another 14 billion euros will be spent in the extension and re-equipment of existing metro, regional and suburban lines.

Criticism.

The way Le Grand Paris has been handled was criticized by the architects themselves, especially by Jean Nouvel who wrote several virulent editorials against the Minister in charge of Le Grand Paris until June 2010, Christian Blanc.  Politically, the President of the Île-de-France region, Jean-Paul Huchon and the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, both members of the French Socialist Party opposed the initiatives taken by the national government, which they said were in contradiction with the devolution of urban planning matters to local governments. In October 2011, Delanoë stated that the President "is trying to claim for himself an urban dynamic begun long ago by the local governments". Although Huchon had reached an agreement with the national government earlier in the year on the transportation network, he also declared that Grand Paris "is not a generic term to cover everything that is going on on the territory of the Île-de-France region (...) and even less a national certificate created to relabel local policies that were already in existence." Political opposition was also strong from the Green Party (Europe Écologie), led in the Île-de-France region by Cécile Duflot.

Communes.

The Métropole du Grand Paris consists of the following 131 communes:

The Métropole du Grand Paris (, meaning roughly "Metropolis of Greater Paris") is an administrative structure for cooperation covering the City of Paris and its nearest surrounding suburbs. The métropole came into existence on January 1, 2016 and comprises 131 communes, including the City of Paris, all 123 communes in the surrounding inner-suburban departments of the "Petite Couronne" (Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne), plus seven communes in two of the outer-suburban departments, including the communes of Argenteuil in Val-d'Oise, and Paray-Vieille-Poste in Essonne, the latter of which covers part of Orly Airport. Part of the métropole comprised the Seine department, which existed from 1929 to 1968. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometers and has a population of 7 million.


Life.

Maria Theresia was the eldest child and daughter of Alexander Ferdinand, 3rd Prince of Thurn and Taxis (1704–73) and Princess Maria Henriette Josepha of Fürstenberg-Stühlingen (1732–72). She was a younger half-sister of Karl Anselm, 4th Prince of Thurn and Taxis and niece of Maria Augusta of Thurn and Taxis.  She grew in a cultural environment at the princely court in Regensburg, which was a center of French, German and Italian opera, theater, ballet, pantomimes and concerts. She was instructed in clavercin playing with her sisters and displayed an early talent of music composition.  Maria Theresia was engaged to Prince Joseph of Fürstenberg from 1772 until her affair with Prince Philip of Hohenlohe in 1776. Her family, however, refused permission for her to marry Philip. In 1780 in Prague, she married the Danish noble Ferdinand, Count of Ahlefeldt-Langeland (1747–1815) against the will of her family. Having conducted a marriage against the will of her family was a criminal act, for which she was forced to flee to avoid arrest.  From 1780, Maria Theresia's spouse was marshal at the court of Ansbach, where she was active in the amateur theatre of Elizabeth Craven. During this time, she composed a libretto. In 1792–94, her spouse was marshal of the Danish royal court and director of the Royal Danish Theatre. Maria Theresia composed music for several ballets, operas, and plays of the royal theatre. She was given good critic as a composer and described as a “virkelig Tonekunstnerinde” ('a True Artist of Music').  She moved to Dresden with her spouse in 1798, and lived from 1800 until her death in Prague.

Maria Theresia Ahlefeldt (16 January 1755 in Regensburg, Free Imperial City of Regensburg, Holy Roman Empire – died 20 December 1810 in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austrian Empire), was a Danish (originally German) composer. She is known as the first female composer in Denmark.


History.

Construction.

The museum building is located near the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube, in Ušće park in the Novi Beograd municipality. It was designed by Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović in 1960, with construction beginning that year and continuing until 1965. The architects received the October Prize from the City of Belgrade on 20 October 1965, the same day the museum was opened to the public.  Due to its shape, architecture and location, it has been described as the "crystal at the confluence" or an "(architectural) jewel".

2007–17 renovation.

When renovation talks first began in the early 2000s, both original architects were still alive. However, Antić died in 2005 and Raspopović in 2015. Reconstruction began in 2007, but dragged on for a decade, due to numerous reasons. After 10 years of renovation work, the museum was finally re-opened to the public on 20 October 2017, on the anniversary of the first museum opening 52 years earlier. The entire building was renovated and upgraded to meet current museum standards. The park surrounding the museum building was also reconstructed. The first exhibition to be held in the newly renovated museum was "Sequences" by Dejan Sretenović.  Raspopović contributed to the reconstruction project by suggesting that the glass, belonging to the building’s domes, be replaced with a darker shade. The newly added blue panels change their tone, depending on the weather and time of day. The domes have therefore become interactive and dynamic, complementing the surrounding park and the nearby modernistic glass-and-steel Ušće Tower. The main criticism, regarding the renovations, revolves around the use of too much concrete in the access paths leading to the museum. Despite new lighting, as well as the addition of pebbles and tartan, critics believe that the concrete makes the area appear less "humane" and could hamper the future growth of avenue-like trees along the paths.  The parceling and concrete work done in the surrounding park area was also criticized, as was the apparent haste in the latter stages to finish the reconstruction quickly. The first company chosen to do the construction work was "Montera". It was paid fully for the job, but went bankrupt leaving the renovation unfinished for years. During the next public bidding in 2014, aimed specifically at redoing the roof, the company "Jedinstvo" from Užice was chosen. The following bidding, which covered the remaining work, failed. "Jedinstvo" applied again and was selected by the museum, even though it had the highest offer. The Ministry of Culture, headed by Ivan Tasovac at the time, insisted that the lowest bidder should be picked instead, which was "Modulor", a company from Zemun. As a result, the museum director, Jovan Despotović, was let go and the "Termoinženjering" company was chosen at the next bidding. They finished the entire reconstruction, renovating the roof a second time. Yet, already in July 2018 the reconstructed roof began to leak when it rained.

Departments.

The collection began to form in 1958. As of 2018, 8,000 paintings and sculptures are exhibited.  The museum has several departments and collections:  Departments:  The museum also operates the Salon of the MoCAB (opened in 1961), located in old town Belgrade.  According to the curators, the most popular exhibits after the 2017 reopening include painting "On the black field" by, big balls sculpture "L-50" by Ivan Kožarić, sculpture "Light shapes" by Vojin Bakić and installation "Comrade Tito, (our) white violet" by Dušan Otašević.

Museum of Contemporary Art () is an art museum located in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It was founded in 1958 as the Modern Gallery. It was moved into the current building in the Ušće neighborhood of New Belgrade in 1965. The building is a masterpiece of architects Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović, a short-lived but highly successful partnership, which also produced the 21 October Museum in Šumarice Memorial Park in Kragujevac. The collection contains more than 35,000 works of art.


Design and development.

In parallel with the F8U-1s and -2s, the Crusader design team was also working on a larger aircraft with even greater performance, internally designated as the V-401. Although externally similar to the Crusader and sharing with it such design elements as the variable incidence wing, the new fighter was larger and was powered by the Pratt & Whitney J75-P-5A engine generating 29,500 lbf (131 kN) of afterburning thrust. To deal with Mach 2+ flight conditions it was fitted with large vertical ventral fins under the tail which rotated to the horizontal position for landing. To ensure sufficient performance, Vought made provisions for a Rocketdyne XLF-40 liquid-fueled rocket motor with 8,000 lbf (35.6 kN) of thrust in addition to the turbojet. Avionics included the AN/AWG-7 fire control computer, AN/APG-74 radar, and AN/ASQ-19 datalink. The system was expected to simultaneously track six and engage two targets.  Due to extensive changes as compared to the F8U-1, the F8U-2 was labeled by some as the "Crusader II", and as a result, the XF8U-3 was officially labeled "Crusader III."

Operational history.

The XF8U-3 first flew on 2 June 1958. Despite claims by many books and articles that, during testing, the aircraft reached Mach 2.6 at 35,000 ft (10,670 m), in fact, the maximum speed reached (only once) was Mach 2.39, while normal operating speed was no more than Mach 2.32. The first time that the aircraft exceeded Mach 2.0 in level flight was on August 14, during its 38th test flight, well before the rival F4H-1 did so. Some sources state that Vought projected a top speed of Mach 2.9 with the tail rocket installed, though the windscreen and most aluminum airframes were not designed to withstand the heat of speeds more than Mach 2.35. Demonstrated zoom ceiling was well over 76,000 ft (23,170 m). In December 1955, the US Navy declared a competition for a Mach 2+ fleet defense interceptor. Fly-offs against the Crusader III's main competitor, the future McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, demonstrated that the Vought design had a definite advantage in maneuverability. John Konrad, Vought's chief test pilot, later stated that the Crusader III could fly circles around the Phantom II. Combat thrust-to-weight ratio (T/W ratio) was almost unity (0.97), while early F4H had only 0.87. However, the solitary pilot in the XF8U-3 was easily overwhelmed with the workload required to fly the intercept and fire Sparrows which required constant radar illumination from the firing aircraft, while the Phantom II had a dedicated radar intercept officer on board.  In addition, with the perception that the age of the guns was over, the Phantom's considerably larger payload and the ability to perform air-to-ground as well as air-to-air missions, trumped Vought's fast but single-purposed fighter. For similar reasons, the Phantom would replace the Navy's F-8 Crusader as the primary daylight air superiority fighter in the Vietnam War, although it was originally introduced as a missile-armed interceptor to complement day fighters like the Crusader.  The F8U-3 program was canceled with five aircraft built. Three aircraft flew during the test program, and, along with two other airframes, were transferred to NASA for atmospheric testing, as the Crusader III was capable of flying above 95% of the Earth's atmosphere. NASA pilots flying at NAS Patuxent River routinely intercepted and defeated U.S. Navy Phantom IIs in mock dogfights, until complaints from the Navy put an end to the harassment.  All of the Crusader IIIs were later scrapped.

The Vought XF8U-3 Crusader III was an aircraft developed by Chance Vought as a successor to the successful Vought F-8 Crusader program and as a competitor to the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. Though based in spirit on the F8U-1 and F8U-2, and sharing the older aircraft's designation in the old Navy system, the two aircraft shared few parts.


Early life.

Trịnh Xuân Thanh was born 13 February 1966 in Hanoi, Vietnam. He graduated from Hanoi Architectural University in 1990.

Career.

Trịnh Xuân Thanh is a former member of the Communist Party of Vietnam.  Thanh began his career in Germany from 1990 to 1995. He later worked for the state-owned company in Vietnam. In 2007, he joined Petrovietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation (PVC). He served as its Chairman from 2009 to 2013. He was subsequently accused of causing $150m in losses at PVC.  Thanh worked for the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Da Nang in 2013. He later served as the Deputy-Chairman of the Hậu Giang Provincial People's Committee.

Kidnapping.

The Ministry of Public Security issued a statement on 31 July 2017 saying that Thanh had turned himself to the police following accusations against him of causing massive losses at his previous employer. The Ministry of Public Security issued an international arrest warrant for him in September 2016. It was not known where Trịnh Xuân Thanh has been hiding since he left Vietnam. It is also not clear exactly how or when Thanh returned to Vietnam.  On hearing of Thanh's reappearance in Vietnam, the editor of the Vietnamese online newspaper, Thoibao.de in Germany, Mr Lê Trung Khoa, contacted Thanh's lawyer, the police and the state prosecutor in Berlin. He then announced in a video conference with the BBC News on the same day that Thanh was abducted at about 10:40 on 23 July in Tiergarten park in Berlin with a female employee of Vietnam’s foreign trade office, allegedly by armed men from Vietnam's secret service and bundled into the back of a car.  The next day, the first of August, the German newspaper TAZ gave further details: Thanh had previously sought political asylum at the beginning of 1990s but had returned voluntarily to Vietnam in 1995, and, despite the fact that there was an international arrest warrant for him issued in September 2016 by the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam, he was not pursued because the claim "violating Vietnamese law" was not considered concrete enough.  A day later, the German foreign ministry confirmed the kidnapping, blaming the Vietnamese intelligence service and the Vietnamese Embassy in Germany, for what it called "an unprecedented and glaring breach of German and international law". In response, they ordered a Vietnamese intelligence officer from the Vietnamese Embassy in Berlin to leave Germany within 48 hours and demanded that Thanh be allowed to return immediately to allow the Vietnamese authorities to apply for his extradition and to allow his application for asylum to be examined. Germany also said it was considering other measures against Vietnam.  On 3 August 2017, Thanh appeared on Vietnamese television on and said he had returned to Vietnam voluntarily; however, his asylum lawyer suggested he may have said this under duress. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry in a press conference expressed regret over a statement from Germany accusing Vietnam of kidnapping him.  Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on 4 August, and repeated in an interview with Bärbel Krauss, "I want to say this quite clearly: under no circumstances will we tolerate this kind of thing. Nor will we let it go...But we reserve the right to take further measures if necessary...But obviously we cannot simply go back to business as usual, as if nothing had happened."  Trịnh Xuân Thanh was sentenced in Hanoi on 22 January 2018 to life imprisonment for embezzlement and economic mismanagement.

Trịnh Xuân Thanh (born 13 February 1966 in Hanoi) is a former Vietnamese politician and businessman. He is the former head of the state-owned Petrovietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation (a subsidiary of Petrovietnam), and the former Deputy-Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee of Hậu Giang. In 2016, he was accused of causing massive losses at the state-owned company and fled the country. While in Berlin, as an asylum-seeker, he was allegedly kidnapped and repatriated to Vietnam on 23 July 2017. This led to diplomatic scandal resulting in Germany to expel a Vietnamese diplomat.


Background and education.

Born in the City of Westminster, Wolmer was the eldest son of William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne and his wife, the former Lady Maud Cecil, daughter of Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. He was educated at Winchester College and graduated from University College, Oxford in 1909. He was the cousin of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury.

Political career.

A few months later, at the December 1910 general election Lord Wolmer entered Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Newton division of Lancashire. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to his uncle, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil in 1916 and Assistant Director of the War Trade Department from 1916 to 1918. At the 1918 general election, he did not stand in Newton (which was won by the Labour Party politician, Robert Young), but was elected to the newly formed constituency of Aldershot that year. From 1922 to 1924, he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade and Assistant Postmaster-General from 1924 to 1929.  In November 1940, Lord Wolmer resigned his seat in the Commons, and was called up to the House of Lords in his father's barony of Selborne in January 1941. He was Director of Cement at the Ministry of Works from 1940 to 1942. In 1942, he inherited his father's earldom and his last political post was as Minister of Economic Warfare from 1942 to 1945. This put him in charge of the Special Operations Executive, which ran undercover operations of sabotage in Occupied Europe. As head of SOE it was his policy to back the Chetniks in Jugoslavia despite the numerous items of intelligence which suggested that they were in league with the Germans. He was responsible for a delay of 12 months in support being given to Tito's Partisans and when Fitzroy McLean was ordered to go to Cairo with a view to establishing contact with Tito he did everything he could to frustrate the mission. He was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour after the war and in 1948 was Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, then chairman of the National Provincial Bank from 1951 to 1953 and deputy chairman of Boots from 1951 to 1964.

Family.

On 9 June 1910, he married the Honourable Grace Ridley, third daughter of Matthew White Ridley, 1st Viscount Ridley. They had six surviving children:  Lord Selborne's wife died in 1959 and on 3 March 1966, he married Valerie Bevan "née" de Thomkahaza, a daughter of a Hungarian politician. His eldest son had also died on active service in 1942 and upon his own death in 1971 in Alton, Hampshire aged 84, was succeeded in his titles by his grandson, John.

Roundell Cecil Palmer, 3rd Earl of Selborne, CH, PC (15 April 1887 – 3 September 1971), known as "Top Wolmer" and styled Viscount Wolmer from 1895 to 1941, was a British administrator, intelligence officer and Conservative politician.


Early life.

Born in 1954, Lourenço grew up in a politically engaged family of ten children. His father, Sequeira João Lourenço (1923–1999), a native of Malanje, was a nurse and nationalist, who served three years of imprisonment in Portuguese Angola for illegal political activity. His mother, Josefa Gonçalves Cipriano Lourenço (1928–1998), a seamstress, was a native of Namibe. He received both a primary and secondary Portuguese-language education in Bié Province and Luanda.

Education and military career.

Lourenço studied at the Industrial Institute of Luanda and later participated in the liberation struggle in Ponta Negra, in August 1974, where he was part of the first group of MPLA soldiers to enter Angolan territory via Miconge, towards the city of Cabinda after the fall of the Portuguese colonial regime.  He began his military career fighting against the Portuguese in the Angolan War of Independence and fought as a member of the MPLA in the Angolan Civil War. Lourenço conducted his training in artillery and then became a political officer in the MPLA. In 1978, Lourenço traveled to the Soviet Union and studied at the Lenin Higher Academy, where he furthered his military training and completed a master's degree in Historical Sciences. He later returned to Angola in 1982. Now an artillery general, Lourenço turned towards politics and in 1984 was appointed as Governor of Moxico Province.

Political career.

Lourenço's early politics were mainly confined within the MPLA as an officer responsible for keeping guerrilla soldiers' morale high. Following his appointment as Governor of Moxico Province in 1984, he continued to rise through the ranks of the ruling party. He also served as the provincial commissioner of Moxico Province for the MPLA, president of the Regional Military Council of the 3rd Military Political Region, First Secretary of MPLA and Provincial Commissioner of Benguela Province. He was the MPLA's Secretary for Information from 1992 to 1997 and President of the MPLA Parliamentary Group in the National Assembly from 1993 to 1998.  At a party congress, he was elected as Secretary-General of the MPLA on 12 December 1998. His election was said to be linked to the favour of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and it was thought that Lourenço could potentially succeed the long-ruling dos Santos at some point. However, after dos Santos said in 2001 that he would not seek re-election as president, Lourenço openly expressed an interest in becoming the MPLA's presidential candidate and thereby damaged his standing with dos Santos, who apparently had no real intention of leaving office, but had sought to expose political rivals. Juilão Mateus Paulo succeeded him as MPLA Secretary-General at a December 2003 party congress.  Lourenço was First Vice-President of the National Assembly from 2003 to 2014. He was appointed as Minister of Defense in April 2014, and he was designated as Vice-President of the MPLA in August 2016. In September 2018 he became the Chairman of the MPLA, replacing José Eduardo dos Santos.  In December 2016 the MPLA designated Lourenço as the party's top candidate in the 2017 legislative election. He was elected President of Angola on 23 August 2017 and took office on 26 September becoming the third President in the country's history.  On 8 September 2018, he was elected President of the MPLA, Angola's ruling party since 1975, becoming its 5th party leader.

Personal life.

He is married to Ana Afonso Dias Lourenço, a Member of Parliament of the MPLA and former Minister of Planning, who held a position at the World Bank in Washington D.C. until October 2016. They have six children, all of which are currently active in the MPLA. Apart from his Indigenous Umbundu language and Portuguese, he speaks Russian, Spanish, and English.

João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, (born 5 March 1954) is an Angolan politician who has served as the President of Angola since 26 September 2017. Previously, he was Minister of Defence from 2014 to 2017. In September 2018 he became the Chairman of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the ruling party. He was the party's Secretary-General from 1998 to 2003.


2015 Slovenian same-sex marriage referendum

Background.

On 3 March 2015 the National Assembly passed a bill defining marriage as a “union of two” instead of a “union of a man and a woman.” Conservative opponents of the law, including a group called Children Are At Stake, gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on the issue, hoping to block same-sex marriage. On 26 March, the National Assembly voted to block the referendum on the ground that it would violate the constitutional provision which prohibits popular votes on laws eliminating an unconstitutionality in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The proponents of a referendum appealed to the Constitutional Court, which on 22 October declared that the National Assembly does not have the ability to declare a referendum unconstitutional. The National Assembly thus on 4 November scheduled a referendum to be held on 20 December 2015.  Per article 90 of the Constitution a law is rejected if "a majority of voters who have cast valid votes vote against the law, provided at least one fifth of all qualified voters have voted against the law". A minimum of 343,104 voters (which makes up 20% of about 1.7 million registered voters) are required to cast a valid "no" vote for the result of the referendum to be valid.  In a 2012 referendum, 54.55% of voters rejected a law that would have expanded rights for same-sex registered partnerships.  Slovenian Catholic groups, and Pope Francis urged a "no" vote. A number of EU politicians, including Violeta Bulc called for a "yes" vote. All parties in Parliament except SDS and NSi supported a 'Yes' vote.

Opinion polls.

A poll conducted by Delo Stik in February 2015 showed that 51% of Slovenians supported the bill, which was debated in the National Assembly at the time, while 42% were against.  Another poll conducted by Ninamedia in March 2015 showed that 42% of respondents supported the new law, while 54% opposed. Support was highest among those younger than 30, and in the Slovene Littoral region.  A poll from November 2015 showed that 46% of respondents supported and 54% opposed the bill. The poll suggested a strong division between different groups. While most women, atheists and residents of urban areas supported the bill, a significant majority of men, Catholics and rural population opposed it. The poll also suggested a low turnout and the possibility that the result would be non-binding.

Results.

Early voting began on Tuesday 15 December 2015 and continued for the two following days. Results were released on Sunday 20 December 2015 after all polls closed. The bill was rejected by a majority of those who voted and a sufficient number of "no" votes were cast (more than 20% of all registered voters) thus fulfilling both constitutional requirements for a binding result.

Aftermath.

The parliament is obliged by the result for one year and cannot propose similar legislation in that period. Initiators of the referendum suggested that they will not oppose legislation which would expand social rights for same-sex unions as long as it does not include adoption rights and redefinition of marriage. Supporters of the defeated bill expressed their disappointment over the result and suggested that a number of 'yes' voters clearly decided to boycott the referendum.

Inaccessible polling places dispute.

Before the referendum, two voters with disabilities requested that the authorities make their polling places accessible. Their requests were denied, and the courts rejected their lawsuits and appeals. In 2019, together with the Slovenian Disability Rights Association (Drupis), they submitted applications to the European Court of Human Rights. In January 2020, the Court communicated the cases with the government of Slovenia. As of January 2020, the cases, called Toplak v. Slovenia and Mrak v. Slovenia, are ongoing.

A referendum on a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was held in Slovenia on 20 December 2015. The bill was rejected, as a majority of voters voted against and the votes against were more than 20% of registered voters.


History.

Coinbase was founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Blockchain.info co-founder Ben Reeves was part of the original founding team but later parted ways with Armstrong due to a difference in how the Coinbase wallet should operate. The remaining founding team enrolled in the Summer 2012 Y Combinator startup incubator program. In October 2012, the company launched the services to buy and sell bitcoin through bank transfers. In May 2013, the company received a US$5 million Series A investment led by Fred Wilson from the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. In December 2013, the company received a US$25 million investment, from the venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures (USV), and Ribbit Capital.  In 2014, the company grew to one million users, acquired the blockchain explorer service Blockr and the web bookmarking company Kippt, secured insurance covering the value of bitcoin stored on their servers, and launched the vault system for secure bitcoin storage. Throughout 2014, the company also formed partnerships with Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, and Time Inc. allowing those firms to accept bitcoin payments. The company also added bitcoin payment processing capabilities to the traditional payment companies Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal.  In January 2015, the company received a US$75 million investment, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the New York Stock Exchange, USAA, and several banks. Later in January, the company launched a U.S.-based bitcoin exchange for professional traders called Coinbase Exchange. Coinbase began to offer services in Canada in 2015, but in July 2016, Coinbase announced it would halt services in August after the closure of their Canadian online payments service provider Vogogo.  In May 2016, the company rebranded the Coinbase Exchange, changing the name to Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX). In July 2016, they added retail support for Ether.  In January and then March 2017, Coinbase obtained the BitLicense and licensed to trade in Ethereum and Litecoin from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). In November 2017, Coinbase was ordered by the US Internal Revenue Service to report any users who had at least $20,000 in transactions in a year.  Coinbase listed Bitcoin Cash on December 19, 2017 and the coinbase platform experienced price abnormalities that led to an insider trading investigation.  On February 23, 2018, Coinbase told approximately 13,000 affected customers that the company would be providing their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013 to 2015 to the IRS within 21 days.  On April 5, 2018, Coinbase announced that it has formed an early-stage venture fund, Coinbase Ventures, focused on investment into blockchain- and cryptocurrency-related companies.  On May 16, 2018, Coinbase Ventures announced its first investment in Compound Labs, a start-up building Ethereum smart contracts similar to money markets.  In August 2018, Amazon cloud executive Tim Wagner joined Coinbase as vice president of engineering.  In January 2019 Coinbase stopped all trading on Ethereum Classic due to suspicion regarding an attack on the network.  In February 2019, Coinbase announced that it had acquired "blockchain intelligence platform" Neutrino, an Italy-based startup, for an undisclosed price. The acquisition raised concern among some Coinbase users based on Neutrino founders' connection to the Hacking Team, which has been accused of providing internet surveillance technology to governments with poor human rights records. On March 4, 2019, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his company "did not properly evaluate" the deal from a due diligence perspective and thus any Neutrino staff who previously worked at Hacking Team "will transition out of Coinbase."  In April 2019, a UK corporate filing stated that Coinbase's non-U.S. revenue grew 20% to €153 million (U.S.$173 million) in 2018 resulting in a net profit of €6.6 million. Coinbase UK CEO Zeeshan Feroz said the company's non-U.S. operations accounted for nearly one-third of the company's overall revenue and Reuters estimated that the company's global revenue totaled "around $520 million" in 2018.  In August 2019, Coinbase announced that it was targeted by a sophisticated hacking attack attempt in mid-June. This reported attack used spear-phishing and social engineering tactics (including sending fake e-mails from compromised email accounts and created a landing page at the University of Cambridge) and two Firefox browser zero-day vulnerabilities. One of the Firefox vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to escalate privileges from JavaScript on a browser page () and the second one could allow the attacker to escape the browser sandbox and execute code on the host computer (). Coinbase's security team detected and blocked the attack, the network was not compromised, and no cryptocurrency was stolen.

Products.

Coinbase has two core products: a Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX) for trading a variety of digital assets on its professional asset trading platform, and a user-facing retail broker of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin for fiat currency. It also offers an API for developers and merchants to build applications and accept payments in both digital currencies., the company offered buy/sell trading functionality in 32 countries, while the cryptocurrency wallet was available in 190 countries worldwide. On March 26, 2018, Coinbase announced their intention to add support for ERC-20 tokens.

Complaints.

Coinbase CEO Bryan Armstrong was criticized on Twitter in January 2018 for creating excessive transaction demand on the Bitcoin network, in what some users referred to as "spamming the network."  On February 16, 2018, Coinbase admitted that some customers were overcharged in error for credit and debit purchases of cryptocurrencies. The problem was initiated when banks and card issuers changed the merchant category code (MCC) for cryptocurrency purchases earlier this month. This meant that cryptocurrency payments would now be processed as "cash advances", meaning that banks and credit card issuers could begin charging customers cash-advance fees for cryptocurrency purchases. Any customers who purchased cryptocurrency on their exchange between January 22 and February 11, 2018 could have been affected. At first, Visa blamed Coinbase, telling the "Financial Times" on February 16 that it had "not made any systems changes that would result in the duplicate transactions cardholders are reporting." However, the latest statement from Visa and Worldpay on the Coinbase blog clarifies: "This issue was not caused by Coinbase."  In March 2018, "Quartz" reported that the number of monthly customer complaints against Coinbase jumped more than 100% in January of that year, to 889, citing official Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data, with more than 400 of those categorized as "money was not available when promised".

Coinbase is a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California. They broker exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Tezos, and many others, with fiat currencies in approximately 32 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide.


Early life.

Sancho was born in Camberwell, Greater London to parents from Trinidad and Tobago. He was raised in Kennington. He became friends with fellow aspiring footballer Reiss Nelson, who lived nearby, after they played together in youth tournaments. Growing up, he was an ardent supporter of Chelsea.

Club career.

Early career.

Sancho joined Watford at the age of seven. Due to issues with commuting across London to the club's academy, he moved into accommodation provided by Watford and began attending their partner school Harefield Academy as a boarder, aged 11. At the age of 14 he told his Watford under-15s coach about his intention to play for England.  At the age of 14, he moved to Manchester City in March 2015 for an initial fee of £66,000 under the EPPP, potentially rising to £500,000 with add ons. Sancho continued to impress in the Manchester City academy and was one of a trio of players that the Manchester City chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, said would be fast tracked into the senior set up in May 2017. In July 2017, Sancho was omitted from Manchester City's pre-season tour squad due to a dispute over assurances of playing time in a new contract. It was subsequently reported that Sancho was attempting to force a move away from the club.

Borussia Dortmund.

Sancho signed for German Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund on 31 August 2017 for a fee reported to be in the region of £8 million and was immediately included in the first-team squad. He later stated that he felt confident in making the move abroad due to his previous experiences in relocating with Watford and Manchester City. Sancho made his debut for the club against Eintracht Frankfurt on 21 October, coming on as a substitute with six minutes left of the match, becoming the first Englishman to play a Bundesliga match for Dortmund. Sancho made his first league start for Dortmund on 14 January 2018, hitting the woodwork in a goalless draw with VfL Wolfsburg. He scored his first professional goal on 21 April 2018. It was the first goal in a 4–0 victory against Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga and he also assisted two other goals in the same match.  Having signed a new contract keeping him at the club until 2022, Sancho enjoyed a successful October 2018 by being named Bundesliga Player of the Month, registering three goals and an assist in just three league games. Included among his goals for the month was a brace in a draw against Hertha BSC which saw him become the first player born in the 2000s to score twice in a single Bundesliga match and the youngest ever by a Dortmund player. On 24 October, he also became the first player born in the 2000s to score in the UEFA Champions League for Dortmund against Atlético Madrid.  During a 3–3 draw with Hoffenheim on 9 February 2019, he became the youngest-ever player to score eight goals in a single Bundesliga season, breaking the record previously held by Christian Wück. Later that month, upon scoring in a 3–2 win over Bayer Leverkusen, he broke Lukas Podolski's record to become the youngest player to score nine Bundesliga goals, aged 18 years and 336 days. On 13 April, Sancho scored a brace in a 2–1 win over Mainz and in doing so became the youngest-ever Dortmund player to score at least 10 goals in a single Bundesliga campaign. Following an impressive league campaign in which he scored 12 goals and provided 14 assists, Sancho was named in the 2018–19 Bundesliga Team of the Season.  Success continued ahead of the 2019–20 season, with Sancho providing an assist and scoring in a 2–0 DFL-Supercup victory over Bayern Munich on 3 August 2019. Later that month Sancho agreed a new contract with Dortmund. Sancho's goal in Dortmund's 3–3 draw with RB Leipzig on 17 December meant he had scored in seven consecutive games for the club (including in Champions League matches against Barcelona and Slavia Prague), bringing his talley up to 15 goals and 16 assists in the calendar year of 2019. Sancho's three goals and three assists in five league matches during February 2020 saw him named Bundesliga Player of the Month for the second time in his career.  On 31 May 2020, Sancho scored his first career hat-trick in a 6–1 away win over SC Paderborn. After scoring his first goal, he removed his shirt to reveal a shirt with the message "Justice for George Floyd", a black Minneapolis man who had died the previous week after a police officer kept his knee on a pinned-down Floyd until he became unresponsive.

International career.

Youth career.

Sancho has been capped by England youth teams, at under-16, under-17 and under-19 levels.  In May 2017, Sancho was part of the England under-17 team that reached the final of the UEFA European Under-17 Championship, and was named player of the tournament for his performances. In September 2017, Sancho was named in England's squad for the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup but the player's new German club resisted the call up. The two parties eventually reached an agreement where he would be available for the group stages of the competition, but his participation was not guaranteed if England progressed to the knock out rounds. On 8 October 2017, he scored twice in England U17's first match, against Chile. On 16 October, during England's round of 16 tie against Japan, he was withdrawn from the competition by Borussia Dortmund.  On 2 November 2017, Sancho was called up to the England U19 squad for the first time, joining them for 2018 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification matches against the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Group 8's host-nation team Bulgaria. He made his first start at U19 level in the 6–0 victory against the Faroes, lasting seventy minutes before being substituted for Ben Brereton; He replaced Brereton in the 66th minute in the win over Iceland, which secured progression to the elite round. He scored the only goal of the match against Bulgaria to help England top their group. Coming on as a substitute for Brereton, Sancho scored the last of the goals in England's 4–1 win over Hungary in the first match of the elite round on 21 March 2018.

Senior career.

Following an impressive start to the 2018–19 season, Sancho was called up to the England senior squad for the first time on 4 October 2018 in preparation for UEFA Nations League fixtures against Croatia and Spain. He made his debut as a 78th-minute substitute against the former on 12 October, in a 0–0 away draw. On 22 March 2019, Sancho started his first competitive match for England in their 5–0 win over the Czech Republic at Wembley Stadium for a UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying match. During the September internationals, Sancho scored his debut goals for the senior team, a brace, in a 5–3 home victory over Kosovo in a Euro 2020 qualifier on 10 September.

Honours.

Borussia Dortmund  England U17  England  Individual

Jadon Malik Sancho (born 25 March 2000) is an English professional footballer who plays as a winger for German Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund and the England national team.


Description.

The brush-tailed porcupine reaches 40 to 50 cm in length, not counting the tail. The adult weighs about 3 kg. It has an elongated, rat-like face and body and short legs, tipped with clawed and webbed feet. Unlike most other porcupines, the brush-tailed porcupine has lighter and smaller quills. On the tail, these quills are thinner and brush-like. These can make noise when rattled.

Distribution.

The brush-tailed porcupine occurs in Benin, Cameroon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Togo and Uganda, in tropical rainforest at altitudes up to.

Ecology.

Brush-tailed porcupines live in small family groups of about eight members. Different family groups can share resources. When attacked by a predator, the porcupine raises its quills so it looks twice its size, rattles its tail quills, and stomps its feet. As with all porcupines, the brush-tailed porcupine backs into the attacker and inflicts damage with its quills.  Brush-tailed porcupines live in forests, usually at high elevations, and are nocturnal, sleeping in caves and burrows during the day. They are herbivorous, feeding on leaves, flowers and fruits which have fallen to the forest floor. They also eat roots and palm nuts, and occasionally carrion, and invade crops of maize, cassava and bananas when these are grown adjacent to the forest.  Male and female form a pair bond during breeding season. The female has a long pregnancy compared to other rodents: 110 days at the longest. The young are born well-developed or precocial. They are mature at about 2 years of age. The meat of the brush-tailed porcupine is popular and is consumed in large quantities.

The African brush-tailed porcupine ("Atherurus africanus") is a species of rat-like Old World porcupine, indigenous to a broad belt of Africa ranging from Guinea on the west coast to Kenya on the east. This is a common species with a very wide range, and despite being used extensively for bushmeat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as being of "least concern".


Biography.

Giorgi Saakagze was born in 1570 in Noste village (Peli village by other sources), near the town on Kaspi. Saakadze's family came of the untitled nobility ("samepo aznauri"). His father, Siaush, rose in prominence through a loyal service to King Simon I of Kartli, whom Giorgi joined in military service in his early career. Under the young king Luarsab II, he was appointed a mourav of Tbilisi, Tskhinvali, and Dvaleti in 1608. Saakadze's influence and prestige especially grew after he destroyed an Ottoman invasion force at the battle of Tashiskari in June 1609, thereby saving Luarsab from being dislodged. In 1611, the king married Saakadze's sister, Macrine, annoying the great nobles, who grew increasingly suspicious of the ambitious and aspiring officer who had had risen from the ranks of the petty nobility to become the most powerful man in Kartli. The animosity between the two nobles parties centered on the princes P’arsadan Tsitsishvili and Shadiman Baratashvili on one hand, and Saakadze on the other. The nobles convinced Luarsab that Saakadze was an Iranian traitor, prompting him to divorce Macrine and authorize a plot to kill him in May 1612. Saakadze escaped the trap and defected to Iran. Having converted to Islam and displayed his military ability in Iran's war with the Ottomans, he quickly won the confidence of Shah Abbas I of Iran and was regularly consulted on the Georgian affairs.  In 1614, Saakadze avenged Luarsab and his nobles by aiding Shah Abbas in the invasion of Georgia which brought Luarsab's reign to an end, but dissuaded the Iranians from committing atrocities in Kartli after the nation surrendered. In 1619, the shah appointed him a vekil (regent) to Bagrat Khan, the Iranian nominee to the throne of Kartli. Saakadze turned into a de facto ruler of Kartli. Once the hostilities with the Ottomans resumed, Saakadze served as one of the leading commanders in the shah's ranks from 1621 to 1623. His military exploits led Abbas to appoint him to the staff of Qarachaqay Khan who led a 35,000-strong army to crush the rebellion in Georgia. Saakadze then discovered that the Shah planned to massacre all armed Kartlians, including himself. He conspired with the rebel leaders – his brother-in-law Zurab of Aragvi and king Teimuraz I of Kakheti – and ambushed the Iranian army at Martqopi on March 25, 1625, inflicting a decisive defeat on it. Saakadze went on to annihilate the Turkic nomads transplanted by the Iranian government to replace the exiled Georgian population, dislodged the shah's governor Paykar Khan from Kakheti and raided the Iranian garrisons as far as Ganja and Karabakh. In an act of revenge, Shah Abbas put Saakadze's younger son, Paata, to death, and sent his severed head to the Georgians. The punitive Iranian expedition followed soon thereafter, and won a costly victory over the Georgians at the Battle of Marabda. Saakadze withdrew into the mountains, and organized a powerful guerrilla resistance which forced Abbas I to recognize Teimuraz's royal status.  The unity of Georgian nobles quickly collapsed, however. Saakadze's opposition to Teimuraz's control of Kartli led to a bitter conflict which culminated in the fratricidal battle of Bazaleti in the fall of 1626. The royal army won a victory, driving Saakadze into exile to Istanbul where he entered the service of Sultan Ibrahim I. He briefly served as a governor of the Konya Vilayet and fought against the Iranians at Erzurum (1627-1628), and in Meskheti (1628). However, Grand Vizier Ekrem Hüsrev Pasha soon accused Saakadze of treason and had him, along with his son Avtandil, Kaikhosro, Prince of Mukhrani, and other Georgians, put to death at Constantinople on October 3, 1629.  Saakadze's last surviving son, Ioram, later attained to the princely rank in Georgia, and founded the Tarkhan-Mouravi noble family.

In culture.

Saakadze's controversial career has always been a source of conflicting perceptions of his role in Georgia's history. The traditional historiography of Georgia, heavily influenced by Prince Vakhushti and Marie Brosset, continued to view him as a feudal adventurer and ambitious warlord involved in the turbulent whirl of intrigues and disturbances which fill the history of seventeenth-century Georgia.  The first attempt at the rehabilitation of Saakadze was made by his relative Metropolitan Joseph of Tbilisi in his poem The Grand Mouravi (დიდმოურავიანი, "didmouraviani"; 1681–87). Beginning from the early 20th century, some Georgian authors have also tried to emphasize the positive aspects of Saakadze's biography, particularly his contribution to the 1625 rebellion which frustrated Shah Abbas's plan to convert eastern Georgian lands into the Qizilbash khanates.  In the 1940s, Joseph Stalin’s wartime propaganda established Saakadze as a major symbol of Georgian patriotism. In October 1940, Stalin commented on Saakadze, proclaiming that the Grand Mouravi’s hopes for Georgia’s "unification into one state through the establishment of royal absolutism and of the liquidation of the power of the princes" had been progressive. In an apparent move to encourage Georgian nationalism in order to gain the loyalty of the population during the war with Germany, Stalin himself was involved in modifying the script for an epic movie, "Giorgi Saakadze", commissioned from the Georgian film director Mikheil Chiaureli in 1942-1943. Stalin dismissed a script by the Georgian writer Giorgi Leonidze and approved the one by Anna Antonovskaya and Boris Chenry, adopted from Antonovskaya's 1942 Stalin Prize-winning six-volume novel, "The Great Mouravi" ().  The film emphasized that Saakadze, initially an obscure squire, was a victim of machinations at the hands of the wealthy feudal lords who would sacrifice everything, including their motherland, for their own benefit. It intentionally avoided any mention of Saakadze's own adventures and illustrated him as a popular leader against the external aggressors. In the atmosphere of suspicion and spy mania in the Soviet Union during these years, the movie also served to current propaganda by emphasizing that the treason threatening to the popular leader, and hence to the country, was to be punished cruelly. Ironically, Giorgi Saakadze was also the name of the Wehrmacht's 797th Battalion, one of Georgian battalions formed by the Germans to fight the Soviet Union.

Giorgi Saakadze the Grand Mouravi () (c. 1570 – October 3, 1629) was a Georgian politician and military commander who played an important but contradictory role in the politics of the early 17th-century Georgia. He was also known as Grand Mouravi (დიდი მოურავი, "didi mouravi") in Georgia, Mūrāv-Beg in Persia and Māūrāv-Hūn or Māġrāv-Bek in the Ottoman Empire for having served as a mouravi (appointed royal official which can be rendered by seneschal or bailiff) of Tbilisi.


Etymology.

George Robert Gray of the British Museum named this species in honour of Alfred Russel Wallace, British naturalist and author of "The Malay Archipelago", who in 1858 was the first European to describe the bird. The generic name "Semioptera" is composed of "semeion" for a flag or military standard and "ptera" for wings.

Subspecies and taxonomy.

The standardwing bird-of-paradises' closest relatives are the superb birds-of-paradise ("Lophorina" species), and actually evolved after the "Drepanornis" sicklebills, making them one of their other closest relatives. It has two subspecies:

Conservation status.

A common species in its limited habitat range, the standardwing bird-of-paradise is evaluated as being of least concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to its increasingly fragmented habitat. It is listed on Appendix II of CITES.

Description.

The standardwing bird-of-paradise is medium-sized, approximately 28 cm long, and olive brown. The male has a gloss violet-and-lilac coloured crown and emerald-green breast shield. Its most striking features are two pairs of long white plumes coming out from the bend of the wing that can be raised or lowered at the bird's will. The unadorned olive-brown female is smaller but has a longer tail than the male.

Behaviour and ecology.

The males are polygamous. They gather and perform a spectacular aerial display, "parachuting" with wings and its vivid green breast shield spread, and the wing "standards" fluttering above its back.  Its diet consists mainly of insects, arthropods and fruits.

Distribution.

The standardwing is endemic to Northern Maluku in eastern Indonesia and is the westernmost species of the true birds-of-paradise. It can be found on the islands of Halmahera and Bacan in lowland tropical rainforests and hills, and occasionally in woodland.

History.

The first introduction of a bird-of-paradise to Europe was a result of Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the earth. When the voyagers were at Tidore in December 1521, they were offered a gift of beautiful dead birds by the ruler of Bacan to give to the King of Spain. Based on the circumstances and description of the birds in Antonio Pigafetta's account of the voyage, they were likely standardwings. An alternate account by Maximilianus Transylvanus introduced the term "manucodiata" (a corruption of the Malay "manute-dewata"; "bird of the gods"), used for birds-of-paradise up to the 19th century.  Following its original discovery in 1858, the standardwing bird-of-paradise was not seen again for nearly 60 years, and then only a handful of times until 1953. No further sightings were reported until the British ornithologist David Bishop rediscovered the species in 1983 and began making the first detailed observations of its behaviour.  The standardwing bird-of-paradise was filmed for the first time in 1986 for the BBC nature documentary "Birds for All Seasons", when a cameraman Michael W. Richards stationed in the canopy captured footage of a male bird displaying. Ten years later, David Attenborough observed a mass display of dozens of males for the BBC "Natural World" film "Attenborough in Paradise", leading him to speculate that the reason for their extravagant behaviour is to establish the hierarchy for breeding rights, rather than to directly impress the females.

The standardwing bird-of-paradise ("Semioptera wallacii") also known as Wallace's standardwing or as the standardwing is a species of bird-of-paradise. It is the only member in monotypic genus "Semioptera".


Petrarchan reform.

In Petrarch's compact book hand, the wider leading and reduced compression and round curves are early manifestations of the reaction against the crabbed Gothic secretarial minuscule we know today as "blackletter". Petrarch was one of the few medieval authors to have written at any length on the handwriting of his time; in his essay on the subject, "La scrittura", he criticized the current scholastic hand, with its laboured strokes ("artificiosis litterarum tractibus") and exuberant ("luxurians") letter-forms amusing the eye from a distance, but fatiguing on closer exposure, as if written for another purpose than to be read. For Petrarch the gothic hand violated three principles: writing, he said, should be simple ("castigata"), clear ("clara"), and orthographically correct. Boccaccio was a great admirer of Petrarch; from Boccaccio's immediate circle this post-Petrarchan "semi-gothic" revised hand spread to "literati" in Florence, Lombardy, and the Veneto.

Poggio Bracciolini.

A more thorough reform of handwriting than the Petrarchan compromise was in the offing. The generator of the new style ("illustration") was Poggio Bracciolini, a tireless pursuer of ancient manuscripts, who developed the new humanist script in the first decade of the 15th century. The Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci recalled later in the century that Poggio had been a very fine calligrapher of "lettera antica" and had transcribed texts to support himself— presumably, as Martin Davies points out— before he went to Rome in 1403 to begin his career in the papal curia. Berthold Ullman identifies the watershed moment in the development of the new humanistic hand as the youthful Poggio's transcription of Cicero's "Epistles to Atticus". By the time the Medici library was catalogued in 1418, almost half the manuscripts were noted as in the "lettera antica". The new script was embraced and developed by the Florentine humanists and educators Niccolò de' Niccoli and Coluccio Salutati.

Niccoli's cursive and roman typeface.

The neat, sloping, humanist cursive invented by the Florentine humanist Niccolò de' Niccoli in the 1420s and disseminated through his numerous scholars is usually characterized as essentially a rapid version of the same script. Rhiannon Daniels writes, however, that "[t]his was not humanistic bookhand written cursively, but a running script written with a very fine pen; a modification of contemporary gothic chancery script influenced by humanistic bookhand; hence it is sometimes known as "cancelleresca all'antica"". In the late fifteenth century this "chancery script in the Antique manner" was further developed by humanists in Rome. Calligraphic forms of this "chancery italic" were popularized by the famous Roman writing master Ludovico Arrighi in the early sixteenth century.  In the history of Western typography humanist minuscule gained prominence as a model for the typesetter's roman typeface, as it was standardized by Aldus Manutius, who introduced his revolutionary italic typeface based on the chancery hand in Venice, 1501, and was practised by designer-printers Nicolas Jenson and Francesco Griffo; roman type has helped establish the remarkable resistance to change of the modern Latin alphabet.

Humanist minuscule is a handwriting or style of script that was invented in secular circles in Italy, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. "Few periods in Western history have produced writing of such great beauty", observes the art historian Millard Meiss. The new hand was based on Carolingian minuscule, which Renaissance humanists, obsessed with the revival of antiquity and their role as its inheritors, took to be ancient Roman:[W]hen they handled manuscript books copied by eleventh- and twelfth-century scribes, Quattrocento literati thought they were looking at texts that came right out of the bookshops of ancient Rome".


Description.

The fort was unusual for a Roman fort, being an irregular hexagon rather than oblong, and occupied the whole of the small plateau on which it stood. It occupied an area of almost. The fort was connected to Banna by a Roman road known as the Maiden Way. Two stone signalling towers have been discovered between the two forts (at Barron’s Pike and Robin Hood’s Butts), and it is believed that these were used to pass on signals from Bewcastle to Birdoswald.  It is believed that the fort was built at about the same time as the forts on Hadrian's Wall, and that it was originally built with turf defences and timber buildings, but with gates and headquarters of stone. During the Antonine period, the turf ramparts were faced with stone. It was later completely rebuilt in stone. There were gateways to the north, south, east and west, the west gateway being the main one. The commandant’s house (praetorium) was in the approximate centre of the hexagon, with the headquarters (principia) to the immediate north of it. A Hadrianic-style bathhouse was situated in the south-east section of the fort.  Building inscriptions found at the site indicate that detachments from at least three legions were involved in the building of the fort, the Second Legion (stationed at Caerleon in Wales), the Sixth Legion (based in York) and the Twentieth Legion (based in Chester).  The fort was largely destroyed in A.D. 343, when Hadrian’s Wall was overrun. It was subsequently rebuilt but was finally destroyed after the barbarian invasion of A.D. 367 and was abandoned.

Garrison.

The second-century garrison was the First Cohort of Dacians, a thousand-strong infantry unit. The third-century garrison is believed to be the first Cohors I Nerviorum (part-mounted).

Excavations.

Limited excavations were carried out in 1937, 1954 and 1957. These established the positions of the internal buildings and uncovered several altars.

Current site.

The embankments and ditches of the fort can still be seen. A church and churchyard occupy the southern part of the site, and the churchyard contains the famous Bewcastle Cross.  To the north-east of the site are the remains of Bewcastle Castle, a Norman castle built in about 1092, using stones from the Roman fort. The castle was reputedly destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in 1641.

Bewcastle Roman Fort was a Roman fort, built to the north of Hadrian's Wall as an outpost fort and intended for scouting and intelligence. The Roman name for the fort was Fanum Cocidi (as recorded in the Ravenna Cosmography), and means 'The Shrine of Cocidius', a deity worshipped in northern Britain. The remains of the fort are situated at the village of Bewcastle, Cumbria, to the north of the Roman fort at Birdoswald, on Hadrian's Wall.


Early life and education.

Mason was born in Miami, Florida, and grew up in a dance-oriented family in Pinecrest. Both of her parents are of Cuban descent. Mason began her dance training at the age of three in ballet and flamenco, and went on to study jazz, acrobatics, hip-hop, modern, and contemporary dance. Mason began her study of theatre at age 11 with community and middle school productions. Upon moving to Los Angeles, California, Mason continues to study theater while also keeping a focus on film and television at the Michael Woolson Studio. Mason earned a Bachelor of Arts in World Arts and Cultures, graduating "cum laude," from the University of California, Los Angeles in the spring of 2014.

Career.

"So You Think You Can Dance".

At the age of 18, Mason competed on the fifth season of the show "So You Think You Can Dance", becoming the youngest winner in the history of the competition over fellow contestants Brandon Bryant, Kayla Radomski, and Evan Kasprzak. For the first five weeks of the competition (Top 20 to Top 12), Mason was partnered with Phillip Chbeeb. During the show's sixth week (Top 10), Mason danced a contemporary number choreographed by Travis Wall and was partnered with Jason Glover. Later, Mason was also partnered with Brandon Bryant, Ade Obayomi, Evan Kasprzak, and Kayla Radomski. Mason was consistently praised for her strong and versatile performances.  During the fall of 2009, Mason toured the United States with the top twelve dancers of the "So You Think You Can Dance" competition.

Acting career.

Shortly after completing "So You Think You Can Dance", Mason turned her full attention to channeling her performing skills into her other lifelong love, the craft of acting. Her on-screen career began when Mason starred in the Halloween episode of Nickelodeon's hit show, "Big Time Rush". From there, she appeared in "The Bling Ring", "", "The Fresh Beat Band", and "Hollywood Heights" before landing the recurring role of Cozzette on ABC Family’s "Bunheads" and leading roles in "Hot Mess", and "Delirium". She has also booked roles on "Major Crimes" and "Secret Life of the American Teenager" as well as several smaller, independent projects. Mason had a recurring role on ABC's hit medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" as Dr. Sam Bello.  In February 2018, it was announced that she joined the pilot of "Roswell, New Mexico" as Liz Ortecho. The CW ordered the show to series on May 11, 2018.  Mason performed on November 29, 2009 at the Dizzy Feet Gala in Los Angeles, California at the Kodak Theater. She and Jason Glover performed their popular contemporary piece, "If It Kills Me", choreographed by Travis Wall, and originally performed Top 10 week on SYTYCD. Glover has described Mason as "Unique. You just don’t find dancers like her. She has beautiful lines, is funky and charismatic, and has so much life onstage. Not only does it show in her movement but also on her face. Jeanine is a brilliant performer and one of my favorite people to watch — not just in our group, but out of any dancer I've seen, from Gregory Hines to Gene Kelly."  On November 9, 2010, Mason performed a contemporary-ballroom dance with Mark Ballas to John Legend's "Ordinary People" on the television show, "Dancing With the Stars".  Her sister, Alexis, also auditioned for the eighth season of "So You Think You Can Dance", and made it to the final solo performances before Top 20 in Vegas.

Jeanine Marie Mason (born January 14, 1991) is an American actress and dancer. Her acting career began after winning the fifth season of the Fox television show "So You Think You Can Dance". She is best known for her role as Liz Ortecho in the CW's drama series "Roswell, New Mexico (TV series)".


Education and early career in comedy.

Marjan Šarec commenced his education by joining Marija Vera primary school in Duplica next to Kamnik. Subsequently, he enrolled in a vocational course at the High School for Woodcraft in Ljubljana. After graduating from high school in 1996 and following the advice of director Marjan Bevk, Šarec graduated as an actor from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (part of the University of Ljubljana) in 2001. In the following years, he was actively involved with the Slovenian National television, appearing in Sašo Hribar's radio show Radio Ga-Ga and TV show Hri-bar. Šarec was mostly working as a comedian and political satirist. During this time, his famous stage persona was "Ivan Serpentinšek", a grouchy rural character from Upper Carniola. He also imitated several famous people, including former president of Slovenia Janez Drnovšek, Karel Erjavec, Osama bin Laden, Fidel Castro, Anton Rop, Jelko Kacin, Janez Janša, Andrej Bajuk, and others. He was also working as a journalist and editor.

Political career.

Local politics.

In the 2010 local election, Šarec ran for office of mayor of Kamnik, a town in north-central Slovenia. In a rare case among Slovenian media personalities who attempted to enter national or local politics, Šarec was successful. After finishing second in the first round, he narrowly won the runoff. After being a member of Zoran Janković's Positive Slovenia party, Šarec entered the 2014 local election with his own political list and was reelected in the first round with almost two thirds of the vote. After becoming an elected official, Šarec retired his stage personas and became fully committed to the work of the mayor.

Presidential campaign.

In May 2017, Šarec announced he would run in the upcoming presidential election, to take place on October 22. Despite the media reminding him of his acting career, Šarec stated he was completely serious about the candidacy, as "the function of the president should be treated as a serious one". Criticizing the incumbent president Borut Pahor for treating the presidential function as a celebrity, Šarec was viewed as a potentially strong candidate, one who could attract the younger generation of voters and voters leaning towards the left side of political spectrum. In the first round of the election, Šarec won 25% of the vote, resulting in a run-off against Pahor on 12 November, in which he narrowly lost.

Prime Minister of Slovenia.

In June 2018, Šarec participated in the parliamentary election with the List of Marjan Šarec. The party won 12.6% of the vote, resulting in 13 MPs. LMŠ became the second biggest party in the National Assembly. On 17 August 2018, he was elected as the new head of government, leading the 13th Government of Slovenia.  On 27 January 2020, Šarec resigned from the post, following the resignation of the Minister of Finance, who resigned because of the proposed changes to the health-related legislation.

Marjan Šarec (born 2 December 1977) is a Slovenian politician, actor, and comedian. Šarec served as the 9th Prime Minister of Slovenia from 2018 to 2020.


First marriage.

In April 1285 there were negotiations with Floris V for Elizabeth's betrothal to his son John I, Count of Holland. The offer was accepted and John was sent to England to be educated. On 8 January 1297 Elizabeth was married to John at Ipswich. In attendance at the marriage were Elizabeth's sister Margaret, her father, Edward I of England, her brother Edward, and Humphrey de Bohun. After the wedding Elizabeth was expected to go to Holland with her husband, but did not wish to go, leaving her husband to go alone. It is recorded that while in Ipswich the King, in some outburst, threw his daughter's coronet into the fire: a great ruby and a great emerald were supplied by Adam the Goldsmith for stones lost as a result.  After some time travelling England, it was decided Elizabeth should follow her husband. Her father accompanied her, travelling through the Southern Netherlands between Antwerp, Mechelen, Leuven and Brussels, before ending up in Ghent. There they remained for a few months, spending Christmas with her two sisters Eleanor and Margaret. On 10 November 1299, John died of dysentery, though there were rumours of his murder. No children had been born from the marriage.

Second marriage.

On her return trip to England, Elizabeth went through Brabant to see her sister Margaret. When she arrived in England, she met her stepmother Margaret, whom Edward had married while she was in Holland. On 14 November 1302 Elizabeth was married to Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, 3rd of Essex, also Constable of England, at Westminster Abbey.

Issue.

The children of Elizabeth and Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford were:

Later life.

During Christmas 1315, Elizabeth, who was pregnant with her eleventh child, was visited by her sister-in-law, Queen Isabella of France. On 5 May 1316 she went into labour, giving birth to her daughter Isabella. Both Elizabeth and her daughter Isabella died shortly after the birth. Elizabeth was interred at Walden Abbey, Essex, together with her infant daughter & other members of the de Bohun family.

Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (7 August 1282 – 5 May 1316) was the eighth and youngest daughter of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor of Castile. Of all of her siblings, she was closest to her younger brother King Edward II, as they were only two years apart in age.


Overview.

General Hans Christoff von Königsmarck, commanding Sweden's flying column, entered the city, which was defended by the Governor Feldmarschall Rudolf von Colloredo, a veteran of the siege of Mantua and of the battle of Lutzen, where he served under Albrecht von Wallenstein. The Swedes captured Prague Castle, a sprawling palace complex, on the western bank of the Vltava river and attempted to enter the Old Town on the eastern bank of the river, but were repulsed on the Charles Bridge by Colloredo's men. When a third Swedish army commanded by Prince Carl Gustaf came close to Prague, all three Swedish armies launched a number of attacks against the city. These attacks were resisted, largely thanks to the skill of the Feldmarschall and the energy of his troops. When in November Gustaf received a report about the signed peace, he ordered his troops to leave.  Unable to enter the city, the Swedes settled for looting the castle; some have argued that this was the main purpose of the raid. Many of the treasures collected by Emperor Rudolf II (such as the Codex Gigas and Codex Argenteus) were taken to Sweden, where some can be found in Drottningholm Palace, for example several statues by Adrien de Vries. The cream of the artworks were taken into exile by Christina, Queen of Sweden (r. 1632–1654), and dispersed in groups after her death in 1689, the paintings forming the core of the Orleans Collection, which was sold in London after the French Revolution, so that many of Rudolf's paintings are now in the United Kingdom. A Swedish inventory of 1652 lists 472 paintings as having come from Prague.

Monuments.

On the Old Town Square a Marian column was erected to remember the salvation of Prague.  A monument erected during the 19th century on Colloredo's tomb in the Church of the Maltese Order in Prague recalls his victory over the Swedes. Its German inscription reads thus:  HIER RUHT RUDOLF GRAF COLLOREDO K.K. FELDMARSCHALL UND MALTHESERORDER GROSSPRIOR Vertheidiger der Alt und Neusstad Prags gegen die Schweden Geb. am 2 Nov. 1585 Gest. am 27 Jan. 1657.  ("Here lies Rudolf, count Colloredo, Imperial and Royal Feldmarshall and Grand Prior of the Order of Malta, defender of the Old and New Town of Prague against the Swedes. Born 2. Nov. 1585 Dead 27 Jan. 1657")  On Charles Bridge a 17th-century Latin inscription says:  SISTE VIATOR, SED LUBENS, AC VOLENS UBI SISTERE DEBUIT, SED COACTUS GOTHORUM, AC VANDALORUM FUROR  "Rest here, walker, and be happy: you can stop here willing, but unwilling were stopped the Goths (Swedes) and their Vandalic ferocity"

The Battle of Prague, which occurred between 25 July and 1 November 1648 was the last action of the Thirty Years' War. While the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia were proceeding, the Swedes took the opportunity to mount one last campaign into Bohemia. The main result, and probably the main aim, was to loot the fabulous art collection assembled in Prague Castle by Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612), the pick of which was taken down the Elbe in barges and shipped to Sweden.