Sergio Mattarella  (; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician, jurist, academic, and lawyer who has served as President of Italy since 2015. He is the longest-serving president in the history of the Italian Republic. Following Giorgio Napolitano's death in 2023, Mattarella became the only living Italian president.

A Catholic leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy party from the early 1980s until its dissolution. He served as Minister for Parliamentary Relations from 1987 to 1989, and Minister of Education from 1989 to 1990. In 1994, Mattarella was among the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI), serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy from 1998 to 1999, and Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2001. He joined The Daisy in 2002 and was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (PD) in 2007, leaving it when he retired from politics in 2008. He also served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy from 2011 to 2015.

On 31 January 2015, Mattarella was elected to the presidency on the fourth ballot, supported by the centre-left coalition majority led by the PD and centrist parties. He was re-elected for a second term on 29 January 2022, becoming the second Italian president to be re-elected, the first being Napolitano. As of 2023, five prime ministers have served under his presidency, among them Matteo Renzi, then the PD's leader and main sponsor of his presidential candidacy, Paolo Gentiloni, a leading member of the PD who succeeded Renzi after his resignation in 2016, Giuseppe Conte, at that time an independent politician who governed both with right-wing and left-wing coalitions in two consecutive cabinets, Mario Draghi, a banker and former president of the European Central Bank, who was appointed by Mattarella to lead a national unity government following Conte's resignation, and Giorgia Meloni, first ever female prime minister and leader of the right-wing coalition which won the general election in September 2022.

During his long-time tenure, Italy faced the aftermath of the Great Recession, as well as the severe European migrant crisis, which deeply marked Italian political, economic and social life, bringing to the rise of populist parties. Moreover, in 2020, Italy became one of the countries worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, being the first country in the Western world to implement a national lockdown to stop the spread of the disease.

Early life

Mattarella was born in Palermo on 23 July 1941 into a prominent Sicilian family. His father Bernardo Mattarella was an anti-fascist who, alongside Alcide De Gasperi and other Catholic politicians, founded Christian Democracy (DC), which dominated the Italian political scene for almost fifty years, with Bernardo serving as a minister several times. Bernardo Mattarella has also been accused of being associated with the Sicilian Mafia; however, accusations were always rejected in court. His mother Maria Buccellato came from an upper middle-class family of Trapani.

During his youth, Mattarella moved to Rome due to his father's commitments to politics. In Rome, he became a member of Azione Cattolica (AC), a large Catholic lay association, of which he became the regional chairman for Lazio from 1961 to 1964. After attending Istituto San Leone Magno, a classical lyceum (liceo classico) in Rome, he studied law at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he joined the Italian Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI).

In 1964, Mattarella graduated with merit with the thesis The Function of Political Direction. In 1967, he became a lawyer in Palermo, becoming particularly involved in administrative law. After a few years, Mattarella started teaching parliamentary procedure at the University of Palermo, where he remained until 1983. His academic activity and publications during this period mainly concerned constitutional law topics, the intervention of Sicilian government in economy, bicameralism, legislative procedure, expropriation allowance, evolution of the Sicilian regional administration, and controls on local authorities.

In 1966, Mattarella married Marisa Chiazzese, daughter of Lauro Chiazzese, former rector of the University of Palermo, with whom he had three children: Laura, Francesco, and Bernardo. On 6 January 1980, his older brother Piersanti Mattarella, who was also a DC politician and president of Sicily since 1978, was killed by the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo. This event deeply changed Mattarella's life, and he left his academic career to enter politics.

Political career

One of the first important positions that Mattarella held was the head of the board of arbitrators of the DC, quickly reconstituted at the end of 1981 following the Propaganda Due scandal and the establishment of the related parliamentary commission of inquiry, chaired by Tina Anselmi. The internal body of the party had been charged with identifying the militants registered in the Masonic lodge of Licio Gelli to expel or suspend them, having violated the statute of the party that prohibited registration to Masonic lodges. Mattarella's parliamentary career began in 1983, when he was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies with nearly 120,000 votes in the constituency of Palermo. As a deputy, Mattarella joined the left-leaning faction of the DC known as morotei. The faction, close to Aldo Moro, supported an agreement with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) led by Enrico Berlinguer, the so-called Historic Compromise; his brother Piersanti Mattarella also supported it.

In 1982, Cosa Nostra killed the PCI regional secretary Pio La Torre and the prefect of Palermo Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa. These tragic events shook the credibility of the regional political system dominated by DC. In the following year, Mattarella was entrusted by Ciriaco De Mita, the DC secretary, to "clean up" the Sicilian branch of the party from Mafia control, at a time when mafia made men like Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino were powerful political figures in the region. In 1985, he helped the young lawyer Leoluca Orlando, who had worked alongside his brother Piersanti during his governorship of Sicily, to become the new mayor of Palermo; the two men set out to break the Mafia's hold on the island, transferring budget authority from the corrupt regional government back to the cities and passing a law enforcing the same building standards used in the rest of Italy, thereby making the Mafia's building schemes illegal. In 1987, Mattarella was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies with more than 143,000 votes, remaining close to the left-leaning faction of the party as well as to its secretary De Mita.

Minister and lawmaker

On 29 July 1987, Mattarella was appointed Italian Minister for Parliamentary Relations in the government led by the DC prime minister Giovanni Goria. The government lasted until April 1988, when De Mita was sworn in as new prime minister; however, Mattarella was confirmed as minister.

In March 1989, a maxi-competition for professorships was held for the secondary school. Mattarella reorganized also the teaching programs of two-year high schools, completing the first steps of the so-called "Brocca project", the educational system's revision program, undertaken under his predecessor Giovanni Galloni in 1988. Mattarella also oversaw the overall reform of the elementary school, which made the three teachers' module on two classes universal on 23 May 1990, leading to the overcoming of the traditional single teacher.

On 23 July 1989, Mattarella became Italian Minister of Education in the sixth cabinet of Giulio Andreotti. In January 1990, Mattarella led the first National School Conference, which discussed the renewal of the educational system and addressed the issue of school autonomy. At the end of June 1990, the so-called "anti-drug law" was approved, which mandated health education to schools; the combination of the education system and preventive measures, not only in health matters, was part of the programmatic lines that the minister had drawn. On 27 July 1990, Mattarella resigned from his position, together with other ministers, upon the Italian Parliament's passing in 1990 of the Mammì Act, liberalising the media in Italy, which they saw as a favour to the media magnate Berlusconi.

In 1990, Mattarella was elected deputy secretary of the DC. He left the post two years later to become director of Il Popolo, the official newspaper of the party. Following the 1993 Italian referendum, he drafted the new electoral law nicknamed Mattarellum. The electoral law consisted in a parallel voting system, which act as a mixed system, with 75% of seats allocated using a first-past-the-post electoral system and 25% using proportional representation, with one round of voting.

During those years in the early 1990s, the whole Italian political system was shocked by the Tangentopoli corruption scandal; Mattarella was not directly involved in the scandal. In August 1993, he was among the recipients of an investigation's notification that followed the statements of a Sicilian real estate entrepreneur, who accused him. Mattarella resigned from all his posts and was thanked by Mino Martinazzoli, the then DC leader, who expressed his support to him. Martinazzoli's statement was publicly criticized by Francesco Cossiga because it was in contrast with what was done for other politicians involved in the scandal. Mattarella was later acquitted of the charge.

Minister within the centre-left
Mattarella was one of the protagonists of the renewal of the DC after Tangentopoli that would lead in January 1994 to the foundation of the Italian People's Party (PPI). In the ensuing 1994 Italian general election, in which the newly founded PPI fared poorly, Mattarella was again elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He soon found himself engaged in an internal dispute after the election of new party leader Rocco Buttiglione, who wished to steer the PPI towards an electoral alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI). Following Buttiglione's appointment, Mattarella resigned as director of Il Popolo in opposition to this policy. In a 20 July 1994 interview with l'Unità, Mattarella considered the new political proposal that was taking shape for a new centre-left coalition interesting, "especially for those who are very nostalgic for Aldo Moro's political strategy." In 1995, at the height of the internal conflict within the PPI, he addressed Buttiglione, who was stubbornly seeking an alliance with the political right, as "el general coup leader Roquito Butillone" and defined "an irrational nightmare" the hypothesis that Berlusconi's FI could be accepted into the European People's Party.

Mattarella was one of the first supporters of the economist Romano Prodi at the head of the centre-left coalition known as The Olive Tree in the 1996 Italian general election. After the electoral victory of the centre-left, Mattarella served as leader of the PPI's parliamentary group. Two years later, when the Prodi I Cabinet fell, Mattarella was appointed by Massimo D'Alema as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy with responsibility for the secret services, which he tried to reform. The reform of the secret services proposed by Mattarella collected the indications provided by the Jucci Commission, which had worked extensively on the subject, and aimed at strengthening the political control of the services by the prime minister of Italy, in coordination with the Digis (Government Department of Security Information), by removing power from the Interior Ministry and Defense. It was the basis for the 2007 reform of the secret services.

In December 1999, Mattarella was appointed Italian Minister of Defence in the D'Alema II Cabinet. As Minister of Defence, he supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia against the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević; he also approved a reform of the Italian Armed Forces which abolished conscription. After the resignation of D'Alema in 2000, Mattarella kept his position as Minister of Defence in the Amato II Cabinet.

In October 2000, the PPI joined with other centrist parties to form an alliance called The Daisy (DL), later to merge into a single party in March 2002. Mattarella was re-elected to the Italian Parliament in the 2001 and 2006 general elections, standing as a candidate for The Daisy in two successive centre-left coalitions: The Olive Tree and The Union (L'Unione). In 2007, Mattarella was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (PD), a big tent centre-left party formed from a merger of left-wing and centrist parties which had been part of The Olive Tree, including The Daisy and the Democrats of the Left (heirs of the PCI).

On 5 October 2011, Mattarella was elected by the Italian Parliament with 572 votes to be a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy. He was sworn in on 11 October 2011 and served until he was sworn in as President of the Italian Republic in January 2015.

President of Italy (2015–present)

First term (2015–2022)

On 31 January 2015, Mattarella was elected the president of Italy at the fourth ballot with 665 votes out of 1,009, with support from the Democratic Party (PD), New Centre-Right, Civic Choice, Union of the Centre, and Left Ecology Freedom. Mattarella was officially endorsed by the PD after his name was put forward by Matteo Renzi, the prime minister of Italy at the time. He replaced Giorgio Napolitano, who had served for nine years, the longest presidency in the history of the Italian Republic; since Napolitano had resigned on 14 January, Senate president Pietro Grasso was the Acting President at the time of Mattarella's inauguration on 3 February. Mattarella's first statement as new president was thusly: "My thoughts go first and especially to the difficulties and hopes of our fellow citizens."

Mattarella's first presidential visit was on the day of his election, when he visited the Fosse Ardeatine, where during World War II in 1944 the German Nazi occupation troops killed 335 people as a reprisal for an Italian resistance movement attack. Mattarella stated that "Europe and the world must be united to defeat whoever wants to drag us into a new age of terror".

On 16 February 2015, Mattarella appointed Ugo Zampetti as Secretary-General to the Presidency of the Republic, the head of the presidential secretariat. While three days before, on 13 February, the President appointed Giovanni Grasso as his special counselor for press and communication. As of 2023, Zampetti, a civil servant with a long-time experience within Italian politics, and Grasso, a journalist and writer, are still holding their posts.

On 6 May, he signed the new Italian electoral law, known as Italicum, which provides for a two-round system based on party-list proportional representation, corrected by a majority bonus and a 3% election threshold. Candidates run for election in 100 multi-member constituencies with open lists, except for a single candidate chosen by each party who is the first to be elected.

2016 political crisis

On 4 December 2016, a constitutional referendum was held in Italy. Voters were asked whether they approve a constitutional law that amends the Constitution of Italy to reform the composition and powers of the Parliament of Italy, as well as the division of powers between the state, the regions, and administrative entities. The bill, put forward by then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and his centre-left Democratic Party, was first introduced by the government in the Senate on 8 April 2014. After several amendments were made to the proposed law by both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the bill received its first approval on 13 October 2015 (Senate) and 11 January 2016 (Chamber of Deputies), and its second and final approval on 20 January (Senate) and 12 April (Chamber of Deputies).

In accordance with Article 138 of the Constitution of Italy, a referendum was called after the formal request of more than one-fifth of the members of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, since the constitutional law had not been approved by a qualified majority of two-thirds in each house of parliament in the second vote. 59.11% of voters voted against the constitutional reform, meaning it did not come into effect. This was the third constitutional referendum in the history of the Italian Republic; the other two were in 2001, in which the amending law was approved, and in 2006, in which it was rejected.

Following the defeat, Prime Minister Renzi resigned. On 11 December, Mattarella appointed the incumbent Minister of Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni as new head of the government. Gentiloni led a government composed by PD, NCD, and other minor centrist parties, the same majority of Renzi's. According to many political analysts and commentators, the appointment of Gentiloni caused tensions between Mattarella and Renzi, who asked the president to dissolve the parliament and call for a snap election in 2017. This version was later confirmed by Renzi during a press conference following the 2018 general election, in which he stated it was an error not to vote in 2017.

2018 general election and government formation

The March 2018 election resulted in a hung parliament, with no coalitions able to form a majority of seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The election was seen as a backlash against the Establishment with the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the League becoming the two largest parties in the Parliament.

After the election's results were known, Luigi Di Maio, leader of the M5S, and Matteo Salvini, secretary of the League, each urged that Mattarella should give him the task of forming a new cabinet because he led the largest party or coalition, respectively. On 5 March, Matteo Renzi declared the PD to be in the opposition during this legislature and resigned as party leader when a new cabinet was formed. On 6 March, Salvini repeated his campaign message that his party would refuse any coalition with the M5S. On 14 March, Salvini offered to govern with the M5S, imposing the condition that League ally Forza Italia (FI), led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, must also take part in any coalition. Di Maio rejected this proposal on the grounds that Salvini was "choosing restoration instead of revolution" because "Berlusconi represents the past". Moreover, Alessandro Di Battista, a prominent M5S leader, denied any possibility of an alliance with FI, describing Berlusconi as the "pure evil of our country".

The consultations between Mattarella and the major political parties in Italy on 4 and 5 April failed to result in a candidate for the prime minister, forcing Mattarella to hold another round of consultation between 11 and 12 April.

On 18 April, Mattarella tasked the President of the Senate Elisabetta Casellati with trying to reconcile the issues between the centre-right coalition and the M5S in order to break the post-election political deadlock and form a fully functional new government; however, she failed to find a solution to the conflicts between the two groups, especially between FI and the M5S. On 23 April, after Casellati's failure, Mattarella gave an exploratory mandate to the President of the Chamber of Deputies Roberto Fico to try to create a political agreement between the Democratic Party (PD) and the M5S. On 30 April, following an interview of Renzi, the PD's former leader, in which he expressed his strong opposition to an alliance with the M5S, Di Maio called for new elections.

On 7 May, Mattarella held a third round of government formation talks, after which he formally confirmed the lack of any possible majority (the M5S rejecting an alliance with the centre-right coalition, the PD rejecting an alliance with both M5S and the centre-right coalition, and the League's Salvini refusing to form a government with M5S unless it included Berlusconi's FI, whose presence in the government was explicitly vetoed by the M5S's leader Di Maio); as a result, he stated his intention to soon appoint a "neutral government" (ignoring the M5S and the League's refusal to support such an option) to take over from the Gentiloni Cabinet, which was considered unable to lead Italy into a second consecutive election, as it represented a majority from a past legislature, and suggested an early election in July, which would be the first summer general election in Italy, as an option in light of the ongoing deadlock. The League and the M5S agreed to hold new elections on 8 July, an option that was rejected by all other parties.

On 9 May, after a day of rumours, the M5S and the League officially asked Mattarella to give them 24 more hours to strike a coalition agreement between the two parties. Later that same day, Berlusconi stated that FI would not support an M5S–League government on a vote of confidence but would maintain the centre-right alliance, opening the door to a possible majority government between the two parties. On 13 May, the M5S and League reached an agreement in principle on a government program, clearing the way for the formation of a governing coalition between the two parties, but could not agree regarding the members of a government cabinet, most importantly the prime minister. The M5S and League leaders met with Mattarella on 14 May to guide the formation of a new government. At their meeting with Mattarella, both parties asked for an additional week of negotiations to agree on a detailed government program, as well as a prime minister to lead the joint government. Both the M5S and the League asked their respective members to vote on the government agreement by the weekend.

On 21 May, a private law professor, Giuseppe Conte, was proposed by Di Maio and Salvini for the role of Prime Minister of Italy. Despite reports in the Italian press suggesting that Mattarella still had significant reservations about the direction of the new government, Conte was invited to the Quirinal Palace on 23 May to receive the presidential mandate to form a new cabinet. In the traditional statement after the appointment, Conte said that he would be the "defense lawyer of Italian people".

On 27 May, Conte renounced his mandate due to conflicts between Salvini and Mattarella. Salvini had proposed university professor Paolo Savona as Italian Minister of Economy and Finances, but Mattarella strongly opposed the appointment, considering Savona too Eurosceptic and anti-German. In his speech after Conte's resignation, Mattarella declared that the two parties wanted to bring Italy out of the eurozone and that, as the guarantor of the Italian constitution and the country's interest and stability, he could not allow this. Mattarella subsequently gave economist Carlo Cottarelli the presidential mandate to form a new government.

Mattarella's decision prompted furious reactions from the M5S, who called for Mattarella's impeachment, a move also supported by opposition party Brothers of Italy. The League did not support this action. Calls for impeachment were strongly criticized by Italian and international press. Luciano Fontana (editor of Corriere della Sera) defended Mattarella and said that "Di Maio and Salvini are responsible for this crisis", while Mario Calabresi (editor of la Repubblica) dismissed impeachment proposals as "delirious", and La Stampa called Di Maio and Meloni's proposal "extremely irresponsible". HuffPost editor Lucia Annunziata dismissed Di Maio and Salvini as "liars", while news magazine L'Espresso called them "subversive", and Le Monde praised Mattarella as an "intransigent guardian of the Constitution". The president was also defended by The Guardian, Libération, and Der Spiegel. German business newspaper Handelsblatt titled "Forza Mattarella!" ("Go Mattarella!") Marco Travaglio and Maurizio Belpietro (editors of Il Fatto Quotidiano and La Verità) criticized Mattarella's move as an abuse but recognized that it was not sufficient to start an impeachment procedure. After a few days, the M5S and the League agreed not to propose Savona as finance minister; on 31 May, Conte received again the presidential mandate to form the new cabinet. The new government was sworn in on 1 June.

Political crises of 2019 and 2021

In August 2019, Deputy Prime Minister Salvini launched a motion of no confidence against Conte, after growing tensions within the majority. Many political analysts believe the no-confidence motion was an attempt to force early elections to improve Lega's standing in the Italian Parliament, ensuring that Salvini would become the next prime minister. On 20 August, following the parliamentary debate in which Conte accused Salvini of being a political opportunist who "had triggered the political crisis only to serve his personal interest", the prime minister resigned his post to President Mattarella. On the following day, Mattarella started the consultations with parliamentary groups.

During the round of consultations between Mattarella and the parliamentary groups, a possible new majority emerged, between the M5S and the Democratic Party (PD). On 28 August, the PD's leader Nicola Zingaretti favored keeping Conte at the head of the new government. On the following day, Mattarella received Conte to give him the task of forming a new cabinet. On 4 September, Conte introduced his new cabinet, which was sworn in at the Quirinal Palace on the following day. On 9 September 2019, the Chamber of Deputies expressed its confidence in the government with 343 votes in favour, 263 against, and 3 abstentions. On 10 September 2019, in the second vote of confidence in the Senate, 169 lawmakers voted in favour of the new government and 133 voted against.

In January 2021, Matteo Renzi, former prime minister and leader of Italia Viva (IV), who split from the PD in 2019, revoked his party's support to the government of Conte, who did not resign immediately. On 18 and 19 January, Renzi's party abstained and the government won the key confidence votes in the Chamber and in the Senate but failed in reaching an absolute majority in the Senate. On 26 January, Prime Minister Conte resigned from his office, prompting President Mattarella to start consultations for the formation of a new government.

In February, when the consultations for the formation of a Conte's third government failed, Mattarella gave Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, the task of forming a government of national unity. On 3 February, Draghi accepted with reservation the task of forming a new cabinet and started the consultations with the presidents of the two houses.

After successful negotiations with parties including FI, the League, the M5S, and the PD, Draghi was sworn in as the prime minister on 13 February, pledging to oversee effective implementation of COVID-19 economic stimulus. Draghi's government has been described as both a national unity government and "president's government", a cabinet sponsored by and implemented by Mattarella.

COVID-19 pandemic

During Mattarella's presidency, Italy was hit by a major outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2020, Italy became one of the countries with the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. , there have been more than 25 million COVID-19 cases confirmed and more than 190,000 deaths; the pandemic mainly started in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, and Veneto but then spread through the whole country.

On 22 February, the Council of Ministers introduced a bill to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, quarantining more than 50,000 people from 11 different municipalities in Northern Italy. After few days, schools and universities closed in the whole country. On 8 March, the Italian government extended the quarantine to the entire region of Lombardy and 14 other northern provinces, putting more than a quarter of the national population under pandemic lockdown. On the following day, the government extended the quarantine measures previously applied only in the so-called "red zones" to the whole country, putting de facto 60 million people in lockdown. At the time of its application, this measure was described as the largest lockdown in human history.
On 18 May, the lockdown officially ended and the government allowed the re-openings of bars, restaurants, barbers and gyms. The possibility to travel between different regions was restored on 3 June.

Starting from July, many countries in Europe, including Italy, witnessed a new rise in detected COVID-19 cases. On 7 October, the parliament postponed the end of the state of emergency to 31 January 2021, and Prime Minister Conte imposed the use of protection mask outdoors. On 13 October 2020, the Italian government reintroduced stricter rules to limit the spread of COVID-19. Demonstrations and gatherings of people were strictly forbidden. Regions and municipalities were given the power to only tighten but not release containment measures. On 25 October, the government introduced new restrictions, imposing the closing of gyms, swimming pools, theatres, and cinemas, as well as the closing of bars and restaurants by 6 pm. Restrictions were later confirmed until April 2021 by the new government led by Mario Draghi.

On 15 March 2021, Prime Minister Draghi placed the majority of Italy under so-called "full lockdown" conditions, with non-essential businesses closing and travel restricted, in response to an increase in the transmission of COVID-19; unlike the 2020 lockdown, factories and some other workplaces were allowed to remain open. Draghi vowed that Italy would see its vaccination programme triple in April, reaching 500,000 people per day by that time.

In June 2021, the more contagious SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant became predominant in Italy. In August 2021, the government extended the requirement of the EU Digital COVID Certificate, also known as Green Pass, to the participation in sports events and music festivals but also to the access to indoor places like bars, restaurants and gyms, as well as to long-distance public transportation, in an attempt to contain the spread of new variants. On 15 October, Italy became the first country in the world to establish a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination certificate for the entire work force, public, and private.

On 31 December, during what was anticipated to be his last speech to the nation as president and within a dramatic increasing in COVID-19 cases, Mattarella thanked all the Italians who got vaccinated, stressing that "wasting vaccines was an offense to anyone who didn't have them". Mattarella also stated that during his seven-year term he never felt alone, thanking Italians to have shown "the best face of the country".

Second term (2022–present)

During 2021, despite high popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, President Mattarella expressed his unavailability regarding a second term, which had been proposed by various political forces, recalling similar remarks made by his predecessors Antonio Segni and Giovanni Leone. Despite his firm denial, Mattarella received several votes in the ballots, notably reaching 336 votes in the sixth ballot and 387 in the seventh one, even if no major party or coalition formally supported him as a candidate. On the morning of 29 January, after the fall of all other possible candidacies and the impossibility of reaching a shared candidacy between the two major coalitions, the re-election of incumbent president Mattarella became a serious alternative. On the same day, Mattarella agreed to serve a second term, and was re-elected with 759 votes, as most party leaders and Prime Minister Mario Draghi asked him to accept their joint nomination for another term.

On 3 February, President Mattarella was sworn in for his second term in front of a joint assembly of the parliament. He called for unity, saying: "We still need to work together to strengthen Italy, beyond the current difficulties." He also commented on the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, stating: "We cannot accept that now, without even the pretext of competition between different political and economic systems, the winds of confrontation are once again blowing across a continent that has experienced the tragedies of the First and Second World Wars." Mattarella added: "We must appeal to our resources and those of allied and friendly countries so that the displays of strength give way to mutual understanding so that no people should fear aggression from their neighbours." Following the invasion of the country, Mattarella strongly condemned Vladimir Putin's decision to attack Ukraine, describing the invasion as a "brutal war" and a "nineteenth-century-like attack that evoked frightening scenarios, with humanity as the protagonist of its own ruin".

2022 government crisis

On 13 July 2022, M5S abstained during the confidence vote on the decreto aiuti (), a bill that introduced stimulus to contrast the ongoing energy crisis. On the following day, the M5S left the Senate floor during the voting process, de facto opening a government crisis within the Draghi's cabinet. Following the M5S's abstention, Prime Minister Draghi consulted with President Mattarella about the crisis and, after a few hours, he formally resigned as Prime Minister citing a lack of political trust and confidence within the government's majority. However, Mattarella rejected the resignation because the government had largely won the confidence vote in the Senate and invited the prime minister to address the Parliament, explaining the political situation.

On 20 July, the government failed to reach the absolute majority in the confidence vote as Lega, FI and M5S decided not to take part in the ballot, de facto causing the fall of the government. On the following day, after a speech in front of the Chamber of Deputies, Draghi officially resigned as prime minister. Mattarella accepted his resignation, but Draghi remained in office as caretaker prime minister until the formation of the Meloni government following a snap general election. On the same day, Mattarella summoned Draghi, Roberto Fico and Elisabetta Casellati to the Quirinal Palace and then dissolved the Parliament. In a brief speech to the nation, Mattarella stated: "Pauses are not possible at the moment we are going through: energy costs have consequences for families and businesses, economic difficulties must be addressed, there are many obligations to be closed in the interest of Italy."

2022 general election and government formation

The 2022 general election, held on 25 September, was characterized by a strong showing of the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI), which won an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament. On 20 October, a few days after the elections of the presidents of the two houses of Parliament, Ignazio La Russa of FdI on 13 October for the Senate of the Republic, and Lorenzo Fontana of the League on 14 October for the Chamber of Deputies, Mattarella officially launched consultations on the formation of a new cabinet.

On the following day, the centre-right coalition formally proposed Meloni as its candidate to the premiership. In the afternoon, Mattarella summoned Meloni to the Quirinal Palace and gave her the task of forming a new cabinet. The Cabinet was announced on 21 October and was officially sworn in on 22 October. It was one of the fastest government formations in the history of the Italian Republic. Meloni became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Italy.

In February 2023, Mattarella officially asked the government to modify the law regarding beach concessions in Italy, which was considered against both the European law and the opinion of the Italian Council of State. He also criticised the so-called Milleproroghe (), a decree law promoted by the government aimed at resolving urgent provisions by the end of the current year and described by Mattarella as a "mere container of the most different regulatory interventions".

Personal life and public image

Mattarella was married to Marisa Chiazzese, daughter of Lauro Chiazzese, a professor of Roman law and rector of the University of Palermo. His wife died in 2012. He has three children: Laura (born 1967), Bernardo Giorgio (1968), and Francesco (1973). His daughter Laura has acted as de facto First Lady, accompanying her father on official trips outside Italy.  Mattarella is a Roman Catholic.

Best known for its involvement in politics, Mattarella's family has held various national and regional offices spanning across two generations. His father Bernardo Mattarella was a member of the Constituent Assembly and served as minister in various governments from 1953 until 1963. His brother Piersanti Mattarella was murdered in 1980 in Sicily by  while serving as president of the Regional Government of Sicily. Another brother, Antonio Mattarella, was managing director of the Investment Banking division of Goldman Sachs from 2005 to 2017.

Mattarella is an association football fan and a supporter of Inter Milan. As head of state, he attended the UEFA Euro 2020, which included Italy as one of the hosts, and the UEFA Euro 2020 Final at Wembley Stadium on 11 July 2021, which was won by Italy, beating England on penalty kicks following a 1–1 draw after extra time. On the following day, he hosted the national team at the Quirinal Palace to celebrate.

At the end of his first term, Mattarella's approval rating was among the highest ever for an Italian president and the highest among Western world leaders. According to the polling firm Ixè, Mattarella's approval rating in December 2021 was at 77%, while it stood at 66% according to SWG and 65% according to Quorum–YouTrend. In February 2023, one year after his re-election as president, his approval rating was still very high, remaining at 77% according to Ixè and 65% for Quorum–YouTrend.

On 7 February 2023, Mattarella became the first president to attend the Sanremo Music Festival.

Electoral history

Presidential elections

Honours

National honours
 : Head and Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (3 February 2015)
 : Head of the Military Order of Italy (3 February 2015)
 : Head of the Order of Merit for Labour (3 February 2015)
 : Head of the Order of the Star of Italy (3 February 2015)
 : Recipient (gold medal) of the Italian Order of Merit for Culture and Art (27 December 1991)
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Red Cross (9 July 2019)

Foreign honours
 : Collar of the National Order of Merit (6 November 2021)
 : Recipient of the Order of Agostinho Neto (25 May 2023)
 : Collar of the Order of the Liberator General San Martin (8 May 2017)
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Glory (30 July 2018)
 : Grand Star of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (1 July 2019)
 : Heydar Aliyev Order (18 July 2018)
 : Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold (1 December 2021)
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Balkan Mountains (12 September 2016)
 : Grand Cross of the Cameroon Order of Valour (11 March 2016)
 : Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (2 July 2018)
 : Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the White Rose (27 September 2017)
 : Grand Cross of the Order of the Legion of Honour (5 July 2021)
 : Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (19 September 2019)
 : Grand cross of the Order of the Redeemer (26 November 2015)
 : Commander Grand Cross with Chain of the Order of the Three Stars (29 June 2018)
 : Grand Cross with Golden Chain of the Order of Vytautas the Great (5 July 2018)
 : Honorary Companions of Honour with Collar of the National Order of Merit (13 September 2017)
 : Collar of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (4 July 2016)
 : Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion (20 June 2017)
 : Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav (6 April 2016)
 : Collar of the National Order of Merit (19 January 2023)
 : Knight of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) (17 April  2023)
 : Grand Collar of the Order of Liberty (6 December 2017)
 : Collar of the Order of the Star of Romania (11 June 2016)
 : Collar of the Order of San Marino (5 October 2021)
 : Member of the Order for Exceptional Merits (21 October 2021)
 : Collar of the Order pro Merito Melitensi (27 October 2016)
 : Knight of the Collar of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (8 November 2021)
 : Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim (13 November 2018)
 : Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (as Minister of Defence) (16 October 2000)
 : Knight with the Collar of the Order of Pope Pius IX (17 April 2015)
 : Paul VI Prize (29 May 2023)

References

External links

 Official biography, website of the Italian presidency
 Twitter account of Mattarella's office

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1941 births
20th-century Italian politicians
21st-century Italian politicians
Candidates for President of Italy
Christian Democracy (Italy) politicians
Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy politicians
Democratic Party (Italy) politicians
Deputy Prime Ministers of Italy
Education ministers of Italy
First Class of the Order of the Star of Romania
Government ministers of Italy
Collars of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Italian Ministers of Defence
Italian People's Party (1994) politicians
Italian Roman Catholics
Judges of the Constitutional Court of Italy
Living people
Mattarella family
Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy)
Politicians from Palermo
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Recipients of the Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana
Recipients of the Heydar Aliyev Order
Sapienza University of Rome alumni

Sergio Mattarella


Phil Nice (born 6 April 1954 in Vange, Essex) is a British actor who has been active in television and films since 1984.

He has appeared in TV serials including Who Dares Wins, South of the Border, Inspector Morse, Mr. Bean, Goodnight Sweetheart, The Bill, EastEnders, Heartbeat, The Inbetweeners (as a driving instructor), Coming of Age, Moving Wallpaper, Love Soup, Torchwood: Miracle Day, My Family, Hebburn and Citizen Khan (as friendly neighbour Keith). He also appeared in Morrison's adverts in 2011.

He has appeared in films including Ident, Danny the Champion of the World, Magicians and A Kind of Hush.

In December, 1985, Nice, along with temporary comedy partner Arthur Smith made a short series of parody documentaries for Channel 4 called Arthur and Phil Go Off.

In 2014 Nice played an astronaut killed by giant spiders in 'Kill the Moon', the seventh episode of the eighth series of the science-fiction television show Doctor Who.

In January 2015 he appeared in series two of Broadchurch as Andrew Darlington, the manager of the care home looking after Jocelyn Knight's elderly mother.

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

Podcasts

External links

1954 births
Living people
Male actors from Essex
British male television actors
British male film actors
People from Basildon

Phil Nice


John Joseph Jessing (November 17, 1836 – November 2, 1899) a German-American immigrant, who became a Catholic priest in the United States, and was a pioneer in Catholic orphanage work and Catholic education. He was also the founder of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, in 1888.

Birth and childhood
In the early 19th century, a young German named John William Jessing married Anna Maria Schlusemann of Stadtlohn near the Dutch boundary. Anna was John's second wife. She was the daughter of Engelbert Schlusemann, a shoemaker, the trade in which her husband also was engaged. Three children were born of this union, including John Joseph, born on November 17, 1836 at No. 4 Kleiboltengasse in Münster in Prussia. A daughter, Wilhelmina Frances lived (December 31, 1839 - September 4, 1940) and a posthumous son, Bernard Anthony William lived (August 12, 1841 - May 1869). In 1840, Joseph's father, John William, died leaving a very young family.

Early years and Prussian military service
As a boy, Jessing worked in a print shop to provide for his mother and two siblings as his father had died when Jessing was only four years old. The young boy devoted what little spare time he had to reading and study. When he grew to manhood, Jessing did what many young boys did when he enlisted in the Prussian army, an organization known for its severe training regimen and discipline.

In the army, Jessing rose to the rank of quartermaster sergeant, who proved himself a successful fighter as well as logistician. He was decorated by King William I of Prussia for bravery at the Battle of Dybbøl, earning many decorations and medals for his service in the Seventh Westphalian Artillery during both the First and the Second wars with Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Despite all these military achievements, Joseph's dream of ordination remained his true ambition.

In 1867, Jessing left his home in Münster, Westphalia, to pursue his lifelong vocation of the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Immigration and ordination
In 1867, young Joseph emigrated to the United States and began his studies at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary of the West in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1868, to serve in the newly founded Diocese of Columbus. He was ordained a priest by its first bishop, the Right Reverend Sylvester Rosecrans, at St. Patrick Pro-Cathedral in Columbus on July 16, 1870, and was assigned to Sacred Heart Church in Pomeroy, Ohio.

Newspaper and orphanage
Soon after arriving at Sacred Heart, Jessing became deeply concerned about the orphan boys in his parish. With the assistance of the Poor Brothers of Saint Francis, he provided these needy children with shelter, food, and schooling. This work led to his establishing the Saint Joseph Orphan Asylum. The orphanage was funded primarily through Jessing's German-language newspaper, The Ohio (later called Ohio Waisenfreund, meaning "Ohio Orphan's Friend"), with Jessing as chief writer and publisher.  Jessing used the proceeds from the small newspaper to fund his work with the orphans so that it would be self-sustaining. Ohio Waisenfreund became one of the leading German language Catholic newspapers.

In 1877, Father Jessing wrote a letter to Bishop Rosecrans asking permission to bring his newspaper and the orphan's asylum to a larger city. In that letter, he explained that he needed to be closer to the railroad in order to distribute his paper. Since he wanted the work to be self-sustaining, he also discussed an industrial school that he wanted to start in connection with the orphan's asylum where boys could learn a trade to support themselves as adults.

Rosecrans approved Jessing's plan, and the newspaper and orphan's asylum were moved to Columbus later that year and was closer to the railroad. Besides the industrial school, Father Jessing started various trade opportunities for the orphans including the Josephinum Church Furniture Company where the boys could be taught a trade.

Collegium Josephinum seminary
When four older boys expressed a desire to study for the priesthood, Jessing advertised in his paper that he would sponsor two boys who wished to become priests but who lacked the financial means to do so.  Of the forty applicants, Jessing accepted twenty-three and the first academic classes began on September 1, 1888. In memory of the original St. Joseph's Orphanage, this seminary was called, in Latin, the Collegium Josephinum or Josephinum College.

As those first students progressed through the seminary program, the institution initially provided six years of primary education ("minor seminary," four years of high school and two years of college) and six years of secondary seminary education ("major seminary," another two years of college/pre-theology and four years of theology/ seminary).

To ensure that the Josephinum would continue after his death, Jessing asked that the fledgling institution be placed under the protection of the Holy See. Pope Leo XIII granted the request in 1892, thus making the Josephinum the first Pontifical University outside of Italy. From that time to the present, the institution has been under the direction of the Congregation for Seminaries, with the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States as its Chancellor. The Josephinum was incorporated under the laws of the State of Ohio in 1894. The seminary is financially independent from both the Holy See and the Diocese of Columbus.

In June 1896, Pope Leo named Jessing to the title of Domestic Prelate to honor him for his years of service to the Church and the community. Due to this, he was now referred to as Monsignor Jessing.

The first six seminarians to graduate the program were ordained to the priesthood in June 1899.  Monsignor Jessing was able to witness this before his death a few months later, on November 2 of that year.

Death
Joseph Jessing died in Columbus, Ohio on November 2, 1899. In 1968 the graduates of the seminary erected a plaque in his home city of Münster to honor Jessing. The Conference Center at the Pontifical College Josephinum is named after Monsignor Jessing.

See also
 Pontifical College Josephinum
 Leonard J. Fick

References

External links
 https://web.archive.org/web/20060210082137/http://www.pcj.edu/aboutus/history.html Historical Sketch of Msgr. Joseph Jessing
 http://www.ohiomemory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fp267401coll36&CISOPTR=11682&DMSCALE=18.75000&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMMODE=viewer&DMFULL=0&DMOLDSCALE=3.81098&DMX=0&DMY=0&DMTEXT=%25201877&DMTHUMB=1&REC=4&DMROTATE=0&x=76&y=77 Jessing and some of the orphans he helped in Ohio.
 Photos of the Pontifical College Josephinum, Ohio memory digital collections

1836 births
1899 deaths
19th-century American male writers
19th-century American non-fiction writers
19th-century American Roman Catholic priests
19th-century venerated Christians
American male non-fiction writers
American Roman Catholic religious writers
Catholics from Ohio
Child welfare
Editors of Christian publications
German emigrants to the United States
Orphanages in Ohio
Clergy from Columbus, Ohio
Clergy from Münster
People from Pomeroy, Ohio
Pontifical College Josephinum

Joseph Jessing


Chad Valley is a long-established brand of toys in the United Kingdom owned by Sainsbury's.

History

The company has its roots in a printing business established by Anthony Bunn Johnson in Birmingham in the early 19th century. Under the management of his son Joseph and grandson Alfred the company moved to the suburb of Harborne, in the valley of a stream called the Chad Brook, giving its name to the Chad Valley district, from which the company name is derived.

Chad Valley made a decision to expand their range to soft toys before World War I. They mass-produced their new Teddy bears in Harborne

In 1938 the company received a royal warrant as 'Toymakers to H.M. The Queen'. When Princess Elizabeth acceded to the throne in 1952 the warrant was changed to read 'Toymakers to H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother'.

The company moved away from manufacturing toys in the Second World War. Instead they produced goods to help the war effort such as wooden instrument cases, cases for the barrels of anti-aircraft guns, hospital beds and electrical coils and starters.

In 1945 the company resumed toy production. Tin plate toys were produced for the first time although manufacture was outsourced to Metal Box, a company with the skills and machinery needed to produce printed toys. This new tin plate range was such a success that in 1946 the company moved production in-house. They purchased the Birmingham metalworking company AS Cartwright to cut and fold metal, Winfield to produce clockwork mechanisms and Barronia Metals and True to Type Products to produce precision engineering equipment.

The radio broadcaster Kenneth Horne was Chairman and Managing Director of the company from 1956 to 1958.

The company was one of the UK's leading toymakers for most of the 20th century; by 1960 it was operating seven factories and employing over 1,000 people. In the 1970s, however, it closed several factories and cuts were made in staffing and production, and 1975 saw only two factories remaining. The company was taken over by Palitoy in 1978.

The brand name was bought by Woolworths in 1988 and remained in use until that company's insolvency in 2009. Home Retail Group, the parent company of retailers Homebase and Argos, purchased the brand for £5 million in January 2009. The Chad Valley brand is now available exclusively at Argos. In March 2016, Sainsbury's bought Home Retail Group for approximately £1.4 billion and Chad Valley became a brand of Sainsbury's.

References

External links

 Chad Valley Toys (enthusiast web site)

1860 introductions
Companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands
Toy brands
Toy companies of the United Kingdom
F. W. Woolworth Company
Teddy bear manufacturers
British royal warrant holders

Chad Valley (toy brand)


Ginger milk curd, also known as ginger-juice milk curd, ginger milk pudding or simply ginger milk, is a Chinese hot dessert originated in Shawan Ancient Town, Panyu District, Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province in southern China. The main ingredients are ginger, milk, and sugar. Water buffalo milk is used in the original recipe.

Method of preparation
First, cut a piece of old ginger into small pieces and finely grind the ginger. Then, squeeze the juice out by pressing the ginger through a sieve. Put the juice into a bowl. Next, bring the milk to a boil and dissolve sugar in milk. Take off heat and allow it to cool a little. If one is available, place a kitchen thermometer into the milk. The optimum curdling temperature is . In the meantime, stir the ginger juice thoroughly. When the milk temperature decreases to around 70-75 °C, pour the milk quickly into the middle of the ginger juice. Wait for two to three minutes. The milk will then be curdled, and may be eaten with a spoon.

Underlying biochemical principle
The most important part of the ginger in ginger milk curd is the ginger protease zingipain. This substance with molecular weight of 31 kDa is found with three forms of isoelectric point values around 5.58, 5.40, and 5.22, respectively. The three forms have very similar biochemical behavior, where the optimal proteolytic activity is from 40 to 60°C and maximum clotting activity at 70°C.

Milk is a substance consisting mainly of milk fat globules and casein micelles in a continuous phase of water, sugar, whey protein and minerals. Casein micelles consist of mainly α(s1)-casein, α(s2)-casein, β-casein, and κ-casein, where hydrophobic α and β-casein are in the inner sub-micelle and hydrophilic κ-casein is in the outer part.

When the milk starts curdling, the curds are small, but as coagulation increases, curd size increases until the milk ends up with a tofu-like structure. When the curdling occurs, the ginger protease cuts open the κ-casein so that the hydrophilic C-terminus and the hydrophobic N-terminus separate. This disrupts the stability of the casein micelle. In the hydrophobic effect, the hydrophobic casein coagulates.

See also
Douhua
Junket (dessert)
 List of Chinese desserts
 List of desserts

References

External links
Ginger milk curd photos

Chinese desserts
Cantonese cuisine
Curd
Macanese cuisine
Puddings
Ginger dishes
Milk dishes

Ginger milk curd


Clinton Jencks (March 1, 1918 – December 15, 2005) was an American lifelong activist in labor and social justice causes, most famous for union organizing among New Mexico's miners, acting in the 1954 film Salt of the Earth (where he portrayed "Frank Barnes", a character based on himself), and enduring years of government prosecution (and persecution) for allegedly falsifying a Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavit.

Biography

Early years

Jencks was born March 1, 1918, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His father was a mail carrier and his mother an active member of the Methodist Church. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1939, then moved to St. Louis, where he became active in the Interfaith Youth Council and met his future wife, Virginia Derr. Jencks served in the Air Force during World War II, and after his honorable discharge he worked at Asarco's Globe Smelter in Denver. Jencks joined the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (called Mine and Mill or Mine-Mill), a radical union of metal miners. Impressed with the Jenckses' commitment and charisma, Mine-Mill sent them to New Mexico in 1946.

Mine-Mill in New Mexico

The Jencks' years in New Mexico were marked by an upsurge of local Chicano labor activism at the same time that left-wing unions were withstanding employer offensives, anticommunist legislation, and attacks by other unions. Clinton and Virginia Jencks helped consolidate a Chicano leadership of Mine-Mill Local 890 and encouraged miners' wives to participate in union affairs.

In 1950, the same year that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled Mine-Mill for alleged communist domination, New Mexican miners went out on strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Hanover, New Mexico. This strike began over wages, benefits, and safety, but when the company secured a court injunction prohibiting miners from picketing, miners' wives took over the picket lines. What followed was a dramatic confrontation between the union and the company, and an equally dramatic set of confrontations between husbands and wives, who were at odds over women's activism and the threat it posed to men's household authority. Both Clinton and Virginia Jencks supported the women. Local 890 won the strike in 1952 largely because of the women's picket.

Salt of the Earth

Meanwhile, blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers Herbert Biberman and Paul Jarrico were looking for a story to dramatize in an independent feature film, and they happened upon the women's picket when Jarrico and his wife Sylvia met the Jenckses at a dude ranch in northern New Mexico in the summer of 1951. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Michael Wilson wrote the script for Salt of the Earth in 1952, union families critiqued it, and Wilson changed it to reflect their sensibilities. Union men, women, and children played most of the roles in this highly unusual collaboration. Salt of the Earth, however, was heavily suppressed during and after production by anti-communists in Hollywood and Washington.

In October 1952, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) called on Clinton Jencks to testify in its hearings on communism in Mine-Mill, and on April 23, 1953, during the furor over the production of Salt of the Earth, federal agents arrested him on charges of falsifying a noncommunist affidavit he had signed in 1950. He went to trial in federal court in January 1954 and was convicted, largely on the testimony of Harvey Matusow, a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Matusow later recanted his story, and while his recantation failed to help Jencks win on appeal, by the time Jencks's case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1957 the entire system of paid informants had been discredited.

In Jencks v. United States, a landmark decision that later played a minor role in the Watergate prosecutions, the Court overturned Jencks's conviction and held that defense counsel had the right to see FBI reports.  After this decision, the United States Congress enacted a law directing the federal courts to provide to the defense, documents  used by government employees and agents testifying in federal criminal trials. This law came to known as the Jencks Act.  The usual remedy for failure to provide these documents is dismissal of the criminal charges.  (See United States v. Reynolds.)

While Jencks pursued his appeal, Mine-Mill took him out of New Mexico and ultimately asked for his resignation. Jencks found himself blacklisted from employment throughout the Southwest, but in the early 1960s, he won a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to study economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his doctorate and taught at San Diego State University until his retirement.

Later life and death

Clinton Jencks continued his social activism as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America until his death on December 15, 2005, at the age of 87.

Footnotes

Further reading

 Baker, Ellen R. "'I Hate to Be Calling Her a Wife Now': Women and Men in the Empire Zinc Strike, 1950-1952." In Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670-2000, ed. Jaclyn Gier and Laurie Mercier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
 Caballero, Raymond. McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
 Lorence, James J. The Suppression of "Salt of the Earth": How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
 Lorence, James J. Palomino: Clinton Jencks and Mexican-American Unionism in the American Southwest. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
 Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1998. Reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

External links
 Clinton Jencks: The Union, Community Organizing and Civil Liberties by Dr. Christine Marin, Arizona State University Archivist Emerita

1918 births
2005 deaths
American activists
American communists
American trade union leaders
United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America
People from Colorado Springs, Colorado
San Diego State University faculty
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of Colorado alumni
Victims of McCarthyism

Clinton Jencks


Bruce Foster Sterling (September 28, 1870 – April 26, 1945) was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Biography
Bruce Foster Sterling was born in Masontown, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools of Masontown and the California State Normal School in California, Pennsylvania.

He graduated from West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 1895. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1896 and commenced practice in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1906 and was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1912, 1920 and 1924.

Sterling was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-fifth Congress.  He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1918.  He resumed the practice of law.  He was elected register of wills and clerk of the orphans court of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1935, 1939, and 1943.

He died at Uniontown, aged 75, and was interred in Oak Grove Cemetery.

Sources

The Political Graveyard

External links

1870 births
1945 deaths
California University of Pennsylvania alumni
Democratic Party members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Pennsylvania lawyers
West Virginia University alumni
People from Masontown, Pennsylvania
Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania

Bruce Foster Sterling


A la costa is a 1904 novel by Ecuadorian politician and writer Luis A. Martínez. It is one of the leading Ecuadorian works on social and political commentary, and an insight into the history at the time. The novel covers a series of issues, including political conflict between liberals and conservatives and social identity, economic
differences between the mountainous regions and the coast and between plantation workers and urbanites, and prostitution. It reflects on the overall meaning of life.

References

External links
Read at Biblioteca.org.ar
Article at Rincondelvago.com

1904 novels
Ecuadorian novels

A la costa


Sir Michael Foster  (8 March 1836 – 29 January 1907) was an English physiologist. He was instrumental in organizing the Cambridge Biological School and acted as Secretary of the Royal Society.

Biography
Foster was born in Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, in March 1836, the son of Michael Foster, FRCS. He was educated at Huntingdon Grammar school where he played cricket for the first eleven and was described as "a capital cricketer", in his role as wicket-keeper batsman and University College School, London. After graduating in medicine in 1859, he began to practise in his native town, but in 1867 he returned to London as teacher of practical physiology at University College London, where two years afterwards he became professor. In 1870 he was appointed by Trinity College, Cambridge, to its praelectorship in physiology, and thirteen years later he became the first occupant of the newly created chair of physiology in the university, holding it till 1903. One of his most famous students at Cambridge was Charles Scott Sherrington who went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1932.

He married first, in 1864, Georgina Edmonds, daughter of Cyrus Read Edmonds. Following her death in 1869, he married secondly, in 1872, Margaret Rust, daughter of George Rust, JP, of Huntingdon.  He lived at Nine Wells House, Great Shelford in the Gog Magog Hills opposite his friend and fellow physiologist W H Gaskell.

Career

He excelled as a teacher and administrator, and had a very large share in the organization and development of the Cambridge biological school. From 1881 to 1903 he was one of the secretaries of the Royal Society, and in that capacity exercised a wide influence on the study of biology in Britain. In the 1899 Birthday Honours, he was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), and served as president of the British Association at its meeting at Dover in September 1899.

Foster was elected to represent the University of London in parliament in a by-election in February 1900, and returned unopposed in the 1900 general election held later the same year. He stood for the Liberal Unionist Party, and though returned as a Unionist, his political action was not to be dictated by party considerations, and he gravitated towards Liberalism. He played no prominent part in parliament and indicated a desire to resign in 1902, but stayed on until the next election of 1906, where he stood for re-election but was defeated.

He was joint editor with E. Ray Lankester of The Scientific Memoirs of Thomas Henry Huxley. His chief writings were a Textbook of Physiology (1876), which became a standard work, and Lectures on the History of Physiology during the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (1901), which consisted of lectures delivered at the Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, in 1900. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1902.

He died suddenly in London in 1907.

Irises
Foster was also the binomial author of many iris species. One of many irises he introduced includes Iris lineata Foster ex Regel (or A.Regel), which was originally described and published in Gartenflora (1887), and later cited in Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1888).

The species Iris fosteriana was named after Foster by Aitchison, in 1881.

The British Iris Society recognised his significant contributions with the introduction of the Foster Memorial Plaque in 1926. This is a medal made of sterling silver, hallmarked by Toye & Co., London, one side cast in bas relief with an oval portrait of Foster, within a bed of irises, a banner above inscribed 'In Memory Sir Michael Foster 1836-1907'. The other side named the award winner. Early awardees included, in 1927 George Yeld VMH, American John Wister and Frenchman Seraphin Mottet.  In 1936 it was given to painter William Caparne. This award has continued into the twenty-first century.

References

Bibliography

Attribution

External links

 Biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

 Obituary in The Journal of Physiology
 Photograph of Sir Michael's residence, Nine Wells House, Great Shelford. This house used to have an extensive iris garden planted by Sir Michael, but the iris garden was lost during WW II.
 Sir Michael Foster works @Google Books

1836 births
1907 deaths
People from Huntingdon
People educated at University College School
Academics of University College London
Alumni of the University of London
English agnostics
English physiologists
Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fullerian Professors of Physiology
Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for London University
UK MPs 1895–1900
UK MPs 1900–1906
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Michael Foster (physiologist)


The McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics A-12 Avenger II was a proposed American attack aircraft from McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics. It was to be an all-weather, carrier-based stealth bomber replacement for the Grumman A-6 Intruder in the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Its Avenger II name was taken from the Grumman TBF Avenger of World War II.

The development of the A-12 was troubled by cost overruns and several delays, causing questions of the program's ability to deliver upon its objectives; these doubts led to the development program's cancellation in 1991. The manner of its cancellation was contested through litigation until a settlement was reached in January 2014.

Design and development

Advanced Tactical Aircraft program
The United States Navy began the Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) program in 1983. The program was to develop and field a replacement for the A-6 Intruder by 1994. Stealth technology developed for the United States Air Force would be used heavily in the program. Concept design contracts were awarded to the industry teams of McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics, and Northrop/Grumman/Vought in November 1984. The teams were awarded contracts for further concept development in 1986.

The McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics team was selected as the winner on 13 January 1988; the rival team led by Grumman surprisingly failed to submit a final bid. The McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics team was awarded a development contract and the ATA aircraft was designated A-12.  The first flight was initially planned for December 1990. The A-12 was named Avenger II in homage to the World War II-era Navy torpedo-bomber Grumman TBF Avenger.

The Navy initially sought to buy 620 A-12s and Marines wanted 238. In addition, the Air Force briefly considered ordering some 400 of an A-12 derivative. The A-12 was promoted as a possible replacement for the Air Force's General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, and for the United Kingdom's Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers. The craft was a flying wing design in the shape of an isosceles triangle, with the cockpit situated near the apex of the triangle. The A-12 gained the nickname "Flying Dorito".

The aircraft was to be powered by two General Electric F412-D5F2 turbofan engines, each producing about  of thrust. It was designed to carry precision guided weapons internally, up to two AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, two AGM-88 HARM air-to-ground missiles and a complement of air-to-ground ordnance, including unguided or precision-guided bombs, could be carried in an internal weapons bay. It has been claimed that the A-12 was to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons held in its internal weapons bay as well. The A-12 was to have a weapons load of .

Beginning in early 1990 McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics revealed delays and projected cost increases. Due to complications with the composite materials, aircraft weight had increased to 30% over design specification. This was unwelcome for an airplane that needed to operate efficiently and effectively from an aircraft carrier. Technical difficulties with the complexity of the radar system to be used also caused costs to increase; by one estimate the A-12 was to consume up to 70% of the Navy's budget for aircraft. After delays, its critical design review was successfully completed in October 1990 and the maiden flight was rescheduled to early 1992. In December 1990 plans were made for 14 Navy aircraft carriers to be equipped with a wing of 20 A-12s each.

A government report released in November 1990 documented serious problems with the A-12 development program. In December 1990 Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney told the Navy to justify the program and deliver reasons why it should not be canceled. The response given by the Navy and the contractors failed to persuade the Secretary of Defense, as he canceled the program in the following month, on 7 January 1991, for breach of contract.

The government felt the contractors could not complete the program and instructed them to repay most of the $2 billion that had been spent on A-12 development. McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics disputed this in Federal Claims court. The reasons and causes for the cancellation have been debated and remain an issue of controversy, with suggestions of political expediency and scheming to be behind the action.

Aftermath

After the cancellation of the A-12, the Navy elected to purchase the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which went on to replace the A-6 Intruder and the F-14 Tomcat. The Super Hornet uses the General Electric F414 turbofan engine, which is a modified variant of the upgraded F404 version developed for the A-12. The full-size A-12 mockup was revealed to the public at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in June 1996. The cancellation of the A-12 is seen as one of the major losses in the 1990s that weakened McDonnell Douglas and led to its merger with rival Boeing in 1997. After years of being in storage at the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (formerly General Dynamics) facility in Fort Worth, Texas, the mockup was transported to Veterans Memorial Air Park adjacent to Meacham Airport in north Fort Worth in June 2013. (The park was later renamed Fort Worth Aviation Museum.)

The manner in which the program was canceled led to years of litigation between the contractors and the Department of Defense over breach of contract (General Dynamics Corp. v. United States). On 1 June 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the U.S. Navy was justified in canceling the contract.  The ruling also required the two contractors to repay the U.S. government US$1.35 billion, plus interest charges of US$1.45 billion. Boeing, which had merged with McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics vowed to appeal the ruling. In September 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear the two companies' arguments, that the government canceled the project improperly and that the use of the state secrets privilege by the U.S. prevented them from mounting an effective defense. In May 2011, the Supreme Court set aside the Appeals Court decision and returned the case to federal circuit court. In January 2014, the case was settled with Boeing and General Dynamics agreeing to pay $200 million each to the U.S. Navy.

Specifications (A-12 Avenger II)

See also

References
Citations

Bibliography

 Boyne, Walter J. Air Warfare: An International Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2002. .
 Jenkins, Dennis R. Grumman A-6 Intruder – WarbirdTech Volume 33. North Branch, Minnesota: Specialty Press, 2002. .
 Mahnken, Thomas G. Technology and the American Way of War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. .
 Polmar, Norman., and Robert Stan Norris. The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: A History of Weapons and Delivery Systems Since 1945. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2009. .
 Richardson, Doug. Stealth Warplanes. Osceola, WI: Zenith Imprint, 2001. .
 Richeson, Jim. "Coming Soon to a Carrier Near You: Avenger". Naval Aviation News, December 1990. pp. 14–19.
 Senior, Tim. The Air Forces Book of the F/A-18 Hornet. Osceola, Wisconsin: Zenith Imprint, 2003. .
 Stevenson, James P. The $5 Billion Misunderstanding: the Collapse of the Navy's A-12 Stealth Bomber Program. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2001. .
 Thomason, Tommy H. Strike from the Sea: U.S. Navy Attack Aircraft from Skyraider to Super Hornet, 1948 – present. North Branch, Minnesota: Specialty Press, 2009. .
 Yenne, Bill. Weapons of the 21st Century. New York; Avenel, New Jersey: Crescent Books, 1993. .

External links

 A-12 Avenger II on GlobalSecurity.org
 A-12 Avenger II Mock-up photos on Fort Worth Star-Telegram.com

A-12
A-12
Flying wings
Stealth aircraft
Carrier-based aircraft
Cancelled military aircraft projects of the United States
Military scandals
United States military scandals
Tailless delta-wing aircraft

McDonnell Douglas A-12 Avenger II


The Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products is a 2012 World Health Organization treaty, designed to combat the worldwide illicit tobacco trade. The Protocol is supplementary to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Description

The Protocol was concluded on 12 November 2012 in Seoul, at the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It was opened for signature on 10 January 2013 and remained so until 9 January 2014. It was signed by 54 states and, as September 2018, has been ratified by or acceded to by 58 parties. The Protocol entered into force on 25 September 2018 after being ratified by its 40th state. Only parties that have ratified the Framework Convention may ratify the Protocol.

The Protocol contains provisions which require a ratifying state to take a variety of measures regarding the tobacco trade, including licensing, tracking and tracing, record-keeping, monitoring and regulating sales by Internet, international transit, and duty-free sales. The Protocol also promotes international co-operation in information sharing, mutual legal assistance, and extradition of persons suspected of involvement in the illicit tobacco trade.

Once it has entered into force, the Protocol will be monitored by the Meeting of the Parties which convenes every other year immediately following the FCTC Conference of the parties.

External links
Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, WHO information page
Text
Signatures and ratifications

Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products
Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products
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Ornithischia is an extinct clade of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds.

The name Ornithischia, or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek stem ornith- (ὀρνιθ-), meaning "of a bird", and ischion (ἴσχιον), plural ischia, meaning "hip joint". However, birds are only distantly related to this group as birds are theropod dinosaurs.

Overview

Ornithischians with well known anatomical adaptations include the ceratopsians or "horn-faced" dinosaurs, the pachycephalosaurs or "thick-headed" dinosaurs, the armored dinosaurs (Thyreophora) such as stegosaurs and ankylosaurs, and the ornithopods.

There is strong evidence that certain groups of ornithischians lived in herds, often segregated by age group, with juveniles forming their own flocks separate from adults.

Some were at least partially covered in filamentous pelts, and there is much debate over whether these filaments found in specimens of Tianyulong, Psittacosaurus, and Kulindadromeus may have been primitive feathers.

Fossil works

They are known as the 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs because of their hip structure. However, birds actually descended from the 'lizard-hipped' dinosaurs, the Saurischia. The name "Ornithischia" means "bird-hipped," and birds also have pelvises in which the pubis points backwards.

An alternative name for the order is the Predentata, because all of them are beaked herbivorous dinosaurs. The beak is in front of the jaw-bone, the dentary, so it is a 'predentary'. The upper half of the beak is the 'premaxilla' on the end of the upper jaw. The beak is a key adaptation for cropping plants for their food.

Their original (basal) form of locomotion was bipedal. However, from early in their evolutionary history, they were capable of both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion. Several groups became entirely quadrupedal.

A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships might upset this summary.

The ornithischia has two sub-orders:
Thyreophora: the armoured dinosaurs: Ankylosaurs and Stegosaurs.
Cerapoda: the duck-billed and horned dinosaurs.

Plants
Their vegetarian diet included:
Seed ferns: Pteridospermatophyta. Upper Triassic, Jurassic.
Cycads and other woody seed plants, common during Mesozoic period.
Gymnosperms (conifers): Jurassic, Cretaceous.
Angiosperms (flowering plants): Cretaceous
Algae in the form of seaweed: no direct evidence, but likely.

This group of dinosaurs would not be able to reach the taller conifers. The other main group of vegetarian dinosaurs, the sauropodomorphs, were specialists able to reach vegetation on the tall trees.

Related pages
Saurischia
Fabrosauridae
Heterodontosaur

References

Ornithischia


Barningham Hall is a Grade I listed building which stands in the grounds of the estate called Barningham Winter. Both the hall and estate privately owned. The house is close to the village of Matlask in the English County of Norfolk in the United Kingdom. The house was built for Sir Edward Paston in 1612 although the house seen today is the result of renovations, alterations and enlargement carried out under the control and design of Humphry Repton and his architect son John Adey Repton in 1805.

Description
The hall stands within its 4,000 acre estate and was remodelled in 1805 by the Reptons. The main body of the structure is built in red brick with stone dressings. The west facing façade has five bays with the central bay used as the porch and front entrance to the house. This façade dates from the early house built by Paston. The porch has polygonal angled buttresses to each corner topped with finials. The bays continue up through the steep roof to form two storey dormers giving the hall an impression of height. The porch has a semicircular porch arch in stone, bearing the original halls construction date of 1612. The porch rises to the same height to give the façade symmetry. All the windows have stone mullions, transoms and pediments over the windows. The south facing façade was extensively re-modelled by the John Adey Repton. He added bays and replaced the windows although the crowstep gables with polygonal buttresses to the quoins are all survived from the original house. He also changed the east façade to include a simpler version of the crowstep gables in 1810. At this time Repton also added an extension to the east side of the hall which contained a kitchen and a gun room. Below the ground floor of the hall are the original enfilade cellars. The cellars have two staircase, one from the wine cellar to the kitchen and another to the principle entertaining rooms on the ground floor. On the roof there are polygonal chimneys with star shaped toppings. They sit upon a roof of plain red tiles with a castellated brick cornice around the eves

Other estate buildings
To the north of the hall is the coach house and stable block which are connected to the hall with high brick wall on the west and service building to the east. The stable and coach house are in an L shape and range to the north and the east of the courtyard and are both Grade II listed buildings. The east block which was the stable block has a wooden clock turret with a bell under a leaded cupola over a crow-stepped gabled bay. Either side are this central bay there are smaller crow-stepped gabled bay. The building is built in red Norfolk brick with a tile and pantile (Rear) roof. The northern side building was the coach house and coachman's cottage. The building is over three storeys and has three bays with equal sized crow-stepped gables. With dormers. It is built in red brick with some diaper decorative pattern built into the brick bond. The roof is of plain red tile with fish tail tiles to the front

History

Curzun Family
After a period of time following the great survey known as the Domesday Book the manor of Barningham was in the ownership by William de Curzun. Curzun lived in the reign of Henry II. He was followed by Ralph Curzun and Sir Robert Curzun all of whom were lord of the manor. In 1345 the lands and manor of Barningham was in the ownership of John de Reppes. By 1361 the ownership had passed to William and Maude Wynter.

Wynter family
The hall that stands today was built in 1612 on land owned by the Wynter family and replaced a house which was demolished and stood a short distance from the present building. The old house had been the property of the Wynter family for many generations. The first member of the Wynter family of any note was William Wynter who twice served as the High Sheriff of the bailiwick of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1380 and 1392. He is recorded as owning the house and manor of Barningham Winter and when he died his son John Wynter inherited the manor of Barningham Winter along with the house. He was also lord of the manors of Matlask, Bessingham, Wickmere, Plumstead, Aldborough, and Baconsthorpe. His father also owned the manors of  Egmere and Wighton and it is assumed that John was also lord at these places. John Wynter was a lawyer and worked in Royal administration, beginning seven years before King Richard II was overthrown. He served Richard for three terms as escheator. Following the deposition of Richard, Wynter was shrewd enough to support the return of Henry Bolingbroke in July 1399 to become King Henry IV of England. John Wynter died in 1414 leaving the house and estate to his son Edmund Wynter. Edmund was also in the legal profession and he died in 1448. In his will he left the manor house and all its contents to his widow as a life interest with it all being passed on to his eldest son John Wynter after her death. The house and title passed down several generations of Wynter's until the reign of Elizabeth I when the house and manor was sold to Sir Edward Paston.

The Pastons
The Paston family were a well connected and influential family in Norfolk. The patriarch Sir William Paston (1528–1610) who was the founder of the Paston Grammar School in North Walsham owned Caister Castle, Paston Hall and Oxnead Hall. Another member of the family, Sir Edward Paston (1550–1630), built and owned Appleton hall in 1599 and was on part of what is now the Sandringham Estate. In 1612 the existing manor house and estate at Barningham was acquired by another Paston Family member. His name was Sir Edward Paston (1550 – 1630) and he had the old Wynter manor house demolished and a new larger hall built a short distance from the old manor. Edward Paston died in 1630 at the age of 80. he left the house and estate to Clement Paston who was his grandson. He in turned left it to another Edward Paston. The fortunes of the Paston family declined by the 1730s. William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth (1654-1732) had converted to Anglicanism in 1689, but refused to swear allegiance to William and Mary and had subsequently lost all his offices. When he died he left the family with enormous debts and huge mortgages on the Paston Properties. In this financial confusion, Edward Paston abandoned the estate and hall at Barningham in 1736. It remained empty for the next twenty years and was sold in 1756 to settle Edward Paston's debts.

Subsequent ownership
The house and estate were purchased from Paston by William Russell from London, who was a whale bone merchant who also had interests in the West Indies. Roughly crushed whale bones were used to renovate pastures in Britain in the late eighteenth century and used extensively in East Anglia creating huge profits for the bone merchants. Russell was one such gentleman. Kings Lynn was a major port for the whale industry and there were several whale bone and oil processing mills in the area including Narborough and Congham. Barningham Hall was an ideal location for Russell being close to these whale business operations. However Russell only held the property for 19 years and he sold the estate to Thomas Lane in 1775. Ten years later in 1785 Lane sold the estate to Thomas Vertue Mott. The Hall and estate has remained with this family until the present day.

Gallery

References

Attribution

Country houses in Norfolk
Grade I listed buildings in Norfolk
Houses completed in 1612
Houses completed in 1805
Grade I listed houses
1805 establishments in England
1612 establishments in England
North Norfolk

Barningham Hall