Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.

His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives, including Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the StB secret police, and he spent multiple periods as a political prisoner, the longest of his imprisoned terms being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983.

Havel's Civic Forum party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He assumed the presidency shortly thereafter, and was re-elected in a landslide the following year and after Slovak independence in 1993. Havel was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and enlargement of NATO membership eastward. Many of his stances and policies, such as his opposition to Slovak independence, condemnation of the treatment of Sudeten Germans, such as the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II, as well as granting of general amnesty to all those imprisoned under the Communist era, were very controversial domestically. By the end of his presidency, he enjoyed greater popularity abroad than at home. Havel continued his life as a public intellectual after his presidency, launching several initiatives including the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, the VIZE 97 Foundation, and the Forum 2000 annual conference.

Havel's political philosophy was one of anti-consumerism, humanitarianism, environmentalism, civil activism, and direct democracy. He supported the Czech Green Party from 2004 until his death. He received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award. The 2012–2013 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. He is considered by some to be one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The international airport in Prague was renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague in 2012.

Early life
Havel was born in Prague on 5 October 1936 into a wealthy family celebrated in Czechoslovakia for its entrepreneurial and cultural accomplishments. His grandfather, Vácslav Havel, a real estate developer, built a landmark entertainment complex on Prague's Wenceslas Square. His father, Václav Maria Havel, was the real estate developer behind the suburban Barrandov Terraces, located on the highest point of Prague—next door to which his uncle, Miloš Havel, built one of the largest film studios in Europe. Havel's mother, Božena Vavrečková, also came from an influential family; her father was a Czechoslovak ambassador and a well-known journalist.

In the early 1950s, because of his class background, Havel entered into a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes at a gymnasium. He completed his secondary education in 1954.

For political reasons, he was not accepted into any post-secondary school with a humanities program; therefore, he opted for studies at the Faculty of Economics of the Czech Technical University in Prague but dropped out after two years. On 9 July 1964, Havel married Olga Šplíchalová.

Early theatre career

The intellectual tradition of his family was essential for Havel's lifetime adherence to the humanitarian values of the Czech culture. After finishing his military service (1957–59), Havel had to bring his intellectual ambitions in line with the given circumstances, especially with the restrictions imposed on him as a descendant of a bourgeois family. He found employment in Prague's theatre world as a stagehand at Prague's Theatre ABC – Divadlo ABC, and then at the Theatre on Balustrade – Divadlo Na zábradlí. Simultaneously, he was a student of dramatic arts by correspondence at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). His first own full-length play performed in public, besides various vaudeville collaborations, was The Garden Party (1963). Presented in a series of Theatre of the Absurd, at the Theatre on Balustrade, this play won him international acclaim. The play was soon followed by The Memorandum, one of his best known plays, and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, all at the Theatre on Balustrade. In 1968, The Memorandum was also brought to The Public Theater in New York, which helped to establish Havel's reputation in the United States. The Public Theater continued to produce his plays in the following years. After 1968, Havel's plays were banned from the theatre world in his own country, and he was unable to leave Czechoslovakia to see any foreign performances of his works.

Political dissident

During the first week of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Havel assisted the resistance by providing an on-air narrative via Radio Free Czechoslovakia station (at Liberec). Following the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, he was banned from the theatre and became more politically active. He took a job at Krakonoš brewery in Trutnov, an experience he wrote about in his play Audience. This play, along with two other "Vaněk" plays (so-called because of the recurring character Ferdinand Vaněk, a stand in for Havel), became distributed in samizdat form across Czechoslovakia, and greatly added to Havel's reputation of being a leading dissident (several other Czech writers later wrote their own plays featuring Vaněk). This reputation was cemented with the publication of the Charter 77 manifesto, written partially in response to the imprisonment of members of the Czech psychedelic rock band The Plastic People of the Universe; Havel had attended their trial, which centered on the group's non-conformity in having long hair, using obscenities in their music, and their overall involvement in the Prague underground movement. Havel co-founded the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted in 1979. His political activities resulted in multiple imprisonments by the authorities, and constant government surveillance and questioning by the secret police (Státní bezpečnost). His longest period in prison, from May 1979 to February 1983, is documented in letters to his wife that were later published as Letters to Olga.

He was known for his essays, most particularly The Power of the Powerless (1978), in which he described a societal paradigm in which citizens were forced to "live within a lie" under the Communist regime. In describing his role as a dissident, Havel wrote in 1979: "we never decided to become dissidents. We have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how, sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more nor less."

Samuel Beckett's 1982 short play, Catastrophe, was dedicated to Havel while he was held as a political prisoner in Czechoslovakia.

Presidency

On 29 December 1989, while he was leader of the Civic Forum, Havel became President of Czechoslovakia by a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly. He had long insisted that he was not interested in politics and had argued that political change in the country should be induced through autonomous civic initiatives rather than through the official institutions. In 1990, soon after his election, Havel was awarded the Prize For Freedom of the Liberal International.

In 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first free elections in 44 years, resulting in a sweeping victory for Civic Forum and its Slovak counterpart, Public Against Violence. Between them, they commanded strong majorities in both houses of the legislature, and tallied the highest popular vote share recorded for a free election in the country. Havel retained his presidency.

Despite increasing political tensions between the Czechs and the Slovaks in 1992, Havel supported the retention of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic prior to the dissolution of the country. Havel sought re-election in 1992. Although no other candidate filed, when the vote came on 3 July, he failed to get a majority due to a lack of support from Slovak deputies. The largest Czech political party, the Civic Democratic Party, let it be known that it would not support any other candidate. After the Slovaks issued their Declaration of Independence, he resigned as president on 20 July, saying that he would not preside over the country's breakup.

However, when the Czech Republic was created as one of two successor states, he stood for election as its first president on 26 January 1993, and won. Although he was nominally the new country's chief executive, the framers of the Constitution of the Czech Republic intended to vest most of the real power in the prime minister. However, owing to his prestige, he still commanded great moral authority, and the presidency acquired a greater role than the framers intended. For instance, largely due to his influence, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), successor to the KSC's branch in the Czech Lands, was kept on the margins for most of his presidency. Havel suspected that the KSCM was still an unreformed Stalinist party.

Havel's popularity abroad surpassed his popularity at home, and he was often the object of controversy and criticism. During his time in office, Havel stated that the expulsion of the indigenous Sudeten German population after World War II was immoral, causing a great controversy at home. He also extended general amnesty as one of his first acts as president, in an attempt to lessen the pressure in overcrowded prisons as well as to release political prisoners and persons who may have been falsely imprisoned during the Communist era. Havel felt that many of the decisions by the previous regime's courts should not be trusted, and that most of those in prison had not received fair trials. However, critics claimed that this amnesty led to a significant increase in the crime rate: the total number of crimes doubled, as did the number of murders. Several of the worst crimes in the history of the Czech criminology were committed by criminals released in this amnesty. Within four years of the Velvet revolution (and following another two amnesties declared by Havel), criminality had more than tripled since 1989. According to Havel's memoir To the Castle and Back, most of those who were released had less than a year to serve before their sentences ended, but statistics contradict Havel's claims.

In an interview with Karel Hvížďala (included in To the Castle and Back), Havel expressed his feeling that it was his most important accomplishment as president to have contributed to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. According to his statement the dissolution was very complicated. The infrastructure created by the Warsaw Pact was part of the economies of all member states, and the Pact's dissolution necessitated restructuring that took many years to complete. Furthermore, it took time to dismantle the Warsaw Pact's institutions; for example, it took two years for Soviet troops to fully withdraw from Czechoslovakia.

Following a legal dispute with his sister-in-law Dagmar Havlová (wife of his brother Ivan M. Havel), Havel decided to sell his 50% stake in the Lucerna Palace on Wenceslas Square in Prague, built from 1907 to 1921 by his grandfather, also named Václav Havel (spelled Vácslav,) one of the multifunctional "palaces" in the center of the once booming pre-World War I Prague. In a transaction arranged by Marián Čalfa, Havel sold the estate to Václav Junek, a former Communist spy in France and head of the soon-to-be bankrupt conglomerate Chemapol Group, who later openly admitted that he bribed politicians of the Czech Social Democratic Party.

His near friend was Ivan Medek, who became the chief of the president office.

In January 1996, Olga Havlová, his wife of 32 years, died of cancer at 62. In December 1996, Havel who had been a chain smoker for a long time, was diagnosed with lung cancer. The disease reappeared two years later. He quit smoking. In 1997, he remarried, to actress Dagmar Veškrnová.

Havel was among those influential politicians who contributed most to the transition of NATO from being an anti-Warsaw Pact alliance to its present form. Havel advocated vigorously for the inclusion of former-Warsaw Pact members, like the Czech Republic, into the Western alliance.

Havel was re-elected president in 1998. He had to undergo a colostomy in Innsbruck when his colon ruptured while he was on holiday in Austria. On 30 January 2003, Havel signed The letter of the eight supporting U.S. policy on Iraq. Havel left office after his second term as Czech president ended on 2 February 2003. Václav Klaus, one of his greatest political adversaries, was elected his successor as president on 28 February 2003. Margaret Thatcher wrote of the two men in her foreign policy treatise , reserving the greater respect for Havel. Havel's dedication to democracy and his steadfast opposition to communist ideology earned him admiration.

Post-presidential career

Beginning in 1997, Havel hosted Forum 2000, an annual conference to "identify the key issues facing civilisation and to explore ways to prevent the escalation of conflicts that have religion, culture or ethnicity as their primary components". In 2005, the former president occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center of the United States Library of Congress, where he continued his research on human rights. In November and December 2006, Havel spent eight weeks as a visiting artist in residence at Columbia University. The stay was sponsored by the Columbia Arts Initiative and featured "performances, and panels centr[ing] on his life and ideas", including a public "conversation" with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Concurrently, the Untitled Theater Company No. 61 launched a Havel Festival, the first complete festival of his plays in various venues throughout New York City, including The Brick Theater and the Ohio Theatre, in celebration of his 70th birthday. Havel was a member of the World Future Society and addressed the Society's members on 4 July 1994. His speech was later printed in THE FUTURIST magazine (July 1995).

Havel remained an admired individual by Czech citizens. In The Greatest Czech TV show (the Czech spin-off of the BBC 100 Greatest Britons show) in 2005, Havel received the third biggest amount of voices, so he was elected to be third greatest Czech when he was still alive.

Havel's memoir of his experience as president, To the Castle and Back, was published in May 2007. The book mixes an interview in the style of Disturbing the Peace with actual memoranda he sent to his staff and modern diary entries and recollections.

On 4 August 2007, Havel met with members of the Belarus Free Theatre at his summer cottage in the Czech Republic in a show of his continuing support, which has been instrumental in the theatre's attaining international recognition and membership in the European Theatrical Convention.

Havel went on a hunger strike in 2007 to support Kurdish doctor and human rights activist Yekta Uzunoglu in his legal battle. A former president going on a hunger strike to support the legal battle of a foreigner in his country was a first in world history.

Havel's first new play in almost two decades, Leaving, was published in November 2007, and was to have had its world premiere in June 2008 at the Prague theater Divadlo na Vinohradech, but the theater withdrew it in December as it felt it could not provide the technical support needed to mount the play. The play instead premiered on 22 May 2008 at the Archa Theatre to standing ovations. Havel based the play on King Lear, by William Shakespeare, and on The Cherry Orchard, by Anton Chekhov; "Chancellor Vilém Rieger is the central character of Leaving, who faces a crisis after being removed from political power." The play had its English language premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre in London and its American premiere at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Havel subsequently directed a film version of the play, which premiered in the Czech Republic on 22 March 2011.

Other works included the short sketch Pět Tet, a modern sequel to Unveiling, and The Pig, or Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig, which was premiered in Brno at Theatre Goose on a String and had its English language premiere at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York, in a production from Untitled Theater Company No. 61, in a production workshopped in the Ice Factory Festival in 2011 and later revived as a full production in 2014, becoming a New York Times Critic's Pick.

In 2008, Havel became a Member of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation. He met U.S. President Barack Obama in private before Obama's departure after the end of the European Union (EU) and United States (US) summit in Prague in April 2009. Havel was the chair of the Human Rights Foundation's International Council and a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Havel was a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system. From the 1980s, Havel supported the green politics movement, partly due to his friendship with the co-founder of the German Alliance 90/The Greens party Milan Horáček. From 2004 until his death, he supported the Czech Green Party.

Death

Havel died on the morning of 18 December 2011, at the age of 75, at his country home in Hrádeček.

A week before his death, he met with his longtime friend, the Dalai Lama, in Prague; Havel appeared in a wheelchair. Prime Minister Petr Nečas announced a three-day mourning period from 21 to 23 December, the date announced by President Václav Klaus for the state funeral. The funeral Mass was held at Saint Vitus Cathedral, celebrated by the Archbishop of Prague Dominik Duka and Havel's old friend Bishop Václav Malý. During the service, a 21 gun salute was fired in the former president's honour, and in accordance with the family's request, a private ceremony followed at Prague's Strašnice Crematorium. Havel's ashes were placed in the family tomb in the Vinohrady Cemetery in Prague. On 23 December 2011, the Václav Havel Tribute Concert was held in Prague's Palác Lucerna.

Reactions

Within hours Havel's death was met with numerous tributes, including from U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa. Merkel called Havel "a great European", while Wałęsa said he should have been given the Nobel Peace Prize. The Russian Embassy sent an official condolence on behalf of the President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Slovakia declared December 23 a day of national mourning.

At the news of his death, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a native of Czechoslovakia, said, "He was one of the great figures of the 20th Century", while Czech expatriate novelist Milan Kundera said, "Václav Havel's most important work is his own life." Communists took the opportunity to criticize Havel. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia's leader Vojtěch Filip stated that Havel was a very controversial person and that his words often conflicted with his deeds. He criticized Havel for having supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, repeating the charge that Havel had called the event a "humanitarian bombing", although Havel had expressly and emphatically denied ever using such a phrase.

An online petition organized by one of the best-known Czech and Slovak film directors, Fero Fenič, calling on the government and the Parliament to rename Prague Ruzyně Airport to Václav Havel International Airport attracted—in a week after 20 December 2011—support of over 80,000 Czech Republic and foreign signatories. It was announced that the airport would be renamed the Václav Havel Airport Prague on 5 October 2012.

Reviewing a new biography by Michael Žantovský, Yale historian Marci Shore summarized his challenges as president: "Havel's message, 'We are all responsible, we are all guilty,' was not popular. He enacted a general amnesty for all but the most serious criminals, apologized on behalf of Czechoslovakia for the post-World War II expulsion of the Sudeten Germans and resisted demands for a more draconian purge of secret police collaborators. These things were not popular either. And as the government undertook privatization and restitution, Havel confronted pyramid schemes, financial corruption and robber baron capitalism. He saw his country fall apart (if bloodlessly), becoming in 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia."

Awards
Havel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983. In 1986, Havel received the Erasmus Prize, in 1989 the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, and in 1990, he received the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize for his outstanding contributions to the well-being of the wider community. In the same year he received the Freedom medal.

In 1993, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

On 4 July 1994, Václav Havel was awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal. In his acceptance speech, he said: "The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world."

Havel was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.

In 1997, Havel received ex aequo the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.

In 1998, the jury of the Europe Theatre Prize awarded him a special prize by the President Jack Lang.

In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2002, he was the third recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation. In 2003, he was awarded the International Gandhi Peace Prize by the government of India for his outstanding contribution towards world peace and upholding human rights in most difficult situations through Gandhian means; he was the inaugural recipient of Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for his work in promoting human rights; he received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom; and he was appointed as an honorary Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 2008 he was also awarded the Giuseppe Motta Medal for support for peace and democracy. As a former Czech President, Havel was a member of the Club of Madrid. In 2009 he was awarded the Quadriga Award, but decided to return it in 2011 following the announcement of Vladimir Putin as one of the 2011 award recipients.

Havel also received multiple honorary doctorates from various universities such as the prestigious Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in 2009, and was a Foreign Associate Member of the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques from October 1992 until his death.

On 10 October 2011, Havel was awarded by the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili with the St. George Victory Order. In November 2014, he became only the fourth non-American honored with a bust in the U.S. Capitol.

State honours and awards

Honours

Awards
 : Indira Gandhi Peace Prize (1993), New Delhi
 : Geuzenpenning (1995), Vlaardingen
 : Europe Theatre Prize - Special Prize (1998), Taormina
 : Gandhi Peace Prize (08/2003), Delhi

Memorials

Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent
In April 2012, Havel's widow, Dagmar Havlová, authorized the creation of the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. The prize was created by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and is awarded at the annual Oslo Freedom Forum. The prize "will celebrate those who engage in creative dissent, exhibiting courage and creativity to challenge injustice and live in truth".

Václav Havel Library
The Václav Havel Library, located in Prague, is a charitable organization founded by Dagmar Havlová, Karel Schwarzenberg and Miloslav Petrusek on 26 July 2004. It maintains a collection of pictorial, audio and written materials and other artefacts linked to Václav Havel. The institution gathers these materials for the purpose of digitisation, documentation and research and to promote his ideas. It organises lectures, holds conferences and social and cultural events that introduce the public to the work of Václav Havel and club discussion meetings on current social issues. It runs educational activities for second-level students. It is also involved in the issuing of publications. The library makes accessible Václav Havel's literary, philosophical and political writings, and provides a digital reading room for researchers and students in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

In May 2012, the library opened a branch in New York City named the Václav Havel Library Foundation. In 2014, the Václav Havel Library moved to larger premises at Ostrovni 13, in the centre of Prague.

Václav Havel Building of the European Parliament
In July 2017, the European Parliament opened a new building on its official Strasbourg site. The building was named after Havel and decorated with a bust of the former Czech president.

Václav Havel Memory in Zagreb
On 4 October 2016, the day before what would have been the 80th birthday of Václav Havel, his photograph was presented on the fountain in Croatian capital Zagreb. Croatian-Czech Society proposed the Václav Havel Street in Zagreb.

Václav Havel Boulevard and memorial plaque in Kyiv
In November 2016, Václav Havel Boulevard was opened in Kyiv, Ukraine. The new name has replaced the one given during Soviet era when boulevard was named in honor of the Communist politician Jānis Lepse. In December, First Deputy Chairman Iryna Herashchenko along with Minister of Culture of Czech Republic Daniel Herman and Minister of Culture of Ukraine Yevhen Nyshchuk opened memorial plaque in honor of Václav Havel.

Václav Havel Bench
The Václav Havel Bench (Havel's Place) is an artistic and urban utility project, created by Czech architect and designer Bořek Šípek. It is composed of two wooden garden chairs connected by a round table, which has a hole inside. A linden, the Czech national tree, is growing through this hole. These benches can be found in many Czech towns as well as in some foreign locations such as Washington, D.C., Dublin, Lisbon, and Barcelona.

Sculptures and busts
On 19 November 2014, a bust of Havel, created by Czech-American artist Lubomír Janečka, was unveiled at the U.S. Congress, commemorating the 25-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Havel is the fourth European ever to be honored by having a bust of himself in the U.S. Congress, after Winston Churchill, Raoul Wallenberg and Lajos Kossuth. Another sculpture of Havel is placed in a boardroom of Leinster House in Dublin, the historical seat of the Oireachtas, the Irish National Parliament.

On 22 June 2017 a statue of Václav Havel created by Georgian sculptor Jumber Jikia was unveiled in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The Václav Havel Library Foundation donated a bust of Havel to Columbia University in New York City. This bust was unveiled on 27 September 2018 while Havel was being honored by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Works

Collections of poetry
 Čtyři rané básně (Four Early Poems)
 Záchvěvy I & II, 1954 (Quivers I & II)
 První úpisy, 1955 (First promissory notes)
 Prostory a časy, 1956 (Spaces and times)
 Na okraji jara (cyklus básní), 1956 (At the edge of spring (poetry cycle))
 Antikódy, 1964 (Anticodes)

Plays
 Life Ahead/You Have Your Whole Life Ahead of You, 1959, (Život před sebou) with Karel Brynda
 Motomorphosis/Motormorphosis, 1960/1961, (Motomorfóza), a sketch from Autostop
 Ela, Hela, and the Hitch, 1960/1961, (Ela, Hela a stop), a sketch for Autostop; discarded from the play, lost; found in 2009; published in 2011
 An Evening with the Family, 1960, (Rodinný večer)
 The Best Years of Missis Hermanová, 1962, (Nejlepší rocky paní Hermanové) with Miloš Macourek
 The Garden Party (Zahradní slavnost), 1963
 The Memorandum (or The Memo), 1965, (Vyrozumění)
 The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, 1968, (Ztížená možnost soustředění)
 Butterfly on the Antenna, 1968, (Motýl na anténě)
 Guardian Angel, 1968, (Anděl strážný)
 Conspirators, 1971, (Spiklenci)
 The Beggar's Opera, 1975, (Žebrácká opera)
 Audience, 1975, (Audience) – a Vanӗk play
 Unveiling, 1975, (Vernisáž) – a Vanӗk play
 Mountain Hotel 1976, (Horský hotel)
 Protest, 1978, (Protest) – a Vanӗk play
 Mistake, 1983, (Chyba)
 Largo desolato 1984, (Largo desolato)
 Temptation, 1985, (Pokoušení)
 Redevelopment, 1987, (Asanace)
 The Pig, or Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig (Prase, aneb Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig), 1987; published in 2010; premiered in 2010, co-authored by Vladimír Morávek
 Tomorrow, 1988, (Zítra to spustíme)
 Leaving (Odcházení), 2007
 Dozens of Cousins (Pět Tet), 2010, a Vanӗk play, a short sketch/sequel to Unveiling

Nonfiction books
 The Power of the Powerless (1985) [Includes 1978 titular essay. Online]
 Living in Truth (1986)
 Letters to Olga (Dopisy Olze) (1988)
 Disturbing the Peace (1991)
 Open Letters (1991)
 Summer Meditations (Letní přemítání) (1992/93)
 Toward a Civil Society (1994)
 The Art of the Impossible (1998)
 To the Castle and Back (2007)

Fiction books for children
 Pizh'duks

Films
 Odcházení, 2011

Music
 Havel was a major supporter of The Plastic People of the Universe, and close friend of its leader, Milan Hlavsa, its manager, Ivan Martin Jirous, and its guitarist/vocalist, Paul Wilson (who later became Havel's English translator and biographer) and a great fan of the rock band The Velvet Underground, sharing mutual respect with the principal singer-songwriter Lou Reed, and was also a lifelong Frank Zappa fan.
 Havel was also a great supporter and fan of jazz and frequented such Prague clubs as Radost FX and the Reduta Jazz Club, where U.S. President Bill Clinton played the saxophone when Havel brought him there.
 Havel befriended Joan Baez after he evaded arrest by pretending to be her roadie.

Cultural references
Václav Havel has been portrayed, as himself or a character based on him, in a number of feature and television films:
 Czech Century is a 2013 historical television series chronicling Czech history from 1989. Havel is portrayed by Marek Daniel.
 Marek Daniel also portrayed Havel in a satirical web series, Kancelář Blaník.
 Havel is a 2020 historical film about Havel's (Viktor Dvořák) life before 1989.
 The Prog-related Art-rock band, Toy Matinee, recorded a song about Havel, entitled "Remember My Name" from their 1990 eponymous album released by Reprise Records.
 Havel is mentioned in the song La Vie Bohème from the 1996 musical Rent.

See also
 Civil resistance
 Hrad (politics)
 List of peace activists
 Nonviolent resistance
 Mlýny, Czech comedy play
 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize

References

Primary sources
Works by Václav Havel
 Commentaries and Op-eds by Václav Havel and in conjunction between Václav Havel and other renowned world leaders for Project Syndicate.
 "Excerpts from The Power of the Powerless (1978)", by Václav Havel. "Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text provided by Bob Moeller, of the University of California, Irvine."
 "The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World" (Speech republished in THE FUTURIST magazine). Retrieved 19 December 2011
 . Czech.cz (Official website of the Czech Republic), 10 September 2007. Retrieved 21 December 2007. On personal responsibility, freedom and ecological problems.
 Two Messages Václav Havel on the Kundera affair, English, salon.eu.sk, October 2008

Media interviews with Václav Havel
 After the Velvet, an Existential Revolution? dialogue between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik, English, salon.eu.sk, November 2008
 Warner, Margaret. "Online Focus: Newsmaker: Václav Havel". The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS, broadcast 16 May 1997. Retrieved 21 December 2007. (NewsHour transcript.)

Biographies
 Keane, John. Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts. New York: Basic Books, 2000. . (A sample chapter [in HTML and PDF formats] is linked on the author's website, "Books" .)
 Kriseová, Eda. Václav Havel. Trans. Caleb Crain. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. .
 Pontuso, James F. Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. .
 Rocamora, Carol. Acts of Courage. New York: Smith & Kraus, 2004. .
 Symynkywicz, Jeffrey. Václav Havel and the Velvet Revolution. Parsippany, New Jersey: Dillon Press, 1995. .
 Williams, Kieran. Václav Havel. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. ISBN 978-1-78023-665-0.

External links

 Václav Havel Official website
 Václav Havel Library, Prague
 Knihovna Vaclava Havla (Vaclav Havel Library) at Google Cultural Institute
 Encyclopædia Britannica's biography of Václav Havel
 Watch Citizen Havel, a film about Václav Havel, at www.dafilms.com

 Václav Havel archive from The New York Review of Books
 Havel at Columbia: Bibliography: Human Rights Archive
 Radio Prague's detailed account of Havel's life
 Bio of Václav Havel
 New York Times obit
 The Havel Festival
 The Dagmar and Václav Havel Foundation
 Last interview, given to The European Strategist
 Václav Havel Freedom Collection interview

1936 births
2011 deaths
20th-century Czech dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Czech philosophers
20th-century Czech poets
20th-century Czech politicians
20th-century Czech writers
20th-century essayists
20th-century letter writers
20th-century memoirists
20th-century non-fiction writers
21st-century Czech dramatists and playwrights
21st-century Czech people
21st-century Czech poets
21st-century Czech politicians
21st-century Czech writers
21st-century essayists
21st-century memoirists
21st-century non-fiction writers
Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by Czechoslovakia
Anti-consumerists
Autobiographers
Candidates in the 1993 Czech presidential election
Candidates in the 1998 Czech presidential election
Charter 77 signatories
Civic Democratic Alliance presidential candidates
Civic Democratic Party (Czech Republic) presidential candidates
Civic Forum politicians
Club of Rome members
Collars of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
Collars of the Order of the Liberator General San Martin
Collars of the Order of the White Lion
Columbia University fellows
Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Companions of the Order of Canada
Constructed language creators
Critics of postmodernism
Czech activists
Czech anti-communists
Czech children's writers
Czech critics
Czech environmentalists
Czech essayists
Czech film directors
Czech humanitarians
Czech literary historians
Czech male dramatists and playwrights
Czech male poets
Czech non-fiction writers
Czech philosophers
Czech political philosophers
Czech political writers
Czech prisoners and detainees
Czech satirists
Czech Social Democratic Party presidential candidates
Czech surrealist writers
Czech Technical University in Prague alumni
Czech writers
Czechoslovak democracy activists
Czechoslovak dissidents
Czechoslovak military personnel
Czechoslovak prisoners and detainees
Direct democracy activists
Environmental philosophers
Environmental writers
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Film directors from Prague
Grand Collars of the Order of Liberty
Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour
Grand Crosses of the Order of Vytautas the Great
Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Grand Crosses with Chain of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (civil)
Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
International Simón Bolívar Prize recipients
KDU-ČSL presidential candidates
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
Absurdist writers
Literacy and society theorists
Literary theorists
Magic realism writers
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Olof Palme Prize laureates
People of the Cold War
People of the Velvet Revolution
Philosophers of art
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of education
Philosophers of history
Philosophers of literature
Philosophers of social science
Philosophers of war
Philosophy writers
Political prisoners
Politicians from Prague
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Presidents of Czechoslovakia
Presidents of the Czech Republic
Recipients of St. George's Order of Victory
Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art
Recipients of the Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana
Recipients of the Gandhi Peace Prize
Recipients of the Medal of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay
Recipients of the Order of Brilliant Star
Recipients of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise
Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)
Recipients of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 1st class
Recipients of the Thalia Award
Social philosophers
Sustainability advocates
Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre theorists
Theatrologists
Theorists on Western civilization
Writers about activism and social change
Writers about communism
Writers about globalization
Writers about theatre
Writers from Prague
Writers of historical fiction set in the modern age
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague alumni

Václav Havel


A dip or dipping sauce is a common condiment for many types of food.  Dips are used to add flavor to a food, such as pita bread, dumplings, crackers, cut-up raw vegetables, fruits, seafood, cubed pieces of meat and cheese, potato chips, tortilla chips, falafel, and sometimes even whole sandwiches.

Dips have many forms and are eaten all over the world. People have been using sauces for dipping for thousands of years.

References

Condiments

Dipping sauce


Isomerization is a thing that happens to molecules and parts of molecules.

Isomerization is when a molecule or part of a molecule changes shape but still has the same number of each kind of atom.  The atoms change places, but they do not go away.  No new atoms come.

For example, when a ketose group changes to an aldose group, that is isomerization because both groups are -C2H3O2.  They have two carbon atoms, three hydrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms.  In the ketose group, the first carbon has a double bond to an oxygen and a single bond to the other carbon.  In the aldose group, the second carbon has the double bond to the oxygen, and the hydrogen atoms are in different places.  But they both have the same number of each kind of atom.

References

Chemistry

Isomerization


The British International School Shanghai Puxi  () is an international school in Minhang, Shanghai, China which opened in 2004.

The British International School Shanghai Puxi follows the National Curriculum of England and Wales, the International General Certificate of Secondary Education and the IB Diploma Programme at a secondary level.

History

The school was founded in 2004 and is part of the Nord Anglia Education's group of schools. Nord Anglia Education owns and operates 43 international schools around the world in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and America.

Campus and location

The school began with one campus building in 2004 and a new secondary building was opened on a nearby site in 2008. This was followed by a new secondary campus, built alongside the original school building, which was opened in 2011 by Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

The campus is located in the Puxi side of Shanghai, in the Huacao area, a expatriate residential area.

Facilities include
Classrooms for Early Years, primary and secondary students
Music technology classrooms and recording studios
Music practice rooms
Primary and secondary science laboratories
Black box drama studio
Two theatres
Primary and Secondary Learning Resource Centres (Libraries)
2 indoor gymnasiums
Tennis courts
25-metre swimming pool in the secondary school
Smaller primary school swimming pool
Full size football pitch and athletics track turfed with astroturf
Outdoor play area

Key stages and school structure
The school follows the British Key Stage System.

Extra-curricular activities

The school offers over after-school activities across the ECA and BISCAP (British International School Community Activity Programme) programmes. The main difference between ECAs and BISCAPs is that BISCAPs are not free.

ECAs include a range of sport, dance, drama, science, gardening, exam revision, martial arts, a range of music groups and many more.

BISCAP is an additional programme which brings in external coaches to run early morning, after school, evening and weekend sessions in music, sport, art and drama.

The school is also home to China Elite Tennis Academy (CETA)  who hold training sessions on campus.

Accreditations
The British International School Shanghai Puxi is accredited to offer the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGSCE).

The school is also an accredited examination centre for the ABRSM, HSK, Cambridge International Examinations Centre (CIEC),

The school is accredited the Association of China and Mongolia International Schools (ACAMIS), the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA), EdExcel Examination Board, Shanghai International Schools association (SISA)

Community

The school has a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) which organises social events during the school year including the annual Welcome Back Party, the Christmas Fair and the International Food Evening. They also have a New Parent Programme who organise events and information sessions for new families to the school.

The school's Room Parent network is a popular way for parents to get involved in school life, with one Room Parent responsible for one particular class. Room Parents provide information to the parents from the class teacher. They also help to organise volunteers needed for reading, as well as helping to arrange coffee mornings or other activities for parents to socialise and get to know one another.

References

External links
 BISS Puxi Campus
 FOBISIA
 ACAMIS
 COBIS
 Greater Hongqiao Guide

British international schools in Shanghai
International Baccalaureate schools in China
Private schools in Shanghai
Minhang District
Educational institutions established in 2004
2004 establishments in China

The British International School Shanghai, Puxi Campus


Spring Garden is a neighborhood in central Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, bordering Center City on the north.  Spring Garden is a neighborhood that combines diverse residential neighborhoods and significant cultural attractions.  The residential areas on the north side of the neighborhood (North of Spring Garden Street) are composed mostly of brick and brownstone three-story townhouses built during the mid-to-late 19th century.  The houses include townhouses in the Italianate style, Second Empire, Queen Anne, and Venetian Gothic.  Many streets (including Green Street and Spring Garden Street) include "terraced" set ups, which include a small gardened plot, often raised, in front of the house.  The residential areas to the south are dominated by taller, multi-family buildings built during the 20th century. The museum area, also to the south of Spring Garden Street, includes the Rodin Museum, the Central Library of Philadelphia, and the Barnes Museum. Before consolidation of Philadelphia, Spring Garden was a district of Philadelphia County.

Boundaries
Finkel defines Spring Garden as "North of Benjamin Franklin Parkway to Fairmount Avenue, Broad Street to Schuylkill River." The Philadelphia Information Locator Service list (augmented from the Finkel 1995 list), repeats Finkel's definition of the neighborhood's boundaries. One qualification that should be added is that this definition would have Spring Garden as extending deep into Center City, nearly all the way to City Hall. The other boundary that most would agree Finkel omitted is Vine Street.

The Spring Garden Civic Association limits its purview to only the northern half of the above definition, as "between Spring Garden Street and Fairmount Avenue and between Broad Street and Pennsylvania Avenue/Fairmount Park." The sub-neighborhood of Baldwin Park occupies the area between Spring Garden Street and Vine Street and between Broad Street and the Schuylkill River. The neighborhood is named after the centrally located Matthias Baldwin Park.

The neighborhood's main arterial road is Spring Garden Street, running east to west.

Demographics

Spring Garden is within the 19130 ZIP code, which also includes Fairmount and Francisville.  The 2000 census reported that the population within the 19130 ZIP code is 22,252.  The racial composition of Spring Garden was 60% white, 30% African American, 3% Asian, and 7% Hispanic.
Ten years later, the population of the 19130 ZIP code had increased by 10% to 24,870, an increase in population of 2,618, with a racial composition of 68.1% white, 21.4% black, and 5.6% Asian.

Before the neighborhood was incorporated into the city of Philadelphia in 1854, the city of Spring Garden peaked at ninth on the list of the largest cities in the United States during the 1850 Census.

History

Spring Garden appears in Varie's map of 1796 as a small settlement between Vine Street and Buttonwood Lane and a point on a line with Seventh Street, and extending as far west as Ridge Road. There was a street (now known as Franklin Street) which ran north from Vine Street across Callowhill, and stopped opposite a house half-way between Callowhill, and Buttonwood Lane. The Street now known as Eighth Street (then called Garden Street) ran through the centre of the district, and the street now called Darien, formally Garden Street (then called Spring Street) ran from Vine to Buttonwood.

The neighborhood was originally part of the Northern Liberties, a township to the north of the city (which at that time was distinct from the other townships and municipalities within the County of Philadelphia). It was originally part of a manor (named Spingettsbury Farm) established by William Penn.  During the late 1700s, the manor was split into two estates---"Bush Hill" (located to the east of 19th Street) and "The Hills" (located to the west of 19th Street).  In the early 1800s, the estates were subdivided, and from 1850 to 1876, housing was developed in alignment with the city grid that had originally been established by William Penn.

The neighborhood name is quite old, going back many decades before Philadelphia's Act of Consolidation, when the area was part of the Spring Garden District of Philadelphia County, not yet part of the city. Finkel gives 1808 as the year it first appears in the written sources that he and his contributors consulted. The Philadelphia Information Locator Service list (augmented from the Finkel 1995 list), while repeating Finkel's definition of the neighborhood's boundaries, gives 1813 as the earliest year of use.

The district was incorporated March 22, 1813, as "the Commissioners and Inhabitants of the district of Spring Garden." The original boundaries were Vine Street on the south; the middle of Hickory Lane (afterwards Coates Street, now Fairmount Avenue) on the north; Broad Street on; the west, and the middle of Sixth Street on; the east.

On March 21, 1827, the district was enlarged by adding; that part of Penn Township beginning at the middle of Sixth Street to a point 210 feet north of the north side of Poplar Lane; thence northwest, parallel to the lane, at a distance of 200 feet from the latter, to the middle of Broad Street; thence parallel with Vine Street to the Schuylkill River.

The meaning of this was, that whilst the upper boundary of the district took a course from Sixth Street west by north to Broad Street, the line beyond the latter ran due east and west to the Schuylkill. It extended by the course of that river to Vine Street, and along the latter to Broad, where it met the old district line. By this addition the size of Spring Garden was more than doubled. At the time of consolidation the area of the district was estimated to be 1100 acres (4.5 km2).The former diagonal street York Avenue, a short section of which survives in Center City, formerly ran from Spring Garden to Fifth Street near Market Street and during the mid 19th century served as a major commuter route for residents of the Spring Garden District who worked in what was then the central business district of Philadelphia.

At the time of its consolidation in 1854, it was one of the ten largest cities in the United States.

The neighborhood was once home to significant heavy industry. Many blocks of the neighborhood were once covered by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Various Bement-related machine tool firms (William Bement & Son; Bement, Miles & Co; and then Niles-Bement-Pond) occupied the site where the Barnes Foundation museum now stands.

Infrastructure and government

City government
The Spring Garden neighborhood is in the 15th Ward and the 8th Ward.  The 8th Ward leaders in 2011 are Stephanie Singer (D) and Alber Doering (R); the 15th Ward leaders are William Greenlee (D) and Jason Brehouse (R).  Generally, the northern part of Spring Garden (Spring Garden Street and north) is in the 15th Ward; the southern part is in the 8th Ward.

Spring Garden is within the 5th City Council District. , the 5th district is served by Councilman Darrell Clarke, who is the council's president.

State government
The Spring Garden neighborhood is in the 182d State House District and the 195th State House District.  Generally, the northern part of Spring Garden (Spring Garden Street and north; roughly co-terminous with the portions of Spring Garden in the 15th Ward) is in the 195th State House District.  In 2011, the representative from the 195th house district was Michelle F. Brownlee.  Generally, the southern part of Spring Garden (the portion in the 8th Ward) is in the 182d State House District.  In 2011, the representative from the 182d house district is Babette Josephs.

The Spring Garden neighborhood is in the 1st State Senate District.  Since 2020, the State Senator is Nikil Saval.

Community association
Spring Garden is represented by the Spring Garden Civic Association.  The Civic Association performs neighborhood maintenance services, such as occasional street sweeping and tree planting.  Further, much of the neighborhood is included in The Spring Garden Historic District, intended to preserve the historic architecture of the neighborhood.

Parks
The neighborhood includes the Roberto Clemente Playground, which was renovated in 2011 and includes a "sprayground."  The neighborhood also includes "The Spring Gardens" community garden which covers an entire city block.  The block was cleared in 1996 and was turned into a community garden composed of over 180 garden plots that are cared for by neighborhood families.

Transportation

Automobile
As mentioned above, the main arterial road through Spring Garden is Spring Garden Street, which runs east and west.  The neighborhood is bounded on the east by Broad Street, which runs north and south.  The neighborhood is also bounded by Vine Street on the south, which contains an entrance to Interstate 676.  On the west, the neighborhood is bounded by the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Public transportation
Spring Garden is served by several public transportation routes of SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

Despite the neighborhood's importance to American railway history, most of its rail infrastructure is gone. The Philadelphia and Reading right-of-way, cut down below street level, is abandoned to woods in one portion and serves as parking in another.

Several bus routes and a subway route connect the neighborhood to Center City and other city neighborhoods.

Broad Street subway
On the east side of the neighborhood, the subway connects the neighborhood to North Philadelphia (for example, Temple University), City Hall, Walnut Street, and the Sports Complex.  The Spring Garden station, refurbished in 2011, is located at Broad Street and Spring Garden Street.

Bus route 33
The 33 bus route runs south through the neighborhood on 19th Street. It runs along Market eastward to Penn's Landing.  The 33 returns, running west along John F. Kennedy Boulevard and north through the Spring Garden neighborhood on 20th Street.

During rush hour, the 33 south-bound runs every 5–8 minutes and takes about 10–12 minutes from 20th and Spring Garden to 16th and Market.  Likewise, during rush hour, the 33 runs north-bound every 5–8 minutes and takes about 12–14 minutes to get from 15th & John F. Kennedy Boulevard to 20th & Spring Garden.

Bus route 2
The 2 bus route runs south through the Spring Garden neighborhood on 17th Street.  It continues south on 17th through Center City to South Philadelphia at Oregon Station.  The 2 bus route returns north from South Philadelphia, through Center City, on 16th Street.

During rush hour, the 2 south bound runs every 10–13 minutes and takes 9–11 minutes to get from 17th and Spring Garden to 17th and Market.  Likewise, during rush hour, the 2 runs north-bound every 11–13 minutes and takes about 10–13 minutes to get from 16th and Market to 16th and Spring Garden.

Bus route 7
The 7 bus route runs south along 23rd Street from Brown Street to Spring Garden Street, where it turns southeast on Pennsylvania Avenue to 21st Street. From there, it heads south into Center City.  At Market Street, it heads west to 23rd Street and then goes into South Philadelphia along 23rd.

Bus route 48
The 48 bus route runs south along 23rd Street from Brown Street to Spring Garden Street, where it turns southeast on Pennsylvania Avenue to 21st Street.  From there, it heads south into Center City.  At Market Street, it heads east along Market to Front Street.  Heading out of Center City, the 48 runs west bound along Arch Street to 22nd Street, where it turns north. Northbound, the 48 travels through the neighborhood on 22nd, crossing Spring Garden Street and Fairmount Avenue.

During rush hour, the 48 south bound runs every 4–6 minutes and takes 9–11 minutes to get from 23rd and Spring Garden to 16th and Market.  Likewise, during rush hour, the 48 runs north-bound every 7–8 minutes and takes about 10–13 minutes to get from 22nd and Arch to 22nd and Spring Garden.

Bus route 32
The 32 bus route runs southeast along Pennsylvania Avenue, crossing Fairmount Avenue and Spring Garden Street.  At Hamilton Street, it heads east to 21st Street.  From there, it heads south into Center City.  At Market Street, it heads east along Market to Broad Street.  From there it heads south along Broad Street to Washington Street, where it turns around.  Heading north out of Center City, the 32 runs north bound along Broad Street, goes counter-clockwise around City Hall, and then heads east on John F. Kennedy Boulevard to 18th Street, where it turns north, returning to the Spring Garden neighborhood on its southern and western borders.

During rush hour, the 32 south bound runs every 10–11 minutes and takes 9–11 minutes to get from Pennsylvania Avenue and Spring Garden to 15th and Market.  Likewise, during rush hour, the 32 runs north-bound every 10–13 minutes and takes about 10–13 minutes to get from 15th and John F. Kennedy Boulevard to Pennsylvania Avenue and Spring Garden Street.

Bus route 43
The 43 bus route runs east and west along Spring Garden Street.  Eastbound, the bus takes Spring Garden to Front Street and Delaware Avenue (near the Festival Pier).  From there, it heads northbound to Fishtown and Port Richmond.  Westbound, the 43 runs along Spring Garden, crosses the Schulykill to Lancaster Avenue, then north on Lancaster Avenue to Belmont Avenue in Parkside.

Education

Public schools
Spring Garden is in the School District of Philadelphia.

Spring Garden is located in the Laura Wheeler Waring Elementary School catchment, although a significant portion of the neighborhood's elementary-school children who attend public schools attend schools outside the catchment such as Albert M. Greenfield Elementary School.  Spring Garden is the home of the Benjamin Franklin High School and Franklin Learning Center, formerly William Penn High School for Girls. Spring Garden is also home of one of the top-ranked public high schools in the city and state, the Julia R. Masterman School at 1699 Spring Garden Street.  Although students are, generally, automatically eligible to attend the neighborhood school, they may also attend other Philadelphia Schools (academic magnet schools, performing arts schools, and other out-of-catchment schools) through the school district's Voluntary Transfer Program.

Private schools
Spring Garden is the home of the J. W. Hallahan Catholic Girls High School.  For boys, the Roman Catholic High School is just outside the neighborhood, on the east side of Broad Street.  Spring Garden is also the home of the St. Francis Xavier School, a Catholic lower- and middle-school.

Churches
Spring Garden is home to several churches, including St. Andrew's Church (the only Lithuanian-Catholic parish in the city) on 19th and Wallace, St. Francis Xavier Church, at 24th and Green Streets, Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, at 22nd and Mount Vernon Streets, Greater Canaan Church of God in Christ, at 21st and Spring Garden, United for Christ Ministries on 21st Street, and Enon Baptist Church at 19th and Green Streets.

See also

References

Bibliography

External links

Spring Garden Civic Association
Historic Photos
2601 Parkway History

Neighborhoods in Philadelphia
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
National Register of Historic Places in Philadelphia
Irish-American neighborhoods
Houses in Philadelphia
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania

Spring Garden, Philadelphia


Vladimir Ivir MVO (November 1, 1934, Zagreb – February 21, 2011, Zagreb) was a Croatian linguist, lexicographer and translation scholar. He was the first Croatian theoretician of translation, highly appreciated among the European linguists.

Ivir's early interest was in English syntax. During his postgraduate research at University College London in 1962/63, under the supervision of Randolph Quirk, he completed a thesis on predicative adjectives. During his time in London, Ivir became interested in the "linguistic revolution" stemming from the ideas of Noam Chomsky, and, upon returning home, became the first Croatian linguist to write an outline of transformational linguistics.

He was the author of many Croatian textbooks for high schools, for learning English, and for secondary school programs for translators. In 2001 his home Faculty has established postgraduate study of Translatorship, based on Ivir's ideas and programs.

He was named Emeritus Professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, upon his retirement in 2004.

In Croatia, he became widely known as a person that interpreted many important events live, but is especially remembered for his simultaneous translation of the landing on the Moon in 1969. Ivir was also the official translator at the reception in Banski dvori during US President Richard Nixon's visit to Zagreb in 1970.

Selected publications
 (1982) A contrastive analysis of English adjectives and their Serbo-Croatian correspondents (LCCN 94147360)
 (1991) Languages in Contact and Contrast: Essays in Contact Linguistics (= Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 54), Editor, with Damir Kalogjera ()
 (1993) Croatian-English Dictionary of Business & Government ()
 (1993) Hrvatsko-engleski poslovno-upravni rječnik (LCCN 94124627)
 (2000) Englesko-hrvatski poslovni rječnik (ed. Višnja Špiljak, Vladimir Ivir), Masmedia, Zagreb, 2000.,
 (2007) Vladimir Ivir, Ilirjana Shehu: Hrvatsko-englesko-albanski rječnik poslovno administrativnog nazivlja s albansko-hrvatskim indeksom, Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 2007.,
 (2007) Hrvatsko-engleski rječnik poslovno-administrativnog nazivlja, 2007.

References

Sources

1934 births
Scientists from Zagreb
Academic staff of the University of Zagreb
Linguists from Croatia
Croatian lexicographers
Croatian translators
Members of the Royal Victorian Order
2011 deaths
20th-century translators

Vladimir Ivir


Carbondale is an unincorporated community in Liberty Township, Warren County, in the U.S. state of Indiana.

History
Carbondale was known as Clark's Cross Roads at least as early as 1846; later it was called Free Hall.  The discovery of coal in the town's vicinity led to the current name being applied in 1873.  The first house was built here in 1854 by John Thompson; another was built the next year by Andrew Brier, and a church was constructed in 1867.

A post office was established in 1855 under the name Clark's Cross Roads, and was discontinued in 1858. In 1873, another post office was established with the name Carbondale but was also discontinued, in 1904.

Geography
Carbondale is located just east of the intersection of U.S. Route 41 and State Road 63, about 6 miles north-northwest of the county seat of Williamsport.  The scenic Big Pine Creek flows about a mile and a half east of town.

References

Unincorporated communities in Indiana
Unincorporated communities in Warren County, Indiana

Carbondale, Indiana


Mobile phone use while driving is common but it is considered dangerous due to its potential for causing distracted driving and subsequent crashes. Due to the number of crashes that are related to conducting calls on a phone and texting while driving, some jurisdictions have made the use of calling on a phone while driving illegal in an attempt to curb the practice, with varying levels of efficacy. Many jurisdictions have enacted laws making handheld mobile phone use illegal. Many jurisdictions allow use of a hands-free device. Driving while using a hands-free device has been found by some studies to provide little to no benefit versus holding the device itself and carrying on a conversation. In some cases restrictions are directed only at minors, those who are newly qualified license holders (particularly those of a younger age), or to drivers in school zones. In addition to voice calling, activities such as texting while driving, web browsing, playing video games, or phone use in general may also increase the risk of a crash.

In the United States, automobile crashes due to distracted driving are increasing even after the passage of laws intended to lessen such use while driving. Using a cell phone while driving increases the driver's risk of causing a crash. Drivers can become distracted, decreasing the driver's awareness on the road, leading to more car crashes. When drivers talk on cell phones the risk of an automobile crash resulting in hospitalization is four times higher than when not talking on a cell phone. Drivers who text when behind the wheel are twenty-three times more likely to have an automobile crash. One out of every four automobile crashes in the United States are caused by texting while driving.

Studies

Prevalence

The Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), the provincial automobile insurance association in Quebec, conducted a study on driving and cellphones in 2003. Questionnaires were sent to 175,000 drivers and analysis was done on the 36,078 who responded. The questionnaire asked about driving habits, risk exposure, collisions over the past 24 months, socio-demographic information, and cell phone use. Questionnaires were supported with data from cell phone companies and crash records held by police. The study found that the overall relative risk (RR) of having a crash for cell phone users when compared to non-cell phone users averaged 1.38 across all groups. When adjusted for distance driven per year and other crash risk exposures, RR was 1.11 for men and 1.21 for women. They also found that increased cell phone use correlated with an increase in RR. When the same data were reanalyzed using a Bayesian approach, the calculated RR of 0.78 for those making less than 1 call/day and 2.27 for those with more than 7 calls/day was similar to cohort analysis. When the data were reanalyzed using case-crossover analysis, RR was calculated at a much higher 5.13. The authors expressed concern that misclassification of phone call and cell phone usage due to reporting errors of the exact time of the collisions was a major source of bias with all case-crossover analysis of this issue.

In March 2011, the US insurance company State Farm Insurance announced the results of a study which showed 19% of drivers surveyed accessed the Internet on a smart phone while driving. In September 2010, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a report on distracted driving fatalities for 2009. The NHTSA considers distracted driving to include some of the following as distractions: other occupants in the car, eating, drinking, smoking, adjusting radio, adjusting environmental control, reaching for object in car, and cell phone use. In 2009 in the US, there was a reported 5,474 people killed by distracted drivers. Of those, 995 were considered to be killed by drivers distracted by cell phones. The report does not state whether this under- or overrepresents the level of cell phone use amongst drivers, and whether there is a causal relationship.

A 2003 study of US crash data states that driver inattention is estimated to be a factor in 25% to 50% of all police-reported crashes. Driver distraction, a sub-category of inattention, has been estimated to be a contributing factor in 8% to 13% of all crashes. Of distraction-related crashes, cell phone use may range from 1.5 to 5% of contributing factors. However, large unknowns in each category may increase the inaccuracy of these estimates. A 2001 study sponsored by the American Automobile Association recorded "Unknown Driver Attention Status" for 41.5% of crashes, and "Unknown Distraction" in 8.6% of all distraction related crashes. According to NHTSA, "There is clearly inadequate reporting of crashes".

Currently, being distracted by an "outside person, object, event" (commonly known as "rubbernecking") is the most reported cause of distraction-related crashes, followed by "adjusting radio/cassette/CD". "Using/dialing cell phone" is eighth. A 2003 study by the University of Utah psychology department measured response time, following distance, and driving speed of a control group, subjects at the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) limit of 0.08%, and subjects involved in cell phone conversations. As the study notes; "... this is the third in a series of studies that we have conducted evaluating the effects of cell phone use on driving using the car following procedure (see also Strayer & Drews, 2004; and Strayer et al., 2003). Across these three studies, 120 participants performed in both baseline and cell phone conditions. Two of the participants in our studies were involved in a crash in baseline conditions, whereas 10 participants were involved in a crash when they were conversing on a cell phone." However, no drunk driver had a crash in any test. After controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, the study concluded that cell phone drivers exhibited greater impairment than drunk drivers.

Meta-analyses
A 2005 review by the Hawaii House of Representatives entitled "Cell Phone Use and Motor Vehicle Collisions: A Review of the Studies" contains an analysis of studies on cell phone/motor vehicle crash causality.  A key finding was that: "No studies were found that directly address and resolve the issue of whether a
causal relation exists between cellular telephone use while operating a motor vehicle and motor vehicle collisions." Meta-analysis by the Canadian Automobile Association and the University of Illinois found that response time while using both hands-free and hand-held phones was approximately 0.5 standard deviations higher than normal driving (i.e. an average driver, while talking on a cell phone, has response times of a driver in roughly the 40th percent

Arguments from increase in mobile subscription

In the US, the number of cell phone subscribers has increased by 1,262.4% between the years 1985-2008. In approximately the same period the number of crashes has fallen by 0.9% (1995–2009) and the number of fatal crashes fallen by 6.2%. It has been argued that these statistics contradict the claims that mobile use impairs driving performance. Similarly, a 2010 study from the Highway Loss Data Institute published in February 2010 reviewed auto claims from three key states along with Washington, D.C., prior to cell phone bans while driving and then after.  The study found no reduction in crashes, despite a 41% to 76% reduction in the use of cell phones while driving after the ban was enacted.

Handsfree device
Driving while using a handsfree cellular device is not safer than using a hand held cell phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies, epidemiological, simulation, and meta-analysis. The increased cognitive workload involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk.  For example, a Carnegie Mellon University study found that merely listening to somebody speak on a phone caused a 37% drop in activity in the parietal lobe, where spatial tasks are managed.

The United Kingdom
In the UK using a mobile phone while driving has been illegal since 2003, unless it is in a handsfree kit. The penalty originally started with a £30 ($40) fine which later became a fine of £60 ($80) plus 3 penalty points in 2006, then £100 ($134) and 3 points in 2013.  The 2013 fine increase proved ineffective at stopping motorists from using their phones while driving. The percentage of drivers admitting to using their phones while on the road increased from 8% in 2014 to 31% in 2016, an increase of 23% in two years. In the same year statistics revealed that only 30,000 drivers were given a Fixed penalty notice (FPN) for the offence, compared to 123,000 in 2011. The increased percentage of people using their phones can be attributed in part to the growing affordability of smartphones. Increased smartphone sales and lack of enforcement created a situation where it began to be considered acceptable to use a phone while driving, even though it had been illegal for over 13 years.

In 2017 the Department of transport (DfT) decided to increase the penalties to a £200 ($268) fine with 6 penalty points as a result of the growing acceptance of phone use while driving. This would mean that motorists who perhaps already had 6 points on their driving licence, would be disqualified from driving for 6 months if caught. The biggest detriment would be for newly qualified drivers who have passed their driving tests within the last two years. New drivers have conditions on their licence for two years after passing their test in the UK, with the most significant being that if they gain 6 penalty points on their licence they have to fully retake their driving test. Licence holders after 2 years have 12 points until licence disqualification in most circumstances rather than a ban/retest. The decision to make the penalty 6 points rather than 4 or 5 was likely made to deter young/new drivers from using their phones while driving, as they were observed to be one of the largest age groups committing the offence. A year after the stricter law came in, a smaller 23% of motorists had admitted to using a phone while driving, an 8% reduction compared to 2 years ago. Studies will continue to monitor whether or not this habit persist among motorists as it has done throughout the past, while the British government aims to make picking up your phone as socially unacceptable as drink driving.

Comparisons with passenger conversations
The scientific literature is mixed on the dangers of talking on a cell phone versus those of talking with a passenger. The common conception is that passengers are able to better regulate conversation based on the perceived level of danger, therefore the risk is negligible.  A study by a University of South Carolina psychology researcher featured in the journal, Experimental Psychology, found that planning to speak and speaking put far more demands on the brain's resources than listening. Measurement of attention levels showed that subjects were four times more distracted while preparing to speak or speaking than when they were listening. The Accident Research Unit at the University of Nottingham found that the number of utterances was usually higher for mobile calls when compared to blindfolded and non-blindfolded passengers across various driving conditions. The number of questions asked averaged slightly higher for mobile phone conversations, although results were not constant across road types and largely influenced by a large number of questions on the urban roads.

A 2004 simulation study that compared passenger and cell-phone conversations concluded that the driver performs better when conversing with a passenger because the traffic and driving task become part of the conversation. Drivers holding conversations on cell phones were four times more likely to miss the highway exit than those with passengers, and drivers conversing with passengers showed no statistically significant difference from lone drivers in the simulator. A study led by Andrew Parkes at the Transport Research Laboratory, also with a driving simulator, concluded that hands-free phone conversations impair driving performance more than other common in-vehicle distractions such as passenger conversations. However, some have criticized the use of simulation studies to measure the risk of cell-phone use while driving since the studies may be impacted by the Hawthorne effect.

In contrast, the University of Illinois meta-analysis concluded that passenger conversations were just as costly to driving performance as cell phone ones. AAA ranks passengers as the third most reported cause of distraction-related crashes at 11%, compared to 1.5% for cellular telephones. A simulation study funded by the American Transportation Research Board concluded that driving events that require urgent responses may be influenced by in-vehicle conversations, and that there is little practical evidence that passengers adjusted their conversations to changes in the traffic. It concluded that drivers' training should address the hazards of both mobile phone and passenger conversations.

Texting

The scientific literature on the dangers of driving while sending a text message from a mobile phone, or texting while driving, is limited. A simulation study at the Monash University Accident Research Centre has provided strong evidence that both retrieving and, in particular, sending text messages has a detrimental effect on a number of critical driving tasks. Specifically, negative effects were seen in detecting and responding correctly to road signs, detecting hazards, time spent with eyes off the road, and (only for sending text messages) lateral position. Surprisingly, mean speed, speed variability, lateral position when receiving text messages, and following distance showed no difference.

The low number of scientific studies may be indicative of a general assumption that if talking on a mobile phone increases risk, then texting also increases risk, and probably more so. Market research by Pinger, a company selling a voice-based alternative to texting reported that 89% of US adults think that text messaging while driving is "distracting, dangerous and should be outlawed." The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released polling data in 2009 that showed 87% of people consider texting and e-mailing while driving a "very serious" safety threat, almost equivalent to the 90% of those polled who consider drunk driving a threat. Despite the acknowledgement of the dangers of texting behind the wheel, about half of drivers 16 to 24 say they have texted while driving, compared with 22% of drivers 35 to 44.

Texting while driving received greater attention in the late 2000s, corresponding to a rise in the number of text messages being sent. Over a year approximately 2,000 teens die from texting while driving. Texting while driving attracted interest in the media after several highly publicized car crashes were caused by texting drivers, including a May 2009 incident involving a Boston trolley car driver who crashed while texting his girlfriend. Texting was blamed in the 2008 Chatsworth train collision which killed 25 passengers. Investigations revealed that the engineer of that train had sent 45 text messages while operating.

In a 2011 study it was reported that over 90% of college students surveyed text (initiate, reply or read) while driving. On July 27, 2009, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released preliminary findings of their study of driver distraction in commercial vehicles. Two studies, comprising about 200 long-haul trucks driving 3 million combined miles, used video cameras to observe the drivers and road; researchers observed "4,452 safety-critical events, which includes crashes, near-crashes, crash-relevant conflicts, and unintended lane deviations." 81% of the safety-critical events had some type of driver distraction. Text messaging had the greatest relative risk, with drivers being 23 times more likely to experience a safety-critical event when texting. The study also found that drivers typically take their eyes off the forward roadway for an average of four out of six seconds when texting, and an average of 4.6 out of the six seconds surrounding safety-critical events.

Internet surfing
In 2013 it was reported that, according to a national survey in the US, the number of drivers who reported using their cellphones to access the internet while driving had risen to nearly one of four.

Intervention
A study conducted by the University of Vienna using the theory of planned behavior identified two key determinants of high-level mobile phone use. Those two factors, subjective norm (i.e., perceived social norms) and self-identity (i.e., the degree to which individuals see mobile phones as a part of their self), might be promising targets for the development of persuasive strategies and other interventions aimed at reducing inappropriate and problematic use of mobile phones, such as using mobile phones while driving.

Public economics

Social economic costs
Mobile phone use while driving has economic impacts. Using a mobile phone while driving can definitely have economic costs to the driver using the phone (ex. paying for costs of collision, losing pay if late to work from distracted driving, etc.). More interesting however is how a driver's mobile phone use while driving can have external effects on both other drivers' safety and other drivers' economic property. Specifically, mobile phone use while driving produces negative consumption externalities where the consumer's (driver's) use of the phone while driving can reduce the well-being of others who are not paid by the consumer (i.e. outside the market mechanism). Mobile phone use can cause drivers to take their eyes off the road, minds off the road, and hands off the steering wheel. These consumer distractions can negatively affect others in many ways such as collision or even fatality due to consumer distraction, congestion on the road due to slower driving speeds because of multitasking, and tardiness of those affected by the externality because of others' distracted driving. The negative consumption externalities produced from mobile phone use while driving not only affects others on the road but also causes economic inefficiencies. Externalities are a form of market failure where, by definition, the market fails to deliver an efficient outcome.

Figure 1 details the effects of this negative externality. In this case, the market quantity is too high where there are too many that use their mobile phone while driving. The socially optimal quantity (Q*) is thus lower than the market quantity (Q). To overcome this inefficiency, governments often must get involved and regulate price or quantity.

Legislation and social economic benefits
While there is no feasible way to ensure that driver's attention remains sufficiently focused on driving, there are ways that the government can intervene legislatively to discourage drivers from engaging in behaviors that potentially distract them from driving. In cases of a negative consumption externality such as mobile phone use while driving, the government will usually impose a ban by way of price burden, in this case a fine or ticket, in order to reduce the market quantity to a socially optimal quantity. An illustration of this intervention can be found below (Figure 2) where, in this case, the government has the ability to fine or ticket those who use a phone while driving in order to reduce the number of distracted drivers on the road. As illustrated, the market quantity (Q) of distracted driver's produced by mobile phone use while driving is too high and the socially optimal point for society is lower. Thus a ticket or some sort of price burden is put in place to reduce the market quantity to the socially optimal quantity (Q*).

The negative consumption externalities caused by mobile phone use while driving, as shown, has economic costs. Not only does mobile phone use while driving jeopardize safety for the driver, anyone in the car, or others on the road but it also produces economic costs to all parties involved. As shown, these costs are best managed with government intervention through policy or legislation changes. Ticketing is often the best choice as it affects only those who are caught performing the illegal act. Ticketing is another cost induced from mobile phone use and driving because ticketing laws for this act have only been put into place due to the large number of crashes caused by distracted drivers due to mobile phone use. Further, not only are the tickets costly to individuals who receive them but so is the price that must be paid to enforce the prohibition of mobile phone use while driving. Key to the success of a legislative measure is the ability to maintain and sustain them through enforcement or the perception of enforcement. Police officer and photo radar cameras are other costs that must be paid in order to reduce this externality.

Social economic benefits
While paying tickets may be an undesired cost to pay by those who are given the ticket, ticket payments can actually have positive impacts in reducing the externality (discussed above) and increasing the total welfare of society. Ticket revenue often goes to state or local needs. For example, revenue from tickets can be used to improve local/state infrastructure and public schooling.

The effects of ticketing this negative consumption externality of mobile phone use while driving can be seen below. The graph shows the implementation of a ticket as having the same effect of a pigouvian tax.

While this is the goal of the ticket, that is, to have the same effect of a pigouvian tax which is intended to correct an inefficient market outcome, and does so by being set equal to the social cost of the negative externalities, that us usually not the case of a ticket. Tickets only affect those who receive the ticket while a tax effects all. The graphs shows ticket implementation as having the same effect as a pigouvian tax. This is the ideal revenue brought in by ticketing as that is the price burden that will bring the socially optimal quantity. While this is ideal, this is very unlikely to happen through ticketing because, with ticketing, one must factor in the probability of someone receiving the ticket and multiple that probability by the price. The graph does not show this theoretical situation because the data of how often tickets are given for mobile phone use while driving is not conclusive.

While ticketing can be tricky to apply, the revenue brought in by ticket is a benefit to society as it can be used for local and state needs and will help reduce the externality.

Legislation

Crashes involving a driver being distracted by talking on a mobile phone have begun to be prosecuted as negligence similar to speeding. In the United Kingdom, from 1 March 2017, motorists who are caught using a hand-held mobile phone while driving will have six penalty points added to their license in addition to the fine of £200. This increase was introduced to try to stem the increase in drivers ignoring the law. Japan prohibits hand-held mobile phone or mobile device use while driving. New Zealand has banned hand held mobile phone use since 1 November 2009. Many states in the United States have banned texting on cell phones while driving. Some states allow for drivers to use a cell phone mount but some states do not. Illinois became the seventeenth U.S. state to enforce this law. As of July 2010, 30 states had banned texting while driving, with Kentucky becoming the most recent addition on July 15.

Public Health Law Research maintains a list of distracted driving laws in the United States. This database of laws provides a comprehensive view of the provisions of laws that restrict the use of mobile communication devices while driving for all 50 states and the District of Columbia between 1992, when first law was passed, through December 1, 2010. The dataset contains information on 22 dichotomous, continuous or categorical variables including, for example, activities regulated (e.g., texting versus talking, hands-free versus handheld), targeted populations, and exemptions.

In 2014, various state police forces in Australia have trialed cameras which have the ability to pick up errant drivers from more than  away. Police in Western Australia makes use of undercover motorcycles to keep an eye on other motorists and any offence will be recorded on the officer's helmet camera. Other countries with high levels of car crashes relating to distracted driving are also considering similar measures.

NSW road rules were changed on 1 December 2016 for P2 drivers. Learner, P1 and P2 drivers must not use mobile phones for any function while driving or riding or while stationary (at traffic lights). Drivers must be parked out of traffic to use their phones.

The Road Transport Legislation Amendment (Mobile Phones—P2 Licences) Regulation 2016 under the Road Transport Act 2013 enforces this new rule and the objects of this Regulation sought:
(a) to amend the Road Rules 2014 to extend the restriction on drivers who are holders of learner or provisional P1 licences from using a mobile phone while driving a vehicle (whether or not the mobile
phone is held by the driver) to include drivers who are holders of provisional P2 licences, and
(b) to make consequential amendme nts to the Road Transport (Driver Licensing) Regulation 2008.

This Regulation was made under the Road Transport Act 2013.

Prior to the introduction of this new law on 1 December 2016, only learner and P1 provisional licence-holders were barred from using mobile phones in any capacity while driving, as P2 drivers faced the same restrictions as other licence-holders.

List of countries with bans

Hand-held and hands-free
Countries where using either a hand-held or hands-free phone while driving is illegal:

  – Laws regarding cell phone use while driving are set state by state. While no state bans the use of all cell phones for all adult drivers of non-commercial vehicles at all times, many states ban all cell phone use by young drivers and/or commercial drivers. Many states have a combination of bans of texting and hand-held cell phone use. See Restrictions on cell phone use while driving in the United States for details.

Hand-held only

Countries where using a hand-held phone while driving is illegal:

: All states and territories.
 – Offenders will be penalised five demerit points with a $362 fine for illegally using their mobile phone, or $481 if detected in a school zone. During double demerit periods, such as Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Easter, drivers will be penalised ten demerit points.
 – The fine for using mobile while driving will cost $1,161 and 4 demerit points. If the driver caught twice within a year, they'll be fined with another $1,161 fine and 8 demerit points. This makes it one of the highest in the world.
 – The penalties if the driver is caught using a mobile phone whilst driving are 4 demerit points and a $555 fine. If the matter is heard at court, the fine for illegal mobile phone/device use can be as much as $1,849.
 – The fine for touching or holding a mobile phone while not in a cradle to make, receive or end a voice call is $500 and 3 demerit points. Creating, sending, or looking at a text, email, social media, photo, video or similar will incur a $1,000 fine and 4 demerit points.
 – The fine for using your device to make or receive calls is $498 and 3 demerit points. The fine for messaging, social networking, accessing apps or the internet is $612 and 4 demerit points.
 – Driving whilst using a mobile will cost the driver 3 demerit points and a $500 fine.
 – A driver will receive an expiation fee and three demerit points.
 – The fine for using mobile while driving will cost $390 and 3 demerit points.
 - Breaches of the law will be punished by a 100 € fixed penalty notice (Organmandat). If formal charges are issued, the relevant authority can impose a fine of up to 140 €.
 - According to the General Directorate of Traffic, those who commit the violation of using a hand-held cell phone while driving could face a fine of BD50 to BD500.
 - At present, the Road Traffic Amendment Act prohibits any person from driving a vehicle while at the same time holding, manipulating, talking on, or using a cellular phone, and anyone found guilty of violating this provision of the law faces a $2 000 fine, 18 months in jail or both.
 - Using a mobile phone behind the wheel is a punishable offence, a person can be fined €174.

 – Headphones and Bluetooth devices included.

 – Every province and territory except Nunavut:

 as of 1 January 2010
 as of July 15, 2010
 as of June 6, 2011
 as of 2003
 as of April 8, 2008
 as of 23 January 2010
 as of 1 October 2009

 as of January 1, 2010 (plus hands-free for 'new' drivers)
 as of January, 2012
 as of April 1, 2011

 – Prohibited in the Indian union: hand held units, hand-free units, reaching for the phone or looking for messages, etc. Strictly enforced in a few states like Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh.

 – Prohibited for any hand-held mobile device, either talking or texting, except in emergencies.

 as of May 1, 2008

 Provision for Rs 200 Npr. fine for each time caught using phone or wireless while driving. One can use after parking on safe place. Traffic Police are mainly based on Kathmandu, Pokhara, Biratnagar, Dharan, Damak and so on.

 - The penalty for using a hand-held mobile phone while driving is $150 and 20 demerit points.

 – Only in:
Islamabad
 (with implementation of Republic Act 10913, or the "Anti-Distracted Driving Act," from May 18, 2017)

 (Hands-free allowed provided that hands are not used to answer the call, i.e. voice control/auto-pickup)

 – Only in:
 – At least in:
The city of Montgomery
 – Statewide ban for drivers between 18 and 20, and all drivers in school zones and road construction areas. In addition:
The city of Fort Smith has a blanket ban.

 – No state law, but all counties have enacted distracted driving laws that make hand-held phone use illegal.

 – Drivers with learner's or intermediate licenses, regardless of age.

The city of Detroit
The city of Troy, Michigan

 – Blanket ban in state vehicles statewide & within the city of Albuquerque city limits.

 – The cities of San Antonio and Austin have a blanket ban effective January 1, 2015 for all hand-held mobile phones, MP3 players, and GPS navigators not permanently affixed to a motor vehicle (e.g. using a smart phone with a GPS navigator app) civil fines run up to $500.

See also

Behavioral modernity
Evolutionary mismatch
Passenger problem
Texting while driving
Death by GPS
List of selfie-related injuries and deaths

References

External links
Bad Bill to Ban Cell Phone Use While Driving Passes Senate
Cellular Phone Use While Driving: Risks and Benefits, a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (commissioned by AT&T Wireless)
Accident Research Unit, University of Nottingham, UK
Background on: Distracted Driving – Insurance Information Institute
Driven to Distraction – Articles in this series from The New York Times (July 2009 to January 2010) examine the dangers of drivers using cellphones and other electronic devices.
Meta-Study on Driver Distraction and Voice Interaction (Fraunhofer IAO/Carnegie Mellon University)

Driving Safety
Traffic law
Driver distraction
Road safety
Driving safety

Mobile phones and driving safety


Julius J. Joseph was an American government official. He was alleged to be a Soviet spy in the Venona Project transcripts.  During World War II, he worked in the Office for Emergency Management (1942) and the Labor War Manpower Commission (1943) and from 1943 to 1945 for the Far Eastern section (Japanese intelligence) of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where his wife Bella Joseph also worked.

Venona decrypt 880 of 8 June 1943 from New York KGB Rezident Vasily Zarubin to KGB foreign intelligence head General Pavel Fitin in Moscow  is about the OSS and the Office of War Information (OWI).  It discusses the activities of five agents, or "probationers" as they are referred to, Maurice Halperin, Duncan Chapin Lee, Bella Joseph, Franz Neumann, and Julius Joseph.

In 1945, Joseph had become Deputy Chief of the Far Eastern Division.  He is referred to as a Soviet source in the OSS in the Venona traffic under the cryptonym "Cautious".

References
 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
 Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley, Devin-Adair Company, 1951
 Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era, New York: Random House, 1999

Possibly living people
Year of birth missing
American spies for the Soviet Union
American people in the Venona papers
People of the Office of Strategic Services

Julius Joseph (spy)


P.S. Longer Letter Later is an epistolary novel written by Paula Danziger and Ann M. Martin in 1998.  It is a novel in letters and is written as a year-long correspondence between two twelve-year-old girls, Tara (styled Tara*Starr) and Elizabeth.  The novel was followed by a sequel, Snail Mail No More.

The novel was developed with Danziger writing as Tara and Martin as Elizabeth.  The writing styles of the authors' individual works are reflected in the styles for Tara (whose voice resembles Danzinger's Amber Brown books) and Elizabeth (whose writing is similar to Baby-sitters Club books).  In a radio interview, the authors said that as they developed the story together, their own friendship was tested like that of their characters.

Plot
Tara is outgoing and impulsive and likes to write, while Elizabeth is shy, quiet and prefers writing poetry and also has to deal with an emotionally abusive father. Even so, they are best friends.

When Tara moves to Ohio, the girls continue their friendship through letters back and forth to each other.  They have to do this by writing, because Elizabeth's father does not like Tara, and Tara's parents think it is expensive to talk on the phone. The letters detail the changes in their lives – Tara must cope with moving, making new friends and dealing with her mother's pregnancy, while Elizabeth's family begins to fall apart.  Tara makes another best friend in Ohio, whose name is Hannah.  Tara calls her Pal Indrome because her name is the same spelled backwards as forwards. It becomes her new nickname and everyone calls her "Pal". Tara also gets a boyfriend, Alex, who kisses her.

Elizabeth's father starts to scare her when he is coming home later than usual, drinking, and going overboard on his credit cards after he loses his job and has no money. Meanwhile Tara is making new friends, joining clubs and getting involved in school activities. When Elizabeth's family has to move to an apartment because of money problems, her dad decides to leave, and separates from her mother.

It is through their alternating letters that readers learn how Tara and Elizabeth grow and change – and how they keep their friendship strong, even if it is long-distance. This book shows how hard a friendship can be when a person can't see her friend, but suggests that for someone who truly cares about something and works hard for it, anything can happen.

Reviews
The Denver Post called it a "classic example of an Odd Couple collaboration", given the mismatch of the characters and their writing styles. Publishers Weekly assessed it as "strikingly insightful".

Boston Globe included it in a shortlist of books recommended to help children cope with the uncertainty of moving house.

References

Epistolary novels
1998 American novels
American children's novels
Novels about friendship
Novels set in Ohio
Novels about moving
Collaborative novels
1998 children's books

P.S. Longer Letter Later