The Union of South Africa (; ; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies. It included the territories that were formerly a part of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.

Following World War I, the Union of South Africa was a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and became one of the founding members of the League of Nations. It was mandated by the League with the administration of South West Africa (now known as Namibia). South West Africa became treated in most respects as another province of the Union, but it never was formally annexed.

Like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Union of South Africa was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Its full sovereignty was confirmed with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster 1931. It was governed under a form of constitutional monarchy, with the Crown being represented by a governor-general. The Union came to an end with the enactment of the constitution of 1961, by which it became a republic and left the Commonwealth of Nations. The Republic of South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth in 1994.

Constitution

Main features

The Union of South Africa was a unitary state, rather than a federation like Canada and Australia, with each colony's parliaments being abolished and replaced with provincial councils. A bicameral parliament was created, consisting of the House of Assembly and Senate, with members of the parliament being elected mostly by the country's white minority. During the course of the Union, the franchise changed on several occasions always to suit the needs of the government of the day. Parliamentary sovereignty was a convention of the constitution, inherited from the United Kingdom; save for procedural safeguards in respect of the entrenched sections of franchise and language, the courts were unable to intervene in Parliament's decisions.

Capitals

Owing to disagreements over where the Union's capital should be, a compromise was reached in which every province would be dealt a share of the benefits of the capital: the administration would be seated in Pretoria (Transvaal), the Parliament would be in Cape Town (Cape Province), the Appellate Division would be in Bloemfontein (Orange Free State), while archives would be in Pietermaritzburg (Natal). Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg were given financial compensation. Since South West Africa was never officially annexed as a fifth province, its capital, Windhoek, was never officially recognized as the country's fifth capital.

Relationship to the Crown

The Union initially remained under the British Crown as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. With the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the Union and other dominions became equal in status to the United Kingdom, and the Parliament of the United Kingdom could no longer legislate on behalf of them. This had the effect of making the Union and the other dominions de jure sovereign nations. The Status of the Union Act, passed by the South African Parliament in 1934, incorporated the applicable portions of the Statute of Westminster into South African law, underscoring its status as a sovereign nation. It removed what remaining authority Whitehall had to legislate for South Africa, as well as any nominal role that the United Kingdom had in granting Royal Assent. The governor-general was now required to sign or veto bills passed by Parliament, without the option of seeking advice from London.

The monarch was represented in South Africa by a governor-general, while effective power was exercised by the Executive Council, headed by the prime minister. Louis Botha, formerly a Boer general, was appointed first prime minister of the Union, heading a coalition representing the white Afrikaner and English-speaking British diaspora communities.
Prosecutions before courts were instituted in the name of the Crown (cited in the format Rex v Accused) and government officials served in the name of the Crown.

Languages

An entrenched clause in the Constitution mentioned Dutch and English as official languages of the Union, but the meaning of Dutch was changed by the Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925 to include both Dutch and Afrikaans.

Final days of the South Africa Act and legacy

Most English-speaking whites in South Africa supported the United Party of Jan Smuts, which favoured close relations with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, unlike the Afrikaans-speaking National Party, which had held anti-British sentiments and was opposed to South Africa's intervention in the Second World War. Some Nationalist organisations, like the Ossewabrandwag, were openly supportive of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Most English-speaking South Africans were opposed to the creation of a republic, many of them voting "no" in the 5 October 1960 referendum. But due to the much larger number of Afrikaans-speaking voters, the referendum passed, leading to the establishment of a republic in 1961. The government led by the National Party consequently withdrew South Africa from the Commonwealth. Following the results of the referendum, some whites in Natal, which had an English-speaking majority, called for secession from the Union. Five years earlier, some 33,000 Natalians had signed the Natal Covenant in opposition to the plans for a republic.

Subsequently, the National Party government had passed a Constitution that repealed the South Africa Act. The features of the Union were carried over with very little change to the newly formed Republic. The decision to transform from a Union to Republic was narrowly decided in the referendum. The decision together with the South African Government's insistence on adhering to its policy of apartheid resulted in South Africa's de facto expulsion from the Commonwealth of Nations.

Segregation

The South Africa Act dealt with race in two specific provisions. First it entrenched the liberal (by South African standards) Cape Qualified Franchise system of the Cape Colony which operated free of any racial considerations (although due to socio-economic restrictions no real political expression of non-whites was possible). The Cape Prime Minister at the time, John X. Merriman, fought hard, but ultimately unsuccessfully, to extend this system of multi-racial franchise to the rest of South Africa.

Second it made "native affairs" a matter for the national government. The practice therefore was to establish a Minister of Native Affairs.

According to Stephen Howe, "colonialism in some cases—most obviously among white minorities in South Africa—meant mainly that these violent settlers wanted to maintain more racial inequalities than the colonial empire found just".

Previous attempts at unification

Several previous unsuccessful attempts to unite the colonies were made, with proposed political models ranging from unitary, to loosely federal.

Early unification attempt under Sir George Grey (1850s)

Sir George Grey, the Governor of Cape Colony from 1854 to 1861, decided that unifying the states of southern Africa would be mutually beneficial. The stated reasons were that he believed that political divisions between the white-controlled states "weakened them against the natives", threatened an ethnic divide between British and Boer, and left the Cape vulnerable to interference from other European powers. He believed that a united "South African Federation", under British control, would resolve all three of these concerns.

His idea was greeted with cautious optimism in southern Africa; the Orange Free State agreed to the idea in principle and the Transvaal may also eventually have agreed. However, he was overruled by the British Colonial Office which ordered him to desist from his plans. His refusal to abandon the idea eventually led to him being recalled.

The imposition of confederation (1870s)
In the 1870s, the London Colonial Office, under Secretary for the Colonies Lord Carnarvon, decided to apply a system of Confederation onto southern Africa. On this occasion, however, it was largely rejected by southern Africans, primarily due to its very bad timing. The various component states of southern Africa were still simmering after the last bout of British expansion, and inter-state tensions were high. The Orange Free State this time refused to even discuss the idea, and Prime Minister John Molteno of the Cape Colony called the idea badly informed and irresponsible. In addition, many local leaders resented the way it was imposed from outside without understanding of local issues. The Confederation model was also correctly seen as unsuitable for the disparate entities of southern Africa, with their wildly different sizes, economies and political systems.

The Molteno Unification Plan (1877), put forward by the Cape government as a more feasible unitary alternative to confederation, largely anticipated the final act of Union in 1909. A crucial difference was that the Cape's liberal constitution and multiracial franchise were to be extended to the other states of the union. These smaller states would gradually accede to the much larger Cape Colony through a system of treaties, whilst simultaneously gaining elected seats in the Cape parliament. The entire process would be locally driven, with Britain's role restricted to policing any set-backs. While subsequently acknowledged to be more viable, this model was rejected at the time by London. At the other extreme, another powerful Cape politician at the time, Saul Solomon, proposed an extremely loose system of federation, with the component states preserving their very different constitutions and systems of franchise.

Lord Carnarvon rejected the (more informed) local plans for unification, as he wished to have the process brought to a conclusion before the end of his tenure and, having little experience of southern Africa, he preferred to enforce the more familiar model of confederation used in Canada. He pushed ahead with his Confederation plan, which unraveled as predicted, leaving a string of destructive wars across southern Africa. These conflicts eventually fed into the first and second Anglo-Boer Wars, with far-reaching consequences for the subcontinent.

Second Boer War (1899–1902)

After the discovery of gold in the 1880s, thousands of British immigrants flocked to the gold mines of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State. The newly arrived miners, though needed for the mines, were distrusted by the politically dominant Afrikaners, who called them "uitlanders", imposed heavy taxes on them and granted them very limited civil rights, with no right to vote. The British government, interested in profiting from the gold and diamond mines there and highly protective of its own citizens, demanded reforms, which the Afrikaners rejected. A small-scale private British effort to overthrow Transvaal's President Paul Kruger, the Jameson Raid of 1895, proved a fiasco, and presaged full-scale conflict as diplomatic efforts all failed.

The Second Boer War started on 11 October 1899 and ended on 31 May 1902. The United Kingdom gained the support of its Cape Colony, of its Colony of Natal and of some African allies. Volunteers from across the British Empire further supplemented the British war effort. All other nations remained neutral, but public opinion in them was largely hostile to Britain. Inside Britain and its Empire there was also significant opposition to the Second Boer War, spearheaded by anti-war activists such as Emily Hobhouse.

At the onset of the war, the British were both overconfident about the chances of success in a military confrontation with the Boer republics and underprepared for a long-term conflict. British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and members of his cabinet, in particular Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, ignored repeated warnings that Boer forces were more powerful than previous reports had suggested. In the last months of 1899, Boer forces launched the first attacks of the war, besieging the British-held settlements of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, and winning several engagements against British troops at Colenso, Magersfontein and Stormberg. However, by the next year the British soon organized an effective response to these attacks, lifting the three sieges and winning several battles against Boer forces. The British, now deploying approximately 400,000 soldiers from across their colonial empire, successfully invaded and occupied the Boer republics. Numerous Boer soldiers refused to surrender and took to the countryside to carry out guerrilla operations against the British, who responded by implementing scorched earth tactics. These tactics included interning Afrikaner civilians from the Boer republics in concentration camps (in which roughly 28,000 people died) and destroying homesteads owned by Afrikaners to flush out the guerillas and deny them a base of civilian support. Using these tactics combined with a system of blockhouses and barriers to seal off Boer holdouts, the British were able to gradually track down and defeat the guerillas. In the 1902 Treaty of Vereeniging, the British formally annexed the Boer republics into the Cape Colony, ending the war.

History of the Union of South Africa

National Convention
The National Convention was a constitutional convention held between 1908 and 1909 in Durban (12 October to 5 November 1908), Cape Town (23 November to 18 December 1908, 11 January to 3 February 1909) and Bloemfontein (3 to 11 May 1909). This convention led to the British Parliament's adoption of the South Africa Act, which ratified the Union. The four colonies that would become South Africa were represented, along with a delegation from Rhodesia. The 33 delegates assembled behind closed doors, in the fear that a public affair would lead delegates to refuse compromising on contentious areas. The delegates drew up a constitution that would, subject to some amendments by the British government, become the South Africa Act, which was South Africa's constitution between 1910 and 1961, when the country became a republic under the Constitution of 1961.

Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia

In 1922 the colony of Southern Rhodesia had a chance (but ultimately rejected) to join the Union through a referendum. The referendum resulted from the fact that by 1920 British South Africa Company rule in Southern Rhodesia was no longer practical with many favouring some form of 'responsible government'. Some favoured responsible government within Southern Rhodesia while others (especially in Matabeleland) favoured membership of the Union of South Africa. Politician Sir Charles Coghlan claimed that such membership with the Union would make Southern Rhodesia the "Ulster of South Africa".

Prior to the referendum, representatives of Southern Rhodesia visited Cape Town where the Prime Minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, eventually offered terms he considered reasonable and which the United Kingdom government found acceptable. Although opinion among the United Kingdom government, the South African government and the British South Africa Company favoured the union option (and none tried to interfere in the referendum), when the referendum was held the results saw 59.4% in favour of responsible government for a separate colony and 40.6% in favour of joining the Union of South Africa.

Union of South Africa and South West Africa

Background

The inhospitable coast of what is now the Republic of Namibia remained uncolonised up until the end of the 19th century.

From 1874, the leaders of several indigenous peoples, notably Maharero of the Herero nation, approached the Cape Parliament to the south. Anticipating invasion by a European power and already suffering Portuguese encroachment from the north and Afrikaner encroachment from the south, these leaders approached the Cape Colony government to discuss the possibility of accession and the political representation it would entail. Accession to the Cape Colony, a self-governing state with a system of multi-racial franchise and legal protection for traditional land rights, was at the time considered marginally preferable to annexation by either the Kingdom of Portugal or the German Empire.

In response, the Cape Parliament appointed a special Commission under William Palgrave, to travel to the territory between the Orange and Cunene rivers and to confer with these leaders regarding accession to the Cape. In the negotiations with the Palgrave Commission, some indigenous nations such as the Damara and the Herero responded positively (October 1876), other reactions were mixed. Discussions regarding the magisterial structure for the area's political integration into the Cape dragged on until, from 1876, it was blocked by Britain. Britain relented, insofar as allowing the Cape to incorporate Walvis Bay as an exclave, which was brought under the magisterial district of Cape Town, but when the Germans established a protectorate over the area in 1884, South West Africa was predominantly autonomous.

Thereafter, South West Africa became a German colony, except for Walvis Bay and the Offshore Islands which remained part of the Cape, outside of German control.

South African occupation

Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Union of South Africa occupied and annexed the German colony of German South West Africa. With the establishment of the League of Nations and cessation of the war, South Africa obtained a Class C Mandate to administer South West Africa "under the laws of the mandatory (South Africa) as integral portions of its territory". Subsequently, the Union of South Africa generally regarded South West Africa as a fifth province, although this was never an official status.

With the creation of the United Nations, the Union applied for the incorporation of South West Africa, but its application was rejected by the U.N., which invited South Africa to prepare a Trusteeship agreement instead. This invitation was in turn rejected by the Union, which subsequently did not modify the administration of South West Africa and continued to adhere to the original mandate. This caused a complex set of legal wranglings that were not finalised when the Union was replaced with the Republic of South Africa. In 1949, the Union passed a law bringing South West Africa into closer association with it including giving South West Africa representation in the South African parliament.

Walvis Bay, which is now in Namibia, was originally a part of the Union of South Africa as an exclave as it was a part of the Cape Colony at the time of Unification. In 1921 Walvis Bay was integrated with the Class C Mandate over South West Africa for the rest of the Union's duration and for part of the republican era.

Statute of Westminster

The Statute of Westminster passed by the British Parliament in December 1931, which repealed the Colonial Laws Validity Act and implemented the Balfour Declaration 1926, had a profound impact on the constitutional structure and status of the Union. The most notable effect was that the South African Parliament was released from many restrictions concerning the handling of the so-called "native question". However, the repeal was not sufficient to enable the South African Parliament to ignore the entrenched clauses of its constitution (the South Africa Act) which led to the coloured-vote constitutional crisis of the 1950s wherein the right of coloureds to vote in the main South African Parliament was removed and replaced with a separate, segregated, and largely powerless assembly.

Military

The military of the Union of South Africa was the Union Defence Force (UDF) until 1957, when it became the South African Defence Force.

Flags/Coats of arms

See also

 Basutoland
 Bechuanaland
 South West Africa
 Southern Rhodesia
 Swaziland Protectorate

Notes

References

Bibliography

 Beck, Roger B. The History of South Africa (Greenwood, 2000).
 Davenport, Thomas, and Christopher Saunders. South Africa: A modern history (Springer, 2000).
 Eze, M. Intellectual history in contemporary South Africa (Springer, 2016).

 Ross, Robert. A Concise History of South Africa (2009)
 Thompson, Leonard, and Lynn Berat. A History of South Africa (4th ed. 2014)
 Thompson, Leonard. The Unification of South Africa 1902 – 1910 (Oxford UP, 1960).
 Welsh, Frank. A History of South Africa (2000).

External links

1910 establishments in Africa
1910 establishments in South Africa
1910 establishments in the British Empire
1910s in South Africa
1920s in South Africa
1930s in South Africa
1940s in South Africa
1950s in South Africa
1960s in South Africa
1961 disestablishments in Africa
1961 disestablishments in South Africa
1961 disestablishments in the British Empire
20th century in South Africa
Articles containing video clips
Defunct organisations based in South Africa
Former British colonies and protectorates in Africa
Former Commonwealth realms
Former countries in Africa
Former monarchies
Former monarchies of Africa
History of South Africa
Political history of South Africa
South Africa and the Commonwealth of Nations
States and territories disestablished in 1961
States and territories established in 1910
White supremacy in Africa

Union of South Africa


Robert Guenette (January 12, 1935 – October 31, 2003) was an American film producer, screenwriter, film director, television director and television producer, recipient of the Directors Guild of America Award.

Guenette is considered one of the first documentary directors to introduce the "newsreel style" in documentaries. He and his son, Mark, were co-founders of the International Documentary Association.

Filmography

Writer, cinema
 The Defector (1966)
 The Tree (1969)
 The Mysterious Monsters (1975)
 The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981)

Director, cinema
 The Tree (1969)
 The Mysterious Monsters (1975)
 The Man Who Saw Tomorrow (1981)

Director, TV documentaries
 Our War in Vietnam (1962)
 National Geographic Specials (1965, TV series)
 They've Killed President Lincoln! (1971)
 Appointment with Destiny (1971-1973, TV series, Guenette directed 4 episodes out of a total of 7, and wrote 2)
The Plot to Murder Hitler (1971)
The Crucifixion of Jesus (1972)
Cortez and Montezuma: The Conquest of an Empire (1972)
Peary's Race for the North Pole (1973)
 The World Turned Upside Down (1973)
 Monsters! Mysteries or Myths? (1974)
 The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena (1976)
 The Making of Star Wars (1977)
 Roots: One Year Later (1978)
 The Hanna-Barbera Hall of Fame: Yabba-Dabba-Doo 2 (1979)
 SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
 Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
 Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi (1983)
 Dinosaur! (1985)
 The Flintstones' 25th Anniversary Celebration (1986)
 Memories Then and Now (1988)
 Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros. (1991)
 Crazy About the Movies: Dennis Hopper (1991)
 Crazy About the Movies: Ava Gardner (1992)
 Orson Welles: What Went Wrong? (1992)
 Celebration of a Life: Steven J. Ross Chairman of Time Warner (1993)
 Golf: The Greatest Game (1994)
 Heroes of the Game (1994)
 Celebrate the Century (1999, TV mini-series documentary)
 Legends, Icons and Superstars of the 20th Century: Five Pop Music Icons (2001)

Director, TV movies
 Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow (1986)

Producer, TV movies
 Victory at Entebbe (1976)

Producer, TV series
 Winners (two episodes in 1977 and 1978 as executive producer)

Awards

Nominees
 1972: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Any Area of Creative Technical Crafts (for The Plot to Murder Hitler)
 1978: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Entertainment Special (for the episode "I Can" from the series Winners)
 1978: Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Entertainment Special (for the episode "Journey Together" from the series Winners)
 1982: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Special (for Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Won
 1982: Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary (for Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark)
 2001: International Documentary Association Pioneer Award

Notes

References

1935 births
2003 deaths
Deaths from brain cancer in the United States
Neurological disease deaths in California
Deaths from cancer in California
American film directors
American film producers
American television producers
American male screenwriters
Directors Guild of America Award winners
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American screenwriters

Robert Guenette


The Course were a dance music act from the Netherlands. It consisted of DJ/producer Vincent Hendriks and vocalists Dewi Lopulalan and Irma Derby. They achieved their biggest commercial success in 1997.

Hendriks and Lopulalan first met in 1990 at a DJ "mix championship" in the Netherlands. They met again in 1996, at the same venue, and the two decided to collaborate on some music.

The group released their first single, "Ready or Not", a dance cover of the 1996 song by The Fugees, in early 1997, with echoes of other contemporary hits Ultra Flava by Farley & Heller and Hold That Sucker Down by The OT Quartet. It reached #5 in the UK Singles Chart in April, giving the band their first hit. The follow-up, a cover of Chaka Khan and Rufus' "Ain't Nobody" also fared well, reaching #8 in July. However, their third single, "Best Love", only made it to #51 in December. Subsequent singles failed to see chart action, proving The Course to be a "two-hit wonder". They broke up in the late 1990s because of the lack of commercial success after the first two singles.

Albums

Singles

References

External links
The Course at last.fm
The Course at discogs.com

British dance music groups
Dutch dance music groups

The Course


The Albanians (Albanian: Shqiptarët) is a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and Kosovo, who speak Albanian language as their mother tongue.

Albanians share a common ancestry, culture and history, majority are Muslims, Bektashi, and Catholics and Orthodox Christianity. There National Hero is Skanderbeg. In the Ottoman Empire, Albanian Men were mostly represented in high ranks, like Muhammad Ali Pasha or Ali Pasha and the Köprülü family.
The Albanian Dynasty House of Zogu, was founded by King Zog I of Albania.
Muslim Albanian boys get circumcised with a sünnet-ceremony, this was taken at the time of the Ottoman Empire

References

Albania
Ethnic groups in Europe

Albanians


The Sandcastle is a novel by Iris Murdoch, published in 1957.  It is the story of a middle-aged schoolmaster (Bill Mor) with political ambitions who meets a young painter (Rain Carter), come to paint a former school headmaster's portrait.

Synopsis
Bill Mor is a middle-aged History and Latin teacher at a public school. He is married to Nan and has two children, Donald and Felicity. Mor has political ambitions to stand as a candidate for the Labour party, although his wife is firmly opposed to any such ambitions. At a friends' dinner, he makes the acquaintance of Rain Carter, a young artist who has arrived at the school to paint a portrait of Demoyte, the school's former headmaster. Mor shows Rain Carter around the town. They are spotted together by Mor's friend Tim Burke, who suspects Mor and Carter might be having an affair.

On one outing, Mor wants to show Miss Carter a small river outside the town. Miss Carter lets Mor, who doesn't have a license, drive her car through rough terrain, but the car gets stuck and damaged. Mor gets home late from this misadventure but chooses not to tell his wife about the incident. Nan and Felicity go away for a holiday in Dorset, and the love affair between Mor and Rain Carter develops during this time.

Nan comes home early from her holiday and surprises Mor kneeling in front of Rain with his head in her lap. In despair, Nan goes to Tim Burke. After a moment of mutual attraction between the two, Burke advises Nan to go back to her husband and not to ruin their relationship. However, Bill finds himself incapable of letting go of Rain. He is taken by her to an exhibition of her works in London and is deeply impressed with the pictures.

Meanwhile, Mor's son Don climbs the school tower with a friend and is saved from a dangerous fall by his father, upon which Don is expelled from the school.  He runs away from home and is missing for days. During his absence, there is a function at the school for the unveiling of the new portrait. Nan gives a public speech at this gathering, praising and encouraging her husband's political ambitions. Rain, who knew nothing of this side of Mor's life, decides to leave him in order not to be in the way of his ambitions and resolves to go back to France.

That night, she paints until the early hours of the morning, changing Demoyte's face in the portrait and, by daybreak, has left. Don returns home.

Characters in "The Sandcastle"
Bill Mor
Nan Mor (Mor's wife)
Felicity Mor (Mor's daughter)
Donald Mor (Mor's son)
Rain Carter
Demoyte (former headmaster)

The Title
There is only one reference to a 'sandcastle' in the book.
From Iris Murdoch's The Sandcastle, Chapter Five:

"I can recall, as a child, seeing pictures in English children's books of boys and girls playing on the sand and making sandcastles – and I tried to play on my sand. But a Mediterranean beach is not a place for playing on. It is dirty and very dry. The tides never wash the sand or make it firm. When I tried to make a sandcastle, the sand would just run away between my fingers. It was too dry to hold together. And even as I poured sea water over it, the sun would dry it up at once."

Adaptations
William Ingram adapted it as a television drama in 1963.

References

1957 British novels
Novels by Iris Murdoch
Novels about artists
British novels adapted into television shows
Novels set in schools
Chatto & Windus books

The Sandcastle (novel)


Angela "Angel" Wainaina (1983 – 28 January 2009) was a Kenyan actress, radio presenter and rapper.

Life
Wainaina was born 1983 in Kawangware, a slum of Nairobi, Kenya.  She joined a drama club at Kambui High School. She was a runner up at the Miss Kenya competition in 2005. She was a poet and underground rapper. She played Sergeant Maria in the popular television show "Cobra Squad".

On 15 January 2007, she began working for Ghetto Radio, as Kenya's first female MC. Her show "Chanuka Dada" was very popular, and she was well known for her energetic social advocacy. She was awarded the Young Women African Summit's media award.

Death
Wainaina died on 28 January 2009 in the Nakumatt supermarket fire. Her funeral was held at the Holy Family Cathedral in Nairobi.

References

1983 births
2009 deaths
Kenyan television actresses
Kenyan radio journalists
21st-century Kenyan actresses
20th-century journalists

Angel Wainaina


The Abial Cushman Store (also known as the Lee Forest Grange and Home on the Grange) is a historic commercial building at 2766 Lee Road in Lee, Maine. Built in 1840, it is one of the rural community's few surviving 19th-century commercial buildings, and one of its few examples of Greek Revival architecture.

Description and history
The Abial Cushman Store is located in the rural village center of Lee, just east of Maine State Route 168 on the north side of Lee Road (Maine State Route 6). It is a rectangular wood-frame structure, two stories in height, with a side gable roof, clapboard siding, and a full-width single-story porch across the front. The front corners of the building have pilasters, which rise support an entablature across the front below the eave. The front facade has windows in the second level, and a two-part ground level. The left side of the ground floor houses a storefront with a center entry flanked by large fixed-pane windows, while the right side has a sash window and doorway that provides access to the upper level. A series of telescoping ells project to the rear of the main block.

The structure was built in 1840, and is believed to be the town's oldest surviving commercial building. Located in the town center and near the economically important Lee Academy, it was used as a general store for many years.  In 1884 it became the home of the local Grange chapter, a role it served for much of the 20th century. It has since undergone some restoration, and is used as a retail and community space.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places December 18, 1990.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Penobscot County, Maine

References

External links
Home on the Grange web site

Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine
Commercial buildings completed in 1840
Grange organizations and buildings in Maine
Buildings and structures in Penobscot County, Maine
National Register of Historic Places in Penobscot County, Maine
Grange buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine

Abial Cushman Store


The 2012–13 Northern Arizona Lumberjacks men's basketball team represented Northern Arizona University during the 2012–13 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Lumberjacks, led by first year head coach Jack Murphy, played their home games at the Walkup Skydome, with two home games at the Rolle Activity Center, and were members of the Big Sky Conference. They finished the season 11–21, 8–12 in Big Sky play to finish in a three-way tie for sixth place. They lost in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky tournament to Weber State.

Roster

Schedule

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!colspan=9| Exhibition

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!colspan=9| Regular season

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!colspan=9| 2013 Big Sky Conference men's basketball tournament

References

Northern Arizona Lumberjacks men's basketball seasons
Northern Arizona
Northern Arizona Lumberjacks men's basketball
Northern Arizona Lumberjacks men's basketball


On September 17–19, 2016, three bombs exploded and several unexploded ones were found in the New York metropolitan area. The bombings left 31 people wounded, but no fatalities or life-threatening injuries were reported.

On the morning of September 17, a pipe bomb exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey. Later that day, a homemade pressure cooker bomb went off in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. A second pressure cooker bomb was discovered four blocks away. Late on September 18, multiple bombs were discovered at the train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of these bombs detonated early the next day.

On September 19, 2016, the sole suspect—Ahmad Khan Rahimi, of Elizabeth—was captured, following a shootout with police in neighboring Linden, New Jersey, which left two officers injured. Rahimi was not part of a terrorist group, but his actions were believed to have been influenced by the extremist Islamic ideology espoused by al-Qaeda. In 2017, Rahimi was convicted in U.S. federal court of eight federal crimes arising from the attack. On February 13, 2018, Rahimi was sentenced to a mandatory term of life without parole.

Events

Seaside Park bombing
In the morning of September 17, 2016, in Ocean County, New Jersey, the Seaside Semper Five, a 5K run event, was expected to draw as many as 3,000 people, with many of them being veterans of the United States Armed Forces. The race was delayed after a suspicious backpack was noticed in the vicinity of the starting point.

At about 9:30 a.m., shortly before the race was supposed to start, a pipe bomb exploded in a trash can on Ocean Avenue in Seaside Park. Three "rudimentary" pipe bombs, all reportedly timed to go off during the race, were later found, with only one of the three having exploded. No one was hurt by this bombing, however.

The race was canceled after the explosion, and the beach and boardwalk in Seaside Park were evacuated. Police officials and federal agents soon went door-to-door, asking residents about information regarding the bombs or any suspicious activity they may have seen, heard, or witnessed.

Manhattan bombing
In the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, on the same day as the Seaside Park bombing, a pressure cooker bomb filled with shrapnel, in the form of small bearings or metal BBs, exploded in a crowded area on West 23rd Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue at 8:31 p.m. The explosion occurred in front of 133 West 23rd Street in the vicinity of a construction site, at which materials were in place for exterior renovations of the Visions at Selis Manor facility, an apartment building for the blind, at 135 West 23rd Street. Other nearby buildings included the Townhouse Inn of Chelsea, many restaurants, and a Trader Joe's at 21st Street and 6th Avenue. The Chelsea neighborhood is residential, known for its nightlife, and is not close to any significant tourist sites or government buildings.

Witnesses said that the explosion "seemed to have started inside a sidewalk dumpster" in the vicinity of Sixth Avenue, and photographs of a "twisted dumpster" in the middle of West 23rd Street went viral on Twitter. A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity stated that the explosion "appeared to have come from a construction toolbox" in front of a building, and photographs of the area reportedly showed a twisted, crumpled black metal box.

Effects

The explosion "was powerful enough to vault a heavy steel dumpster more than 120 feet through the air ... Windows shattered 400 feet from where the explosion went off, and pieces of the bomb were recovered 650 feet away." The explosion caused damage to a nearby five-story brownstone, and debris was strewn in front of the St. Vincent de Paul Church. The moment of the blast was captured on closed-circuit television footage from three cameras.

Thirty-one people were injured, 24 of whom were taken to four hospitals. Most injuries were scrapes and bruises caused by flying debris and glass. None of the injuries were ultimately life-threatening, but one victim sustained penetrating trauma to the abdomen and was rushed from the scene in serious condition. Nine of the injured were taken to Bellevue Hospital, including the seriously injured person. Lenox Health Greenwich Village treated another nine victims. By the following morning, all of the injured had been released.

The explosion disrupted travel in Manhattan extensively. A significant zone (14th Street to 34th Street between Fifth Avenue and Eighth Avenue) was closed to car travel overnight. By 7:00 a.m. the following morning, all roads in the neighborhood were reopened except for West 23rd Street. New York City Subway service to stations along West 23rd Street was disrupted while the investigation was ongoing.

Discovery of second device
Following the explosion, officers began a block-by-block search for additional unexploded bombs. Several hours later, police received a call from a resident of West 27th Street who had seen a suspicious-looking package near her home. The device was under a mailbox at West 27th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, four blocks away from the site of the original blast. Two state troopers arrived and discovered the pressure cooker bomb concealed in a plastic bag and connected with dark wiring to a mobile phone. The bomb was filled with small bearings or metal BBs. The pressure cooker bomb was described as similar to those used in the Boston Marathon bombing. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) reported its find of a "possible secondary device" at 11:00 p.m.

The bomb was removed by an NYPD bomb squad robot. An officer used the robot to place the bomb in a containment chamber, and the device was driven away at around 2:25 a.m. on September 18. Investigators obtained fingerprints and the mobile phone from the device. The bomb was driven to the NYPD's Rodman's Neck firing range in the Bronx, where it was destroyed via a controlled explosion. The devices were to be sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for further inspection.

Discovery of bombs in Elizabeth
At around 8:00 p.m. on September 18, two men took a backpack they found atop a municipal garbage can at the Elizabeth train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of the men, Lee Parker, was homeless and was looking for a backpack so he could go to a job search. His friend Ivan White had found the backpack above the garbage can. They were about  from a busy pub's front entrance and about  from a train trestle when they took the backpack. White and Parker looked into the backpack, discovered that the item contained wires and a pipe, and called 9-1-1 at around 8:45 p.m. The men, who were not held as suspects, were hailed as heroes in Elizabeth; a GoFundMe campaign in their name raised over $16,000 in donations.

The Elizabeth Police Department was the first authority to respond to the men's 9-1-1 call. The investigation was soon turned over to the New Jersey Transit Police Department and the FBI, two county robots (Union and Essex) confirmed the devices were pipe bombs. One of these bombs was detonated at around 12:40 a.m. as the robots sought to disarm the devices. One robot was "damaged" by the blast. Authorities were working to disable the other devices. Following the bomb's accidental explosion, the station was evacuated. The surrounding area was put on lockdown, and service was suspended between the Newark Airport and Elizabeth stations for the day. New Jersey-bound trains from New York were held at Penn Station.

Elizabeth Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said that it was unclear whether the train station was a specific target, or whether the bombs were dumped by someone looking to quickly get rid of them. The Elizabeth device was "similar in appearance" to the Seaside Park device. Police later theorized that the bomber, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, had thrown away the bombs in Elizabeth in an effort to hide the evidence because these bombs lacked detonators.

Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), Homeland Security, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) responded to the scene of the Chelsea bombing and were involved in the investigation, in addition to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and the NYPD. Initially, the Seaside Park and Manhattan bombings were investigated as separate incidents, but over a period of two days, the investigation yielded similarities between the two incidents, leading the investigators to determine that they were connected, and therefore that it was to be investigated as one overall composite terrorist act or endeavor, committed by the same person or party.

Within hours after the attack, officials determined that the explosion was intentional, and ruled out the possibility of a natural gas explosion. Investigators did not immediately find evidence of a terrorism link, initially leaving open the possibility of arson or vandalism at the time. A link to terrorism was discovered in the following days.

Both of the Manhattan bombs—the one that exploded and the second that was disabled—were of the same design, using pressure cookers filled with bearings or metal BBs that were rigged with flip phones and Christmas lights that set off a small charge of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), which served as a detonator for a larger charge of a secondary explosive similar to Tannerite.

The FBI examined fingerprints from the undetonated West 27th Street pressure cooker bomb and its attached mobile phone. DNA evidence was also recovered. On September 19, the FBI traced the prints, as well as some pictures on the mobile phone, to Ahmad Khan Rahimi (see below).

Three different designs had been used amongst the four explosive devices, with the Department of Homeland Security finding that the bomb-maker followed guidelines featured in Inspire, an online magazine published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Investigators also said they believed the bomb-maker had cased the Chelsea neighborhood before the bombing there, and that he may have had an accomplice as he would have had to otherwise cover a lot of ground between the bombing sites in a relatively short amount of time. They were talking to witnesses who claimed to have seen Rahimi in the Chelsea area before the explosion. Several bomb ingredients were purchased by Rahimi on eBay between June 20 and August 10.

Search for suspects
Investigators discovered surveillance video that showed a suspect, later identified as Rahimi, planting a bomb on West 23rd Street in Manhattan then walking to West 27th Street dragging a duffel bag. The subject left the bag at West 27th Street. Later, two individuals took the pressure cooker bomb out of the bag and left the scene. Authorities determined that the two men who had taken the bomb out of the bag were, most likely, scavengers who had only wanted the duffel bag and did not know what they had been handling; in the process, they might have deactivated the bomb in the bag. The NYPD and FBI wished to talk with these men, who were considered possible witnesses but were not suspected in helping plant the bomb. Investigators later believed the men were possible Egyptian tourists who have since returned to their home country. U.S. investigators notified Egyptian authorities that they wanted to question the men. It was later confirmed that the pair were security officers for an airline in the Middle East who, despite their profession, did not register that the device was a bomb and focused only on the chance to take the luggage for themselveswhich they soon threw in the garbage at their hotel, rather than contact authorities, when they saw news reports about the hunt for Rahami.

Late on September 18, the day after the Manhattan explosion, the FBI announced that five men, who were later found to be relatives of Rahimi, had been detained in connection with the investigation. The men were detained at about 8:45 p.m. at a traffic stop, which was being conducted by the FBI and NYPD on the Belt Parkway near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Motive
An official speaking to The New York Times on condition of anonymity said, "We don't understand the target or the significance of it. It's by a pile of dumpsters on a random sidewalk." At a news conference the day following the Manhattan bombing, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that placing a bomb in a crowded city street was intrinsically a terrorist act, but that "there is no evidence of an international terrorism connection with this incident", while noting that the investigation was still in its early stages. An explosives expert, speaking anonymously, said the materials used in the bomb indicated that the bomb-builder had some knowledge of how to assemble the explosive device.

A note found on the pressure cooker bomb left on West 27th Street referred to Anwar al-Awlaki (the Muslim cleric who became a senior member of al-Qaeda and was then killed by a U.S. drone strike), the Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.

On September 20, investigators said that when Rahimi was arrested, he had a notebook in his possession in which he had written about Anwar al-Awlaki, the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the spokesperson and a senior leader of ISIL. The notebook had bullet holes and blood stains. In the notebook, Rahimi wrote of "killing the kuffar", an Arabic term for unbelievers.

According to authorities, Rahimi was not part of a terrorist cell, but was motivated and inspired by the extremist Islamic ideology espoused by al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda chief propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki. The criminal complaint filed against Rahimi states that Rahimi had a YouTube account in which he listed two jihadist propaganda videos as "favorites" alongside other, unrelated materials.

Perpetrator

Background
Ahmad Khan Rahimi (; born January 23, 1988), an Afghan American whose surname was initially reported as Rahami, came to the United States from Afghanistan in 1995, and was naturalized in 2011. He is a native Pashto speaker.

His father, Mohammad Rahimi, came to the U.S. several years earlier seeking asylum. According to a neighbor, Rahimi's father, a Pashtun, had been part of the anti-Soviet mujahideen movement in Afghanistan, and was critical of the Taliban. The younger Rahimi may have as many as seven siblings. Before settling into the U.S., the Rahimi family fled from the then war-torn Afghanistan to Pakistan. In the U.S., they lived in a number of New Jersey towns before settling in Elizabeth.

Rahimi graduated from Edison High School in 2008. From 2010 to 2012, he attended Middlesex County College in Edison, New Jersey, majoring in criminal justice with alleged aspirations of a future in law enforcement. He dropped out.

Rahimi's friends described him as a generous person who was never devoutly religious and would invite his friends to eat and conduct rap battles at his family's fried chicken restaurant—First American Fried Chicken in Elizabeth,  from New York City. To some, he was known as Mad, short for Ahmad. A classmate from Edison High described him as quiet, mild-mannered, well-dressed, and "not abrasive, [but] funny" whenever he spoke. In recent years, though, he seemed to be a "completely different person" who was more stern than before and less easygoing. Also, in elementary school, Ahmad's teacher complained to Mohammad that his son was "act[ing] like a king in class". Ahmad broke a friend's nose while in junior high.

While at Edison High, he started a relationship with a classmate from the Dominican Republic, which culminated in them having a daughter together in 2007, during Rahimi's senior year. According to people close to the Rahimis, this upset Mohammad Rahimi, who refused to meet his granddaughter or the mother, and had been disapproving of the relationship due to expectations that his son would marry a cousin in Afghanistan. In March 2008, after returning from his first trip in Pakistan, he moved in with his girlfriend's family and got a job at a Kmart store. Rahimi's girlfriend later ended the relationship and sued him for child support. This reportedly depressed Rahimi, who subsequently returned to his family, and damaged his relationship with his father.

The Rahimi family had a history of disputes with the City of Elizabeth over their restaurant's operating hours, claiming that the city was discriminating against them because of their ethnicity and because they were Muslim. They filed a lawsuit against the city in 2011, in which they alleged harassment and religious discrimination by police and officials who would force them to close early. Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said the longstanding issues were caused by a series of complaints from neighbors, who reported noise and large crowds gathering at the restaurant late at night. The city later barred all takeout restaurants, including the Rahimis', from operating past 10:00 p.m. In 2009, two of Rahimi's brothers were arrested for attempting to record a conversation with police, according to court papers. Rahimi lived above the restaurant with his family.

In July 2016, Rahimi passed the required background check and legally purchased the Glock 9 mm handgun he used in the subsequent shootout, from a licensed dealer in Salem, Virginia.

Legal troubles
At one time, Rahimi was licensed to carry firearms. In August 2014, he, at that time living in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, was charged with aggravated assault and unlawful possession of a weapon in Union County. The charges arose from allegations that Rahimi had stabbed his brother in the leg, after the victim and another brother attempted to stop Rahimi from assaulting their mother and sister "for no apparent reason". Rahimi was reported by two of his siblings the next day and spent three months in the Union County Jail, but was reported to have bailed. A grand jury declined to make an indictment, and the charges were dropped on September 22.

A "high-ranking law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation" said Rahimi had spent two additional days in jail, one in February 2012 for allegedly violating a restraining order, and another in October 2008 for failure to pay traffic tickets.

Rahimi's father Mohammad had tried to contact the FBI about his son around August 2014, but two months later, Rahimi was cleared by the FBI. One reason cited was that Mohammad had stated that he was merely angry over the August domestic incident when he reported his son, so he had denied his previous statement. In an interview with The New York Times, Mohammad claimed that he had seen his son watching videos made by al-Qaeda and the Taliban and asked him to stop. However, the FBI later said Mohammad never informed them of what he had seen.

On September 20 — the day after his arrest — Rahimi's estranged ex-girlfriend, and the mother of his daughter, filed a petition in a New Jersey state court seeking full custody of the child, citing Rahimi as being a possible participant in "terrorist related activity" in New York City. She also filed to change her child's name, as well as to force the media not to contact her or her daughter. The petition for custody was granted the following day, though the request to change the daughter's name was denied, as was the request for media not to contact her, because "the court said it had no authority to grant the requests." Rahimi and the mother of his child had engaged in a long-running battle, as Rahimi owed her more than $3,000 in child support in 2015; she had previously gotten a restraining order against Rahimi.

Overseas travels and return to U.S.
Rahimi, reportedly, went back to Afghanistan several times (including for an extended period starting in 2012), and "showed signs of radicalization" afterwards. The trips were reportedly arranged by Rahimi's pious father, who was concerned about his son being "too Americanized". Rahimi and members of his family also made several trips to Pakistan, where they had Afghan relatives living as refugees. According to a family friend, Rahimi claimed that his father took away his passport while he was sleeping and left him alone in a foreign country.

Rahimi and a brother spent several weeks in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and nearby Kuchlak, as well as Kandahar, Afghanistan. At Quetta, which is home to a large population of Afghan immigrants and some Taliban members-in-exile, he was in an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman, believed to be his cousin, in July 2011, and had a son with her in 2014. The son's fate is unknown. Rahimi also went under the wing of a local radical cleric, according to a close relative in Afghanistan. Following Rahimi's arrest, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said the group had no connection with him.

In Kuchlak, Rahimi attended an Afghan-run Naqshbandi religious seminary closely associated with the Taliban movement, where he took lectures in Islamic education for three weeks. Rahimi remained in Pakistan from April 2013 to March 2014, and traveled to Afghanistan during the period. Following his near-year-long stay in the region, he underwent additional screening. On both occasions, he stated that he visited family members and was cleared by immigration and customs officials. The FBI did not find any signs of ties to terrorism during background checks.

According to a childhood friend, Rahimi grew a beard, started wearing more religious clothing following his trips to Afghanistan, and began praying in the back of his family's restaurant. When the mobile phone from West 27th Street was examined, investigators found that Rahimi had posted jihadist writings on various websites.  In addition, his handwritten journal was found, expressing a desire to become a martyr.  However, it was "not known whether he had any links to an overseas terror organization, or whether he had been inspired by such organizations and their propaganda efforts, as others have been." One intelligence source said Rahimi may have been self-radicalized.

In June 2016, Rahimi's wife left the United States, planning to return September 21. On September 19, following her husband's arrest, she was stopped by the United Arab Emirates authorities. Two days later, she returned to New York and was questioned by the investigators. The wife was cooperative and not accused of wrongdoing.

Events of September 18–19

Manhunt
After stopping the five men on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, FBI agents and Elizabeth police searched Rahimi's home in the early morning of September 18. The FBI asked for public assistance in detaining Rahimi for questioning in connection with the bombings in Manhattan and Seaside Park, as well as the attempted overnight bombing in Elizabeth.

At 7:39 a.m. on September 19, the NYPD posted a "Wanted" poster of Rahimi on Twitter. Seventeen minutes later, the Wireless Emergency Alert system was used to send an alert message to the mobile phones of millions of people in New York City, marking the first time New York City used the emergency alert to search for a named suspect. The alert message read, "WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen." Mayor de Blasio said, "Anyone who sees this individual or knows anything about him or his whereabouts needs to call it in right away."

Authorities said that Rahimi might be armed and dangerous. Law enforcement put him on some terror watchlists to prevent him from leaving the United States.

Concurrently, authorities started searching Rahimi's home in Elizabeth. The New Jersey State Police released two tweets, one at 9:30 a.m. and the other at 10:56 a.m., both stating that Rahimi was wanted in connection with the Seaside Park and Elizabeth bombs.

Discovery, shootout, and arrest
At around 10:30 a.m., Linden bar owner Harinder Baines was in a deli across the street from his bar, watching CNN, when he saw a man sleeping in the bar's doorway. He recognized the man as Rahimi from news reports and called 911, saying "the guy looks a little suspicious and doesn't look good to me." Linden Police Department (Linden PD) Officer Angel Padilla arrived and awoke the man, soon confirming that the man was the wanted Rahimi, and calmly (so as not to alert Rahimi) called for additional units to be dispatched to the location. Officer Padilla ordered Rahimi to show his hands. Rahimi disregarded the order, retrieved a Glock 9mm handgun, and shot Officer Padilla in the abdomen, striking his bulletproof vest.

By this point, four other Linden PD personnelInvestigator Pete Hammer, Investigator Mark Kahana, Officer David Guzman, and Officer Daniel Diazwere separately arriving in response to Officer Padilla's request for more units. Padilla returned fire as Rahimi fled up the street. Investigator Hammer drove towards Rahami, who stepped onto the street and fired at Hammer, with the bullet passing through the windshield and grazing Hammer's head; despite being struck by the bullet and cut by flying glass, Hammer drove at Rahami, who dodged the vehicle and ran on. During the shootout, Rahimi was shot at least seven times, hit in his liver and an artery, and sustained a shoulder wound. None of the officers' injuries or conditions were critical, with Padilla and Hammer both being discharged from hospital within days.

Rahimi was apprehended shortly before noon, and transported to University Hospital by ambulance. He underwent numerous surgeries and was in critical but stable condition. The severity of Rahimi's injuries made his ultimate survival uncertain. Officer Angel Padilla was released from the hospital that night, and Officer Peter  Hammer, shot while in his car, was released the next day.

Following Rahimi's arrest, investigators said there was "no indication" he was part of a broader terror cell, nor that such a cell was "operating in the area." Rahimi was said to be initially uncooperative during interrogations.

Prosecution

Federal trial and conviction
On September 20, Rahimi was charged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, by criminal complaint, with four federal crimes including use of weapons of mass destruction (count one); bombing a place of public use (count two); destruction of property by means of fire or explosives (count three); and use of a destructive device during and in furtherance of a crime of violence (count four). On the same day, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark charged him with use of a weapon of mass destruction (counts one and two), bombings of a place of public use and public transportation system (count three), and attempted destruction of property by means of fire or explosive (count four).

On September 26, Rahimi's father and wife retained the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to defend him on the federal charges. The ACLU represented Rahimi until he was given a federal public defender. An assistant federal public defender represented Rahimi at trial.

On November 10, after Rahimi had been moved into federal custody in Manhattan, he made an initial appearance in the Manhattan federal court to face terrorism charges. Rahimi's lawyer said in court that Rahimi had eight to ten surgeries and had liver damage. Federal authorities argued that Rahimi was well enough to be in regular custody.

On November 16, Rahimi was indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on eight criminal counts including use of a weapon of mass destruction; attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction; bombing a place of public use; destruction of property by means of fire or explosion; attempted destruction of property by means of fire or explosion; interstate transportation and receipt of explosives; use of a destructive device during, and in furtherance of, a crime of violence (two counts). A day later, Rahimi pleaded not guilty on all of the charges before U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman.

In April 2017, the defense team filed a motion for a change of venue, requesting that the trial be held in Burlington, Vermont. They argued that the extensive pre-trial publicity in New York would prevent their client from getting a fair trial in Manhattan. The court denied this motion the following month.

While awaiting trial for his federal charges, Rahimi was accused by authorities at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan of distributing Islamic extremist propaganda and attempting to radicalize inmates alongside fellow pre-trial inmate and would-be terrorist, Sajmir Alimehmeti. Rahimi had passed on propaganda materials containing lectures and speeches of prominent extremists such as Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, to Alimehmeti, who would then distribute the materials to other MCC inmates. Additionally, explosive-making instructions were passed on to some inmates. Alimehmeti was convicted of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State in December 2019 and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Alimehmeti was transferred to ADX Florence shortly afterward.

On October 16, 2017, after a two-week jury trial, Rahimi was found guilty of all eight charges in federal court in New York.  The mandatory sentence is life without parole. Rahimi was removed from the courtroom during opening statements after making repeated outbursts. During the trial, the government introduced into evidence Rahimi's fingerprints and DNA on unexploded bombs and bomb debris; videotape of Rahimi pulling the luggage containing the bombs; and testimony from detectives, computer analysts, and others. The government also presented as evidence a journal carried by Rahimi at the time of his arrest that read: "Everything had to be done quietly and I had to lie to cover my tracks. The sounds of the bombs will be heard in the streets. Gun shots to your police. Death to your oppression." The government also presented evidence from Rahimi's Internet bookmarks, which included bomb-making guides that appeared in al-Qaeda propaganda. A juror interviewed following the verdict called the evidence of guilt overwhelming. Officials also stated that he tried to convert other inmates to extremist ideologies before and during the trial. On February 13, 2018, Rahimi was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Rahimi was transferred to United States Penitentiary, McCreary in Kentucky after his sentencing. In 2022, Rahimi was transferred to ADX Florence in Colorado.

State prosecution
On the night of September 19, Rahimi was charged in New Jersey Superior Court with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer in relation to the shootout in Linden. He was also charged with second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon and second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, both in relation to the handgun found in his possession.

On October 13, after a delay caused by his ongoing recovery from gunshot wounds, Rahimi appeared, by teleconference, in New Jersey State Court to plead not guilty to the charges against him.

On October 18, Rahimi was moved from the hospital to the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. On November 10, ahead of hearings in his case, Rahimi was moved from the medical unit at Trenton State Prison to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

Response

Governor Cuomo released a statement following the Manhattan bombing, saying, "We are closely monitoring the situation and urge New Yorkers to, as always, remain calm and vigilant." The day following the bombing, Cuomo and de Blasio toured the damage together.

Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., released a statement saying the Afghan government condemned the bombings and promising the country's cooperation with the investigation.

In a statement, the Council on American–Islamic Relations welcomed the arrest of Rahimi, saying, "American Muslims, like all Americans, reject extremism and violence, and seek a safe and secure nation. Our nation is most secure when we remain united and reject the fear-mongering and guilt by association often utilized following such attacks."

Security was boosted across New York City's five boroughs as a precaution. Cuomo said that, while there was no ongoing threat, he would deploy 1,000 additional National Guard troopers and State Police officers to major commuter hubs during the United Nations General Assembly meeting which began when the bombings were unfolding.

In the two days following the Manhattan bombing, the NYPD received 406 phone calls reporting suspicious packages in the city. None were found to contain bombs.

The Yelp listing for the chicken restaurant owned by Rahimi's family was review bombed in retaliation for the attempted bombings.

See also
Jihadist extremism in the United States
List of terrorist incidents in September 2016

References

External links

2010s in Manhattan
2016 crimes in New Jersey
2016 in New York City
23rd Street (Manhattan)
Attacks in the United States in 2016
Chelsea, Manhattan
Crimes in New York City
History of Elizabeth, New Jersey
Explosions in New Jersey
Improvised explosive device bombings in the United States
Islamic terrorist incidents in 2016
Islamic terrorism in New York (state)
Linden, New Jersey
Plots and attacks using pressure cooker bombs
Seaside Park, New Jersey
September 2016 crimes in the United States
Terrorist incidents in New Jersey
Terrorist incidents in New York City
Terrorist incidents in the United States in 2016
Anti-Americanism

2016 New York and New Jersey bombings


The Duplessis Orphans () were a population of Canadian children wrongly certified as mentally ill by the provincial government of Quebec and confined to psychiatric institutions in the 1940s and 1950s.  Many of these children were deliberately miscertified in order to acquire additional subsidies from the federal government. They are named for Maurice Duplessis, who served as Premier of Quebec for five non-consecutive terms between 1936 and 1959. The controversies associated with Duplessis, and particularly the corruption and abuse concerning the Duplessis orphans, have led to the popular historic conception of his term as Premier as La Grande Noirceur ("The Great Darkness") by its critics.

The Duplessis Orphans have accused both the government of Quebec and the Roman Catholic Church of wrongdoing. The Catholic Church has denied involvement in the scandal, and disputes the claims of those seeking financial compensation for harm done.

Background
During the 1940s and 1950s, limited social services were available to residents of Quebec. Before the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, most of the social services available were provided through the Roman Catholic Church. Among their charges were people considered to be socially vulnerable: those living in poverty, alcoholics or other individuals deemed unable to retain work, unwed mothers, and orphans.

The Catholic Church urged many mothers to admit children to orphanages despite not having been formally orphaned due to their "bastard" status (being born to unwed mothers).  Some of these orphanages were operated by Roman Catholic religious institutions, due to a lack of secular investment in social  services; they encouraged unwed mothers to leave their children there, so that they might be raised in the Roman Catholic church. Maternity homes for unwed mothers, too, then prevalent, often encouraged the giving up of these "bastard" children.

The Loi sur les Asiles d'aliénés (Lunatic Asylum Act) of 1909 governed mental institution admissions until 1950. The law stated the mentally ill could be committed for three reasons: to care for them, to help them, or as a measure to maintain social order in public and private life. However, the act did not define what a disruption of social order was, leaving the decision to admit patients up to psychiatrists.

The provincial government of Union Nationale Premier Maurice Duplessis received subsidies from the federal government for building hospitals, but received substantially fewer subsidies to support orphanages. Government contributions were only $1.25 a day for orphans, but $2.75 a day for psychiatric patients. This disparity in funding provided a strong financial incentive for reclassification. Under Duplessis, the provincial government was responsible for a significant number of healthy older children being deliberately classified as mentally ill  and sent to psychiatric hospitals, based on diagnoses made for fiscal reasons. Duplessis also signed an order-in-council which changed the classification of orphanages into hospitals in order to provide them with federal subsidies.

A commission in the early 1960s investigating mental institutions after Duplessis' death revealed one-third of the 22,000 patients classified as "mentally ill" were classified as such for the province's financial benefit, and not due to any real psychiatric deficit. Following the publication of the Bédard report in 1962, the province ceased retaining the institutional notion of "asylum". When many of the orphans reached adulthood, in light of these institutional changes, they were permitted to leave the facilities.

Impacts on orphans
Years later, long after these institutions were closed, survivors of the asylums began to speak out about child abuse which they endured at the hands of some staff and medical personnel. Many who have spoken publicly about their experiences claim that they had been abused physically and sexually, and were subjected to lobotomies, electroshock and straitjackets.

In a psychiatric study completed by one of the involved hospitals, middle-aged Duplessis Orphans reported more physical and mental impairments than the control group. In addition, the orphans were less likely to be married or to have a healthy social life. 80% reported they had suffered a traumatic experience between the ages of 7 and 18. Over 50% said they had undergone physical, mental, or sexual abuse. About 78% reported difficulty functioning socially or emotionally in their adult life.

Legal recourse in the 1990s
By the 1990s, about 3,000 survivors and a large group of supporters formed the Duplessis Orphans Committee, seeking damages from the Quebec provincial government. In March 1999, the provincial government made an offer of approximately CAD$15,000 as full compensation to each of the victims. The offer was rejected and the provincial government was harshly criticized, with Quebec's ombudsman at the time, Daniel Jacoby, saying that the government's handling of the affair trivialized the abuse alleged by the victims. In 2001, the claimants received an increased offer from the provincial government for a flat payment of $10,000 per person, plus an additional $1,000 for each year of wrongful confinement to a mental institution. The offer amounted to approximately $25,000 per orphan, but did not include any compensation for alleged victims of sexual or other abuse.

After the offer was accepted by representatives of the Duplessis Orphans Committee, the result was bitterly contested by other members upon learning that under the terms of the settlement, the committee's lawyer, president, and former public relations official would receive six- to seven-figure payments, in comparison with the paltry amount given to the actual victims. The committee subsequently voted to replace both the president and the public relations official. Critics of the judgment pointed out that three of the bureaucrats running the government's compensation program were being paid over $1,000 per day for work, whereas the orphans themselves received the same amount of money for an entire year of their confinement.

Seven religious communities were involved in operating some of the facilities: the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of Mercy, the Grey Nuns of Montreal, the Sisters of Charity of Quebec, the Little Franciscans of Mary, the Brothers of Notre-Dame-de-la-Misericorde, and the Brothers of Charity. When the settlement with the provincial government was reached, the orphans agreed to drop any further legal action against the Catholic Church. This offended some survivors; in 2006, one of the Orphans, Martin Lécuyer, stated, "It's important for me, that the Church, the priests, that they recognize they were responsible for the sexual abuse, and the aggression. It's not for the government to set that peace... It's an insult, and it's the biggest proof that the government is an accomplice of the Church."

Aftermath
In 1999, researchers Léo-Paul Lauzon and Martin Poirier issued a report arguing that both the Quebec provincial government and the Catholic Church made substantial profits by falsely certifying thousands of Quebec orphans as mentally ill during Duplessis' premiership. The authors made a conservative estimate that religious groups received $70 million in subsidies (measured in 1999 dollars) by claiming the children as "mentally deficient", while the government saved $37 million simply by having one of its orphanages redesignated from an educational institution to a psychiatric hospital. A representative of a religious order involved with the orphanages accused the authors of making "false assertions". In 2010, it was estimated that approximately 300–400 of the original Duplessis orphans were still alive.

On March 4, 1999, after a criminal investigation where 240 Duplessis orphans alleged 321 criminal accusations against those in charge of the hospitals, former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard declared a public apology to the orphans, but "without blaming or imputing legal responsibility to anyone."

Fate of human remains
In 2004, some Duplessis orphans asked the Quebec government to unearth an abandoned cemetery in the east end of Montreal, which they believed to have held the remains of orphans who may have been the subject of human experimentation. According to testimony by individuals who were at the Cité de St-Jean-de-Dieu insane asylum, the orphans in the asylum's care were routinely used as non-consensual experimental subjects, and many died as a consequence. The group wanted the government to exhume the bodies so that autopsies may be performed. In November 2010, the Duplessis orphans made their case before the United Nations Human Rights Council. In 2021, preliminary ground-penetrating radar analyses on grounds around former Canadian Indian residential schools allegedly indicated the presence of unmarked graves that could include the remains of Indigenous children that were also mainly administered by Christian churches. This has spurred further calls for the Quebec government and the Catholic Church to excavate former psychiatric hospital sites where the orphans were committed, with a class action lawsuit launched in 2018 denouncing the earlier settlement as "an insult" and not a "true apology" by the government and religious organizations.

See also
 Wrongful involuntary commitment
 Political abuse of psychiatry
 Anti-psychiatry
 Child abuse
 Magdalene asylum
 Religious abuse
 Project MKUltra
 Crimes against humanity

Notes

References
 Paulin, Marguerite. Maurice Duplessis: Powerbroker, Politician, XYZ Publishing, Montreal, 2005
 Thifault, Marie-Claude and Perreault, Isabelle. "The Social Integration of the Mentally Ill in Quebec Prior to the Bédard Report of 1962", Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 2002, vol. 29, no. 1

Further reading
 "Les enfants de Duplessis" (Duplessis Children), 1991, by Pauline Gill
 "Les fous crient au secours" (The mad cry for help) 1961, by Jean-Charles Pagé
 "Naître rien: Des orphelins de Duplessis, de la crèche à l'asile." 2002 by Rose Dufour, with the collaboration of Brigitte Garneau
 Les enfants de la Grande Noirceur. by Rod Vienneau, 2008
 "Plaidoyer d'un ex-orphelin réprouvé de Duplessis." 2000, by Jacques Baugé-Prévost
 "Les heures sauvage" 2001 by
 Matthias Dickert: The Duplessis Orphans. A Historical, Political and Literary Approach. In: Teaching Canada – Enseigner le Canada Ed. Martin Kuester, Claire Köhling, Sylvia Langwald, Albert Rau. Wißner, Augsburg 2017, pp 165–175

External links
The Duplessis Orphans at CBC Digital Archives
O douce Providence a composition by Alyssa Ryvers with Hervé Bertrand, a Duplessis Orphan.

Political scandals in Canada
Victims of human rights abuses
History of psychiatry
Medical malpractice
History of Catholicism in Quebec
Political history of Quebec
Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals in Canada
Activists for victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church
Psychiatric false diagnosis
History of human rights in Canada

Duplessis Orphans


Taenia crassiceps is a tapeworm in the  family Taeniidae. It is a parasitic organism whose adult form infects the intestine of carnivores, like canids.  It is related to Taenia solium, the pork tapeworm, and to Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm. It is commonly found in the Northern Hemisphere, especially throughout Canada and the northern United States.

Natural intermediate hosts of this organism are usually small rodents and moles. The larval stages of T. crassiceps develop subcutaneously or in their body cavities as cysticerci which are cyst-like structures.

Taenia crassiceps begins its life in the intestines of wild canines, such as the wolf. Inside the wolf, the tapeworm reproduces. Its eggs are passed in the wolf's feces and are eaten by a rat. When the rat is eaten by another wolf, the parasite's life cycle repeats. Taenia crassiceps rarely infect humans, but if they do, they often cause ocular larva migrans that can progress to blindness. An adult human's immune system typically removes the parasite before permanent damage is done, however, juveniles are typically less defended.

Human pathologies
Taenia crassiceps is described as an opportunistic infection in severe immunodeficiency, as in AIDS. But human infection are rare, with only eight cases reported and individuals who were infected tended to be immunosuppressed patients where parasites accumulated on skeletal muscles and subcutaneous tissue, and some with intraocular infections.
Rodents are natural intermediate hosts, and they harbor the cyst-like larvae (metacestodes, cysticerci) in the peritoneal cavity, where they multiply by asexual budding. Humans serve as intermediate hosts when food or water contaminated with feces from infected canids or felids is consumed.

A case of intracranial T. crassiceps tapeworm cysticercosis with severe involvement of the cerebellum is described. A 51-year-old German woman was hospitalized because of progressive headache, nausea, and vomiting. The signs and symptoms had started 2 weeks before, and intensity had been increasing ever since. At the time of admission, the patient showed cerebellar ataxia but no further neurologic deficits. She did not have fever or other symptoms. She had no known chronic preconditions or recent hospital stays and had never taken immunosuppressant drugs. She had no family history of neurologic symptoms or malignant diseases. Combined surgical removal of the larvae and treatment with albendazole and praziquantel led to a complete cure in this nonimmunocompromised patient. The organism was unequivocally identified by molecular methods, thus avoiding a misdiagnosis of Taenia solium tapeworm cysticercosis.

Symptoms
There may be no symptoms. Symptoms may include: Headaches, Nausea, and Vomiting

Laboratory studies
Positive test results from a serum enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay ELISA for anticysticercal antibodies help confirm the diagnosis; however, negative test results do not exclude cysticercosis. A CBC count may reveal eosinophilia.

Treatments
Surgical removal is mandatory for individuals with intraoscular cysts. Oscular cysticercosis can be effectively treated with Anthelminthics such as Albendazole or Praziquantel, oral corticosteroids.

Immunoregulation
The immune response elicited by T. crassiceps and its antigens in human and mice cells were studied, suggesting that it had a strong capacity to induce chronic Th2-type responses that are primarily characterized by high levels of Th2 cytokines, low proliferative response in lymphocytic cells, immature and LPS-tolerogenic profile in dendritic cells, the recruitment of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, and activated macrophages.

References
Includes public domain text from the CDC as cited

Cestoda
Zoonoses
Animal diseases
Parasitic animals of mammals
Animals described in 1800

Taenia crassiceps


The Ciane (Sicilian: Ciani) is a short river in southern Sicily, Italy. It flows into the Ionian Sea near Syracuse, after a run of , at a common mouth with the Anapo.

The name, deriving from the Greek cyanos ("azure"), is connected to the myth of Anapus and the nymph Cyane. On its banks are present spontaneous grows of papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), probably sent to Hiero II of Syracuse by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The area is now protected as part of the Natural Preserve of Fiume Ciane and Saline di Siracusa, created in 1984.

References
Guide of Sicily

Rivers of Italy
Rivers of Sicily
Rivers of the Province of Syracuse
Drainage basins of the Ionian Sea

Ciane


A-Boy Supply is a chain of plumbing and electrical supply stores located in the Pacific Northwest United States.  This privately held company is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The company has 3 stores in Oregon. They specialize in plumbing and electrical supplies, but they also have a mix of products similar to a neighborhood hardware store.  The largest A-Boy store is the Barbur Boulevard location  and it also has a seasonal plant nursery, and lumber. They also sell a limited selection of their product line, mostly faucets, via their website.

History

A-Boy Supply was founded by John Dolan in 1960 in a former grocery store in southeast Portland, Oregon. They first sold plumbing fixtures, electrical supplies and appliances. Lighting products and lighting supplies were added later. In 1962 he opened a second store in Milton-Freewater, Oregon- 300 miles away from the first store in Portland, Oregon. Although the store did well, distance made management difficult and, in 1969, John sold it.

The family then directed focus on developing stores in the Portland metro area beginning with a store in Tigard, Oregon. In November 1975, 2 stores were opened.  One in Beaverton, Oregon, and one in the Northeast Portland Hollywood neighborhood. The Vancouver, Washington store opened just in time for the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The Hillsboro, Oregon store was opened in 1984 and the Portland Northwest Vaughn Street store in 1996.

In July 2009, two months after announcing plans to liquidate their stores, the president of A-Boy Supply Co. bought out his family members and reopened 5 of the company's 6 stores, all of the Oregon locations.

Supreme Court Case: Dolan v. City of Tigard

A 1991 application to the City of Tigard to redevelop the Tigard A-Boy store site was halted due to a dispute with the city of Tigard. After John Dolan died in 1993, his wife Florence Dolan pursued the case to the US Supreme Court. In June 1994, she won the Supreme Court decision Dolan v. City of Tigard, that found the City of Tigard in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

After the court victory, and a delay in collecting restitution from the city, the new store was completed in 1999.

See also
 List of companies based in Oregon

Notes

References
Company History taken from the A-Boy Supply website, via the Internet Archive.
 Illinois Municipal Review / November 1994
Realtor.org

External links
 A-Boy Plumbing & Electrical Supply website

Hardware stores of the United States
Companies based in Portland, Oregon
Retail companies established in 1960
1960 establishments in Oregon
Privately held companies based in Oregon
American companies established in 1960

A-Boy Plumbing & Electrical Supply