Yarcombe is a village and civil parish in the county of Devon, England, situated in the East Devon administrative district on the A30 road near the towns of Honiton and Chard. It is sited in the steep rolling meadows and ancient woods of the Yarty Valley on the south edge of the Blackdown Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The population according to the 2011 census was 500.

The small village centre has a Norman church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, an old inn with monastical roots, a hotel, a bed and breakfast and a cluster of houses, but there are also many outlying farms and hamlets which make Yarcombe a large parish.

Yarcombe is a working village, and farming and agricultural support services are important sources of employment. There are other small businesses in the community, such as accommodation and catering, building and joinery, motor services, furniture making, and rural crafts. The village has a village hall and an active community life, including traditions such as pig and terrier racing, barrel rolling and metal ball throwing. The East Devon Sheepdog Trials have been held in Yarcombe for several years, in July.

Earl (later King) Harold briefly owned the manor in the village, prior to his demise at the Battle of Hastings. In Elizabethan times ownership of the manor passed to Francis Drake. Today one of his descendants remains squire of Yarcombe. In the Hundred Years War money was sent from Yarcombe by its French owner to the armies of France, to help them fight the English.

Yarcombe village is located close to the Devon/Somerset border and not far from West Dorset. The nearest small towns are Chard (6 miles) and Honiton (8 miles). Nearby are the coastal resorts of Lyme Regis, Seaton, Sidmouth, Budleigh Salterton and Exmouth. Larger towns further afield include Taunton (12 miles to the north), Exeter and Yeovil (around 25 miles west and east respectively).

Yarcombe won the Devon Village of the Year competition in 2005 and then at the West of England finals finished top of the Business of the Year category for the region.

References

External links

 Genuki
 Listed buildings in Yarcombe

Civil parishes in Devon
Villages in Devon
East Devon District
Former manors in Devon

Yarcombe


Éditions Larousse is a French publishing house specialising in reference works such as dictionaries. It was founded by Pierre Larousse and its best-known work is the Petit Larousse.

It was acquired from private owners by Compagnie Européenne de Publication in 1984, then Havas in 1997. It was acquired by Vivendi Universal in 1998.  Vivendi made losses in 2002 and sold Larousse to the Lagardère Group, thus satisfying public opinion by keeping Larousse in French hands, despite objections by smaller publishers about Lagardère's virtual monopoly on French publishing. It has been a subsidiary of Hachette Livre since 2004.

It also offers the Larousse Gastronomique and a free, open-content encyclopedia.

The logo was designed by Jean Picart Le Doux (1955-1970), Jean-Michel Folon (1972), Philippe Starck (2006), Christian Lacroix, Moebius, Karl Lagerfeld (1999) and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (2014).

See also
 Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 1866–1876 encyclopedia with 1877 and 1890 supplements
 Nouveau Larousse illustré (New Larousse Illustrated), 1897–1904 encyclopedia
 Grand Larousse encyclopédique, 1960-1964 encyclopedia
 Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse, 1982–1985 dictionary and encyclopedia
 Petit Larousse (1905)

Notes

Book publishing companies of France
French brands

Éditions Larousse


Tuff Gong is the brand name associated with a number of businesses started by Bob Marley and the Marley family. 'Tuff Gong' comes from Marley's nickname, which was in turn an echo of that given to founder of the Rastafari movement, Leonard "The Gong" Howell.

Record label
Tuff Gong is a record label formed by the reggae group The Wailers in 1970. Before 1981, the label used the facilities of Federal Records recording company in Marcus Garvey Drive. The first single on the label was "Run For Cover" by The Wailers. After 1973, the Tuff Gong headquarters was located at 56 Hope Road, Kingston, Jamaica — Bob Marley's home. The location is now home to the Bob Marley Museum.

The Tuff Gong label is distributed by Universal Music through Island Records.

Tuff Gong is the official Caribbean distributor of Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Disney Music Group.

In Rockstar Games and Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV, Tuff Gong Radio is based on the record label and is featured as one of the many fictional radio stations featured in-game. The station is dedicated to playing songs associated with Bob Marley, including tracks by his sons Stephen Marley and Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley.

Recording studio

Tuff Gong is a full-service recording studio located in Kingston, Jamaica. In 1981, Bob Marley's wife, Rita Marley, purchased Ken Khouri's Federal Records recording studio, the island's very first pressing plant, and the company subsequently moved from 56 Hope Road to 220 Marcus Garvey Drive, where it continues to operate.

Tuff Gong includes a recording studio, mastering room, stamper room, pressing plant, cassette plant, wholesale record shop, booking agency, as well as offices for Rita Marley Music and Ghetto Youths International.

Tuff Gong International studio is one of the largest Caribbean studios and features the second-largest live recording space on the island with artists, musicians, producers and tourists traveling from around the world to visit the facility.

A longtime resource for Jamaican musicians, Tuff Gong has been the location of recordings from Rita Marley, Capleton, Sly and Robbie, Shaggy, Bounty Killa, Lady Saw, Vybz Kartel, Popcaan, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, I-Wayne, Beenie Man, Jimmy Cliff, and many others.

International music stars, such as Snoop Dogg, Sinead O'Connor, Kenny Chesney, Lauryn Hill, Self Defense Family, and Tiken Jah Fakoly have chosen the studio for both its recording resources and its history.

A renewed international interest in Jamaican music has led to studio being used by a younger generation of artists, including Major Lazer.

See also
 List of record labels

References

External links
 Tuff Gong Homepage
 Tuff Gong Worldwide

Jamaican record labels
Record labels established in 1970
Reggae record labels
Vanity record labels
Bob Marley
Island Records
Jamaican brands
Kingston, Jamaica

Tuff Gong


Emmanuel Saez (born November 26, 1972) is a French, naturalized American economist who is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work, done with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, includes tracking the incomes of the poor, middle class and rich around the world. Their work shows that top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much inequality as before the Great Depression. He recommends much higher (marginal) taxes on the rich, up to 70% or 90%. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2010, and an honorary degree from Harvard University in 2019.

Research
Emmanuel Saez graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in 1996 where he studied mathematics and economics. He then received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999.

Saez has written extensively on the theory of optimal taxation and transfer, addressing topics such as wealth and income inequality, capital income taxation, and retirement. In addition to his theoretical work, he has authored a number of empirical papers, many of them applying the results from his theoretical work to US household data. His focus on the top 0.1% of the income and wealth distribution has led to his political theories about the "great compression" and the "great divergence" and led to significant research on the consensus about the ideal wealth distribution.

Saez's research on wealth and income inequality has largely focused on households at the top of the wealth and income distributions, which make up a significant portion of the US tax base.

Conservative critics, such as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, say that Saez and Piketty measure "market income," the total income before tax excluding income from government. Saez describes it as gross income reported on tax returns before any deductions. This excludes unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and employer-provided health insurance. Saez says that these are the best data available, as measured consistently since 1913. Critics say that they exaggerate inequality.

In 2011, Saez and Peter Diamond argued in public media a widely discussed paper that the proper marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies and especially the United States to impose is 73% (substantially higher than the current 42.5% top US marginal tax rate).

Together with Raj Chetty and others he researched social mobility in the US. They found substantial geographic differences across the country that were correlated with five factors: segregation, income inequality, local school quality, social capital, and family structure.

Awards

John Bates Clark Medal
He was the recipient of the 2009 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."
Saez's research contributions have been mainly in the field of Public Economics. The 2009 John Bates Clark citation reads:
"[Saez's] work attacks policy questions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, on the one hand refining
the theory in ways that link the characteristics of optimal policy to measurable aspects of the economy and of
behavior, while on the other hand undertaking careful and creative empirical studies designed to fill the gaps
in measurement identified by the theory.  Through a collection of interrelated papers, he has brought the
theory of taxation closer to practical policy making, and has helped to lead a resurgence of academic interest
in taxation."

MacArthur Fellow
In 2010, the MacArthur Foundation named Saez a MacArthur Fellow for his research into the connection between income and tax policy.

See also
Inequality in the United States
Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States

References

External links
 Emmanuel Saez's homepage
 "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States" (September 3, 2013)
 Essays on the economics of income taxation, PhD thesis (1999)

1972 births
Living people
21st-century French economists
Neo-Keynesian economists
Public economists
Labor economists
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Harvard University faculty
University of California, Berkeley faculty
MacArthur Fellows
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Emmanuel Saez


In cryptography, the Pointcheval–Stern signature algorithm is a digital signature scheme based on the closely related ElGamal signature scheme. It changes the ElGamal scheme slightly to produce an algorithm which has been proven secure in a strong sense against adaptive chosen-message attacks, assuming the discrete logarithm problem is intractable in a strong sense.

David Pointcheval and Jacques Stern developed the forking lemma technique in constructing their proof for this algorithm. It has been used in other security investigations of various cryptographic algorithms.

References

Digital signature schemes
Public-key cryptography

Pointcheval–Stern signature algorithm


A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise and transmedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a movie, a work of literature, a television program or a video game. The fictional universe also from media franchises of all time.

The greatest best known famous original media feature series including Disney (Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, etc.), DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) and Marvel Comics (Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, etc.).

Transmedia franchise
Multimedia franchises usually develop through a character or fictional world becoming popular in one medium, and then expanding to others through licensing agreements, with respect to intellectual property in the franchise's characters and settings. As one author explains, "For the studios, a home-run is a film from which a multimedia 'franchise' can be generated; the colossally expensive creation of cross-media conglomerates predicated on synergistic rewards provides an obvious imperative to develop such products." The trend later developed wherein franchises would be launched in multiple forms of media simultaneously; for instance, the movie The Matrix Reloaded and the video game Enter the Matrix were produced at the same time, using the same actors on the same sets, and released on the same day. Several other franchises throughout the 2000s had movies and games released within days of each other, including  King Kong, Star Wars, Harry Potter, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Transformers.

Fiction
Long-running franchises were common in the early studio era, when Hollywood studios had actors and directors under long-term contract. Examples include Andy Hardy, Ma and Pa Kettle, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marilyn Monroe, Bulldog Drummond, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, Tarzan, and Batman. The longest-running modern movie franchises include James Bond, Godzilla and King Kong, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Universal Monsters, and Star Trek. In such cases, even lead actors are often replaced as they age, lose interest, or their characters.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction literary franchises include the ...For Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to... reference books. An enduring and comprehensive example of a media franchise is Playboy Enterprises, which began expanding well beyond its successful magazine, Playboy, within a few years after its first publication, into such enterprises as a modeling agency, several television shows (Playboy's Penthouse, in 1959), and even its own television channel. Twenty-five years later, Playboy released private clubs and restaurants, movie theaters, a radio show, direct to video movies, music and book publishing (including original works in addition to its anthologies of cartoons, photographs, recipes, advice, articles or fiction that had originally appeared in the magazine), footwear, clothing of every kind, jewelry, housewares (lamps, clocks, bedding, glassware), guitars and gambling, playing cards, pinball machines and pet accessories, billiard balls, bedroom appurtenances, enhancements, plus countless other items of merchandise.

Related pages
Movie series
Prequel
Sequel
Spin-off (media)
Spiritual successor
Trilogy

References

Media franchises

Media franchise


Olga Petrova (born Muriel Harding; 10 May 1884 – 30 November 1977) was a British-American actress, screenwriter and playwright.

Life and career

Born Muriel Harding in England, she moved to the United States and became a star of vaudeville using the stage name Olga Petrova. She starred in a number of films for Solax Studios and Metro Pictures, where she was usually given the role of a femme fatale. During her seven years in film, Petrova appeared in more than two dozen films and wrote the script for several others. Most of her films are now lost, including what she considered her best pictures, those directed by Maurice Tourneur. The Library of Congress Silent Feature Film Database indicates three of her films survive: The Vampire (1915), Extravagance (1916) and The Waiting Soul (1918).

In 1913, she met local physician John Dillon Stewart in Indianapolis, Indiana, and quickly became engaged to be married. They married March 31 in Kansas City. Stewart moved his practice to New York City to be near her primary base of operations.

Petrova left the film industry in 1918 but continued to act in Broadway productions. During the 1920s, she wrote three plays and toured the U.S. with a theater troupe. She also interviewed a number of prominent film stars on paid assignment for Shadowland magazine, Motion Picture Magazine, and Photoplay Journal, including Marion Davies, Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Alla Nazimova, Norma Talmadge, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Rudolf Valentino. In 1942, she published her autobiography Butter with My Bread. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She made several visits to Saranac Lake, New York at the height of her fame at the request of theatrical agent William Morris. In the summer of 1921, she turned the first shovel of earth for a housing project sponsored by the chamber of commerce at a lot on Lake Street donated by Walter Jenkins.  The Petrova School on Petrova Avenue bears her name.

Olga Petrova died in 1977 in Clearwater, Florida, aged 93. She had no children.

Publications
 The White Peacock: A Play in Three Acts (Boston: Four Seas Company, 1922)
 Hurricane: Four Episodes in the Story of a Life (Boston: Four Seas Company, 1924)
 What Do We Know?: A Drama in Three Acts (Boston: Four Seas Company, 1930)
 Butter with My Bread (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1942)

Filmography

Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912) short
The Tigress (1914)Lost
The Heart of a Painted Woman (1915) Lost
The Vampire (1915)Survives
The Bludgeon (1915)Incomplete
My Madonna (1915)Lost
What Will People Say? (1916)Lost
The Soul Market (1916)Lost
Playing With Fire (1916)Lost
The Scarlet Woman (1916)Lost
The Eternal Question (1916)Lost
Extravagance (1916 Metro Pictures) Survives
The Black Butterfly (1916 Metro Pictures) Lost
Bridges Burned (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
The Secret of Eve (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
The Waiting Soul (1917 Metro Pictures)survives
The Soul of a Magdalen (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
The Undying Flame (1917 Paramount)Maurice Tourneur, director Lost
Law of the Land (1917 Paramount Pictures) Maurice Tourneur, director Lost
To the Death (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
The Silence Sellers (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
Exile (1917 Paramount Pictures)Maurice Tourneur, director Lost
More Truth Than Poetry (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
Daughter of Destiny (1917 First National Pictures) also producer and writer Lost
The Light Within (1918 First National Pictures)Lost
The Life Mask (1918 First National) Lost
Tempered Steel (1918 First National Pictures) Lost
The Panther Woman (1918 First National Pictures) Lost
Kira Kiralina (1928)

References

External links

Olga Petrova at the Women Film Pioneers Project
Images of Olga Petrova, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
portrait gallery(University of Washington, Sayre collection)
Paramount performer slide
Olga Petrova(kinotv)

1884 births
1977 deaths
Vaudeville performers
American silent film actresses
20th-century American actresses
British silent film actresses
British stage actresses
British emigrants to the United States
20th-century British actresses
British women dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British women writers
Women film pioneers

Olga Petrova


Qais () is an Arabic given name. 'Qays' and 'Qai' are alternatives of Qais.

Notable people with the name include:
Imru' al-Qais, Arabic poet in the 6th century
Kais Saied (born 1958), Tunisian President
Qais Ashfaq (born 1993), British boxer
Qais Abdur Rashid, legendary founding father of the Pashtuns
Qais Khazali (born 1974), founder of the Iran-backed Special Groups
Qais Essa (born 1975), Iraqi international football player
Qais Akbar Omar (born 1982), Afghan-American writer
Qais Al-Sindy (born 1967), Iraqi painter
Azzan bin Qais, Sultan of Oman

Arabic-language masculine given names
Masculine given names

Qais


Premier is a title for the head of government in  central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries.  A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier.

A premier will normally be a head of government, but is not the head of state. In presidential systems, the two roles are often combined into one, whereas in parliamentary systems of government the two are usually kept separate.

Relationship to the term "prime minister"
"Premier" is often the title of the heads of government in sub-national entities, such as the provinces and territories of Canada, states of the Commonwealth of Australia, provinces of South Africa, the island of Nevis within the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the nation of Niue. In some of these cases, the formal title remains "Prime Minister" but "Premier" is used to avoid confusion with the national leader. In these cases, care should be taken not to confuse the title of "premier" with "prime minister". In these countries, terms such as "Federal Premier", "National Premier" or "Premier of the Dominion" were sometimes used to refer to prime ministers, although these are now obsolete.

Etymology

The word comes from French  which means prime minister. Premier meaning 'first', coming from Latin prīmārius. This is why in many nations, "premier" is used interchangeably with "prime minister".

Examples by country
In the People's Republic of China, "premier" is more common and official, but "prime minister" is still used (see Premier of the People's Republic of China).

In the Republic of China (Taiwan), the head of government is officially the President of the Executive Yuan, but it can also be abbreviated to Premier.

In the Cayman Islands, the head of government is referred to as the "Premier", however, as a British Overseas Territory, the British Monarch is the head of state, and the British government often has the last say on external affairs.

In Cambodia, "Premier" means the "Prime Minister". In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a sub-national entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well in the cantons, the head of government has the formal title of "premier", often anglicized as "prime minister", while the national prime minister is Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but "premier" is sometimes colloquially used.

In the Czech Republic, the head of government is colloquially called "Premiér", and the Czech language translates both "Premier" and "Prime Minister" as "Premiér". However, although his post is commonly translated in English as "Prime Minister", the official title as per articles 67 and 68 of the Constitution is "Předseda vlády", literally "President of the Government".

In Croatia, the head of government is officially called "President of the Government" (predsjednik vlade) but "Premier" (premijer) is colloquially used.

In Serbia, the head of government is officially called "President of the Government" (predsednik vlade) but "Premier" (premijer) is colloquially used.

In Poland, the head of government is officially called "President of the Council of Ministers" () but "Premier" (polish for Prime Minister) is colloquially used.

In Italy, the President of the Council of Ministers, an office equivalent to prime minister, is informally referred to as the "Premier".

In North Macedonia the head of the government is named premier (Macedonian премиер, premier), usually translated in English as prime minister.

In the Soviet Union, the title of premier was applied to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, named Chairman of the Council of Ministers after 1946, which became the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In Malaysia, the head of the Sarawak state government is known as the Premier of Sarawak following a state constitutional amendment in 2022, a move widely seen to reflect the status of Sarawak as an equal partner with Sabah and Malaya in Malaysia as stipulated in the 1963 Malaysia Agreement (MA63).

In the Netherlands, the term premier is colloquially used as a synonym of prime minister. In Dutch language, the official and also commonly used term is "minister president", so this is even a third synonym, but this is normally not literally translated to English language.

By jurisdiction
 Premiers of Australia
 Premier of Bermuda
 Premier of the British Virgin Islands
 Premiers of Canada
 Premier of the Cayman Islands
 Premier of the People's Republic of China
 List of premiers of China
 Chancellor of China
 Premier of North Korea
 Premier of Montserrat
 Premiers of South Africa
 Premier of the Soviet Union
 Premier of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
 Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands
 President of the Council of Ministers

See also

 Westminster system
 Constitutional monarchy
 Semi-presidential system
 Semi-parliamentary system
 Parliamentary republic
 Parliamentary leader

References

Heads of government of non-sovereign entities
Positions of authority
Positions of subnational authority
Gubernatorial titles

Premier


Mir Muhammad Ali Rind (Urdu: میر محمد علی رند) is a Pakistani Politician and Member of Senate of Pakistan, currently serving as Chairperson- Senate Committee on Railway.

Political career
He belongs to Baluchistan province of Pakistan, and was elected to the Senate of Pakistan in March 2009 on general seat as Balochistan National Party Awami (BNP-A) candidate, he was later disqualified by the High Court of Balochistan on charges of concealing information that he was previously convicted in corrupt practices and misappropriation of public property. However he was reelected to the senate in the by-poll election for the same seat after Supreme Court of Pakistan allowed him to contest the polls. He is the chairperson of Senate Committee on Railway and member of senate committees of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, Functional Committee on Problems of Less Developed Areas, Employees Welfare Fund. Kashmir Affairs & Gilgit Baltistan. He is Vice President of Balochistan National Party (Awami), and previously had been a member of Baluchistan Assembly as MPA in 1985, 1990 and 1997. He was Minister of Revenue and Excise & Taxation in 1990 and Minister for Food, Fisheries and Coastal Development in 1997 in Baluchistan Cabinet.

See also
 List of Senators of Pakistan
 List of committees of the Senate of Pakistan

References

External links
Senate of Pakistan Official Website

Living people
Members of the Senate of Pakistan
1944 births

Mir Muhammad Ali Rind


Stenoma ulosema is a moth in the family Depressariidae. It was described by Edward Meyrick in 1930. It is found in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro).

The wingspan is about 17 mm. The forewings are whitish-ochreous with some slight brownish suffusion along the dorsum from near the base to the middle. The stigmata are fuscous, the plical minute, faint and very obliquely beyond the first discal, an additional dot on the lower angle of the cell and a blotch of fuscous apical suffusion covering the middle of veins 2-4. There is also a marginal series of fuscous dots around part of the costa and termen. The hindwings
are whitish, with a streak of thickened brown scales on the upper margin of the cell from towards the base to two-fifths of the wing.

References

Moths described in 1930
Taxa named by Edward Meyrick
Stenoma

Stenoma ulosema


The International Amateur Pair Go Championship (IAPGC as known as IAPG CUP) is an international tournament for amateur Go players under the Pair Go rule, held once a year since 1990. This competition is partly on the international championship and partly on the Japanese national championship.
The organising body is the Japan Pair Go Association (JPGA) and the International Amateur Pair Go Championship Executive Committee.

History
Hisao Taki, the president of NKB inc. in traffic advertisement Industry, originated Pair Go and promoted first pair go championship named International Go Amateur Pair Tournament as known as the NKB Cup on December 23, 1990. However, this event is officially translated as 1st International Amateur Pair Go Championship in English. 64 players from 4 countries were invited in this event.

On November 24, 1991, 2nd International Amateur Pair Go Championship was held at Hotel Edmont in Tokyo. Since this event, the neme  of event was fixed.

In 2008, Pair Go was one of the official sports in World Mind Sports Games. For this reason, 19th event was promoted in 2008 World Mind Sports Games.

In March 2010, "Pair Go 20th Anniversary WPGA Pair Go World Cup 2010 Hangzhou" was held in Hangzhou, China.

Past champions

See also
 Go competitions
 Go players
 Rengo

References

External links
World Pair Go Association
23rd International Amateur Pair Go Championship

International Go competitions
Go competitions in Japan


The Labrador Sea (French: mer du Labrador) is an arm of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Labrador Peninsula and Greenland. The sea is surrounded by continental shelves to the southwest, northwest, and northeast. It connects to the north with Baffin Bay through the Davis Strait. It has been described as a marginal sea of the Atlantic.

The Labrador Sea is about 3400 meters deep and  wide where it joins the Atlantic Ocean. It becomes shallower, to less than  towards Baffin Bay and passes into the  Davis Strait.

The water temperature varies between  in winter and  in summer. The salinity is relatively low, at 31–34.9 parts per thousand. Two-thirds of the sea is covered in ice in winter.

Fauna
The northern and western parts of the Labrador Sea are covered in ice between December and June. The drift ice serves as a breeding ground for seals in early spring. The sea is also a feeding ground for Atlantic salmon and several marine mammal species. Shrimp fisheries began in 1978, as well as cod fishing. The cod fishing quickly lessened the fish population in the 1990s and was stopped in 1992. Other fishery targets include haddock, Atlantic herring, lobster and several species of flatfish and pelagic fish such as sand lance and capelin. Bigger amounts are in the southern parts of the sea.

The sea has one of the two major stocks of Sei whales, the other one being the Scotian Shelf. Also common are minke and bottlenose whales.

The Labrador Duck was a common bird on the Canadian coast until 19th century, but is now extinct. Coastal animals include the Labrador Wolf, caribou, moose, black bear, red fox, arctic fox, wolverine, snowshoe hare, grouse, osprey, raven, ducks, geese, partridge and American wild pheasant.

Flora
Costal vegetation includes black spruce, tamarack, white spruce, dwarf birch, aspen, willow, ericaceous shrubs, cottongrass, sedge, lichens and moss. Evergreen bushes of Labrador tea, which is used to make herbal tea, are common in the area, both on the Greenland and Canadian coasts.

References

Other websites

Seas of the Atlantic Ocean
Geography of Greenland
Newfoundland and Labrador

Labrador Sea


Leitner Ropeways is a business that manufactures and distributes products and equipment for ropeways, snow groomers, urban transportation systems, and wind energy in Italy and internationally. The company was founded in 1888 and was recognized in 2003 to be owned by the Leitner Group, later the HTI Group. The company also provides spare parts, repairs and testing.

Products

Leitner Ropeways manufactures various types of ropeways, such as fixed-grip and detachable chairlifts; monocable, bicable, and tricable gondola lifts; telemix; surface lifts; aerial tramways; funiculars; and inclined elevators.

History
In 1888, Gabriel Leitner established the business, specializing in farm machinery, ropeways for material transportation, waterwheels and sawmills. In 1925, the company grew from a workshop employing 10 employees to a factory to produce agricultural machinery. In 1947, the company build its first chairlift in Corvara, Italy. In 1970, agricultural machinery production ceased and was replaced by snow groomer engineering. In 1980 a production plant was built. In 1983, the company developed a detachable grip for chairlifts and gondola lifts. In 1985, the first detachable gondola lifts were made in Brunico and Valtournenche, Italy. The first 4-seater chair was made in Obereggen, Italy. In 1999, the company acquired the ropeway division of Waagner Biro.

In 2003, a company-wide reorganization resulted in the Leitner Group being formed. In the same year, the Leitwind wind turbine was released. In 2008 the MiniMetro was first built in Perugia, Italy. In 2009, Leitner produced the company's first tricable gondola lift.

Agudio
Originally founded in 1861, Agudio was later acquired by Leitner Ropeways. In 2015, Agudio was integrated into Leitner Ropeways, however, the brand was retained.

Sites
The company has five sites. The Sterzing site located in Sterzing/Vipiteno, Italy, serves as the headquarters of Leitner AG / SpA. The Sterzing-Unterackern site is also located in Sterzing/Vipiteno, Italy. Leitner GmbH is located at the site in Telfs, Austria. Leitner France SAS is located at the site in Montmélian, France. Leitech s.r.o. is located at the Stará Ľubovňa site in Poprad, Slovakia.

References

Companies of Italy
Aerial lift manufacturers
Manufacturing companies established in 1888
Italian brands
Manufacturing companies based in South Tyrol
1888 establishments in Austria-Hungary
Wind turbine manufacturers
Renewable energy technology companies
Wind power in Italy

Leitner Ropeways


Absolute Cobblers is a game show, based on an Australian format, that aired for one series on Challenge TV in 1999. It was hosted by Sean Meo and Wynnie La Freak. The idea of the show is that the host had to read out something and panellists have to decide whether it was true or 'absolute cobblers'. They would then throw the question out to the studio audience to see what they thought, with the chance of winning things in the process.

External links

Wynnie La Freak's profile on Dragact

British panel games
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The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is an electrified railroad line in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States. Owned primarily by Amtrak, it runs from Boston in the north to Washington, D.C., in the south with major stops in Providence, New Haven, Stamford, New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. The NEC closely parallels Interstate 95 for most of its length, and, as of 2013, is the busiest passenger rail line in the United States both by ridership and by service frequency. The NEC carries more than 2,200 trains daily.

The corridor is used by many Amtrak trains, including the high-speed Acela, intercity trains, and several long-distance trains. Most of the corridor also has frequent commuter rail service, operated by the MBTA, CT Rail, Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, and MARC. While large through freights have not run on the NEC since the early 1980s, some sections still carry smaller local freights operated by CSX, Norfolk Southern, CSAO, Providence and Worcester, New York and Atlantic, and Canadian Pacific. CSX and NS partly own their routes.

Most of the high-speed rail services in the Americas operate exclusively on the corridor. These include Amtrak's Cardinal, Carolinian, Crescent, Keystone Service, Northeast Regional, Palmetto, Pennsylvanian, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, andVermonter trains, which reach ; and its Acela trains, which reach  on a few sections in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. They also include certain express trains operated by MARC that reach . Acela covers the  between New York and Washington, D.C., in under three hours, and the  between New York and Boston in under 3.5 hours.

Amtrak's proposals for improvements to enable "true" high-speed rail on the corridor would roughly halve travel times at an estimated cost of $151 billion.

History

Origins

Most of what is now called the Northeast Corridor was built, piece by piece, by several railroads, from the 1830s. Before 1900, their routes had been consolidated as two long and unconnected stretches, each a part of a major railroad.  Anchored in Washington, D.C., the stretch owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad approached New York City from the south; anchored at Boston, the stretch owned by the New Haven Railroad entered New York State from Connecticut. The former terminated at New Jersey ferry slips across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The latter extended to the Bronx, whence it continued into Manhattan via trackage rights on the New York and Harlem Railroad.  It also reached the Bronx via the Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad, which extended to the Bronx from the New Haven at New Rochelle.

From 1903 to 1917, the two railroads undertook a number of projects that connected their lines and completed, in effect, the Northeast Corridor. These included the New York Tunnel Extension in New Jersey (including Manhattan Transfer station and a new Pennsylvania Station), the New York Connecting Railroad and the Hell Gate Bridge. Combined, these creations were a stretch that started just above Newark, New Jersey, on the Pennsylvania Railroad side, and connected with the Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad (and thus New Rochelle) on the New Haven side. With the opening of the Hell Gate Bridge in 1917, this connecting stretch and thus the Northeast Corridor itself were complete.

With the 1968 creation of Penn Central, which was a combination of those two railroads and the New York Central Railroad, the entire corridor was under the control of a single entity for the first time.  After successor Penn Central's 1970 bankruptcy, the corridor was almost entirely subsumed, on May 1, 1971, by the subsequently-created Amtrak.

Boston–The Bronx (New Haven Railroad)
 Boston–Providence: Boston and Providence Railroad opened 1835, partially realigned in 1847 and in 1899. Became part of the Old Colony Railroad in 1888.
 Providence–Stonington: New York, Providence and Boston Railroad opened 1837; partially realigned 1848.
 Stonington–New Haven: New Haven, New London and Stonington Railroad opened 1852–1889, realigned in New Haven, 1894.
 New Haven–New Rochelle: New York and New Haven Railroad opened 1849.
 New Rochelle–Port Morris (Bronx): Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad opened 1873.

Newark–Washington, D.C. (Pennsylvania Railroad)
 Newark–Trenton: United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company opened 1834–1839, 1841; partially realigned 1863 and 1870.
 Trenton–Frankford Junction: Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad opened 1834; partially realigned 1911.
 Frankford Junction–Zoo Tower: Connecting Railway opened 1867.
 Zoo Tower–Grays Ferry Bridge: Junction Railroad opened 1863–1866.
 Grays Ferry–Bayview: Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad opened 1837–1838, 1866, 1906.
 Bayview Yard–Baltimore Union Station: Union Railroad opened 1873.
 Baltimore Union Station–Landover: Baltimore and Potomac Rail Road opened 1872.
 Landover–Washington, D.C.: Magruder Branch opened 1907

New York City area

 Manhattan Transfer station (just above Newark), opened 1910
 New York Tunnel Extension, opened 1910
 Pennsylvania Station (1910–1963), completed 1910
 New York Connecting Railroad, completed 1917
 Hell Gate Bridge (connected to Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad), opened 1917

Electrification, 1905–38

New York section

In 1899, William J. Wilgus, the New York Central Railroad (NYC)'s chief engineer, proposed electrifying the lines leading from Grand Central Terminal and the split at Mott Haven, using a third rail power system devised by Frank J. Sprague. Electricity was in use on some branch lines of the NYNH&H for interurban streetcars via third rail or trolley wire. An accident in the Park Avenue Tunnel near the present Grand Central Terminal that killed 17 people on January 8, 1902, was blamed on smoke from steam locomotives; the resulting outcry led to a push for electric operation in Manhattan.

The NH announced in 1905 that it would electrify its main line from New York to Stamford, Connecticut. Along with the construction of Grand Central Terminal, which was opened in 1913, the NYC electrified its lines. On September 30, 1906, the NYC conducted a test of suburban multiple unit service to Highbridge station on the Hudson Line; regular service began on December 11. Electric locomotives began serving Grand Central on February 15, 1907, and all NYC passenger service into Grand Central was electrified on July 1, 1907. NH electrification began in July to New Rochelle, August to Port Chester and October the rest of the way to Stamford. Steam trains last operated into Grand Central on June 30, 1908:  the deadline after which steam trains were banned in Manhattan. Subsequently, all NH passenger trains into Manhattan were electrified. In June 1914, the NH electrification was extended to New Haven, which was the terminus of electrified service for over 80 years.

The PRR was building its Pennsylvania Station and electrified approaches, which were served by the PRR's lines in New Jersey and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). LIRR electric service began in 1905 on the Atlantic Branch from downtown Brooklyn past Jamaica, and in June 1910 on the branch to Long Island City: part of the main line to Penn Station. Penn Station opened on September 8, 1910, for LIRR trains and November 27 for the PRR; trains of both railroads were powered by DC electricity from a third rail. PRR trains changed engines (electric to/from steam) at Manhattan Transfer; passengers could also transfer there to H&M trains to downtown Manhattan.

On July 29, 1911, NH began electric service on its Harlem River Branch: a suburban branch that would become a main line with the completion of the New York Connecting Railroad and its Hell Gate Bridge. The bridge opened on March 9, 1917, but was operated by steam with an engine change at Sunnyside Yard east of Penn Station until 1918.

Electrification north of New Haven to Providence and Boston had been planned by the NH, and authorized by the company's board of directors shortly before the United States entered World War I. This plan was not carried out because of the war and the company's financial problems. Electrification north of New Haven did not occur until the 1990s, by AMTRAK, using a 60 Hz system.

New York to Washington electrification

In 1905, the PRR began to electrify its suburban lines at Philadelphia: an effort that eventually led to 11 kV, 25 Hz AC catenary from New York and Washington. Electric service began in September 1915, with multiple unit trains west to Paoli on the PRR Main Line (now the Keystone Corridor). Electric service to Chestnut Hill (now the Chestnut Hill West Line), including a stretch of the NEC, began on March 30, 1918. Local electric service to Wilmington, Delaware, on the NEC began on September 30, 1928, and to Trenton, New Jersey, on June 29, 1930.

Electrified service between Exchange Place, the Jersey City terminal, and New Brunswick, New Jersey, began on December 8, 1932, including the extension of Penn Station electric service from Manhattan Transfer. On January 16, 1933, the rest of the electrification between New Brunswick and Trenton opened, giving a fully-electrified line between New York and Wilmington. Trains to Washington began running under electricity to Wilmington on February 12, 1933, with the engine-change moved from Manhattan Transfer to Wilmington. The same was done on April 9, 1933, for trains running west from Philadelphia, with the change point moved to Paoli.

In 1933, the electrification south of Wilmington was stalled by the Great Depression, but the PRR got a loan from the Public Works Administration to resume work. The tunnels at Baltimore were rebuilt as part of the project. Electric service between New York and Washington began on February 10, 1935. On April 7, the electrification of passenger trains was complete, with 639 daily trains: 191 hauled by locomotives and the other 448 under multiple-unit power. New York–Washington electric freight service began on May 20, 1935, after the electrification of freight lines in New Jersey and Washington,DC.  Extensions to Potomac Yard across the Potomac River from Washington, as well as several freight branches along the way, were electrified in 1937 and 1938. The Potomac Yard retained its electrification until 1981.

Re-signaling
In the 1930s, PRR equipped the New York–Washington line with Pulse code cab signaling. Between 1998 and 2003, this system was overlaid with an Alstom Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES), using track-mounted transponders similar to the Balises of the modern European Train Control System. The ACSES will enable Amtrak to implement positive train control to comply with the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Founding and operation of Amtrak

Reorganization and bankruptcy

In December 1967, the UAC TurboTrain set a speed record for a production train:  between New Brunswick and Trenton, New Jersey.

In February 1968, PRR merged with its rival New York Central Railroad to form the Penn Central (PC). Penn Central was required to absorb the New Haven in 1969 as a condition of the merger.

On September 21, 1970, all New York–Boston trains except the Turboservice were rerouted into Penn Station from Grand Central; the Turboservice moved on February 1, 1971, for cross-platform transfers to the Metroliners.

In 1971, Amtrak began operations, and various state governments took control of portions of the NEC for their commuter transportation authorities. In January, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts bought the Attleboro/Stoughton Line in Massachusetts, later operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The same month, the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority bought, and Connecticut leased, from Penn Central their sections of the New Haven Line, between Woodlawn, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1973, the Regional Rail Reorganization Act opened the way for Amtrak to buy sections of the NEC not already been sold to these commuter transportation authorities. These purchases by Amtrak were controversial at the time, and the Department of Transportation blocked the transaction and withheld purchase funds for several months until Amtrak granted it control over reconstruction of the corridor.

In February 1975, the Preliminary System Plan for Conrail proposed to stop running freight trains on the NEC between Groton, Connecticut, and Hillsgrove, Rhode Island, but this clause was rejected the following month by the U.S. Railway Association.

By April 1976, Amtrak owned the entire NEC except Boston to the RI state line, which is owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and New Haven to New Rochelle, New York, which is owned by the States of Connecticut and New York. Amtrak still operates and maintains the portion in Massachusetts, but the line from New Haven to New Rochelle, New York, is operated by the Metro-North Railroad, which has hindered the establishment of high-speed service.

Northeast Corridor Improvement Project

In 1976, Congress authorized an overhaul of the system between Washington and Boston. Called the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project (NECIP), it included safety improvements, modernization of the signaling system by General Railway Signal, and new Centralized Electrification and Traffic Control (CETC) control centers by Chrysler at Philadelphia, New York and Boston. It allowed more trains to run faster and closer together, and set the stage for later high-speed operation. NECIP also introduced the AEM-7 locomotive, which lowered travel times and became the most successful engine on the Corridor. The NECIP set travel time goals of 2 hours and 40 minutes between Washington and New York, and 3 hours and 40 minutes between Boston and New York. These goals were not met because of the low level of funding provided by the Reagan Administration and Congress in the 1980s.

Electrification between New Haven and Boston was to be included in the 1976 Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act.

The last grade crossings between New York and Washington were closed about 1985; eleven grade crossings remain in Connecticut.

1990s implementation of high-speed rail

In the 1990s, Amtrak upgraded the NEC north of New Haven, CT to get it ready for the high-speed Acela Express trains. Dubbed the Northeast High Speed Rail Improvement Program (NHRIP), the effort eliminated grade crossings, rebuilt bridges and modified curves. Concrete railroad ties replaced wood ties, and heavier continuous welded rail (CWR) was laid-down.

In 1996, Amtrak began installing electrification gear along the  of track between New Haven and Boston. The infrastructure included a new overhead catenary wire made of high-strength silver-bearing copper, specified by Amtrak and later patented by Phelps Dodge Specialty Copper Products of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

2000–present

Service with electric locomotives between New Haven and Boston began on January 31, 2000. The project took four years and cost close to $2.3 billion: $1.3 billion for the infrastructure improvements and close to $1 billion for both the new Acela trainsets and the Bombardier–Alstom HHP-8 locomotives.

On December 11, 2000, Amtrak began operating its higher-speed Acela Express service. Fastest travel time by Acela is three and a half hours between Boston and New York, and two hours forty-five minutes between New York and Washington, D.C.

In 2005, there was talk in Congress of splitting the Northeast Corridor, which was opposed by then-acting Amtrak president David Gunn. The plan, supported by the Bush administration, would "turn over the Northeast Corridor – the tracks from Washington to Boston that are the railroad's main physical asset – to a federal-state consortium."

With the passage of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, the Congress established the Northeast Corridor Commission (NEC Commission) in the U.S. Department of Transportation to facilitate mutual cooperation and planning and to advise Congress on Corridor rail and development policy. The commission members include USDOT, Amtrak and the Northeast Corridor states.

In August 2011 the United States Department of Transportation committed $450 million to a six-year project to support capacity increases on one of the busiest segments on the NEC: a  section between New Brunswick and Trenton, passing through Princeton Junction. The Next Generation High-Speed project is designed to upgrade electrical power, signal systems and overhead catenary wires to improve reliability and increase speeds up to , and, after the purchase of new equipment, up to . In September 2012, speed tests were conducted using Acela train sets, achieving a speed of . The improvements were scheduled to be completed in 2016, but, due to delays, the project had not been completed until 2020.

2015 derailment

Eleven minutes after leaving 30th Street Station in Philadelphia on May 12, 2015, a year-old ACS-64 locomotive (#601) and all seven Amfleet I coaches of Amtrak's northbound Northeast Regional (TR#188) derailed at 9:21pm at Frankford Junction in the Port Richmond section of the city, while entering a  speed limited (but at the time non-ATC protected) 4° curve at , killing eight and injuring more than 200 (eight critically) of the 238 passengers and five crew on board as well as causing the suspension of all Philadelphia–New York NEC service for six days.

This was the deadliest crash on the Northeast Corridor since 16 died when Amtrak's Washington–Boston Colonial (TR#94) rear-ended three stationary Conrail locomotives at  near Baltimore on January 4, 1987. Frankford Junction curve was the site of a previous fatal accident on September 6, 1943, when an extra section of the PRR's Washington to New York Congressional Limited derailed there, killing 79 and injuring 117 of the 541 on board.

Infrastructure

The NEC is a cooperative venture between Amtrak and various state agencies. Amtrak owns the track between Washington and New Rochelle, New York, a northern suburb of New York City. The segment from New Rochelle to New Haven is owned by the states of New York and Connecticut; Metro-North Railroad commuter trains operate there. Amtrak owns the tracks north of New Haven to the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The final segment from the border north to Boston is owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Electrification

At just over , the Northeast Corridor is the longest electrified rail corridor in the United States. Most electrified railways in the country are for rapid transit or commuter rail use; the Keystone Corridor is the only other electrified intercity mainline.

Currently, the corridor uses three catenary systems. From Washington, D.C., to Sunnyside Yard (just east of New York Penn Station), Amtrak's 25 Hz traction power system (originally built by the Pennsylvania Railroad) supplies 12 kV at 25 Hz. From Sunnyside to Mill River (just east of New Haven station), the former New Haven Railroad's system, since modified by Metro-North, supplies 12.5 kV at 60 Hz. From Mill River to Boston, the much newer 60 Hz traction power system supplies 25 kV at 60 Hz. All of Amtrak's electric locomotives can switch between these systems.

In addition to catenary, the East River Tunnels have 750 V DC third rail for Long Island Rail Road trains, and the North River Tunnels have third rail for emergency use only.

In 2006, several high-profile electric-power failures delayed Amtrak and commuter trains on the Northeast Corridor up to five hours. Railroad officials blamed Amtrak's funding woes for the deterioration of the track and power supply system, which in places is almost a hundred years old. These problems have decreased in recent years after tracks and power systems were repaired and improved.

In September 2013, one of two feeder lines supplying power to the New Haven Line failed, while the other feeder was disabled for service. The lack of electrical power disrupted trains on Amtrak and Metro-North Railroad, which share the segment in New York State.

Stations

There are 109 active stations on the Northeast Corridor; 30 are used by Amtrak. All but three (, , and ) see commuter service. Amtrak owns Pennsylvania Station in New York, 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Station in Baltimore, and Union Station in Washington.

The main services of the Northeast Corridor are indicated using the following abbreviations. Other services are listed in the right-most column. Note that not all trains necessarily stop at all indicated stations.
 Amtrak corridor: A (Acela), KS (Keystone Service), NR (Northeast Regional), PA (), VT ()
 Amtrak long distance: CD (), CL (), CS (), PL (), SM (Silver Meteor), SS ()
MBTA Commuter Rail: P/S (Providence/Stoughton Line), NE (Needham Line), FR (Franklin/Foxboro Line)
CTrail: SLE (Shore Line East)
Metro-North Railroad: NHV (New Haven Line)
NJ Transit Rail: NEC (Northeast Corridor Line), NJC (North Jersey Coast Line), RV (Raritan Valley Line)
SEPTA Regional Rail: CHW (Chestnut Hill West Line), NWK (Wilmington/Newark Line), TRE (Trenton Line)
MARC Train: PEN (Penn Line)

Grade crossings

The entire Northeast Corridor has 11 grade crossings, all in southeastern New London County, Connecticut. The remaining grade crossings are along a part of the line that hugs the shore of Long Island Sound. Without these crossings many waterfront communities and businesses would be inaccessible from land. Six of the grade crossings have four-quadrant gates with induction loop sensors, which allow vehicles stopped on the tracks to be detected in time for an oncoming train to stop. The remaining five grade crossings, 3 near New London Union Station and two in Stonington, have dual gates.

FRA rules limit track speeds on the corridor to  over conventional crossings and  over crossings with four-quadrant gates and vehicle detection tied into the signal system.

History
The New York to New Haven line has long been completely grade-separated, and the last grade crossings between Washington and New York were eliminated in the 1980s. In 1994, during planning for electrification and high-speed Acela Express service between New Haven and Boston, a law was passed requiring USDOT to plan for the elimination of all remaining crossings (unless impractical or unnecessary) by 1997. Some lightly used crossings were simply closed, while most were converted into bridges or underpasses. Only thirteen remained by 1999, of which lightly used crossings in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and Exeter, Rhode Island, were soon closed.

Despite six nonfatal accidents in the previous sixteen years, there was substantial local opposition to closing the remaining 11 crossings. Outright closing the crossing would eliminate the sole access points to several of the places they served, while grade separation would be expensive and require land takings. Instead, the crossings were supplied with additional protections. In 1998, School Street in Groton was the first four-quadrant gate installation in the country with vehicle detection sensors tied into the line's signal system. It cost $1 million rather than the $4 million for a bridge. Seven more crossings received similar installations in 1999 and 2000; only the three in New London (which are on a tight curve with speed limits under ) did not.

On September 28, 2005, a southbound Acela Express struck a car at Miner Lane in Waterford, Connecticut, the first such incident since the additional protections were implemented. The train was approaching the crossing at approximately  when the car reportedly rolled under the lowered crossing gate arms too late for the sensor system to fully stop the train. The driver and one passenger were killed on impact; the other passenger died nine days later from injuries sustained in the crash. The gates were later inspected and declared to have been functioning properly at the time of the incident. The incident drew public criticism about the remaining grade crossings along the busy line.

Crossing list
Crossing are listed east to west.

Passenger ridership

Current rail service

Intercity passenger services

In 2003, Amtrak accounted for about 14% of intercity trips between the cities served by the NEC and its branches (the rest were taken by airline, automobile, or bus). A 2011 study estimated that in 2010 Amtrak carried 6% of the Boston–Washington traffic, compared to 80% for automobiles, 8–9% for intercity bus, and 5% for airlines. Amtrak's share of the air or rail passenger traffic between New York City and Boston has grown from 20 percent to 54 percent since 2001, and 75 percent between New York City and Washington, D.C.

These Amtrak trains serve NEC stations and run at least partially on the corridor:
 Acela Express: high-speed rail Boston–Washington, D.C.
 Cardinal: New York–Chicago via Washington, D.C. (Wednesdays, Fridays, & Sundays only)
 Carolinian: New York–Charlotte, North Carolina
 Crescent: New York–New Orleans
 Keystone Service: higher-speed rail Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – New York
 Northeast Regional: higher-speed rail Boston/Springfield/New York–Washington D.C./Richmond/Newport News/Norfolk/Roanoke, Virginia
 Palmetto: Savannah, Georgia – New York
 Pennsylvanian: Pittsburgh–New York via NEC and Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line
 Silver Meteor: Miami–New York
 Silver Star: Miami/Tampa, Florida–New York
 Vermonter: St. Albans, Vermont – Washington, D.C., via NEC and New Haven–Springfield Line

Eight other Amtrak trains terminate at NEC stations, but do not use any NEC infrastructure outside the terminus:

 Hartford Line: operated in conjunction with ConnDOT, runs across Amtrak-owned New Haven–Springfield line from Springfield Union to New Haven Union, the latter of which uses NEC infrastructure.
 Capitol Limited: runs from Washington, D.C. Union to Chicago Union, the former of which uses NEC infrastructure.
Six Amtrak services operate via the Empire Corridor, a line largely owned by CSX, with other sections owned by Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak. It meets the NEC at New York Penn Station.
 Adirondack: runs from New York Penn to Montreal Central
 Berkshire Flyer: higher-speed rail from New York Penn to Albany–Rensselaer and the Joseph Scelsi Intermodal Transportation Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
 Empire Service: higher-speed rail from New York Penn to Albany–Rensselaer and Niagara Falls
 Ethan Allen Express: runs from Burlington Union to New York Penn
 Lake Shore Limited: runs from Chicago Union to New York Penn; also has a branch to the NEC's terminus at Boston South
 Maple Leaf: runs from New York Penn to Toronto Union

Due to the wide availability of the Northeast Regional, Keystone Service, and Acela Express, as well as commuter rail, most long- and medium-haul trains operating along the New York-Washington leg of the NEC do not allow local travel between NEC stations. In most cases, long- and medium-haul trains only stop to discharge passengers from Washington (and in some cases, Alexandria) northward, and to receive passengers from Newark to Washington. This policy is intended to keep seats available for passengers making longer trips. The Vermonter and Palmetto are the only medium- and long-haul trains that allow local travel in both directions between New York and Washington. The southbound Carolinian allows local travel daily, while the northbound Carolinian only allows local travel on Sundays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Additionally, the medium-haul Pennsylvanian allows local NEC travel, but this train leaves the corridor in Philadelphia and does not travel all the way to Washington.

Commuter rail

In addition to Amtrak, several commuter rail agencies operate passenger service using the NEC tracks:

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)
 Providence/Stoughton Line: Wickford Junction–Boston
 Franklin/Foxboro Line: Readville–Boston
 Needham Line: Forest Hills–Boston
 Framingham/Worcester Line: Back Bay Station–Boston

CTrail
 Hartford Line: New Haven Union Station–New Haven-State Street
Shore Line East: Stamford–New London, Connecticut

Metro-North Railroad (MNRR)
 New Haven Line: New Rochelle, New York–New Haven, Connecticut
 Danbury Branch: Stamford–Norwalk, Connecticut
 Waterbury Branch: Bridgeport–Stratford, Connecticut

Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)
 City Terminal Zone: Sunnyside Yard, Queens–New York

New Jersey Transit (NJT)

 Northeast Corridor Line: Trenton, NJ–New York
 North Jersey Coast Line: Rahway, NJ–New York
 Morristown Line, Gladstone Branch, Montclair-Boonton Line: Kearny Connection–New York
 Raritan Valley Line: Hunter Connection–New York
 Atlantic City Line: 30th Street Station–Frankford Junction

SEPTA
 Trenton Line: Philadelphia–Trenton, New Jersey
 Airport Line: 30th Street Station–Southwest Philadelphia
 Media/Wawa Line: 30th Street Station–Arsenal Junction
 Chestnut Hill West Line: 30th Street Station–North Philadelphia Station
 Wilmington/Newark Line: Newark, Delaware–Philadelphia

MARC Train
 Penn Line: Washington, D.C.–Perryville, Maryland, via Baltimore Penn Station

Freight services

Freight trains operate on parts of the NEC through trackage rights. Prior to the 1970s when Amtrak took over all passenger service, the NEC routinely saw lengthy freight trains sometimes numbering over one hundred cars traversing great lengths of the corridor. All freight operations ultimately came under the control of Penn Central in the late 1960s and later Conrail upon its formation in 1976, however Amtrak, whose ridership was steadily increasing began demanding heavier taxes for longer trains. Ultimately Conrail began reducing freight service to only small, local trains on certain sections of the corridor where most needed once longer freights began causing congestion and bigger delays with passenger service.

Currently, Norfolk Southern Railway operates over the line south of Philadelphia. CSX Transportation has rights from New York to New Haven; in Massachusetts; and in Maryland from Landover, where its Landover Subdivision joins the NEC, to Bowie, where its Pope's Creek Subdivision leaves it. Between Philadelphia and New York, Conrail operates as a local switching and terminal company for CSX and Norfolk Southern (see Conrail Shared Assets Operations). The Providence and Worcester Railroad operates local freight service from New Haven into Rhode Island and has overhead trackage rights from New Haven to New York (see Rail freight transportation in New York City and Long Island). Additionally the Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the New York and Atlantic Railway both have trackage rights over the Hell Gate Bridge in order to connect with their own routes near New York.

Future
In the 2010s, the Federal Railroad Administration drew up a master plan for developing the corridor through 2040, taking into account various projects and proposals by various agency and advocacy groups. The plan was completed in spring 2015. Many of these proposals are unfunded.

NEC FUTURE

In October 2010, Amtrak released "A Vision for High-Speed Rail on the Northeast Corridor," an aspirational proposal for dedicated high-speed rail tracks between Washington, D.C., and Boston. Projected to cost about $117 billion (2010 dollars), the project would allow speeds of , reducing travel time from New York to Washington to 96 minutes (including a stop in Philadelphia) and from Boston to New York to 84 minutes, with an aspirational completion date of 2030 for travel from Washington to New York and 2040 for New York To Boston. In 2012, Amtrak revised its cost estimate to $151 billion.

In 2012, the Federal Railroad Administration began developing a master plan for bringing high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor titled NEC FUTURE, and released the final environmental impact statement in December 2016. The proposed alignment would closely follow the existing NEC south of New York City; multiple potential alignments north of New York City were studied, including the existing shoreline route, a route through Hartford, Connecticut, and a route out along Long Island which would traverse a new bridge or tunnel across Long Island Sound to Connecticut. On July 12, 2017, the Federal Railroad Administration revealed the record of decision for the project. The proposed upgrades have not been funded.

Gateway Program

In February 2011, Amtrak announced plans for the Gateway Project between Newark Penn Station and New York Penn Station. The planned project would create a high-speed alignment across the New Jersey Meadowlands and under the Hudson River, including the replacement of the Portal Bridge, a bottleneck.

New trains for Acela

On August 26, 2016, Vice President Joe Biden announced a $2.45 billion federal loan package to pay for new Acela equipment, as well as upgrades to the NEC. The loans will finance 28 trainsets that will replace the existing fleet. The trains are being built by Alstom in Hornell and Rochester, New York. Passenger service using the new trains is expected to begin in 2024 and the current fleet was expected to be retired by the end of 2022, or when all the replacements have been delivered. Amtrak will pay off the loans from increased NEC passenger revenue.

Northeast Maglev
In 2013, Japanese officials pitched the country's maglev train technology, the world's fastest, for the Northeast Corridor to regional U.S. politicians. The trains could travel from New York to Washington in an hour. Northeast Maglev, using SCMaglev technology developed by Central Japan Railway Company, is currently working with the FRA and MDOT to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement.  The project has received a $27.8 million grant from the FRA.

North Atlantic Rail
The North Atlantic Rail initiative, launched in 2017, has advocated building new high-speed railroads providing speeds up to 225 mph (200 mph by different sources) in the northeast, where the densely-populated core of New England is struggling with traffic and environmental overload. In long-term plans, there is also proposal of building several lines branching out of Northeast corridor (which is bypassed by this proposal, cutting travel time), their maximum speed is yet unknown. Despite being the fastest railroad in the USA today, New York to Boston segment is planned to be replaced by even faster line.

Harold Interlocking

In May 2011, a $294.7-million federal grant was awarded to fix congestion at Harold Interlocking, the USA's second-busiest rail junction after Sunnyside Yard. The work will lay tracks to the New York Connecting Railroad right of way, allowing Amtrak trains arriving from or bound for New England to avoid NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road trains. Financing for the project was jeopardized in July 2011 by the House of Representatives, which voted to divert the funding to unrelated projects. The project was then funded by FRA and the MTA. , the interlocking is being reconstructed for LIRR's East Side Access project.

New Brunswick–Trenton high-speed upgrade
In August 2011, Congress obligated $450 million to a six-year project to add capacity on one of the busiest segments on the NEC in New Jersey. The project is designed to upgrade electrical power, signal systems and catenary wires on a  section between New Brunswick and Trenton to improve reliability, increase speeds up to , and support more frequent high-speed service. The improvements were scheduled to be completed in 2016, but have been delayed repeatedly. The track work is one of several projects planned for the "New Jersey Speedway" section of the NEC, which include a new station at North Brunswick, the Mid-Line Loop (a flyover for reversing train direction), and the re-construction of County Yard, to be done in coordination with NJ Transit. Acela trains began operating at speeds up to  between Princeton Junction and New Brunswick in June 2022. With the planned introduction of the Avelia Liberty in 2024, speeds will increase to .

Replacement of bridge over Hutchinson River
Amtrak has applied for $15 million for the environmental impact studies and preliminary engineering design to examine replacement options for the more than 100-year-old, low-level movable rail Pelham Bay Bridge (just west of Pelham Bridge) over the Hutchinson River in the Bronx that has been limiting speed and train capacity. The goal is for a new bridge to support expanded service and speeds up to .

See also

 Corridor (Via Rail)

Notes

References

Further reading
 The Amtrak Vision for the Northeast Corridor – 2012 Update Report – July 2012
 Northeast Corridor Infrastructure Master Plan – June 2010
 Geddes, Richard Northeast Corridor Future: Options for High-Speed Rail Development and Opportunities for Private-Sector Participation: Hearing Before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Second Session, December 13, 2012

 Spavins, Jim. (2010) Diesels on the Northeast Corridor  (1st ed.).

External links

 The Northeast Corridor – Amtrak
 Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission
 NEC Future – A Rail Investment Plan for the Northeast Corridor
 Map of the Northeast Corridor on OpenStreetMap

 Video: "A Short History of A Short Stretch of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor", Bradley Peniston, August 26, 2015. Animated look at the development of the Philadelphia rights-of-way that became part of the Northeast Corridor.

High-speed railway lines in the United States
Pennsylvania Railroad lines
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad lines
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad lines
Old Colony Railroad lines
Transportation in New England
Electric railways in Washington, D.C.
Electric railways in Maryland
Electric railways in Delaware
Electric railways in Pennsylvania
Electric railways in New Jersey
Electric railways in New York (state)
Electric railways in Connecticut
Electric railways in Rhode Island
Electric railways in Massachusetts
Historic American Engineering Record in Washington, D.C.
Historic American Engineering Record in Maryland
Historic American Engineering Record in Delaware
Historic American Engineering Record in Pennsylvania
Historic American Engineering Record in New Jersey
Historic American Engineering Record in New York (state)
Historic American Engineering Record in Connecticut
Historic American Engineering Record in Rhode Island
Historic American Engineering Record in Massachusetts
Passenger rail transportation in Washington, D.C.
Passenger rail transportation in Maryland
Passenger rail transportation in Delaware
Passenger rail transportation in Pennsylvania
Passenger rail transportation in New Jersey
Passenger rail transportation in New York (state)
Passenger rail transportation in Connecticut
Passenger rail transportation in Rhode Island
Passenger rail transportation in Massachusetts
Rail infrastructure in Washington, D.C.
Rail infrastructure in Maryland
Rail infrastructure in Delaware
Rail infrastructure in Pennsylvania
Rail infrastructure in New Jersey
Rail infrastructure in New York (state)
Rail infrastructure in Connecticut
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Railway lines in the United States
Northeastern United States
Conrail lines
1834 establishments in the United States
Railway lines opened in 1834
25 kV AC railway electrification
Transport corridors

Northeast Corridor


Miquel Orobitg Guitart is a Spanish disability shooter who has represented Spain at the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and  2012 Summer Paralympics.

Personal
Orobitg is from the Catalan region of Spain.

Shooting
Orobitg is an SH1 classified shooter. He competed at the 2008 Summer Paralympics. He competed at the 2012 City of Oviedo Olympic Shooting Challenge, finishing second with 596 points in the R3 air rifle probe 10 meters SH1 event. He qualified for London in May 2012 with a low B qualification score, which at the time meet the minimum qualifying standards. He left for London from Madrid in late August.

Orobitg competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in the  R1 air rifle standing 10 meters event. He competed against Natascha Hiltrop of Germany in the mixed R6-50m Rifle Prone- SH1 round. He lost in the qualifying round of the 50 meter rifle event. He was one of three Spanish shooters at the Games. He competed at the 2013 Spanish national championships, finishing second in the R3 class event with 622.2 points. Prior to attending the event, he participated in a national team training camp.

References

Shooters at the 2012 Summer Paralympics
Shooters at the 2008 Summer Paralympics
Paralympic shooters for Spain
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Sportsmen from Catalonia
Spanish male sport shooters

Miquel Orobitg Guitart


Georges Sergeevich Agabekov (original family name Arutyunov; , transliteration Georgiĭ Sergeevich Agabekov) (1896–1937) was a Soviet Red Army soldier, Chekist, OGPU agent and Chief of OGPU Eastern Section (1928–1929).

The first senior OGPU officer to defect to the West (1930), he wrote revelatory books, which led to massive arrests of Soviet intelligence assets across the Near East and Central Asia.

Early life and career
Agabekov was born in Askhabad, in the Russian Empire, in 1896 to an Armenian family.

He fought in the Russian army from 1914 to 1916 during World War I. In late 1916, he was sent to the Tashkent Praporshchiks school. After the 1917 October Revolution, he joined the Red Guard in March 1918.

Cheka
He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1920 and soon afterward joined the Cheka. He partook in the Red Terror at Ekaterinburg and in the suppression of a peasant revolt in Tyumen.

OGPU
As Agabekov could speak Persian and Turkish, he was brought to Moscow in October 1921 to join the Oriental Section of the Cheka.  In 1922, he was dispatched to Tashkent to work for Yakov Peters. In Turkestan, according to his own account, he played a key role in locating the camp of Enver Pasha, the Basmachi leader, near Denau (now in the Surxondaryo Province of Uzbekistan), which lay the groundwork for the routing of Enver's troops and his assassination in early August 1922.

In April 1924, he was posted to the Soviet mission in Kabul, where he spied under diplomatic cover.

In late 1926, Agabekov was posted in Tehran as rezident of the OGPU Foreign Branch in Persia, where he was successful in obtaining foreign powers' secret codes, recruiting agents and fomenting animosity against the British by the local tribal leaders, but he failed in the task of dispatching back to the Soviet Union the defector Boris Bazhanov, Joseph Stalin's former assistant.

In April 1928, he returned to  Moscow and was promoted to being chief of the OGPU's Near Eastern Section.

Defection in Istanbul
In late October 1929, Agabekov left Odessa for Istanbul as an "illegal" rezident in Turkey, where he replaced the Trotskyite Yakov Blumkin (alias Zhivoi), who was soon executed in Moscow. Like Blumkin, Agabekov travelled to Turkey on a Persian passport and posed as a wealthy ethnic Armenian merchant under the name of Nerses Ovsepyan. Apart from Turkey, Blumkin had started to set up "illegal" spy networks in such countries as Syria, Palestine, Hejaz and Egypt. According to Agabekov, prior to 1930, Turkey was viewed by OGPU as a friendly power because of the Russian-Turkish Treaty of Moscow, but offers of co-operation by the Turkish police and intelligence were declined. Mikhail Trilisser, the chief of the OGPU Foreign Branch (1922–1930), whose patronage Agabekov enjoyed, envisioned Istanbul as a base of Soviet espionage activity for the entire Near East.

In his book The Storm Petrels: The First Soviet Defectors, 1928–1938 (1977), the British intelligence officer and journalist Gordon Brook-Shepherd maintained that Agabekov's defection to France in June 1930 was solely owing to the fact that he had fallen in love with an underage English girl, Isabel Streater, who taught him English. However, Agabekov's own account implied political and ideological motives and criticised what he saw as the degeneration of the revolution, the party's "bureaucratisation", the abuses of the apparatus, the party's lack of democracy and Stalin's autocratic rule.

Shortly after his arrival in Paris in August 1930, the French authorities expelled Agabekov to Brussels, Belgium, where he lived under his original name, Arutyunov. There, he finally succeeded in establishing co-operation with the British and in marrying Isabel.

Publication of OGPU
The publication of Agabekov's English-language book OGPU: The Russian Secret Terror in 1931 led to sweeping arrests of hundreds of Soviet agents and sympathisers in Persia as well as other Near Eastern countries and caused a sharp deterioration of Moscow's relations with Rezā Shāh. He also published two Russian-language books in Berlin, which had an autobiographical element. Agabekov stated that in 1929, the OGPU Foreign Branch actively used Armenian Apostolic Church clergy from both the Soviet Union and abroad for espionage.

Assassination
He is believed to have been killed by Soviet NKVD agents in the Pyrenees in August 1937 after a series of unsuccessful attempts on his life.

However, according to the 1997 memoir attributed to Pavel Sudoplatov, his assassination was perpetrated by a retired Turkish officer in Paris and organised by Aleksandr M. Korotkov (ru), who later became deputy chief of the Foreign Intelligence.

A diverging account of the defector's elimination was provided by Ilya Grigoryevich Dzhirkvelov in his 1987 memoirs. Agabekov then served the Romanian secret police, which had provided him with a fortified house and a bodyguard near Bucharest. In the summer of 1939, a man going by the name of Vladimir Sanakoyev phoned Agabekov and declared that he had been sent to murder him but did not wish to complete his assignment. A confidential meeting was organised, which was ostensibly to work out a plan to deceive Moscow, but it gave Sanakoyev his opportunity to approach his victim.

Dzhirkvelov claimed that his version was borne out by the material in Agabekov's file and that it pointed to considerable discrepancies with Brook-Shepherd's writings.

Writings
 Г. П. У. Записки чекиста. Berlin, 1930 (pdf)
 G.P.U. (1930) (French)
 OGPU:  The Russian Secret Terror, translated from French by Henry W. Bunn, (New York:  Brentanos, 1931)
 OGPU:  The Russian Secret Terror, translated from French by Henry W. Bunn (1975)
 ЧК за работой. Berlin, Стрела, 1931 (pdf)
 ChK za rabotoĭ (1992)
 Sekretnyĭ terror (1998)
 Enver paşa nasıl öldürüldü?'', Hasan Babacan, Servet Avşar (2011)

References

Sources

1896 births
1937 deaths
Russian military personnel of World War I
Armenian people of World War I
Bolsheviks
Cheka
Soviet spies
Iran–Soviet Union relations
Soviet intelligence personnel who defected to the West
Soviet Armenians
People from Ashgabat
People from Transcaspian Oblast
Turkmenistan people of Armenian descent
Armenian people from the Russian Empire
Soviet people murdered abroad
People murdered in France
People killed in NKVD operations

Georges Agabekov


The Pleurotaceae are a family of small to medium-sized mushrooms which have white spores.  The family contains four genera (Nematoctonus has been synonymized with Hohenbuehelia, but not all of its species have been moved to valid genera) and 94 species. Members of Pleurotaceae can be mistaken for members of Marasmiaceae. Perhaps the best known member is the oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus.

Many species in the genera Pleurotus and Hohenbuehelia are nematophagous, that is, they derive nutrition by consuming nematodes. This is made possible by hyphae that may have adhesive knobs that attach to passing nematodes and secrete nematotoxic compounds.

See also
List of Agaricales families

References

External links

Agaricales families

ar:محارية

Pleurotaceae


The Mojave Memorial Cross, officially known as the White Cross World War I Memorial, is a cross formerly on public land in the Mojave desert in San Bernardino County, California that was at the center of the Salazar v. Buono legal case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The original cross was erected in 1934 to honor those killed in war.

The cross stands on Sunrise Rock, a granite outcropping adjacent to Cima Road about  south of Interstate 15, and  north of Cima, California; the trailhead leading to Teutonia Peak is on the opposite side of the road,  north of the monument.  The area is a saddle between Cima Dome and the Ivanpah Mountains, both of which are part of the Mojave National Preserve.

History
The cross was erected in 1934. The caretakers of the spot were introduced to it by a prospector named John Riley Bembry, who served as a medic in World War I and was one of the veterans who established the monument.

The cross has been maintained by volunteers and was reconstructed after being destroyed. It was boarded up in 2002 after lower court rulings declared it illegal because of separation of church and state constitutional concerns.

On April 28, 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled on Salazar v. Buono in a 5–4 decision that sent the case back to a lower court. The high court ruled there was no violation of the separation of church and state when Congress transferred the land surrounding the cross to a veterans group. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement [of religion] does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm".

In April 2012, a land exchange to remove Sunrise Rock from the Mojave National Preserve was approved by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

On Veterans Day, November 11, 2012, the cross was rededicated by Henry Sandoz in a ceremony.

Theft
On the night of May 9–10, 2010, the cross was cut down and stolen from its place on Sunrise Rock. National Park Service spokeswoman Linda Slater said a $125,000 reward was being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves. The VFW promised that the memorial would be rebuilt. "This was a legal fight that a vandal just made personal to 50 million veterans, military personnel and their families," said National Commander Thomas J. Tradewell.
Slater said that the wooden cover which had covered the cross since 2002 was reported missing on May 8, 2010, and that the cross itself had been seen on May 10 but was reported missing on May 11 by rangers who had returned to the location.

The Desert Dispatch was contacted by someone claiming to have a message from the person who removed the cross. The message claimed that the cross had not been damaged or destroyed but moved by a veteran who objected to the cross being on public land. The message also claimed that a non-sectarian memorial had been brought to the site, but that unspecified technical difficulties prevented it from being put in place of the cross. On June 1, the Liberty Institute publicly offered in the Desert Dispatch to take back and care for the cross at a church in Yucca Valley, but two weeks later, the person who stole the cross had not yet responded.  After the theft was reported, an atheist organization, Atheist Alliance International, offered $5,000 to go towards replacing the cross with a more inclusive and non-religious veterans' memorial, but the gesture was ignored by religious groups who insisted that the cross be restored.

On May 20, 2010, park rangers discovered that a replica of the cross stolen 10 days earlier was now bolted to the base of the original. Park personnel removed it and placed it into evidence. Mojave National Park spokesperson, Linda Slater, said that since the replica is not the original disputed cross, it had to come down. "The park service has regulations about people putting up memorials. You can't just go to a park and put up a memorial to a family member."

The cross was found over  away, in Half Moon Bay, California, in early November 2012.

See also
 List of national memorials of the United States

References

External links
Photos of the cross
Snopes.com

Mojave Desert
Monumental crosses in the United States
Monuments and memorials in California
World War I memorials in the United States
Memorial crosses
1934 sculptures
1934 establishments in California
National Memorials of the United States
Recovered works of art

Mojave Memorial Cross


Jules-Antoine Castagnary (11 April 1830 – 11 May 1888) was a French liberal politician, journalist and progressive and influential art critic, who embraced the new term "Impressionist" in his positive and perceptive review of the first Impressionist show, in Le Siècle, 29 April 1874.

Born at Saintes, Charente-Maritime, in the west of France, Castagnary lived in Paris, where he contributed to Le Monde illustré, Le Siècle and Le Nain jaune, a political journal of Liberal tendencies. He reviewed the annual Paris salons from 1857 to 1879. He organized the provincial Republican press at the time of the Siege of Paris (1870–71). After the collapse of the French Second Empire, Castagnary, who was an anti-clerical republican, developed a secondary political career. He became a member of the municipal council of Paris (1874), was the director of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1887), and sat on the Conseil d'État (1879) and the Comité des monuments historiques. He was appointed to a ministerial post in the short-lived Léon Gambetta cabinet in 1881, but resigned when that ministry fell 1 January 1882.

His portrait by his intimate friend Gustave Courbet (1870), whose art Castagnary championed from the first and whose radical role during the Paris Commune Castagnary defended after Courbet's death,  is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The correspondence between the two men is a fundamental document in analyzing Courbet's life and output.

At the time of his death in Paris, Castagnary was engaged in a full-length biography of Courbet, left incomplete; he is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.

Selected works
Philosophie du salon de 1857, 1858
Les Artistes au XIXe siècle : Salon de 1861, 1861
Grand Album des Expositions de peinture et de sculpture. 69 tableaux et statues, 1863
Les Libres Propos, 1864
Le Bilan de l'année 1868, politique, littéraire, dramatique, artistique et scientifique, (contributor with Paschal Grousset, Arthur Ranc and Francisque Sarcey), 1869
Les Jésuites devant la loi française, 1877
Exposition des œuvres de G. Courbet à l'École des Beaux-Arts en mai 1882, (exhibition catalogue), 1882. Curated and edited by Castagnary.
Gustave Courbet et la colonne Vendôme : plaidoyer pour un ami mort, 1883
Salons (1857-1879), 2 vols, 1892

Notes

External links

French art critics
People from Saintes, Charente-Maritime
1830 births
1888 deaths
Burials at Montmartre Cemetery
19th-century French journalists
French male journalists
French male writers
19th-century French male writers

Jules-Antoine Castagnary


Chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 18 (CCL18) is a small cytokine belonging to the CC chemokine family. The functions of CCL18 have been well studied in laboratory settings, however the physiological effects of the molecule in living organisms have been difficult to characterize because there is no similar protein in rodents that can be studied. The receptor for CCL18 has been identified in humans only recently, which will help scientists understand the molecule's role in the body.

CCL18 is produced and secreted mainly by innate immune system, and has effects mainly on the adaptive immune system. It was previously known as Pulmonary and activation-regulated chemokine (PARC), dendritic cell (DC)-chemokine 1 (DC-CK1), alternative macrophage activation-associated CC chemokine-1 (AMAC-1), and macrophage inflammatory protein-4 (MIP-4).

Gene and protein structure
The gene of CCL18 is most similar to CCL3. CCL18 is located on chromosome 17, along with many other macrophage inflammatory proteins (MIPs). The gene itself has 3 exons and 2 introns; but, unlike other chemokines, CCL18 includes 2 pseudo-exons (exons that do not appear in the final peptide) in the first intron. Because of these pseudo-exons, it is believed that CCL18 arose as a result of a gene fusion event between CCL3-like protein encoding genes and gained a different function over time due to accumulating mutations. CCL18 is an 89 amino-acid-long protein, with a 20 amino-acid-long peptide signalling sequence (to signal its secretion) at the N' terminus which is cleaved in the endoplasmic reticulum into a 69 amino-acid-long mature protein.

Sources

CCL18 is produced mainly by antigen-presenting cells of the innate immune system. These cells include dendritic cells, monocytes, and macrophages. Neither T-cells nor B-cells are known to produce CCL18. Its production is upregulated in these cells by IL-10, IL-4, and IL-13, which are cytokines that favour a T-helper 2 type response and are generally involved in humoral immunity or for immunosuppression. The presence of IFN-gamma, a T-helper 1 type response cytokine important for cell-mediated immunity, dampens the production of CCL18. Furthermore, CCL18 is induced by fibroblasts, specifically by induction of collagen produced by fibroblasts, which is important in tissue healing and repair. Finally, CCL18 is constitutively and highly expressed in the lungs, suggesting that CCL18 plays role in maintaining homeostasis.

Chemotactic functions

Chemokines are classed as a special type of cytokine that is involved in immune cell trafficking. CCL18 in particular has some chemotactic functions for the innate immune system, but its functions are primarily involved with recruitment of the adaptive immune system. CCL18 is involved in attracting naïve T-cells,  T-regulatory cells, T-helper 2 cells, both immunosuppressive and immature Dendritic Cells, basophils, and B-cells (naïve and effector). The T-regulatory cells that CCL18 attracts are not classical T-regulatory cells; these cells do not express FoxP3 as most T-regulatory cells do, and instead non-antigen specifically exert their immunosuppressive functions by secreting IL-10. It is thought that these recruited cells maintain homeostasis under healthy conditions.

Receptor

The classical receptors for chemokines are G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), which have 7 transmembrane regions. Following this trend, it was thought that CCL18's receptor is also probably a GPCR. However, for a long time, the physiological receptor has not been found until very recently. To date, are three receptors that have been proposed for CCL18: PITPNM3, GPR30, and CCR8. PITPNM3 is a CCL18 receptor, but PITPNM3 is only expressed on breast cancer cells and not on T-cells nor B-cells, and PITPNM3-CCL8 binding induces Pyk2 and Src mediated signaling, a cancer related signaling pathway, and subsequent metastasis of breast cancer. GPR30 is also reported to bind to CCL18, but binding of CCL18 does not induce chemotaxis; instead, binding of CCL18 to GPR30 blocks both activation of GPR30 by its natural ligands and reduces the ability of CXCL12-dependent activation of acute lymphocytic leukemia B cells. CCR8 is the most recently discovered receptor for CCL18, and the effects of CCR8-CCL18 interactions appear to be physiological, as CCL18 binding to CCR8 induces chemotaxis of Th2 cells. Furthermore, CCL18 binding is competitive with CCR8's previously described ligand, CCL1, further suggesting that CCL18 binds physiologically with CCR8.) Further elucidation of the role of CCR8 in CCL18-mediated pathologies would allow for better understanding of CCL18's function in these diseases.

Effector functions
CCL18 has a plethora of functions that have been characterized in vitro and in vivo. Strangely, CCL18 seems to play a part in both activation of the immune system and the induction of tolerance and homeostasis at steady-state conditions.

Immune activation

The production of CCL18 is induced by T-helper 2 type cytokines, namely IL-4 and IL-13. Coupled with the fact that CCL18 is highly expressed in patients with allergic asthma and other hypersensitivity diseases, CCL18 seems to play an important role for generating and maintaining a T-helper 2 (Th2) type response. Furthermore, the addition of CCL18 as an adjuvant for a malaria vaccine have shown efficacy, perhaps by recruiting immune cells to the site of vaccination. Finally, CCL18 is expressed by dendritic cells in the germinal center of inflamed lymph nodes, and recruits naïve B-cells for antigen presentation. Perhaps aberrant CCL18 expression is involved in the generation of chronic Th2 response, leading to asthma or arthritis.

Immunosuppression

In addition to immune-activating effects, CCL18 also has strong immunosuppressive effects. CCL18 induces immature dendritic cells to differentiate into an immunosuppressive dendritic cell that is capable producing CCL18 which attract T-cells, suppressing effector T-cell function, and generating T-regulatory cells by secreting large amounts of IL-10. Furthermore, exposure to CCL18 by macrophages causes them to mature in the #M2 spectrum, which promotes immunosuppression and healing.

Involvement in disease
Aberrant CCL18 expression is observed in many diseases, and it is thought that these abnormal expression patterns play a key role in these diseases. This table shows a list of all the diseases that CCL18 is involved in.

Breast cancer
The most understood disease that CCL18 is involved in is in breast cancer, where CCL18 induces metastasis of breast cancer cells by binding to PITPNM3. Perhaps CCL18, in breast cancers, is acting as an immunosuppressive cytokine by generating T-regulatory cells, generating immunosuppressive dendritic cells and macrophages, and recruiting effector T-cells to these dendritic cells and macrophages to abolish their anti-cancer functions and allowing the cancer to escape the immune system.

Autoimmunity and hypersensitivity

CCL18 is highly expressed in T-helper 2 mediated hypersensitivity and autoimmune diseases, such as asthma and arthritis. CCL18 is expressed at much higher levels in allergic patients compared to healthy patients and respond aggressively to innocuous antigens. Allergic patients also had higher amounts of activated T-cells in the lungs, suggesting that CCL18 recruitment of these cells is contributing to hypersensitivity. In addition to lung hypersensitivities, these patterns were also observed in dermatitis patients. Furthermore, a similar pattern was also observed in arthritis patients, where CCL18 was expressed at much higher rates by dendritic cells in affected patients. However, in arthritis, perhaps the increased CCL18 is an attempt to suppress effector T-helper 1 cells that are self-reactive.

References

External links

Antiestrogens
Cytokines
GPER antagonists

CCL18