The Sedgwick Avenue station was an elevated, ground level and underground station on the Bronx extension of the IRT Ninth Avenue Line in Highbridge, Bronx, New York City.

History
The station was built to connect to the New York & Putnam Railroad (in later decades, the 'Putnam Division') passenger trains that terminated there instead of the former 155th Street terminal and New York Central Railroad Hudson Division trains that stopped at the new (1918) platforms at this location. The station opened on July 1, 1918, and remained in use by the Polo Grounds Shuttle until 1958. The Putnam Division of the New York Central also ended service in 1958.

Station layout
The station was built extending from the tunnel entrance to Jerome Avenue on the side of a cliff on a steel structure spanning the tracks of Metro-North's Hudson Line that connected to the existing Putnam Bridge, which had been built for the New York City and Northern Railroad. The station street entrance and mezzanine was above the tracks on Sedgwick Avenue. The west end of the platforms on the steel structure were constructed of wood. The east end of the concrete platforms extended into the tunnel for about a car length. A connecting passageway and stairways from the west end of the northbound platform led to the platforms on the New York Central Hudson Division tracks to permit transfers to that division's trains. The station site, in 2010, has ruins of the platforms and the track-bed into the tunnel entrance on Sedgwick Avenue. In late 2022, the station was filled in and sealed off as part of the I-87 reconstruction project.

The tunnel from Sedgwick Avenue to Anderson–Jerome Avenues was built to NYC Elevated Railway standards. Those standards specified the clearance between the tracks and the sides of the tunnel only allowed for the "El" type open third rail instead of the covered third rail in use on the IRT Subway. The standard distance from the center of the track to the center of the El type open third rail-head is a few inches shorter than the distance to the subway type covered third rail-head. This incompatibility prevented the line from being used in the future by standard IRT Subway equipment, and brought about the line's demise instead of being linked to the IRT Jerome Avenue Line at 167th Street in The Bronx and the IRT Lenox Avenue Line at Harlem–148th Street in Manhattan, which had been proposed by the New York City Board of Transportation in 1940. A footbridge to West 161st Street remains.

Gallery

References

External links

 Sedgwick Avenue station photos, diagrams and tour guide, by Joseph Brennan, 2002

IRT Ninth Avenue Line stations
Railway stations in the United States opened in 1918
1918 establishments in New York City
1958 disestablishments in New York (state)
Former elevated and subway stations in the Bronx
Railway stations in the United States closed in 1958

Sedgwick Avenue station


The Stanhope Memorandum was a document written by Edward Stanhope, the Secretary of State for War of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, on 8 December 1888. It set out the overall strategic aims of the British Empire, and the way the British Army was to be employed towards these aims.

It gave the priorities of the Army, in order, as:

 the support of the civil power in the United Kingdom
 the provision of reinforcements for India
 the provision of garrison units for fortresses, colonies and coaling stations
 the provision of two corps for home defence
 the ability to deploy one of these two corps for service in a European war

References

The Stanhope Memorandum of 1888: a Reinterpretation. Ian F. W. Beckett: in Historical Research, Vol. 57 Iss. 136, Pages 240-7. Full text (PDF)
"The Stanhope Memorandum", p.311 of The Victorians at war, 1815-1914, by Harold E. Raugh. Published by ABC-CLIO, 2004.

19th-century history of the British Army
19th-century military history of the United Kingdom
1888 in the United Kingdom
1888 documents
1888 in military history
British defence policymaking

Stanhope Memorandum


An American Werewolf in Paris is a 1997 American British Luxembourgian French German Dutch horror comedy movie directed by Anthony Waller (who also stars) and is the sequel to the 1981 movie An American Werewolf in London. It stars Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy, Vince Vieluf, Phil Buckman, Julie Bowen, Pierre Cosso, Steven Hartley, Thierry Lhermitte and was distributed by Hollywood Pictures.

Other websites

1997 horror movies
1997 comedy movies
1990s monster movies
1990s sequel movies
American horror movies
American comedy movies
American monster movies
American sequel movies
British horror movies
British comedy movies
Luxembourgian movies
French horror movies
French comedy movies
German horror movies
German comedy movies
Dutch comedy movies
Dutch horror movies
Werewolves in movies

An American Werewolf in Paris


The Cunningham Medal is the premier award of the Royal Irish Academy. It is awarded every three years in recognition of "outstanding contributions to scholarship and the objectives of the Academy".

History
It was which was established in 1796 at the bequest of barrister Timothy Cunningham of Gray's Inn. After a period of uncertainty and experimentation regarding the terms and conditions of the award, it was agreed in 1848 that the medals would be open to the authors of works or essays in the areas of Science, Polite Literature and Antiquities, published in Ireland or about Irish subjects. After 1885, the academy stopped giving the award, but it was revived in 1989 for the bicentennial of Cunningham's gift.

The original medal was cast by Irish medallist William Mossop.

Recipients
The following persons have been awarded the Cunningham Medal:

1796: Thomas Wallace
1800: Theophilus Swift (writing, poetry)
1805: William Preston (poetry)
1818: John Brinkley (astronomy)
1827: John D'Alton (history)
1830: George Petrie (history)
1833: George Petrie (history)
1834: William Rowan Hamilton (mathematics)
1838: James MacCullagh (physics)
1839: James Apjohn (physics); George Petrie (history)
1843: Robert Kane (chemistry)
1848: Samuel Haughton (mathematics); Sir William Rowan Hamilton (mathematics); Edward Hincks (orientalist); John O'Donovan (history)
1851: John Hewitt Jellett (mathematics)
1858: Edward Joshua Cooper (astronomy); George Salmon (mathematics); Charles William Wall (literary criticism); William Reeves (history)
1862: Robert Mallet (seismology); Humphrey Lloyd (astronomy); John Thomas Gilbert (history); Whitley Stokes (linguistics)
1873: Sir William Wilde (polymath, father of Oscar Wilde)
1878: George James Allman (natural history); Edward Dowden (literary criticism); Aquilla Smith (numismatics); John Casey (mathematics)
1879: Robert Stawell Ball (mathematics);  William Archer (natural history)
1881: Howard Grubb (astronomy)
1883: Edward Perceval Wright (editing Proceedings of RIA)
1884: John Birmingham (astronomy)
1885: John Christian Malet (mathematics)
Award suspended
1989: Frank Mitchell (natural history)
2001: Daniel Joseph Bradley (physics); Maurice Craig (architectural history); Sir Bernard Crossland (engineering); David Beers Quinn (history)
2005: Denis L. Weaire (physics)
2008: Seamus Heaney (poetry)
2011: John V McCanny (microelectronics)
2014: Patrick Honohan (economics)
2017: Dervilla M. X. Donnelly (chemistry)
2020: Nicholas Canny (history)
2023: Jocelyn Bell Burnell (astronomy)

References

External links
Cunningham Medal awardees (Royal Irish Academy)

Royal Irish Academy
Academic awards
Irish awards

Cunningham Medal


Paul Speratus (13 December 148412 August 1551) was a Swabian Catholic priest who became a Protestant preacher, reformer and hymn-writer. In 1523, he helped Martin Luther to create the First Lutheran hymnal, published in 1524 and called Achtliederbuch.

Early life

Paul Speratus was born in Rötlen (a village now part of present-day Ellwangen) in Swabia, on or about 13 December 1484, probably to a wealthy family. His original surname, Latinized to "Speratus," may have been "Spreter," "Hoffer," or "Offer."  In later years would write his name as "von Rötlen" (of Rötlen) or "von Ellwangen, Priester der Diöcese Augsburg" (of Ellwangen, Priest of the Diocese of Augsburg).

Early studies took him to Paris and Italy, as well as (probably) Freiburg and Vienna.  In 1506, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. In 1517, he was the author of a poem praising the Johann Eck, a conservative Catholic soon to be an important Catholic critic of Luther's teaching. At about the same time, the Pope named Speratus a Papal count palatine. In 1520, after having spent some years as cathedral preacher in Salzburg, he became the cathedral preacher in Würzburg.

Disciple of Martin Luther

On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences and enclosing a copy of his  95 Theses, which his friends had translated from Latin to German by January 1518. In the early part of his ministry, Luther saw himself as a reformer operating inside the Catholic Church, as did many early followers such as Speratus.

By November, 1521, however, Speratus had married and was forced to flee his position, going first to Salzburg, and then to Moravia. He was excommunicated in 1522, after preaching in Vienna a sermon denouncing his monastic vows.  In 1523, he was imprisoned and condemned to death by burning, being released only after the intervention of friends and on the condition that he leave Moravia. It was while imprisoned that Speratus wrote his most famous hymn, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her.

Achtliederbuch

After Speratus was released from prison, he and his wife went to join Luther in Wittenberg in 1523, where Speratus helped Luther to create the first Lutheran hymnal, the Achtliederbuch, published in 1524. This hymnal contained only eight songs: four by Luther, three by Speratus, and one by Justus Jonas. All its songs were published the same year in the Erfurt Enchiridion, a collection of 26 hymns.

Es ist das Heil uns kommen her

The words of this hymn were written during the time Speratus was imprisoned; the melody is taken from a 15th-century chorale.  According to Catherine Winkworth, "Luther himself is said to have given his last coin to a Prussian beggar from whom he heard it for the first time."

The 14 stanzas of Speratus's text expound Luther's teaching concerning salvation by faith rather than by doing good works. According to Scott Hendrix, "It not only emphasizes justification by faith alone but it also underlines the vitality of that faith manifested in service to others".

In Gott gelaub ich, daß er hat

Miles Coverdale published his English translation of this song as "In God I trust for so I must."

Hilf Gott, wie ist der Menschen Not

This hymn is recommended in the Missal of Matthäus Ludecus (1589) for several different feasts of the liturgical year  including Septuagesima.

Later career

On Luther's recommendation, Speratus became court chaplain of Albert, Duke of Prussia, a post he held from 1524 to 1529. In 1530, he became the Protestant bishop of Pomesania, a post he held until his death in 1551. He was active there in defending the tenets of faith advanced by Luther, and in attacking such rival sects as the followers of Caspar Schwenckfeldt and Andreas Osiander. He died in Marienwerder on 12 August 1551.

References

External links
 15th-century chorale melody used for "Es ist das Heil uns kommen her"

1484 births
1551 deaths
16th-century Lutheran bishops in Prussia
German Lutheran hymnwriters
German Protestant Reformers
Lutheran bishops of Pomesania
People from Kwidzyn

Paul Speratus


Edappadi Karuppa Palaniswami (born 12 May 1954), often referred to by his initials E.P.S., is an Indian politician who is the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu and the current leader of opposition in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. He served as the 7th chief minister of Tamil Nadu, from 2017 to 2021. He has been the General Secretary of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam since 28 March 2023. Palaniswami served as the Joint Coordinator of the AIADMK from 2017 to 2022 and Interim General Secretary of the AIADMK from 2022 to 2023. He also served as the Headquarters Secretary of the AIADMK from 2016 to 2022.

Palaniswami has represented Edappadi since 2011 as Member of the Legislative Assembly, previously serving from 1989 to 1996. In the 1998 Indian general election he was elected as Member of Parliament of the Lok Sabha representing Tiruchengode.

When AIADMK won the 2011 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election, he was given a ministerial berth by J. Jayalalithaa and served as the Minister of Highways and Minor Ports on 16 May 2011 for the government of Tamil Nadu. After 2016 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election victory, he was given the additional responsibility of Ministry of Public Works by former C.M, J. Jayalalithaa.

Personal life
Palaniswami was born on 12 May 1954 to Karuppa Gounder and Thavasiyammal at Siluvampalayam, Salem, Madras State, India (now in Tamil Nadu, India). His parents were farmers. After completing school, he enrolled for B.Sc. degree in Sri Vasavi College but did not graduate. He was the students union leader at college. He has a brother Govindraj and a sister Ranjitham. He is married to Ratha Palaniswami and has one son and is an agriculturalist by occupation.

Political career

Palaniswami entered politics as a volunteer for the AIADMK in 1974. Later he became the key member of the party in Salem district. He was first elected to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly in 1989, representing Edappadi constituency, and won re-election in 1991. He was elected Member of Parliament, representing Tiruchengodu constituency in the 12th Lok Sabha. He emerged a dominant force in the AIADMK in the Western belt during late 1990s. He was appointed Propaganda Secretary in July 2006 and Organizing Secretary in 2007.  He was elected from Edappadi constituency in 2011 and 2016 when the AIADMK emerged as a ruling party. He slowly gained prominence as one of the strong confidants of J.Jayalalithaa along with O. Paneerselvam and Dindigul C.Sreenivasan. He served as the Minister of Highways and Minor Ports from 2011 and also served as the Minister of Public Works from 2016 in the J. Jayalalithaa, O. Panneerselvam and in his own ministry. In 2014, He was appointed as the member of AIADMK party disciplinary committee. In 2016, he was appointed headquarters secretary of AIADMK, by succeeding P. Palaniappan.

Chief Minister, 2017-2021

Palaniswami became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in February 2017, following the resignation of O. Panneerselvam, who became chief minister after the demise of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa who won the 2016 Legislative Assembly election as CM candidate of AIADMK. He was sworn in on 16 February 2017 before a crowd of party workers, along with his 32-member cabinet. Palaniswami also holds the charge of Home, Prohibition & Excise Departments along with the other portfolios normally held by the Chief Ministers, and not mentioned elsewhere. He is elected from Edappadi constituency. During his reign, he introduced various schemes like Kudimaramaththu Work, FAME India scheme and Amma Patrol in Tamil Nadu to ascertain the security of women and children in public places.

In May 2018, police opened fire on protests against a Sterlite plant that was polluting local groundwater in Thoothukudi, killing 13 people. While ordering a one-man commission into the violence, Palaniswami also declared the shootings were in "self-defence."

On 28 May 2018, Palaniswami led Tamil Nadu Government ordered the permanent closure of the Sterlite Copper plant. "The Amma government has issued an order to have the Sterlite plant closed down permanently in deference to the sentiments of the people of Thoothukudi," then Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami told journalists in the evening after chairing a meeting of his party legislators at the AIADMK headquarters in Chennai.

However, during the 2019 elections, AIADMK contested in alliance with the BJP and was swept out of parliament when the DMK-led alliance won 38 out of 39 seats in the state.

In 2019 he went on a 13-day tour in the United States, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates to promote foreign investment in Tamil Nadu. While there he launched the Yaadhum Oore programme (lit. all countries, based on Puranauru 192) to encourage the Tamil diaspora to re-invest in Tamil Nadu, in the same line as other states with large NRI populations such as Kerala. During trip he secured 3 lakh crores worth of foreign investment, a greater amount than even his predecessor Jayalalithaa did.

In February 2020, Palaniswami led Tamil Nadu government declared the Cauvery delta region as a Protected Special Agriculture Zone. The announcement was widely hailed by political parties and farmers organisations.

In 2020, Palaniswami led AIADMK government passed order for 7.5% Quota in Medical Admissions for Govt. School Students. He took action to set up government medical colleges in newly formed 11 districts which offered 1,650 more seats to then existing 3,400 seats.

Under his governance, Tamil Nadu was rated as the best governed state based on a composite index in the context of sustainable development according to the Public Affairs Index-2020 released by the Public Affairs Centre in Oct. 2020. Palaniswami is also praised for his administration during the coronavirus pandemic. Tamil Nadu was one of the few states that did not register negative growth in the period of pandemic.

During his regime, Tamil Nadu was the best performing big state overall from the year 2018 to 2021. With a gross state domestic product of $290 billion or Rs 21.6 lakh crore, Tamil Nadu became India's second-largest economy.

In 2020, the study "States of the State" of India Today, said that Palaniswami led Tamil Nadu has topped in 11 categories from a total of 12, including economy, tourism, infrastructure, inclusive development, law and order, along with entrepreneurship, cleanliness, environment, health, education and agriculture. Tamil Nadu had been chosen for this recognition for the third consecutive year.

On 3 May 2021, Palaniswami resigned as Chief Minister following AIADMK's defeat in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly Election.

Leader of the Opposition, 2021
After the party lost the assembly elections in May 2021, Palaniswami won the Edappadi constituency and was elected as the Leader Of the Opposition in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.

Leadership Tussle with O. Panneerselvam, 2022
On 14 June 2022, citing the party's troubles in the polls, AIADMK district secretaries and other senior party members spoke out to shun the "dual leadership" system and came out publicly in favor of strong unitary leader to strengthen the organisation.

Edappadi K. Palaniswami supporters pushed for the change in the party's leadership structure by staging a political coup against AIADMK Coordinator O. Panneerselvam, who had become weak within the party. According to many sources, of the AIADMK's 75 district secretaries, hardly 10 supported him. Of the party's 66 MLAs, only five MLAs were reportedly on O. Panneerselvam side and less than 20 percent of the party's general council members behind him ahead of crucial general council meeting on 23 June 2022, which was expected to elect the single leadership to the party.

On 23 June 2022, A. Tamil Magan Hussain was unanimously elected as the Presidium Chairman of the party at a general council meeting held at the Shrivaaru Venkatachalapathy Palace in Vanagaram, Chennai.

On 30 June 2022, Edappadi K. Palaniswami wrote a letter to O. Panneerselvam asserting the latter ceased to be the party coordinator as the amendments made to the party's bylaw in the 2020 December executive committee meeting were not recognised in the general council meeting held on 23 June.

General Secretary of the AIADMK
On 11 July 2022, The Party General Council abolished the dual leadership model and empowered Edappadi K. Palaniswami to be the Party Chief. The General Council also expelled the Treasurer O. Panneerselvam and his loyalists R. Vaithilingam, P. H. Manoj Pandian, J. C. D. Prabhakar from their respective posts and primary memberships of the party for "anti-party" activities.

On 11 July 2022, Edappadi K. Palaniswami was unanimously elected as the Interim General Secretary of the party at a general council meeting held at the Shrivaaru Venkatachalapathy Palace in Vanagaram, Chennai. On 17 August, the Madras High Court however nullified the decisions of the AIADMK General Council and ordered mainitaing the status quo as on 23 June 2022. On 2 September 2022, a division bench of the Madras High Court upheld the decisions of the AIADMK general council meeting held on 11 July 2022 and set aside the previous court order of the single judge in the appeal case of Edappadi K. Palaniswami, thus effectively restoring unitary leadership.

On 23 February 2023, the Supreme Court of India upheld the decisions of the AIADMK general council meeting held on 11 July 2022, and dismissed the petition of O. Panneerselvam challenging the previous order of the division bench, thus affirming unitary leadership under Edappadi K Palaniswami.
On 28 March 2023, The Madras High Court ruled in favor of Edappadi K. Palaniswami and dismissed the petitions of O. Panneerselvam challenging the resolutions passed at the general council meeting held on 11 July 2022. On the same day, AIADMK announced that Edappadi K. Palaniswami was elected as the general secretary through party's general secretary election. On 20 April 2023, The Election Commission of India recognized Edappadi K Palaniswami as the AIADMK party general secretary, acknowledging the amendments to the party constitution and changes to list of office-bearers. On 10 July 2023, The Election Commission of India recognized the changes at the party organization after due election. On 25 September 2023, Edappadi Palaniswami led AIADMK officially left the NDA alliance and snapped ties with BJP to form and lead the new alliance headed by him in state like DMK's SPA and facing Next Indian general election and TN Assembly election.

Elections contested and positions held

Lok Sabha elections

Tamil Nadu Legislative elections

Posts in Parliament of India

Posts in Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly

See also

 Edappadi K. Palaniswami ministry

References

External links
 Official Biographical Sketch in Lok Sabha Website
 Official Biographical Sketch in Tamil Nadu Assembly Website

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam politicians
Chief ministers from All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
Living people
20th-century Indian politicians
21st-century Indian politicians
Indian Tamil politicians
State cabinet ministers of Tamil Nadu
People from Salem district
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2011–2016
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2016–2021
1954 births
Lok Sabha members from Tamil Nadu
India MPs 1998–1999
Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu MLAs 1991–1996
Tamil Nadu MLAs 2021–2026

Edappadi K. Palaniswami


Andy's Diner (also known as Andy's Railroad) was a roadside diner, constructed from several decommissioned railcars, in Seattle, Washington, established in 1949 and closed in 2008. It was constructed on the former location of a more traditional diner that had been built in 1930.

Concept and menu
Once described as a "longstanding slice of Route 66 Americana", Andy's Diner was housed in a series of adjoining railway cars located in the industrial SoDo neighborhood. The menu featured a selection of typical diner fare.

History

Andy's Diner was opened by Andy "Big Andy" Nagy in 1949, with Nagy subsequently joined in the business by his nephew Andy "Little Andy" Yurkanin. The restaurant's railway theme was reportedly inspired by a similar venue in Spokane. Andy's Diner was sited on the former location of a more traditional diner that had been built in 1930. Originally consisting of a single railcar, over time it grew to include a total of seven, including one used by Franklin Roosevelt during the United States presidential election of 1944.

During the restaurant's heydey it frequently served up to 1,200 people for lunch and was known as a "workingman's paradise".  Boeing chief Thornton Wilson was among the diner's regular customers. In the 1960s, Nagy and Yurkanin attempted to open a chain of Li'l Abner-themed restaurants.  Though that venture did not succeed, the duo later started several other railcar-housed restaurants in the Pacific Northwest including Andy's Tukwila Station (in Tukwila, Washington), the Eugene Station (in Eugene, Oregon), and Andy's Auburn Station (in Auburn, Washington).

In 1980 founder Nagy died. Yurkanin continued to operate the restaurant until 1996, when he retired, his son thereafter taking over the venture. The Yurkanins ultimately sold the business to a trio of local restauranters, though the facility's property owner – Seattle real estate developer Henry Liebman – maintained ownership of the site.

New ownership and closure
Andy's Diner was briefly closed in 2000 for remodeling before opening under its first new management since 1949.  Eight years later, however, the restaurant permanently closed with co-owner Bill Howard explaining that the business had ceased to be profitable and that "times have changed since the heyday of Andy's Diner".

Reopening as Orient Express
After Andy's Diner closed in January 2008, developer Henry Liebman, owner of the restaurant property, began offering it for rent, hoping that if the new lessee "just got back to serving a decent steak and a potato," it would be more successful thanks to the location's parking spaces and closeness to Safeco Field and Qwest Field. Eventually, in October of that year, a Chinese restaurant, the Orient Express, opened on the site, occupying the same railcars that once housed Andy's Diner. The Seattle Times reported that the Orient Express, owned by Gun "Ed" Ting, had managed to attract former regulars of Andy's Diner, despite the significant change in menu from steak, potatoes, and other traditional diner fare to American Chinese cuisine. The Seattle Weekly would later applaud the Orient Express for the fact that there were "no tacky portraits of rickshaws and geisha girls" adorning the walls and that, indeed, the decor was essentially unchanged from the restaurant's time as a roadside diner. According to the newspaper, its "most mysterious dish" was a menu item called Henry Liebman's Noodle Soup.

Legacy
The closure of Andy's Diner followed the earlier closure of another train-themed Seattle restaurant – the Iron Horse – and prompted the Seattle Weekly's Mike Seely to eulogize that in "the sweet hereafter ... the Big Engineer in the sky makes a choice between Andy's and the Iron Horse". Menus from Andy's Diner are archived in the special collections unit of the Seattle Public Library.

See also
 Beth's Cafe
 List of defunct restaurants of the United States

References

External links

 undated menu from Andy's Diner at the Seattle Public Library Special Collections website

1949 establishments in Washington (state)
Defunct diners in the United States
Defunct restaurants in Seattle
Roadside attractions in Washington (state)
Diners in Washington (state)
2008 disestablishments in Washington (state)
Restaurants established in 1949
Restaurants disestablished in 2008
Railway-themed restaurants

Andy's Diner


ISO 3166-2:KY is the entry for the Cayman Islands in ISO 3166-2, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1.

Currently no second level ISO 3166-2 codes are defined in the entry for the Cayman Islands.

The Cayman Islands are officially assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code .

This two character string is most commonly associated with the Cayman Island's official internet domain name extension .ky

See also
 Subdivisions of the Cayman Islands
 FIPS region codes of the Cayman Islands

References

External links
 ISO Online Browsing Platform: KY
 Districts of Cayman Islands, Statoids.com

2:KY
Geography of the Cayman Islands

ISO 3166-2:KY


Julio César Tello Rojas (April 11, 1880 – June 3, 1947)  was a Peruvian archaeologist. Tello is considered the "father of Peruvian archeology" and was the first indigenous archaeologist in South America.

He made the major discoveries of the prehistoric Paracas culture, including nearly 400 textiles associated with mummified burials. He founded a national museum of archeology and served as its first director. In addition, he investigated Chavín de Huantar as the focus for his work in the Andean highlands, which he believed was significant for the development of ancient cultures in the region.

Biography
Tello was born a "mountain Indian" in an Andean village in Huarochirí Province, Peru; his family spoke Quechua, the most widely spoken indigenous language in the nation. He gained a first-class education by persuading the Peruvian government to fund it. Tello completed his bachelor's degree in medicine at the National University of San Marcos in Peru in 1909.

While still a student, Tello studied the practice of trepanation among natives of Huarochirí, and amassed a very large collection of skulls.  He was also studying early pathologies in the population. His collection became the basis for a collection at his university.  His abilities were recognized early and senior men acted as mentors.

He was awarded a scholarship by Harvard University, where he learned English and earned his master's degree in anthropology in 1911.  Next he went to Europe, where he studied archeology in Germany.  In 1912 he attended the Congress of Americanists in England, a group in which he became prominent in later years. It was the beginning of his active international life.

Tello traveled widely during his career, and regularly invited other scholars to Peru, developing an international network of colleagues.  Although Tello published a number of papers in his lifetime, they appeared in little-known journals and newspapers, so they were not well known then even to Spanish speakers. For some time his findings and theories were not widely known outside Peru, because he did not publish in recognized academic journals.

He collaborated with his student Rebeca Carrión Cachot, who also succeeded him as director of the  National Museum of Anthropology and Archeology.

Apart from his seminal work on the discovery of the Paracas culture, as well as the Chavin culture, Tello's great contribution to archeology was his idea that pre-Columbian Andean culture emerged and developed in-situ. Max Uhle had argued that it was introduced from Mesoamerica. Since the late 20th century, Peruvian archeologist Ruth Shady and others have established that Caral-Supe, also known as Norte Chico, is the first civilization in the Americas, arising nearly 5,000 years ago.

Marriage and family
In 1912 in England for a Congress of Americanists, Tello met Olive Mabel Chessman, an English woman who was a student at London University.  They married that year and returned to Peru, where they had several children together. Their eldest daughter died in December 1938.

Career

In 1919 Tello was working with a team at the Chavín de Huantar archeological site, where he discovered a stele. (It has since been named for him, the Tello Obelisk.) Construction of the first temple at this major religious center was dated to 850 BCE. The work of Tello and others established that the site had been a center of a complex culture that lasted for several hundred years, to sometime between 500 and 300 BCE. Until late-20th century discoveries established the dates of the 5000-year-old Norte Chico site, the Chavín culture was believed to be the oldest complex civilization in Peru.

Tello is best known for his discovery in 1927 of 429 mummy bundles in the Cerro Colorado area of Peru on the Paracas Peninsula. He first visited the site on July 26, 1925. He was following a trail begun in 1915, when he had purchased ancient textiles in Pisco. On 25 October 1927, Tello and his team uncovered the first of hundreds of ceremonial mummified bundle burials.

Tello was the first in Peru to practice a scientific method of archeological excavation, to preserve stratigraphy and elements to establish dating and context. In 1928 the team began to remove the mummies and textiles for safekeeping.  His findings and interpretations have been the most significant source of information regarding the Paracas culture, which dates to 750 BCE – 100 CE.

The necropolis contained ritual burials, in which corpses were placed in baskets in a sitting position. Each of the bodies was covered by large textiles, works of woven cotton that had been embroidered in wool to create elaborate designs. The arid climate had helped preserve the textiles. He discovered these textiles, which have been described as "spectacular". Tello and his team collected 394 textiles and gained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation for their preservation. They put more than 180 on display by 1938 at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, where he and his team were on staff.

Unlike some of his colleagues, Tello long believed that the Andean highlands had been important centers of ancient culture. His study of this area was the focus of his work. His theory was proven by his work at sites such as Chavin de Huantar and Ayacucho, a center of Wari culture. In 1936 he, together with prominent scholars Alfred Kroeber, Samuel Lothrop, Wendell Bennett and others established the Institute for Andean Research (IAR), to organize and recognize contributions in the field.

In 1938 President Benavides approved a reorganization of the national museums.  Impressed with the Paracas textile collection, he authorized the new Museo de Antropolgia to house it.  On January 3, 1939, Tello was named its first director. This is now the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú.

The Julio C Tello Museum on the Paracas Peninsula is named in his honour.  After the national marine reserve was established in 1975, the museum was built to house artifacts and interpret the archeology and culture of the Paracas, as well as the rich natural life of the marine reserve.

Bibliography
 Tauro del Pino, Alberto: Enciclopedia Ilustrada del Perú.  Tomo 16. TAB/UYU. Lima, PEISA, 2001.
 Grandes Forjadores del Perú. Lima, Lexus Editores, 2000.
 Burger, Richard, The Life and Writings of Julio C. Tello.America's First Indigenous Archaeologist. University of Iowa Press, 2010.

Legacy and honors
 Considered the "father of Peruvian archeology".
 Richard L. Burger, The Life and Writings of Julio C. Tello, University of Iowa Press, 2009, makes his works and their significance available to a wider audience.
 Julio C. Tello Museum, named in his honor and established to hold his findings of the Paracas culture.
 Tello Obelisk, named in his honor, monument of the Chavín culture.

See also

Paracas Textiles
Paracas culture
Montegrande (archaeological site)

References

1880 births
1947 deaths
Harvard University alumni
Andean scholars
Peruvian archaeologists
Peruvian people of Quechua descent
National University of San Marcos alumni
Recipients of the Order of the Sun of Peru
People from Lima Region
20th-century archaeologists

Julio C. Tello


Warwick Scott Cathro (born 8 March 1948) was pivotal in the development of Trove, an Australian online library database aggregator hosted by the National Library of Australia. The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) says of him; "His extraordinary work in developing and implementing standards; advancing innovative solutions; championing national sectoral infrastructure and encouraging communication and debate in the profession, place Warwick Cathro among the most important Australian library and information practitioners of our time."

Early life
Cathro was born in Newtown, New South Wales and attended Newington College (1957-1964) commencing as a preparatory school student in Wyvern House. In 1959, he was the Dux of Wyvern and in 1964 he was Dux of the College and received the Halse Rogers and Schofield Prizes. Following school,  he commenced study at the University of Sydney and in 1969 graduated as a Bachelor of Science and was awarded his PhD in physical chemistry in 1975.

Library career
Cathro joined the staff of the National Library of Australia in January 1978 and on his retirement in 2011 held the position of Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing and Innovation. During that time, Cathro played a leading role in the Library's delivery of innovative network services to the Australian library community including the Australian Bibliographic Network, Australian National Bibliographic Database, and Libraries Australia. Cathro is considered the founder of Trove, which is the National Library's discovery service and links Australians to resources available online, and in Australian libraries, cultural institutions and research collections. It highlights material collected by 1100 Australian institutions and links to more than 120,000,000 items, including full-text books, journal and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, websites, letters, archives, and biographies of prominent Australians. In 2010, the site received 3 million visits and now boasts an average of 25,000 unique visitors a day. Visitors to the site assist in correcting the machine-readable indexed text in the full-text newspaper section.

In 1997, Cathro was one of the primary organizers of the fourth Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's workshop which was hosted by the National Library in Canberra.

Honours
Cathro was awarded the H.C.L. Anderson Award by ALIA in 2012 for his contribution to the development of Trove, the discovery service and national newspaper digitisation project.  Other awards include the ALIA Library Manager of the Year (1991) and the Victorian Association for Library Automation R.D. Williamson Award (1993).

References

1948 births
Australian librarians
Living people
University of Sydney alumni
People educated at Newington College
Australian physical chemists
National Library of Australia Council members
20th-century Australian chemists

Warwick Cathro


Windows Mobility Center is a component of Microsoft Windows, introduced in Windows Vista, that centralizes information and settings most relevant to mobile computing.

History
A mobility center that displayed device settings pertinent to mobile devices was first shown during the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference of 2004. It was based on the Activity Center user interface design that originated with Microsoft's abandoned Windows "Neptune" project, and was slated for inclusion in Windows Vista, then known by its codename Longhorn.

Overview
The Windows Mobility Center user interface consists of square tiles that each contain information and settings related to a component, such as audio settings, battery life and power schemes, display brightness, and wireless network strength and status. The tiles that appear within the interface depend on the hardware of the system and device drivers.

Windows Mobility Center is located in the Windows Control Panel and also be launched by pressing the  keys in Windows Vista and 7. By default, WMC is inaccessible on desktop computers, but this limitation can be bypassed if one modifies the Windows Registry.

Windows Mobility Center is extensible; original equipment manufacturers can customize the interface with additional tiles and company branding. Though not supported by Microsoft, it is possible for individual developers to create tiles for the interface as well.

See also
 Features new to Windows Vista

References

Mobile computers
Mobility Center
Windows Vista

Windows Mobility Center


Anti-vaccine activism is organized activity designed to increase vaccine hesitancy, often by disseminating misinformation or disinformation. Although myths, conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation spread by the anti-vaccination movement and fringe doctors increases vaccine hesitancy and public debates around the medical, ethical, and legal issues related to vaccines, there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination.

18th and 19th century
Ideas that would eventually coalesce into anti-vaccine activism have existed for longer than vaccines themselves. Some philosophical approaches (e.g. homeopathy, vitalism) are incompatible with the microbiological paradigm that explains how the immune system and vaccines work.  Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine activism exist within a broader context that involves cultural tradition, religious belief, approaches to health and disease, and political affiliation.

Opposition to variolation for smallpox (a predecessor to vaccination) was organized as early as the 1820s around the premise that vaccination was unnatural and an attempt to thwart divine judgment. Religious arguments against inoculation, the earliest arguments against vaccination, were soon advanced. For example, in a 1722 sermon entitled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation", the English theologian Reverend Edmund Massey argued that diseases are sent by God to punish sin and that any attempt to prevent smallpox via inoculation is a "diabolical operation". It was customary at the time for popular preachers to publish sermons, which reached a wide audience. This was the case with Massey, whose sermon reached North America, where there was early religious opposition, particularly by John Williams. A greater source of opposition there was William Douglass, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University and a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had settled in Boston.

Vaccination itself was invented by British physician Edward Jenner, who published his findings on the efficacy of the practice for smallpox in 1798. By 1801, the practice had been widely endorsed in the scientific community, and by several world leaders. Philadelphia physician John Redman Coxe, noting that even then false accounts were circulated of negative effects of vaccination, wrote, "Such are the falsehoods which impede the progress of the brightest discovery which has ever been made! But the contest is in vain! Time has drawn aside the veil which obstructed our knowledge of this invaluable blessing; and in the examples of the Emperor of Constantinople, of the Dowager Empress of Russia, and the King of Spain, we may date the downfall of further opposition". Coxe's expectation of an end to opposition to vaccination proved premature, and through much of the nineteenth century, the principles, practices and impact of vaccination were matters of active scientific debate.  The principles behind vaccination were not clearly understood until the end of the nineteenth century. The importance of hygiene in the preparation, storage, and administration of vaccines was not always understood or practiced. Reliable statistics on vaccine efficacy and side effects were difficult to obtain before the 1930s.

Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League
In the United Kingdom, the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853 required that every child be vaccinated within three or four months of birth. It set a  precedent for the state regulation of physical bodies, and was fiercely resisted.
In 1854. John Gibbs published the first anti-compulsory-vaccination pamphlet, Our Medical Liberties.
By the 1860s, anti-vaccinationism in Britain was active in the working class, labor aristocracy, and lower middle class, all of which were under economic stress.  It had become associated with alternative medicine and was part of a larger culture of social and political dissent that included both labor unions and religious dissenters.

In June 1867, the publication "Human Nature" campaigned in the United Kingdom against "The Vaccination Humbug", reporting that many petitions had been presented to Parliament against Compulsory Vaccination for smallpox, including from parents who alleged that their children had died through the procedure, and complaining that these petitions had not been made public. The journal reported the formation of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League "To overthrow this huge piece of physiological absurdity and medical tyranny", and quoted Richard Gibbs (a cousin of John Gibbs) who ran the Free Hospital at the same address as stating "I believe we have hundreds of cases here, from being poisoned with vaccination, I deem incurable. One member of a family dating syphilitic symptoms from the time of vaccination, when all the other members of the family have been clear. We strongly advise parents to go to prison, rather than submit to have their helpless offspring inoculated with scrofula, syphilis, and mania".

Notable members of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League included James Burns, George Dornbusch and Charles Thomas Pearce. After the death of Richard B. Gibbs in 1871, the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League "languished" until 1876 when it was revived under the leadership of Mary Hume-Rothery and the Rev. W. Hume-Rothery. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League published the Occasional Circular which later merged into the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter.

Anti-Vaccination Society of America
In the United States, many states and local school boards established immunization requirements, beginning with a compulsory school vaccination law in Massachusetts in 1855.
The Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded in 1879, after a visit to the United States by British anti-vaccine activist William Tebb, and opposed compulsory smallpox vaccination for smallpox from the final decades of the 19th century through the 1910s. During this period, smallpox vaccination was the only form of vaccination that was widely practiced, and the society published a periodical opposing it, called Vaccination.

A series of American legal cases, beginning in various states and culminating with that of Henning Jacobson of Massachusetts in 1905, upheld the mandating of compulsory smallpox vaccination for the good of the public. The court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that "the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good".

London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination

In 1880, William Tebb enlarged and reorganized the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League in the UK with the formation of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, with William Young as secretary. The Vaccination Inquirer, established by Tebb in 1879, was adopted as the official organ of the Society. A series of fourteen "Vaccination Tracts" was begun by Young in 1877 and completed by Garth Wilkinson in 1879. William White was the first editor of the Vaccination Inquirer and after his death in 1885, he was succeeded by Alfred Milnes. Frances Hoggan and her husband authored an article for the Vaccination Inquirer in September 1883 which argued against compulsory vaccination. The London Society focused on lobbying parliamentary support in the 1880s and early 1890s. They gained support from several members of the House of Commons of which the most prominent was Peter Alfred Taylor, the member for Leicester, which was described as the "Mecca of antivaccination".

The National Anti-Vaccination League
The UK movement grew, and as the influence of the London Society overshadowed the Hume-Rotherys and it took the national lead, it was decided in February 1896 to re-form the Society as The National Anti-Vaccination League. Arthur Phelps was elected as president. In 1898, the league took on a school leaver named Lily Loat. By 1909 she was elected as the league's Secretary. In 1906, George Bernard Shaw wrote a supportive letter to the National Anti-Vaccination League, equating methods of vaccination with "rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound".

Anti-Vaccination League of America
In 1908, the Anti-Vaccination League of America was created by Charles M. Higgins and industrialist John Pitcairn Jr., with anti-vaccination campaigns focused on New York and Pennsylvania. Members were opposed to compulsory vaccination laws. Higgins was the League's chief spokesman and pamphleteer. Historian James Colgrove noted that Higgins "attempted to overturn the New York State's law mandating vaccination of students in public schools". The League should not be confused with the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, that was formed in 1879. Higgins was criticized by medical experts for spreading misinformation and ignoring facts as to the efficacy of vaccination. The League dissolved after the death of Higgins in 1929.

20th century
Anti-vaccine activism ebbed for much of the twentieth century, but never completely vanished. In the UK, the National Anti-Vaccination League continued to publish new issues of its journal until 1972, by which time the global campaign for smallpox eradication through vaccination had made the disease so uncommon that compulsory vaccination for smallpox was no longer required in the United Kingdom.

New vaccines were developed and used against diseases such as diphtheria and whooping cough. In the UK, these were often introduced on a voluntary basis, without arousing the same kind of anti-vaccination response that had accompanied compulsory smallpox vaccination.

In the United States, numerous measles outbreaks occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and were shown to be more frequent in states that lacked mandatory vaccination requirements. This led to calls in the 1970s for a national level vaccination requirement for children entering schools.
Joseph A. Califano Jr. appealed to state governors, and by 1980, all 50 states legally required vaccination for school entrance. Many of these laws allowed exemptions in response to lobbyists. In New York State, a 1967 law allowed exemptions from receiving polio vaccine for members of religious organizations such as Christian Scientists.

21st century

Lancet MMR autism fraud

Anti-vaccine activism in the 2000s was greatly spurred by fraudulent research that made a false claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. These claims have been extensively investigated and found to be false. The scientific consensus is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and that the MMR vaccine's benefits in preventing measles, mumps, and rubella greatly outweigh its potential risks.

The idea of an autism link was first suggested in the early 1990s and came to public notice largely as a result of the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, which Dennis K Flaherty at the University of Charleston characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". The fraudulent research paper authored by Andrew Wakefield and published in The Lancet falsely claimed the vaccine was linked to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. The paper was retracted in 2010 but is still cited by anti-vaccine activists.

The claims in the paper were widely reported, leading to a sharp drop in vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland. Promotion of the claimed link, which continues in anti-vaccination propaganda despite being refuted, has led to an increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in deaths and serious permanent injuries. Following the initial claims in 1998, multiple large epidemiological studies were undertaken. Reviews of the evidence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library all found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Physicians, medical journals, and editors have described Wakefield's actions as fraudulent and tied them to epidemics and deaths.

An investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield, the author of the original research paper linking the vaccine to autism, had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes. After a subsequent 2.5-year investigation, the General Medical Council ruled that Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research, carrying out unauthorized procedures for which he was not qualified, and acting with "callous disregard" for the children involved.
Wakefield was found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct in May 2010 and was struck off the Medical Register, meaning he could no longer practise as a physician in the UK.

The Lancet paper was partially retracted in 2004 and fully retracted in 2010, when Lancets editor-in-chief Richard Horton described it as "utterly false" and said that the journal had been deceived. In January 2011, Deer published a series of reports in the British Medical Journal, in which a signed editorial stated of the journalist, "It has taken the diligent scepticism of one man, standing outside medicine and science, to show that the paper was in fact an elaborate fraud." A 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".

Wakefield continues to promote anti-vaccine beliefs and conspiracy theories in the United States.
In February 2015, Wakefield denied that he bore any responsibility for the measles epidemic that started at Disneyland among unvaccinated children that year. He also reaffirmed his discredited belief that "MMR contributes to the current autism epidemic". By that time at least 166 measles cases had been reported. Paul Offit disagreed, saying that the outbreak was "directly related to Dr. Wakefield's theory".
Wakefield and other anti-vaccine activists were active in the American-Somali community in Minnesota, where a drop in vaccination rates was followed by the largest measles outbreak in the state in nearly 30 years in 2017.

The anti-vaccination movement was historically apolitical, but in the 2010s and 2020s the movement in the United States has increasingly targeted conservatives.  As measles outbreaks increased, so did calls to eliminate exemptions from vaccine administration. As of 2015, 19 American states had suggested legislation to eliminate or increase the difficulty of exemptions, including California. Concurrently, American anti-vaccine activists reached out to libertarian and right-leaning groups such as the Tea Party movement to broaden their base. While earlier anti-vaccination activists focused on health impacts and safety of vaccines, recent themes increasingly involve philosophical arguments about liberty, medical freedom and parental rights.

With the growing anti-vaccine movement from the 2010s onwards, the United States has seen a resurgence of certain vaccine-preventable diseases.  The measles virus lost its elimination status in the US as the number of measles cases continued to rise in the late 2010s with a total of 17 outbreaks in 2018 and 465 outbreaks in 2019 (as of 4 April 2019).

2019 measles outbreaks
Vaccine hesitancy led to declining rates of vaccination for measles, culminating in the 2019–2020 measles outbreaks. The most significant of these in proportion to national population was the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak.

In July 2018, two 12-month-old children died in Samoa after receiving incorrectly prepared MMR vaccinations. These two deaths were picked up by anti-vaccine groups and used to incite fear towards vaccination on social media, causing the government to suspend its measles vaccination programme for ten months, despite advice from the WHO. The incident caused many Samoan residents to lose trust in the healthcare system. UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate that the measles vaccination rate in Samoa fell from 74% in 2017 to 34% in 2018, similar to some of the poorest countries in Africa.

In August 2019, an infected passenger on one of the more than 8,000 annual flights between New Zealand and Samoa probably brought the disease from Auckland to Upolu. A full outbreak of measles began on the island in October 2019 and continued for the next four months. As of 6 January 2020, there were over 5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths, out of a Samoan population of 200,874. Over three per cent of the population were infected. The cause of the outbreak was attributed to decreased vaccination rates, from 74% in 2017 to 31–34% in 2018, even though nearby islands had rates near 99%. a rate of 14.3 deaths per 1000 infected) and 5,520 cases (2.75% of the population) of measles in Samoa. 61 out of the first 70 deaths were aged four and under and all but seven were aged under 15. After the outbreak, anti-vaxxers employed racist tropes and misinformation to credit the scores of measles deaths to poverty and poor nutrition or even to the vaccine itself, but this has been discounted by the international emergency medical support that arrived in November and December. There was no evidence of acute malnutrition, clinical vitamin A deficiency, or immune deficiency as claimed by various anti-vaxxers.

COVID-19 pandemic activism
During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine activists undertook various efforts to hinder people who wanted to receive the vaccines, with such activities occurring in countries including Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These included attempts to physically blockade vaccination sites, and making false reservations for vaccination appointments to clog up vaccination booking systems. Protests were also organized by the activists to raise awareness for their cause.

In some instances, anti-vaccine rhetoric has been traced to state-sponsored internet troll activities designed to create social dissension.  Worldwide, foreign disinformation campaigns have been associated with declining vaccination rates in target countries.
Anti-vaccine activism online both before and during the pandemic has been linked to extreme levels of falsehoods, rumours, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.

Anti-vaccine activists have falsely claimed in social media posts that numerous deaths or injuries had to do with reactions to vaccines. In one highly publicized instance in early 2023, after Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin experienced an in-game episode of commotio cordis, there was an increase in rhetoric and disinformation from figures such as Charlie Kirk and Drew Pinsky making unfounded claims about Hamlin's cardiac arrest and COVID-19 vaccines. In another 2023 incident, college basketball player Bronny James experienced cardiac arrest at the Galen Center at the University of Southern California, leading to assertions that this was a result of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine; it was later revealed that the episode had been caused by a congenital heart defect.

Strategies and tactics

Arguments used
In a 2002 paper in the British Medical Journal, two medical historians suggested that the arguments made against the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in the late 20th century are similar to those of the early anti-vaccinationists. Both the 19th and 20th century arguments included "vaccine safety issues, vaccine failures, infringement of personal liberty, and an unholy alliance between the medical establishment and the government to reap huge profits for the medical establishment at the expense of the public." However, the authors only considered the use of "newspaper articles and letters, books, journals, and pamphlets to warn against the dangers of vaccination", and did not address the impact of the internet. Comments on youtube videos during the COVID-19 pandemic clustered similarly around "concerns about side-effects, effectiveness, and lack of trust in corporations and government".

Misrepresentation
In some instances, anti-vaccine organizations have used names intended to sound non-partisan on the issue: e.g. National Vaccine Information Center (USA), Vaccination Risk Awareness Network (Canada), Australian Vaccination Network. In November 2013 the Australian Vaccination Network was ordered by the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal to change their name so that consumers are aware of the anti-vaccination nature of the group. Lateline reported that former AVN president Meryl Dorey "claimed she was a victim of hate groups and vested interests" in response to the ruling.

Information quality
Although physicians and nurses are still rated as the most trusted source for vaccine information, some vaccine-hesitant individuals report being more comfortable discussing vaccines with providers of complementary and alternative (CAM) treatments. With the rise of the internet, many people have turned online for medical information.  In some instances, anti-vaccine activists seek to steer people away from vaccination and health-care providers and towards alternative medicines sold by certain of the activists.

Anti-vaccination writings on the internet have been argued to be characterized by a number of differences from medical and scientific literature.  These include:
Promiscuous copying and reduplication.
Ignoring corrections, even when an initial report or data point is shown to be false.
Lack of references, difficulty in checking sources and claims.
Personal attacks on individual doctors.
A high degree of interlinkage between sites.
Dishonest or fallacious arguments.

For example, a 2020 study examined Instagram posts related to HPV vaccine, which can prevent some types of cancer. Antivaccine posts were more likely than provaccine posts to be sent by non-healthcare individuals, to include personal narratives, and to reference other Instagram users, links, or reposts. Antivaccine posts were also more likely to involve concealment or distortion, particularly conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims. 72.3% of antivaccine posts made inaccurate claims, including exaggerating the risks of vaccines and minimizing risks of disease.

Disinformation tactics
A number of specific disinformation tactics have been noted in anti-vaccination messaging, including:
Conspiracies theories alleging lies, trickery, cover-ups, and secret knowledge
Messages crafted for psychological appeal rather than truthfulness
Fake experts
Impossible expectations: claiming that anything less than 100% certainty in a scientific claim implies doubt, and that doubt means there is no consensus
Selective cherry-picking: using obscure or debunked sources while ignoring counter-evidence and scientific consensus
Shifting hypotheses:	Continually introducing new theories about vaccines being harmful; moving to new claims when existing ones are shown to be false
Misrepresentation, false logic and illogical analogies
Personal attacks on critics, ranging from online criticism, publicly revealing personal details, and threats, to offline acitivities such as legal actions, targeting of employers, and violence

Economics of vaccine disinformation
Information is more likely to be believed after repeated exposure.  Disinformers use this illusory truth effect as a tactic, repeating false information to make it feel familiar and influence belief.  Anti-vaccine activists have leveraged social media to develop interconnected networks of influencers that shape people's opinion, recruit allies, impact policy and monetize vaccine-related disinformation.
In 2022, the Journal of Communication published a study of the political economy underlying vaccine disinformation.  Researchers identified 59 English-language "actors" that provided "almost exclusively anti-vaccination publications". Their websites monetized disinformation through appeals for donations, sales of content-based media and other merchandise, third-party advertising, and membership fees. Some maintained a group of linked websites, attracting visitors with one site and appealing for money and selling merchandise on others.  Their activities to gain attention and obtain funding displayed a "hybrid monetization strategy". They attracted attention by combining eye-catching aspects of "junk news" and online celebrity promotion. At the same time, they developed campaign-specific communities to publicize and legitimize their position, similar to radical social movements.

Misrepresentation of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
In the United States, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is used to gather information on potential vaccine adverse reactions, but is susceptible to unverified reports, misattribution, underreporting, and inconsistent data quality. Raw, unverified data from VAERS has often been used by the anti-vaccine community to justify misinformation regarding the safety of vaccines; it is generally not possible to find out from VAERS data if a vaccine caused an adverse event, or how common the event might be.

Legal action

Since Republicans gained a majority in the House in January 2023,  the House Judiciary Committee has used legal action to actively oppose both disinformation research and government involvement in fighting disinformation. One of the projects targeted is the Virality Project, which has examined the spread of false claims about vaccines.  The House Judiciary Committee has sent letters, subpoenas, and threats of legal action to researchers, demanding notes, emails and other records from researchers and even student interns, dating back to 2015. Institutions include the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and the social media analytics firm Graphika.  Researchers emphasize that they have academic freedom to study disinformation as well as freedom of speech to report their results.

Despite conservative claims that the government acted to censor speech online, "no evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts". The actions of the House Judiciary Committee have been described as an "attempt to chill research," creating a "chilling effect" through increased time demands, legal costs and online harassment of researchers.

Harassment
Persons undertaking efforts to counter vaccine misinformation, including public health experts who use social media, have been targeted for harassment by anti-vaccine activists.  For example, Slovakian physician Vladimír Krčméry was a prominent member of the government advisory team during the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia, and was the first person to in that country to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Due to his prominent role in the vaccination campaign, Krčméry and his family became a target of anti-vaccine activists, who physically threatened him and his family.

In June 2023, Texas-based physician and researcher Peter Hotez tweeted his concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sharing misinformation about vaccines on Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan, Kennedy, and Twitter owner Elon Musk asked Hotez to participate in a debate on the podcast. Upon declining the invitation, Hotez was harassed by their fans, with anti-vaccine activist Alex Rosen confronting him at his home.

In his book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist's Warning, Hotez describes how he and other scientists who publicly defend vaccines have been attacked on social media, harassed with threatening emails, intimidated, and confronted physically by opponents of vaccination. He attributes the increase in aggressiveness of the anti-vaccination movement to the influence of the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Hotez estimates that roughly 200,000 preventable deaths from COVID-19, mainly among Republicans, occurred in the US because of refusal to be vaccinated.

At the extreme end, opposition to vaccination has resulted in substantial violence against vaccinators. In Pakistan, "more than 200 polio team workers have lost their lives" (team members include not only vaccinators but police and security personnel) from "targeted killing and terrorism" while working on polio vaccination campaigns.

Countering anti-vaccine activism
Various efforts have been suggested and undertaken to address concerns about vaccines and counter anti-vaccine disinformation. Efforts include social media advertising campaigns, by public health organizations, in support of public health goals.

Best practices for combating vaccine mis- and disinformation include addressing issues openly, clearly identifying areas of scientific consensus and areas of uncertainty, and being sensitive to the cultural and religious values of communities. In countering anti-vaccine disinformation, both factual and emotional aspects need to be addressed.

Whether people will update a mistaken belief is complicated and involves psychological factors and social goals as well as accuracy of information. There is some evidence that both debunking and "pre-bunking" of disinformation can be effective, at least in the short term.  Elements that may help to correct inaccurate information include: warning people before they are exposed to misinformation; high perceived credibility of message sources, affirmations of identity and social norms; graphical presentation; and focusing attention on clear core messages.
Alternative explanations of a situation need to fit plausibly into the original scenario and ideally indicate why the incorrect explanation was previously thought to be correct.

The cultivation of critical thinking, health and science awareness, and media literacy skills are all recommended to help people more critically assess the credibility of the information they see. People who seek out multiple reputable news sources at local and national levels are more likely to detect disinformation than those who rely on few sources from a particular viewpoint.  Particularly on social media, beware of sensational headlines that appeal to emotion, fact-check information broadly (not just through your usual sources), and consider possible agendas or conflicts of interest of those relaying information.

Operation of social media
Other suggestions for countering anti-vaccine activism focus on changing the operation of social media platforms. Interventions such as accuracy nudges and source labelling change the context in which information is presented. For example, correct information can be directly presented to counter disinformation.
Other possibilities include flagging or removing misleading information on social media platforms.  Research suggests that a majority of individuals in the United States would support the removal of harmful misinformation posts and the suspension of accounts. This position is less popular with Republicans than Democrats.

While private entities like Facebook, Twitter and Telegram could legally establish guidelines for moderation of information and disinformation on their platforms (subject to local and international laws) such companies do not have strong incentives to control disinformation or to self-regulate.  Algorithms that are used to maximize user engagement and profits can lead to unbalanced, poorly sourced, and actively misleading information.

Criticized for its role in vaccine hesitancy, Facebook announced in March 2019 that it would provide users with "authoritative information" on the topic of vaccines.  Facebook introduced several policies chosen to reduce the impact of anti-vaccine content, without actually removing it.  These included reducing the ranking of anti-vaccine sources in searches and not recommending them; rejecting ads and targeted advertising that contained vaccine misinformation; and using banners to present vaccine information from authoritative sources.  A study examined the six months before and after the policy changes.  It found a moderate but significant decrease in the number of likes for anti-vaccine posts following the policy changes. Likes of pro-vaccine posts were unchanged.  Facebook has been criticized for not being more aggressive in countering disinformation. In response to efforts to police misinformation, anti-vaccine communities on social media have adopted coded language to refer to vaccinated persons and the vaccines themselves.

Supply-side interventions reduce circulation of misinformation directly at their sources through actions such as application of social media policies, regulation, and legislation.
A study published in the journal Vaccine examined advertisements posted in the three months prior to the Facebook's 2019 policy changes.  It found that 54% of the anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook were placed by just two organizations, funded by well-known anti-vaccination activists. The Children's Health Defense / World Mercury Project chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Stop Mandatory Vaccination, run by campaigner Larry Cook, posted 54% of the advertisements. The ads often linked to commercial products, such as natural remedies and books. Kennedy was suspended from Facebook in August 2022, but reinstated in June 2023.

In 2023, however, state governments that were politically aligned with anti-vaccine activists successfully sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the Biden Administration from seeking to pressure social media companies into fighting misinformation. The order issued by United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit "severely limits the ability of the White House, the surgeon general, [and] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... to communicate with social media companies about content related to Covid-19... that the government views as misinformation". In October 2023, this injunction was paused by the Supreme Court of the United States, pending further litigation.

Use of algorithms and data
Algorithms and user data can be used to identify selected subgroups who can then be provided with specialized content.  This type of approach has been used both by anti-vaccine activists
and by health providers who hope to counter vaccine-related disinformation.
For example, in the United States, the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) has been used to identify communities that have traditionally been under-served or are at elevated risk for infection, morbidity, and mortality. Programs have been developed in such communities to address disinformation and vaccine hesitancy.

Community engagement
Steps have been taken to counter anti-vaccine messaging by directly engaging with communities. Outreach efforts include call centers and texting campaigns, partnering with local community leaders, and holding community-based vaccine clinics.  Creating digital and science literacy resources and distributing them via schools, libraries, municipal offices, churches and other community groups can help to counter misinformation in under-resourced communities.

The Black Doctors Covid-19 Consortium in Philadelphia is one example of a successful direct outreach initiative. Another is the New York State Vaccine Equity Task Force.
In line with the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE)'s 3C's model, outreach to communities has focused on addressing mistrust and increasing Confidence, providing information to improve risk assessment (Complacency), and improving access to COVID-19 vaccines (Convenience).  It has been necessary to counter disinformation in all three areas.

Recommendations for combating vaccine disinformation include increasing the presence of trusted health agencies and credible information on social media, partnering with social media platforms to promote evidence-based public health information, and identifying and responding to emerging concerns and disinformation campaigns.
Networked communities of public health officials and other stakeholders, connecting with the public through a variety of credible and trusted messengers, are recommended.  Sharing of messages through such networks could help to prebunk and counter highly networked and coordinated disinformation attacks.

A networked community approach would differ from the current model of US public health communication, which tends to rely on a single credible messenger (e.g. Anthony Fauci) and is susceptible to disinformation attacks.  To deal with disinformation, community networks would need to address issues of liberty and human rights as well as vaccine safety, effectiveness and access. Networks could also help to show support for those attacked by anti-vaccine activists.

See also
 Anti-vaccinationism in chiropractic
 Big Pharma conspiracy theories
 COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy
 Germ theory denialism
 List of anti-vaccination groups
 oral polio AIDS hypothesis
 Vaccine misinformation
 Vaccines and autism
 MMR vaccine and autism
 Thiomersal and vaccines

References

Autism pseudoscience
Medical-related conspiracy theories
Activism by issue

Anti-vaccine activism


Teairra Marquisha Thomas (born December 2, 1987) professionally known as Teairra Marí, is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, actress and model.

Career
Marí was discovered by the American music mogul Jay Z while she was 16 years old. Jay Z signed her under his label Roc-A-Fella records. In the same year, she released her debut album, titled 'Roc-A-Fella Records Presents Teairra Mari', which turned out to be a major debacle. It was a critical success but struggled in garnering the expected sales numbers. This failure threatened to destroy her musical career even before it started and she exited from the label during the production of her second album. A few years later, she got another chance to redeem her career with the single 'Hunt 4 U', and its success enabled her to approach studios to produce her second album. It was eventually released with the title 'At that Point'. She embarked into acting in 2009 with the film 'The Magnificent Cooly-T'. Thereafter, she appeared in another film 'Lottery Ticket' in 2010. She has also released some mix tapes featuring some well known artists of this era and has tasted success with her latest album, 'Night Shift' which was released in 2017.

Personal life
According to Teairra, she was in an-again-off-again relationship for nine years with Brandy Norwood's brother Ray J. In September 2014, Ray J claimed that Teairra was physically abusive to him during their relationship. In 2011, Teairra was arrested in Beverly Hills, California for allegedly assaulting a police officer. In July 2015, Mari was charged with battery after her Uber driver alleged that she punched him and stole his phone charger after he originally declined to let her charge her phone in his car. Nonetheless, the court case had ended in a mistrial when the judge had to excuse himself due to illness in early 2017.

Discography
 Roc-A-Fella Records Presents Teairra Marí (2005)
 At That Point (2009)
 Sex on the Radio (2012)

References

1987 births
Living people
Actors from Detroit
African American actors
African-American singers
American dancers
American movie actors

Teairra Marí