Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Russia, but is not used due to a moratorium and no death sentences or executions have occurred since 2 August 1996. Russia has a moratorium implicitly established by President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and explicitly established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and reaffirmed in 2009.

History

Medieval Russia and Russian Empire
In pre-Tsarist medieval Russia, capital punishment was relatively rare, and was even banned in many, if not most, principalities. The Law of Yaroslavl (c. 1017) put restrictions on what crimes warranted execution. Later, the law was amended in much of the country to completely ban capital punishment.

Medieval Russia practiced the death penalty extensively. One of the first legal documents resembling a modern penal code was enacted in 1398, which mentioned a single capital crime: a theft performed after two prior convictions (an early precursor to the current three-strikes laws existing in several U.S. states). The Pskov Code of 1497 extends this list significantly, mentioning three specialized theft instances (those committed in a church, stealing a horse, or, as before, with two prior "strikes"), as well as arson and treason. The trend to increase the number of capital crimes continued: in 1649, this list included 63 crimes, a figure that nearly doubled during the reign of Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great). The methods of execution were extremely cruel by modern standards and included drowning, burying alive, and forcing liquid metal into the throat.

Elizabeth (reigned 1741–1762) did not share her father Peter's views on the death penalty, and officially suspended it in 1745, effectively enacting a moratorium. This lasted for 11 years, at which point the death penalty was permitted again, after considerable opposition to the moratorium from both the nobility and, in part, from the Empress herself.

Perhaps the first public statement on the matter to be both serious and strong came from Catherine II (Catherine the Great), whose liberal views were consistent with her acceptance of the Enlightenment. In her Nakaz of 1767, the empress expressed a disdain for the death penalty, considering it to be improper, adding: "In the usual state of the society, death penalty is neither useful nor needed." However, an explicit exception was still allowed for the case of someone who, even while convicted and incarcerated, "still has the means and the might to ignite public unrest". This specific exception applied to mutineers of Pugachev's Rebellion in 1775.
Consistent with Catherine's stance, the next several decades marked a shift of public perception against the death penalty. In 1824, the very existence of such a punishment was among the reasons for the legislature's refusal to approve a new version of the Penal Code. Just one year later, the Decembrist revolt failed, and a court sentenced 36 of the rebels to death. Nicholas I's decision to commute all but five of the sentences was highly unusual for the time, especially taking into account that revolts against the monarchy had almost universally resulted in an automatic death sentence, and was perhaps due to society's changing views of the death penalty. By the late 1890s, capital punishment for murder was virtually never carried out, but substituted with 10 to 15 years imprisonment with hard labor, although it still was carried out for treason (for example, Alexander Ulyanov was hanged in 1887). However, in 1910, capital punishment was reintroduced and expanded, although still very seldom used.

Russian Republic
The death penalty was officially outlawed on March 12, 1917 following the February Revolution and the establishment of the Russian Republic. On May 12, 1917, the death penalty became applicable to soldiers at the front.

Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union

The Soviet government confirmed the abolition almost immediately after the October Revolution, but restored it soon after. Most notably, Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan was executed on 4 September 1918 for her attempt to assassinate Lenin six days earlier. Hangings and shootings very extensively employed by the Bolsheviks as part of their Red Terror.

Over the next several decades, the death penalty was alternately permitted and prohibited, sometimes in very quick succession. The list of capital crimes likewise underwent several changes. Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, many were executed during the Great Purge in the 1930s. Many of the death sentences were pronounced by a specially appointed three-person commission of officials, the NKVD troika. The exact number of executions is debated, with archival research suggesting it to be between 700,000 and 800,000, whereas an official report to Nikita Khrushchev from 1954 cites 642,980 death penalties, another report in 1956 688,503, of which 681,692 were carried out during the years of 1937-1938. (see also ). The verdict of capital punishment in the Soviet Union was called the "Supreme Measure of Punishment" (Vysshaya Mera Nakazaniya, VMN). Verdicts under Article 58 (counter-revolutionary activity) often ended with a sentence that was abbreviated as VMN, and usually followed by executions through shooting, though other frequent verdicts were 10 years and 25 years (dubbed "Сталинский четвертак" Stalinskiy chetvertak, "Stalin's Quarter") sentences.

The death penalty was again abolished on 26 May 1947, the strictest sentence becoming 25 years' imprisonment, before it was restored on 12 May 1950: first for treason and espionage, and then for aggravated murder. According to Western estimates, in the early 1980s Soviet courts passed around 2,000 death sentences every year, of which two-thirds were commuted to prison terms. According to the GARF archives database, between 1978 and 1985 there were 3,058 sentences to death that had been appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. At least one woman was executed during this time, Antonina Makarova, on 11 August 1978. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation carried out the death penalty intermittently, with up to 10 or so officially a year. In 1996, pending Russia's entry into the Council of Europe, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty, which is still in place as of .

Current status

Statute limitations
Article 20 of the Russian Constitution states that everyone has the right to life, and that "until its abolition, the death penalty may only be passed for the most serious crimes against human life." Additionally, all such sentences require jury trial. The inclusion of the abolition wording has been interpreted by some as a requirement for capital punishment to be abolished in the future.

The current Penal Code permits the death penalty for five crimes:
murder, with certain aggravating circumstances (article 105.2)
attempted murder of a judge (article 295)
attempted murder of a police officer (article 317)
attempted murder of a state official (article 277)
genocide (section 357)
No crime has a mandatory death sentence; each of the five sections mentioned above also permit life imprisonment, as well as a prison sentence of 8 to 30 years. Males under the age of 18 or over the age of 60 at the time of commission, along with all females, are ineligible for capital punishment.

The Penal Execution Code specifies that the execution is to be carried out "privately by shooting".

Moratorium
One of the absolute requirements of the Council of Europe for all members is the abolition of capital punishment. However, the council has accepted temporary moratoria. Consistent with this, on 25 January 1996, the Council required Russia to implement a moratorium immediately and fully abolish capital punishment within three years in order to approve its bid for inclusion in the organization. In a month, Russia agreed and became a member of the Council. Whether the moratorium has actually happened as a matter of legal right is controversial.

On 16 May 1996, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree "for the stepwise reduction in the application of capital punishment in conjunction with Russia's entry into the Council of Europe", which is widely cited as de facto establishing such a moratorium. The decree called on the legislature to prepare a law that would abolish capital punishment, as well as a recommendation to reduce the number of capital crimes and require the authorities to treat those on death row in a humane manner. Although the order may be read as not legally abolishing capital punishment, this was eventually the practical effect, and it was accepted as such by the Council of Europe as Russia was granted membership in the organization.

However, since executions continued in 1996 after Russia signed the agreement, the council was not satisfied and presented Russia with several ultimatum, threatening to expel the country if capital punishment continued to be carried out. In response, several more laws and orders were enacted, and Russia has not executed anyone since Golovkin's execution in August 1996. After the moratorium was announced and the maximum sentence was officially increased from 25 years to life in prison, multiple death row inmates committed suicide.

On 2 February 1999, the Constitutional Court of Russia issued a temporary stay on any executions for a rather technical reason, but nevertheless granting the moratorium an unquestionable legal status for the first time. According to the Constitution as quoted above, a death sentence may be pronounced only by a jury trial, which were not yet implemented in some regions of the country. The court found that such disparity makes death sentences illegal in any part of the country, even those that do have the process of trial by jury implemented. According to the ruling, no death sentence may be passed until all regions of country have jury trials.

In April 2013, President Vladimir Putin said that lifting the moratorium was inadvisable. However, when Russia was suspended from the Council of Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and subsequently announced its intention to withdraw from the organisation, former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev endorsed restoring the death penalty in Russia.

In Russia-backed breakaway regions

On 9 June 2022, the Supreme Court of (the self-proclaimed) Donetsk People's Republic convicted Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner (both British), and Saadoun Brahim (Moroccan) of mercenarism and sentenced them to death penalty. The Russian media and the court claimed that Aslin had confessed to "having undergone drilling aimed at carrying out terrorist acts" and that Pinner is recognised in the UK as a terrorist for partaking in wars of Iraq and Syria. The men have said they were serving in the Ukrainian Marines, making them active-duty soldiers who should be protected by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war; the UN and the UK condemned the verdict, supporting this claim. The men were released following a prisoner exchange.

Public opinion
A survey conducted by the same company in 2012 (on a sample of 3,000) found that 62 percent of the respondents favored a return to the use of the death penalty, and 21 percent still supported the moratorium. In this survey, five percent of the respondents supported the abolition of the death penalty, and 66 percent supported the death penalty as a valid punishment.

According to a 2013 survey by the Levada Center, 54 percent of the respondents favored an equal (38 percent) or greater (16 percent) use of the death penalty as before the 1996 moratorium, a decline from 68 percent in 2002 and from 61 percent in 2012. This survey found that the death penalty now has a higher approval rating in urban areas (77 percent in Moscow for example), with men and among the elderly. According to the Levada Center figures, the proportion of Russians seeking abolition of the death penalty was 12 percent in 2002, 10 percent in 2012 and 11 percent in 2013. According to the same source, the proportion of Russians approving of the moratorium increased from 12 percent in 2002 to 23 percent in 2013.

A 2019 Levada Center poll found the number of Russians who support the death penalty's return had climbed to nearly half, with 49% of Russian respondents saying they would like to see the return of the death penalty, an increase from 44% in 2017. 19% said the death penalty should be abolished.

Russian opinion on the practice in Europe
After two terrorists were executed in Belarus in 2012 for their role in the 2011 Minsk Metro bombing, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he urged all European countries to join the moratorium, including Belarus. However, he said that it is an internal affair of each state, and that, despite condemning the execution, Russia still was a major supporter of the war on terror.

Procedure
Historically, various types of capital punishment were used in Russia, such as hanging, breaking wheel, burning, beheading, flagellation by knout until death etc. During the times of Ivan the Terrible, capital punishment often took exotic and torturous forms, impalement being one of its most common types. Certain crimes incurred specific forms of capital punishment, e.g. coin counterfeiters were executed by pouring molten lead into their throats, while certain religious crimes were punishable by burning alive.

In the times after Peter the Great, hanging for military men and shooting for civilians became the default means of execution, though certain types of non-lethal corporal punishment, such as lashing or caning, could result in the convict's death.

In the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, convicts awaited execution for a period around 9–18 months since the first sentence. That was the time typically needed for two or three appeals to be processed through the Soviet juridical system, depending on the level of the court that first sentenced the convict to death. Shooting was the only legal means of execution, though the exact procedure has never been codified. Unlike most other countries, execution did not involve any official ceremony: the convict was often given no warning and taken by surprise in order to eliminate fear, suffering and resistance. Where warning was given, it was usually just a few minutes.

The process was usually carried out by single executioner, usage of firing squads being limited to wartime executions. The most common method was to make the convict walk into a dead-end room, and shoot him from behind in the back of the head with a handgun. In some cases, the convict could be forced down on his knees. Some prisons were rumored to have specially designed rooms with fire slits.  Another method was to make the convict walk out of the prison building, where he was awaited by the executioner and a truck with the engine and headlamps turned on. The lights blinded and disoriented the convict, while the noise of the engine muffled the shot.

The bodies of the executed criminals and political dissidents were not given to the relatives, but rather buried in anonymous graves in undisclosed locations.

See also

 Criminal Code of Russia

References

External links
Russia: Death Penalty Worldwide  Academic research database on the laws, practice, and statistics of capital punishment for every death penalty country in the world.

Russia
Russian criminal law
Death in Russia
Human rights abuses in Russia
Capital punishment in Russia

Capital punishment in Russia


James F. Light (1921-2002) was an American literary scholar, university vice president, and provost. During his academic career, he helped revive the works of satirist Nathanael West, with the first book length critical study of West's work, Nathanael West: An Interpretive Study, (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1961). He was also the leading authority on John William De Forest, the early American realist whose work he critiqued in John William De Forest (Twayne Pub., 1965), and he wrote extensively on J. D. Salinger, Robert Penn Warren and others.  His essay, "The Religion of Death in A Farewell to Arms" was collected by Hemingway scholar Carlos Baker in Baker's Ernest Hemingway:  A Critique of Four Major Novels.

Early life and career

Light was born in Memphis Nov. 5, 1921 to Lois Billings and Luther Light. Soon after moving to Chicago, during the Depression his parents divorced. Although his mother later remarried, he remained an only child, a good student admitted on scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he completed a Master's degree in 1946.

In Chicago, Light was part of the literary circle around Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy, and published an influential story, Christmas Furlough, about a black WWII soldier's inability to get a bus seat home during his brief furlough. In 1948 he married the former Rowena Neal while a professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.  After receiving a Ph.D from Syracuse University in 1951, he taught at Radford College, then at Indiana State University for several years, culminating in a Fulbright Scholarship to Keele University in Britain in 1963-1964.

In 1965, Light moved to Connecticut with his second wife, formerly Amy Wolf (after Rowena's death), to become chairman of the English department at the University of Bridgeport. In 1972 he became dean and provost of Lehman College, part of the City University of New York, at a time when students, faculty, and college administrators were often at odds. A long-time champion of educational opportunity, Light also respected academic standards, and sought ways of balancing these goals through the college's open admissions policy. When budget cuts hit as part of New York City's fiscal crisis, his planning helped Lehman, alone among the CUNY campuses, avoid layoffs of tenured faculty.

Light completed his career as vice president of the College of Arts and Sciences at Southern Illinois University.  After another Fulbright Scholarship, this time to New Zealand, he retired to Nashua, New Hampshire where he died on April 15, 2002, at the age of 80.

Books
 Nathanael West: An Interpretive Study(1961)
 John William De Forest (1965)

References

1921 births
2002 deaths
University of Chicago alumni
University of Kentucky faculty
Syracuse University alumni
Radford University faculty
Indiana State University faculty
Literary critics of English

James F. Light


The Solon people () are a subgroup of the Ewenki (Evenk) people of northeastern Asia. They live in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, and constitute the majority of China's Ewenki.

Terminology and classification

The Ewenki (also spelled Evenki) people are spread throughout the taiga forests of much of northeastern Asia, including most of Eastern Siberia and parts of Northeastern China. According to Juha Janhunen's  classification, the Ewenki people found in China can be classified into three subethnic groups:
 The Solon (, "Solon Ewenki")
 The Oroqen
 The "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus" - a small group which are known to the Chinese as the "Yakut" (, "Yakut Ewenki"). They are the only group in China engaged in reindeer herding.

Another subethnic group in China's Inner Mongolia, the  Khamnigan are bilingual, speaking the Ewenki language along with a  Mongolian dialect. Janhunen believes that their primary ethnic affiliation is Mongolian  rather than Ewenki, and does not include them into his classification of China's Ewenki.

The above classification is different from the PRC's official classification, according to which the Oroqen are considered a separate ethnic group, while the official Ewenki ethnic group of China includes not only the Solons and the "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus", but also  the Khamnigan (or, officially, the "Tungus Ewenki", ).

As both the "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus" and the Khamnigans are quite small groups (perhaps around 200 persons in the former, and under 2,000 in the latter,  as of the 1990s), the majority of the people classified as "Ewenki" in China are Solons.  The Solon population was estimated as  7,200 in 1957,  18,000 in 1982, and 25,000 in 1990.

According to Janhunen's analysis, the Oroqen are in fact much closer to the "Ewenki proper" (i.e., the Evenks of Siberia) than the Solon are. The Solon are characterized by their close association with the Daur people. The Solons reside in the same areas where Daur do, in particular, in Evenk Autonomous Banner of Inner Mongolia, and elsewhere throughout the prefecture-level city of Hulunbuir.  While the Solon language itself is a dialect of the Evenki language, most of the Solons are also bilingual in the Mongolic Daur language.

History

Aiman was the word Manchus used for the north Tungusic tribes of the Ewenki and Orochen which the Manchus incorporated into the Manchu banner system. The Kiler Ewenki had allied with the Cossack Russians unlike other Ewenki such as the Solon Ewenki under Qing rule. The Cossacks had hunted Aiman women as concubines and had children with them at Yaksa. The mixed children numbered 13 girls and 3 boys out of a total of 19 girls and 20 boys. There were 16 women and 155 men. In 1685 the Qing captured the mixed Cossack-Aiman children as well as the Cossacks, their Kiler Ewenki allies and some Orochen and incorporated them into the Ewenki and Oroqen banners.

The Albazinians were told to marry Solon Evenki widows by the Board of Rites.

The Solons were ordered by the Qianlong emperor to stop using rifles and instead practice traditional archery issuing an edict for silver taels to be issued for guns to be turned over to the government.

During 1900-1931 many Han Chinese merchants came to Heilongjiang where Solon lived. Solon women were raped by Han merchants and Solon men were enslaved by the Han Chinese merchant creditors after Solons went into debt to them while trading furs on credit for guns, liquor and tobacco from the Han Chinese merchants from Zhili and Shanxi.

In Xinjiang
In 1763, a number of Solon bannermen, along with their Daur and Xibe comrades-in-arms were resettled from Manchuria (Northeastern China) to the frontier regions of the recently conquered Xinjiang (see Dzungar–Qing Wars). These Solon became also known as the "Ongkor Solon". The presence of the Solons in the region is attested in numerous Russian accounts, in particular from the time of the Muslim minorities' war and its aftermath.

Unlike Xinjiang's Xibe, who preserve their ethnic identity into the 21st century, the less numerous Solon settlers gradually assimilated to the Dagur and Xibe. While over 100 Solons still lived in Xinjiang in 1905–1908, less than 20 people identified as Solon in the region in 1991. In 1990, only one Solon speaker remained in Xinjiang; he was 79 years old.

Penal servitude to Solon
The Qing dynasty often sent women and children of rebels as slaves to Solon (Evenks, Daur people, Oroqen people) garrisons in Ningguta in the Amur river drainage region of Heilongjiang and the Solin garrison in Ili (or Yili) in Dzungaria, Xinjiang. Muslim Uyghur women and children of rebels from a revolt in Uq Turpan were sent to Ili as slaves in 1765 after all the Uyghur male rebels were killed. A shrine in Uq turpan originally claimed to be of daughters of the prophet Sulayman during the Qing later in the 20th century was attributed to 7 Uyghur girls from 1765. Uyghur women and children were also given to Solon after a revolt in Kashgar in 1826. Uyghurs had a tale of a Uyghur woman named Nuzugum who was taken as a slave by an "infidel" Solon soldier in Ili from 1826 in an account recorded in 1882 by Bilal Nazim. Muslim Salar women and children were sent to Yili and Manchuria as slaves after a war in 1781. Eunuchs and slaves who committed infractions like theft and murder, who escaped multiple times or who were deemed to be uncontrollable were also sent to Ningguta as slaves of the Solon. Male slaves who committed robbery and murder or escaped multiple times were considered to difficult to control and were assigned to Oroqen. A eunuch stole the clothes of Lady Niohuru (Concubine Cheng (Qianlong)) in 1759 and was sent to Ningguta as punishment.

When the Qing forces under Zuo Zongtang put down the Dungan Revolt, the sons of Muslim Hui and Salar rebel leaders like Ma Benyuan (马本源) and Ma Guiyuan (马桂源) in Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai were castrated by the Qing Imperial Household Department once they became 11 years old and were sent to work as eunuch slaves for Qing garrisons in Xinjiang and the wives of the rebel leaders were also enslaved. Among the Muslim boys were Ma Sanhe (马三和), Ma Qishizi (马七十子), Ma Shaqiang (马沙枪), Ma Suo (马锁), Ma Youzong (马由宗), Ma Feifei (马飞飞), Ma Wushijiu (马五十九), Ma Wushiliu (马五十六). Ma Jincheng, a son of the Hui Naqshbandi leader Ma Hualong was also castrated after being held in jail in Xi'an until he was 11 years old. The Imperial Household Department immediately castrated the 9 sons of Ma Guiyuan since they already reached age 12 and were enslave as eunuchs to Qing soldiers in Xinjiang. Ma Zhenyuan (马侦源), Ma Benyuan (马本源) and Ma Guiyuan's (马桂源) wives were all enslaved to soldiers and officials in provincial garrisons after the husbands were executed. Ma Yulong (马玉龙) was the father of the boys Ma Sanhe (马三和) and Ma Jibang (继邦). Ma Dingbang (马定邦) was the father of Ma Qishi (马七十), Ma Shaba (马沙把), Ma Suo (马锁) and Ma Youzong (;马由宗). Ma Chenglong (马成龙) was the father of Ma Feifei (马飞). Their sons were all sentenced to castration. The Muslim rebels themselves were subjected to execution by lingchi (slow slicing) while their sons were castrated and their female relatives enslaved to soldiers and officials in provincial garrisons. The children of the Muslim rebels who were under ten included 6 year old Ga Liu (尕六), 8 year old Ga Quan (尕全) and Ma Xier (马希儿) who were imprisoned until they reached 11 and then castrated by the Imperial Household Department.

Yaqub Beg and his son Ishana's corpses were "burned to cinders" in full public view. This angered the population in Kashgar, but Qing troops quashed a rebellious plot by Hakim Khan. Surviving members of Yaqub Beg's family included his four sons, four grandchildren (two grandsons and two granddaughters), and four wives. They either died in prison in Lanzhou, Gansu or were killed by the Qing government. His sons Yima Kuli, K'ati Kuli, Maiti Kuli, and grandson Aisan Ahung were the only survivors alive in 1879. They were all underage children at that time. They were put on trial and sentenced to an agonizing death if they were found to be complicit in their father's rebellious "sedition". If they were innocent, they were to be sentenced to castration and servitude as eunuch slaves to the Qing troops on the Amur frontier in Heilongjiang. Afterwards, when they reached the age of 11 years, they would be handed over to the Imperial Household to be executed or castrated. In 1879, it was confirmed that the sentence of castration was carried out, Yaqub Beg's son and grandsons were castrated by the Chinese court in 1879 and turned into eunuchs to work in the Imperial Palace. Yaqub Beg's sons and grandsons who were captured were under 10 years old Aisin Ahongju (爱散阿洪俱), Kadihuli (卡底胡里) and 10 year old Imahuli (依玛胡里).

Shamanism

There are few sources on the shamanism of the Ewenki peoples below the Amur/Helongkiang river in Northern China. There is a brief report of fieldwork conducted by Richard Noll and Kun Shi in 1994 of the life of the shamaness Dula'r (Ewenki name), also known as Ao Yun Hua (her Han Chinese name). She was born in 1920 and was living in the village of Yiming Gatsa in the Ewenki Banner (county) of the Hulunbuir Prefecture, in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. While not a particularly good informant, she described her initiatory illness, her multiyear apprenticeship with a Mongol shaman before being allowed to heal at the age of 25 or 26, and the torments she experienced during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s when most of her shamanic paraphernalia was destroyed. Mongol and Buddhist Lamaist influences on her indigenous practice of shamansim was evident. She hid her prize possession—an Abagaldi (bear spirit) shaman mask, which has also been documented among the Mongol and Daur peoples in the region. The field report and color photographs of this shaman are available online.

Language

According to Janhunen's research, the numerous dialects of the Ewenki language can be divided into two major groups: those of the Solons (which he labels "Solon Ewenki") and those of the Ewenki of Siberia (as well as the Oroqen and the "Manchurian Reindeer Tungus" of China), which he calls "Siberian Evenki". The Ewenki dialects of the bilingual Khamnigan show features characteristic of both "Manchurian" and "Siberian" groups, as well as peculiar Khamnigan innovations.

The Solon being closely associated with the Daur, many (around half of them, according to Janhunen's field research in the 1990s) Solon people are bilingual in the Daur language.  During the Qing Empire, many Solon (as well as members of many other native groups of Manchuria) were able to speak Manchu, while in modern China Mandarin Chinese is universally taught.

See also
 Solun, Horqin Right Front Banner
 Qing Regulation of Solon Gun Ownership, by David Porter, Harvard University

Notes

References

Tungusic peoples
Ethnic groups in China
Evenks

Solon people


Pinking shears are scissors with saw-toothed instead of straight blades.  They produce a zigzag pattern instead of a straight edge.

Before pinking scissors were invented, a pinking punch or pinking iron was used to punch out a decorative hem on a garment. The punch would be hammered by a mallet against a hard surface and the punch would cut through the fabric. In 1874, Eliza P. Welch patented an improved design for a pinking iron, which featured a pair of handles.

The pinking shears design that is most well known was patented by Louise Austin in 1893. In 1934, Samuel Briskman patented a pinking shear design (Felix Wyner and Edward Schulz are listed as the inventors). In 1952, Benjamin Luscalzo was granted a patent for pinking shears that would keep the blades aligned to prevent wear.

Pinking shears are used for cutting woven cloth. Cloth edges that are unfinished will easily fray, the weave becoming undone and threads pulling out easily. The sawtooth pattern does not prevent the fraying but limits the length of the frayed thread and thus minimizes damage.

These scissors can also be used for decorative cuts and a number of patterns (arches, sawtooth of different aspect ratios, or asymmetric teeth) are available. True dressmaker's pinking shears, however, should not be used for paper decoration because paper dulls the cutting edge.

Etymology

The cut produced by pinking shears may have been derived from the garden plant called the pink, in the genus Dianthus (the carnations). The color pink also may have been named after these flowers, although the origins of the name are not definitively known. As the pink has scalloped, or "pinked", edges to its petals, pinking shears can be thought to produce an edge similar to the flower.

The verb "pink" dates back to 1300 meaning "pierce, stab, make holes in".

References

Scissors
Sewing equipment

Pinking shears


Click through rate (CTR) is a measurement used in online Advertising. Email campaigns and Search Results. Click through rate is given as a percentage. If an advertisement has a click through rate of 5%, this means out of 100 people who saw the advertisement, 5 people clicked the link and reached the target website.

History
Click though rate has decreased significantly over the past years. In 1994, an advertisement was placed by AT&T on the website HotWired. This is considered as the world's first digital advertisement. This ad had a CTR of 44%. This means out of 100 people who saw the ad, 44 clicked on the ad and landed on the AT&T website.  In 2020 Google ads has a CTR of 3.17% meaning out of 100 people seeing the ad, only about 3 people will click and go the advertiser's website.

Email Campaigns
An email campaign is sending out emails to a large number of recipients at a time to promote a product or service. CTR in email campaigns is the number of people who clicked the link in the email and landed on the sender's website. In 2020 the average CTR for email campaigns is 2.62.

Search Engine Rankings
CTR is an important factor in Search Engines like Google. For a search term, Google will display 10 results. If the number of users clicking on the 2nd result is more than the number clicking on the 1st result, with time the 2nd result will move up because of it's high CTR. Similarly CTR affects the ranking of video sharing sites like YouTube.

References

E-mail
Marketing

Click through rate


Eric Darius (born December 3, 1982), is an American saxophonist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and educator.

Early life
Darius was born in New Jersey to a father of Haitian descent and a mother of Jamaican descent. He grew up in Tampa, Florida. Born into a musical family, his father plays bass, his mother and sister sing, and his older brother plays drums and trumpet. Darius grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind and Fire, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Grover Washington, Jr., David Sanborn, George Benson, Bob Marley. He developed a love and appreciation for music at an early age, as his parents exposed him to music from many genres. The first time he saw someone playing saxophone was when in church when he was nine years old. He fell in love with the sound. His parents bought him a saxophone for his birthday.

He began his performing career at the age of 11, when he joined and toured with Sonny LaRosa and America's Youngest Jazz Band. The band included kids from the ages of five to twelve and toured worldwide, playing music by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. While performing with the band at the Montreux Jazz Festival, he decided to pursue a career in music.

At thirteen he left the youth band and his father became his manager. He started performing in Tampa Bay with his own band. As a teenager he performed over 100 shows per year. He attended Howard W. Blake High School of the Performing Arts. In high school he participated in music and sports. He performed with the Blake High School jazz band at the Essentially Ellington contest and festival at Lincoln Center. At seventeen he released his first album independently.

Darius attended the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he studied business and music. He studied jazz under the direction of Chuck Owens and Jack Wilkins and was a member of the university's Jazztet, which performed at the Montreaux Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Jazz à Vienne, and the Umbria Jazz Festival. During college, he signed a recording contract with Higher Octave Music.

Career
His debut album Night on the Town was released in 2004 by Higher Octave and peaked at No. 32 on the jazz albums chart at Billboard magazine. This was followed by Just Getting Started, peaking at No. 18 (2006), Goin' All Out at 14 (2008), On a Mission at 10 (Shanachie, 2010), Retro Forward at 15 (2014), and Breakin' Thru at 19 (2018). The single "Goin' All Out" reached No. 1 on the Contemporary Jazz chart during the week of October 25, 2008.

His performance at the Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival earned him the JazzTrax Best Live Performance of the Year and the Smooth Jazz News Debut Artist of the Year.

Discography

References

External links

1982 births
21st-century African-American male singers
20th-century African-American male singers
Living people
American jazz alto saxophonists
American jazz tenor saxophonists
American male saxophonists
American jazz soprano saxophonists
American jazz singers
American jazz composers
Songwriters from California
American educators
Crossover jazz saxophonists
Smooth jazz saxophonists
Blue Note Records artists
University of South Florida alumni
Musicians from Los Angeles
21st-century American saxophonists
Jazz musicians from California
American male jazz composers
African-American male songwriters

Eric Darius


West Antarctica, or Lesser Antarctica, one of the two major regions of Antarctica, is the part of that continent that lies within the Western Hemisphere, and includes the Antarctic Peninsula. It is separated from East Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains and is covered by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It lies between the Ross Sea (partly covered by the Ross Ice Shelf), and the Weddell Sea (largely covered by the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf). It may be considered a giant peninsula, stretching from the South Pole towards the tip of South America.

West Antarctica is largely covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, but there have been signs that climate change is having some effect and that this ice sheet may have started to shrink slightly. Over the past 50 years, the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula has been – and still is – one of the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, and the coasts of the Peninsula are the only parts of West Antarctica that become (in summer) ice-free. These constitute the Marielandia Antarctic tundra and have the warmest climate in Antarctica. The rocks are clad in mosses and lichens that can cope with the intense cold of winter and the short growing-season.

Location and description

Lying on the Pacific Ocean side of the Transantarctic Mountains, West Antarctica comprises the Antarctic Peninsula (with Graham Land and Palmer Land) and Ellsworth Land, Marie Byrd Land and King Edward VII Land, offshore islands such as Adelaide Island, and ice shelves, notably the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf on the Weddell Sea, and the Ross Ice Shelf on the Ross Sea.

West Antarctica was named in the early 20th century. That usage became standard following the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) and explorations which disclosed that the Transantarctic Mountains provide a useful regional border between West Antarctica and East Antarctica. The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names approved the name in 1962.

West Antarctica is mostly covered by a massive ice sheet referred to as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.  In recent decades, this ice sheet has shown signs of decreasing mass.

The geologic history of West Antarctica was summarized in a 2020 publication.

Marielandia Antarctic tundra
The parts of West Antarctica not covered with ice (Antarctic oasis), which are the coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula, constitute a biodiversity region known as Marielandia Antarctic tundra (after Marie Byrd Land). This area has the warmest climate in Antarctica and the moss and lichen-covered rocks are free of snow during the summer months, although the weather is still intensely cold and the growing season very short.

See also
Tectonic evolution of the Transantarctic Mountains
West Antarctic Rift System

References

.
Tundra
Geography of Antarctica

West Antarctica


Phantom of Heilbronn, or "Woman Without a Face" is the name of a suspected female serial killer. The killer is only known from DNA evidence. This evidence was present at different crime scenes in Austria, France, and Germany. The crimes were committed (or happened) between 1993 and 2009. Six of the crimes were murders. One of the murders was that of Michèle Kieswetter, a police officer. She was killed in Heilbronn on 25 April 2007.

The DNA had been found in 40 different crime scenes. There were many types of crimes committed - from burglaries to killings. In late March 2009, investigators concluded that the "Phantom" criminal did not exist. The DNA recovered at the crime scenes had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples. The DNA belonged to a woman who worked at the factory where they were made.

The events were fictionalized in different serial episodes.

Investigation
An analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the samples collected in Austria showed that it was most often found among people in Eastern Europe and neighboring Russia. This was not discovered in the German investigations. The analysis of mitochondrial DNA done in criminal proceedings is limited. The analysis could only determine a few other personal attributes of a suspect apart from sex. The killer existence was disputed, but is now said to be untrue.

The investigations focused on a special task force "parking lot" at the Heilbronn police department. In January 2009, the reward for clues regarding the whereabouts of the person was increased to €300,000.

The existence of the Phantom had been doubted earlier, but in March 2009, the case took a new turn. Investigators discovered the DNA profile on the burned body of a male asylum-seeker in France. This was an anomaly, since the profile was of a female. They subsequently came to the conclusion that the mysterious criminal did not exist. They found that the laboratory results were the due to the cotton buds used for DNA collection being contaminated. Although sterile, the swabs are not certified for human DNA collection.

The cotton swabs used by many state police departments were found to have been contaminated before shipping. It was found that the contaminated swabs all came from the same factory, which employs several Eastern European women who fit the type the DNA was assumed to match. Bavaria, although a region central to the crimes, obtained their swabs from a different factory. They had no reports of crimes committed by the Phantom.

Associated crimes
The DNA attributed to the "Phantom" was found at the scene, as well as purportedly at the sites of the following crimes:

 on a cup after the killing of a 62-year-old woman on 25–26 May 1993 in Idar-Oberstein, Germany (the DNA was analysed in 2001)
 on a kitchen drawer after the killing of a 61-year-old man on 21 March 2001 in Freiburg, Germany
 on a syringe containing heroin in October 2001 in a wooded area near Gerolstein, Germany
 on the leftovers of a cookie in a trailer that was forcefully opened on the night of 24 October 2001 in Budenheim, Germany
 on a toy pistol after the 2004 robbery of Vietnamese gemstone traders in Arbois, France
 on a projectile after a fight between two brothers on May 6, 2005 in Worms, Germany
 on a stone used for smashing a window, after a burglary on 3 October 2006 in Saarbrücken, Germany (DNA was discovered and analysed only 2008)
 after a March 2007 burglary at an optometrist's store in Gallneukirchen, Upper Austria
 after 20 burglaries and thefts of cars and motorbikes between 2003 and 2007 in Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland, Germany; Tyrol, Austria; and Upper Austria
 on a car used to transport the bodies of three Georgians killed on 30 January 2008 in Heppenheim, Germany (the DNA was analysed on 10 March 2008)
 after a burglary on the night of 22 March 2008 in a disused public swimming pool in Niederstetten, Germany
 after four cases of home invasion in Quierschied (twice), Tholey and Riol, Germany in March and April 2008;
 after an apartment break-in in Oberstenfeld-Gronau during the night of 9 April 2008
 after the robbery of a woman on 9 May 2008 in a club house in Saarhölzbach
 in the car of an auxiliary nurse who was found dead at the end of October 2008 near Weinsberg, Germany

Conclusion
As a consequence of this severe case of contamination with human DNA in a series of forensic investigations, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the standard ISO 18385 in 2016. ISO 18385 defines the requirements for producing consumables free of human DNA contamination for collecting biological evidence at crime scenes. The requirement reads: "Minimizing the risk of human DNA contamination in products used to collect, store and analyse biological material for forensic purposes".

Literature

 Michel Ferracci-Porri: * Le Fantôme de Heilbronn ("The Phantom of Heilbronn's Affair") Editions Normant, France 2009

References

Unidentified serial killers

Phantom of Heilbronn


Central Grocery Co. is a small, old-fashioned Italian-American grocery store with a sandwich counter, located at 923 Decatur Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was founded in 1906 by Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant.  He operated it until 1946 when he retired and his son-in-law Frank Tusa took over the operation.  It is currently owned by Salvador T. Tusa, Salvatore's grandson, and two cousins, Frank Tusa and Larry Tusa. The store was one of many family-owned, neighborhood grocery stores during the early 20th century, when the French Quarter was still predominantly a residential area. Though tourists are more common in Central now, it has retained much of its old-world market feel.

The Central sells not only the sandwiches as take-out or eat-in, but also the ingredients of the muffuletta—including olive salad by the jar—for people who want to make the sandwich at home.  Because of the muffuletta, Central Grocery was featured on national television, in the PBS special program Sandwiches That You Will Like, and on NBC's The Today Show (five best sandwiches series).

Central Grocery sells Italian, Greek, French, Spanish, and Creole table delicacies.  They also carry less-mainstream selections, such as chocolate-covered grasshoppers and bumble bees in soy sauce, which are perennially displayed in the store's front windows.  Marie Lupo Tusa, Salvatore's daughter, is author of the cookbook Marie's Melting Pot, which has hundreds of Sicilian, French, and Creole-style recipes.

Following Hurricane Ida in August 2021, Central Grocery sustained damage to the roof, exacerbated by the rains of Hurricane Nicholas in September.

See also
 French Market
 Italians in New Orleans

References

French Quarter
Italian-American culture in Louisiana
Restaurants in New Orleans
Restaurants established in 1906
Sicilian-American cuisine
1906 establishments in Louisiana

Central Grocery


Homeless Bird is a book by Gloria Whelan, an American author, about life in India for a 13-year-old girl named Koly. Like many Indian girls her age, Koly becomes a teenage bride in an "arranged marriage." Her husband soon dies and Koly becomes a widow, living with her late husband's parents. When this situation doesn't last, Koly has to find a way to make her future.

This book won the National Book Award in 2000 in the category of Young People's Literature. It has been translated into German, Spanish, and Polish.

Plot Summary

Koly is a 13 year-old girl who lives in Vrindavan India with her parents and two brothers. Based on Indian tradition, her family has made an arranged marriage for her. Her husband is a sickly, young boy named Hari. Once they are married, Koly must go to live with his family. But soon Koly finds out that Hari has tuberculosis and he will die very soon. Hari's parents had decided to take Hari to the Ganges River and Koly comes along too. While going to the city of the Ganges River, Hari dies. When Hari dies, Koly becomes a widow. Koly's sassur (father- in-law) is a kind man who teaches students. He teaches Koly to read and shows her a book of poems signed by the author Tagore. Koly's sass (mother-in-law) is not a nice woman. She treats Koly as just another mouth to feed.

Hari's sister Chandra is soon married. Koly is sad because Chandra was her friend and now she is leaving. Soon Koly's sassur dies and now both Koly and her sass are widows.

Sass and Koly are very poor. One day Sass gets a letter from her brother inviting them to live with him in Delhi. They make a stop in Vrindavan to pray at a temple. They take a rickshaw to the temple. Sass gives Koly money to buy lunch. Koly goes to buy the food but when she goes back to the temple her sass is not there. She looks around and cannot find her. Finally she sees the rickshaw driver. He tells her that her sass left on a train hours ago.

Koly cries because her sass has left her. The rickshaw driver says to go to the temple and pray so the monks will give her food. Koly is very unhappy and scared. She sees the rickshaw driver again and he offers to bring her to a house for widows. At the home Koly meets a nice widow named Tanu. Together they find jobs making marigold garlands and beaded bracelets. However, Koly's talent is embroidery. She finally gets a job embroidering. Her new boss' name is Mr. Das.

Koly also teaches the rickshaw driver, Raji, how to read. Raji owns a farm and drives rickshaws for money. They talk and become friends. However he leaves to fix his farm.

At her new job, Koly makes friends with a girl named Mala. Mala is good at embroidery but very outspoken. Mala also steals expensive cloth and thread from Mr. Das. This later causes Mala to lose her job.

Raji comes back and tells Koly that he is fixing up his farm and building a home. He wants Koly to come to his farm with him. She is confused until Raji says he wants her as his wife. Koly is surprised that Raji wants to marry her because she is a widow, and in her society it is shameful to be a widow. However Raji wants to marry Koly because he does not care about appearance and only wants someone he can talk to. Koly is still unsure but agrees to think about it.

Tanu and Koly finally have enough money to buy a room for more widows to live in. Koly decorates the room with embroidered quilts.

In the summer Raji writes that he has built a room for her work on her embroidery. Koly is happy and agrees to marry him. She works on a wedding quilt and says they will marry when she is done embroidering it. She keeps her job, and agrees to take her work to Mr. Das every couple of weeks.

Koly, just like the homeless bird in one of the Tagore poems, has finally found her home.

References

American young adult novels
2000 books
By: A.B, School: Nams or North Andover middle school

Homeless Bird


Daniel Shank (born May 12, 1967) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played in the National Hockey League.

After playing four seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Shank made his professional debut with the Adirondack Red Wings of the American Hockey League in the 1988–89 season.  After scoring just 25 points in the AHL regular season, he tallied 19 in the Calder Cup playoffs, including 11 goals, helping the Red Wings win the AHL championship.

He made his NHL debut with Detroit the next season, scoring 24 points in 57 games.  After appearing in just seven NHL games in the 1990–91 season, though, and beginning the 1991–92 season back in Adirondack, Shank was traded to the Hartford Whalers in exchange for Chris Tancill.  He appeared in 13 regular season and 5 playoff games for the Whalers that season.

Shank then began an extensive International Hockey League career, spending the next six seasons there exclusively.  He had much scoring success in the IHL, scoring 39 goals with the San Diego Gulls in 1992–93, 48 with the Minnesota Moose and Detroit Vipers in 1994–95, 50 with the Detroit Vipers and Las Vegas Thunder in 1995–96, and 39 with the San Antonio Dragons in 1997–98.

During his IHL days, Shank also played in Roller Hockey International, scoring 325 points in five seasons.

After appearing in nine games with the Frankfurt Lions of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga in 1998–99, Shank returned to North America to play in lower minor leagues.  He spent three seasons in the West Coast Hockey League, two in the Quebec Semi-Pro Hockey League, and, most recently, the 2005–06 season in the LNAH with the Verdun Dragons, where he played four games in his last professional action.

Shank also was the head coach of the Central Hockey League's Border City Bandits for part of the 2000-01 season, with his team winning just one of the 13 games for which he was behind the bench.

In his NHL career, Shank appeared in 77 games.  He scored 13 goals and added 14 assists.  He also played in five games for Hartford during the 1992 Stanley Cup Playoffs, recording no points.

In his IHL career, Shank appeared in 470 games.  He scored 240 goals and added 282 assists.

Career statistics

External links

Daniel Shank Dot Com

1967 births
Adirondack Red Wings players
Anaheim Bullfrogs players
Anglophone Quebec people
Chicoutimi Saguenéens (QMJHL) players
Detroit Red Wings players
Detroit Vipers players
Frankfurt Lions players
Hartford Whalers players
Hull Olympiques players
Las Vegas Thunder players
Laval Titan players
Living people
Longueuil Chevaliers players
Orlando Jackals players
Phoenix Cobras players
Phoenix Roadrunners (IHL) players
San Antonio Dragons players
San Diego Barracudas players
San Diego Gulls (IHL) players
San Diego Gulls (WCHL) players
Shawinigan Cataractes players
Springfield Indians players
Ice hockey people from Montreal
Undrafted National Hockey League players
Canadian ice hockey right wingers

Daniel Shank


Berkeley is a city-center neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, located in the area traditionally called the, "Northside", on the west side of Interstate 25 and just south of Interstate 70.  The neighborhood is bounded by Federal Boulevard on the east, I-70 on the north, Sheridan Boulevard on the West and 38th avenue on the south. It is bordered by the West Highland neighborhood on the south and is often erroneously grouped together with the Highlands. The neighborhood contains two lakes surrounded by parks, one eponymous (stretching from 46th Avenue to I-70 and Sheridan Boulevard to Tennyson Street) and Rocky Mountain Lake Park (stretching from Lowell Boulevard to Grove Street and 46th Avenue to I-70). Berkeley Park also contains the William Scheitler Recreation Center, run by the City and County of Denver and including both indoor and outdoor public pools. Berkeley has experienced rapid growth and rise in property values in the last 20 years and particularly since the closing of Elitch Gardens Amusement Park in October 1994. Particularly, Tennyson Street has become a commercial and cultural center for Northwest Denver, beginning in the current decade to rival Highland Square in nearby Highland. City Congressman Rick Garcia pushed for the further development of Tennyson Street in the November 2011 election season and succeeded in obtaining the voters' approval for $2.5 million in public works funding. Business owners on Tennyson from 48th Avenue to 38th Avenue currently collaborate in an Art Walk held on the first Friday of every month.

The average price per square foot in June 2019 was $330.

References

External links
 Berkeley-Regis United Neighbors

Neighborhoods in Denver

Berkeley, Denver


BPB Ltd (formerly BPB plc) (British Plaster Board) was a British building materials business. It once was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.  In 2005, the company was purchased by Saint-Gobain of France. The company's subsidiary British Gypsum, which was the UK operating arm of the company, operates as a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, with five manufacturing sites in Britain as of 2012.

History

Inter-war period
The development of plasterboard (a sandwich of gypsum plaster between two sheets of paper) dates back to the late nineteenth century in the US. The first patent was granted in 1894 but it was not until an American, Frank Culver, persuaded his new employer, Thomas McGhie and Sons, to buy a plasterboard plant from the US that this new product was introduced to Britain. A site was acquired at Wallasey Cheshire and building started in 1916. However, McGhie's shareholders could not supply sufficient funding and in 1917 the plasterboard assets were sold to a new company, British Plaster Board Limited [BPB].

The British building industry was initially slow to adopt the new product.  Helped by a more modern plant, purchased in 1927, sales gradually increased and by 1932 the Company was able to float on the London Stock Exchange. The additional capital enabled BPB to build a new factory at Erith in 1934. The Erith plant had the capacity to manufacture the gypsum plaster (the core of the plasterboard product) and BPB began importing gypsum rock from Canada. This encouraged negotiations with other gypsum companies in Britain and a "breath-taking series of take-overs" followed in the next two years, making BPB the dominant force in the industry. In particular, these included the Gotham Company with plaster works in the north of England, and The Gypsum Mines Limited, with its large gypsum mine at Mountfield Sussex.

Early post-war history
In 1944, BPB acquired its large rival, Gyproc Products Limited; after that there were only a handful of small companies and when ICI withdrew from the market in 1968 BPB was the only British producer of plaster and plasterboard. Organisationally, all domestic gypsum activities were consolidated in the British Gypsum subsidiary and the parent company was BPB Industries.  BPB had also acquired the main paper supplier in 1953 – the Aberdeen firm of C. Davidson.

The post-war period saw extensive overseas investment through subsidiaries and associates. South Africa was the first investment (1946) followed by Placoplatre in France (1952), Western Gypsum of Canada (1954) and Sweden (1957).

Recent history
In 1987 it bought Rigips, a well-known brand in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

In April 1996, it bought Borgadts of Germany for £21m. In June 1996, it bought Gypsum Industries of South Africa for £28m. In October 1998, it bought Gyproc of Scandinavia for £95m, already having a joint venture called Scancem. In March 2000 it bought Heidelberger Dammsysteme of Germany, which made polystyrene insulation, for £22m. In June 2000, it acquired the Celotex company of the US, which made ceiling tiles, for £230m. In January 2001, it bought Rawlplug Ltd. for £27m. In October 2002, it acquired Gyproc Benelux of Belgium for £52m.

In March 2002 it acquired James Hardie Industries, another US business, for £245 million.

Takeover
BPB regained its place in the FTSE 100 Index in June 2005 after an absence of 14 years.

However, since May 1996, BPB had a joint venture with the French company Saint-Gobain, making glass fibre insulation. In August 2005, BPB received a hostile takeover bid from Saint-Gobain, which set a price of 720 pence per share.

The BPB initially resisted this strongly, but eventually accepted a revised bid of 775 pence per share, which valued the company at £3.9billion (US$6.7 billion). BPB was delisted in December 2005.

Operations
BPB was a multinational company with operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In Europe its main rivals are Lafarge of France and Knauf of Germany, which has a UK plant at Immingham.

Plasterboard is mainly used for internal partition walls. BPB's other products include plaster, insulating materials, fastenings, decorative wall covering and ceiling components. British Gypsum has plants at Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire, Kirkby Thore in Cumbria, Mountfield near Robertsbridge in East Sussex, Sherburn-in-Elmet in North Yorkshire and East Leake in Nottinghamshire. It also has training facilities in Erith, south-east London, Clevedon, North Somerset, and Flitwick, in Bedfordshire.

References

External links
 Official site
 British Gypsum
 Parent Company

News items
 BPB accepts French bid in November 2005
 Hostile bid in August 2005
 Fined in November 2002

Building materials companies of the United Kingdom
Companies based in Nottinghamshire
Manufacturing companies established in 1915
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom
Rushcliffe
Saint-Gobain
1915 establishments in England
2005 mergers and acquisitions
British subsidiaries of foreign companies

BPB plc


Max James (born 27 December 1951) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for Port Adelaide in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). He also spent 5 years in the Victorian Football League (VFL) playing for South Melbourne.

Port Adelaide (1971–1977)
James started out at Port Adelaide in 1971 and was a member of their 1977 premiership team. James represented South Australia in eight interstate matches, including at the 1975 Knockout Carnival. In 1977 he was awarded a Simpson Medal for his performance in a match against Western Australia.

South Melbourne (1978–1982)
James transferred to South Melbourne and made his VFL debut in the opening round of the 1978 VFL season. Known for his high flying marks, most of James's games were played from centre half forward, but he was used in various others positions during an injury-riddled stint in the league.

When South Melbourne relocated to Sydney for the 1982 VFL season, James joined them in the move but could only manage three appearances. His son Heath James would later play for the Sydney Swans.

Port Adelaide (1982–1985)
James returned to Port Adelaide to finish his career.

Political career
James ran as an independent candidate at the 2010 South Australian state election in the House of Assembly seat of Port Adelaide held by Rann Labor Treasurer Kevin Foley. In a candidate field of five, James came third receiving 11 percent of the vote.

References

Holmesby, Russell and Main, Jim (2007). The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers. 7th ed. Melbourne: Bas Publishing.

1951 births
Living people
Australian rules footballers from South Australia
Sydney Swans players
Port Adelaide Football Club (SANFL) players
Port Adelaide Football Club players (all competitions)
South Australian State of Origin players

Max James


Israel Epstein (20 April 1915 – 26 May 2005) was a Polish-born Chinese journalist and author. He was one of the few foreign-born Chinese citizens of non-Chinese origin to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Early life and education
Israel Epstein was born on 20 April 1915 in Warsaw to Jewish parents; at the time, Warsaw was under Imperial Russian control (now the capital of Poland). His father had been imprisoned by the authorities of czarist Russia for leading a labor uprising and his mother had been exiled to Siberia. Epstein's father was sent by his company to Japan after the outbreak of the World War I; when the German Army approached Warsaw, his mother and Epstein fled and joined him in Asia. With his family experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in several places, in 1917, Epstein came to China with his parents at the age of two and they settled in Tianjin (formerly Tientsin) in 1920. Epstein was raised there.

Career
Israel Epstein began to work in journalism at age 15, when he wrote for the Peking and Tientsin Times, an English-language newspaper based in Tianjin. He also covered the Japanese Invasion of China for the United Press and other Western news agencies. In the autumn of 1938, he joined the China Defense League, which had been established by Soong Ching-ling, Sun Yat-sen's widow, for the purpose of publicizing and enlisting international support for the Chinese cause. In 1941, he faked news about his own death as a decoy for the Japanese who were trying to arrest him. The misinformation even found its way into a short item printed in The New York Times.

After being assigned to review one of the books of Edgar Snow, Epstein and Snow came to know each other personally and Snow showed him his classic work Red Star Over China before it was published. He was deeply influenced by the progressivism of Snow and became involved with the democratic movement in China, becoming an editor for Snow's magazine, Democracy.

In 1934, Epstein married Edith Bihovsky Epstein, later Ballin, from whom he was divorced in the early 1940s. In 1944, Epstein first visited Britain and afterwards went to live in the United States with his second wife Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley for five years.

After escaping from an Imperial Japanese concentration camp, he worked for Allied Labor News, becoming editor-in-chief. He published his book The Unfinished Revolution in China in 1947. His book was enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times by Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins University. In 1951 Communist defector Elizabeth Bentley testified to the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, "Israel Epstein had been a member of the Russian secret police for many years in China."

Many years later, his wife, Fairfax-Cholmeley, would become known to a generation of Chinese-language students in China and around the world as a contributor to one of the most widely used Chinese-English dictionaries published in the PRC. After Fairfax-Cholmeley's death in 1984, Epstein married his third wife, Huang Huanbi.
In 1951, Soong Ching-ling invited him to return to China to edit the magazine China Reconstructs, which was later renamed China Today. He remained editor-in-chief of China Today until his retirement at age 70, and stayed on as editor emeritus. During his tenure at China Today, he became a Chinese citizen in 1957 and a member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1964. In 1955, 1965 and 1976 Epstein visited Tibet, and based on these three visits in 1983 published the book Tibet Transformed.

Imprisonment
Epstein was imprisoned twice, separately by the Empire of Japan and later by the People's Republic of China.

He was placed in a concentration camp by Imperial Japanese authorities following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He escaped along with some of the other prisoners.

During the Cultural Revolution, on charges of plotting against Zhou Enlai, he was imprisoned in 1968 in the north of Beijing in Qincheng Prison, where he was subjected to solitary confinement. In 1973, he was released, and Zhou apologized. His privileges were restored. Despite his 5 years imprisonment, he remained loyal to the ideals of Communism until his death. Israel Epstein was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body, in 1983.

Honors
During his life, Israel Epstein was honored by Chinese political leaders Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao. His funeral was held at the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionaries, in Shijingshan District, Beijing on 3 June 2005 at 09:30. The ceremony was attended by many officials, among then President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, as well as Politburo Standing Committee members Jia Qinglin and Li Changchun. After the service, his body was cremated.

Published works
 The People's War. [An Account of the War in China to the Fall of Hankow], V. Gollancz, 1939, 384 p.
 I Visit Yenan: Eye Witness Account of the Communist-led Liberated Areas in North-West China, People's Publishing House [Bombay], 1945, 94 pp.
 Notes on Labor Problems in Nationalist China, Garland Pub., 1980, 159 pp.
 My China Eye: Memoirs of a Jew and a Journalist, Long River Press, 2005, 358 pp.
 History Should Not be Forgotten, 五洲传播出版社, 2005, 286 pp.

First published in English
 The Unfinished Revolution in China, Little Brown and Company (1947), hardcover, 442 pp.

Published in Chinese, translated into English
 From Opium War to Liberation, New World Press (Beijing, 1956), hardcover, 146 pp.
 Tibet Transformed, New World Press (Beijing, 1983), trade paperback, 563 pp,
 Woman in World History:  Soong Ching Ling, New World Press (Beijing, 1993), hardcover,

See also
Rewi Alley
Sidney Rittenberg
Sidney Shapiro
Jews in China
Round Eyes in the Middle Kingdom – a documentary about Israel Epstein

References

 Adapted from the Wikinfo article "Israel Epstein" 2 June 2005

Sources and external links
New York Times Obituary by Douglas Martin
Obituary People's Daily Online
Retrospective, China Today
Biography by China Tibet Information Center
Xinhua Newsitem on funeral
Views of a life in China, China.org.cn

1915 births
2005 deaths
People's Republic of China journalists
People's Republic of China writers
Chinese people of Polish-Jewish descent
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to China
Jewish Chinese history
Chinese Communist Party politicians
Members of the Standing Committee of the 6th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Members of the Standing Committee of the 7th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Members of the Standing Committee of the 8th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Members of the Standing Committee of the 9th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Members of the Standing Committee of the 10th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Naturalized citizens of the People's Republic of China
Burials at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery

Israel Epstein


Giuseppe Donizetti (6 November 1788 – 12 February 1856), also known as Donizetti Pasha, was an Italian musician. From 1828 he was Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud II (1808–39).

His younger brother was the  opera composer Gaetano Donizetti. He studied music first with his uncle, Carini Donizetti, and, later, he was a pupil of Simone Mayr. After enlisting in Napoleon's army (1808), he served there as band leader. He took part in the campaigns against Austria and in Spain, and followed Napoleon to Elba. He was present at the Battle of Waterloo. After the fall of Napoleon, he continued his career as a bandmaster in the Savoy army.

Donizetti Pasha as he was called in the Ottoman Empire, played a significant role in the introduction of European music to the Ottoman military. Apart from overseeing the training of the European-style military bands of Mahmud's modern army, he taught music at the palace to the members of the Ottoman royal family, the princes and the ladies of the harem, is believed to have composed the first national anthem of the Ottoman Empire, supported the annual Italian opera season in Pera, organised concerts and operatic performances at court, and played host to a number of eminent virtuosi who visited Istanbul at the time, such as Franz Liszt, Parish Alvars and Leopold de Meyer. Although the elder Donizetti was born in Bergamo, Italy, Istanbul became a second home for him, and he lived there until his death in 1856. He is buried in the vaults of the St. Esprit Cathedral, near the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, in Pera.

Emre Araci published a comprehensive biography of Giuseppe Donizetti in Turkish in 2007. The volume Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha: Musical and Historical Trajectories between Italy and Turkey, edited by Federico Spinetti, was published in English and Italian by the Fondazione Donizetti in 2010.

References

Sources
Ashbrook, William (1982), Donizetti and his Operas, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
The Musical Times: A Levantine life: Giuseppe Donizetti at the Ottoman court
 Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha: Musical and Historical Trajectories between Italy and Turkey / Giuseppe Donizetti Pascià: Traiettorie musicali e storiche tra Italia e Turchia. Edited by Federico Spinetti . Bergamo, Fondazione Donizetti, 2010.
 Maurizio Costanza, La Mezzaluna sul filo - La riforma ottomana di Mahmud II, Marcianumpress, Venezia 2010.
Weinstock, Herbert (1963), Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, New York: Random House.

1788 births
1856 deaths
19th-century Italian musicians
Musicians from the Ottoman Empire
Italian Levantines
Pashas
19th-century Italian male musicians

Giuseppe Donizetti


Aylsham High School is a secondary school in the market town of Aylsham north of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk. It has around 1,000 pupils ranging in age from 11 to 16. Duncan Spalding is the head teacher. The school catchment area includes the town of Aylsham and surrounding villages, including Aldborough, Buxton, Colby, Erpingham and Marsham.

In May 2011 the school was judged to be overall "outstanding" by Ofsted, the English school inspections service.
As of its most recent Ofsted report, the school has received a rating of "good".

History
Aylsham is the last secondary school in Norfolk to remain with the council as a foundation school.

Mentoring

Friendly Faces is a peer support group run by year 10 and 11 pupils. Day to day they offer drop in sessions for other pupils to discuss problems and patrol the playground wearing orange hi-vis jackets. In addition to this the team visit local primary schools in the summer term to prepare year 6 pupils for high school, run training and selection days for new friendly faces and promote anti-bullying throughout the school. In 2012 they hosted an Anti-Bullying conference for the Norfolk Region on behalf of the Diana award Anti-Bullying Ambassadors Programme with Alex Holmes. In 2013 they were invited to London to Facebook HQ for a showcase of best practice in school of antibullying work.

The project, first introduced in 2001, has 20 senior Friendly Faces in year 11 who support a team of 40 year 10 friendly faces at the school. Originally the programme aimed to support pupils who felt they were victims of bullying. The project was later broadened to support any and all issues pupils may face.

Awards won

2015 – Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2014 – Bernard Matthews Youth Awards Finalists
2014 - Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2013 - Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2013 – Bernard Matthews Youth Awards finalists
2012 – Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2011 – Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2010 – Diana Award Anti-Bullying Champions
2009 – Diana Award
2008 – Diana Award
2007 – Diana Award
2007 – Philip Lawrence Award
2006 – Diana Award

References

External links
School profile
Aylsham High School Web site

Secondary schools in Norfolk
Foundation schools in Norfolk
Aylsham

Aylsham High School


Princess Lalla Meryem of Morocco (, born 26 August 1962 in Rome, Italy) is the first daughter and eldest child of the late King Hassan II of Morocco and his second wife, Lalla Latifa Hammou.

After she obtained her Baccalaureat in 1981, Princess Lalla Meryem was appointed by her father as the President of Social Works of the Royal Army Forces.

On 15 September 1984, she married Fuad Filali (born 1957), the son of former Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Abdellatif Filali. They had two children: a daughter and a son:
 Sharifa Lalla Soukaïna Filali (born 30 April 1986 in Rabat). On 11 October 2013 married Mohammed El Mehdi Regragui. On 27 September 2015, she gave birth to twins.
 Moulay Idris Filali (born 11 July 1988 in Rabat).

Lalla Meryem divorced from Fuad Filali in 1999.

Princess Meryem has two brothers King Mohammed VI and Prince Moulay Rachid, and two sisters Lalla Asma and Lalla Hasna.

Holder of numerous prestigious official functions, Princess Meryem has focused much of her activities on the social and cultural realm. Princess Meryem is the President of the Moroccan association in support of UNICEF, President of the Hassan II Foundation for the Moroccans residing abroad, President of the Moroccan National Observatory of the Childs Rights and President of the Hassan II Foundation for the social works of the former soldiers and ex-combatants. In July 2001, she was nominated UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador with focus her Ambassadorship on UNESCO projects for women and children. Also Member of the Honorary Committee of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.

Since 2003 she is President of the National Union of Moroccan Women (UNFM).

Using her Royal status, she continues her work on behalf of women and children and advocate their rights on an international level.

Honours

National honours
 Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Throne.

Foreign honours
 Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (United Kingdom, 27/10/1980).
 Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry (Portuguese Republic, 25/08/1994).
 Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic (Kingdom of Spain, 16 September 2000).
 Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit (Lebanese Republic, 17/07/2001).

Ancestry

References

1962 births
Living people
People from Rome
Moroccan princes and princesses
Italian businesspeople

Princess Lalla Meryem of Morocco


The Hundred days offensive is the term used for the last phase of the First World War, on the western front. Between 8 August and 11 November 1918, allied troops did a number of offensives against the Germans. This forced the Germans to retreat behind the Hindenbug line. It ended with the Armistice of Compiègne.

World War I

Hundred Days Offensive


François-Xavier Paré (March 24, 1793 – September 13, 1836) was a political figure in Lower Canada. He represented Hertford in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada from 1820 to 1824.

He was born in Saint-François-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud, the son of Louis Paré and Hélène Bossé. Paré served as an officer in the militia during the War of 1812 and later reached the rank of captain in the Chasseurs Canadiens. In 1817, he married Rose-Angèle Lappare. Paré did not run for reelection to the assembly in 1824. He died in Saint-François-de-la-Rivière-du-Sud at the age of 43.

References

1793 births
1836 deaths
Members of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada

François-Xavier Paré


A psychological horror is a type of horror and psychological fiction used in movies, games, and books. It is used to make the viewer unsettled and uncomfortable. This type of horror is close to psychological thriller, because they both have mysteries most of the time and have unreliable or disturbed characters to make the drama and action bigger, so they can make the story less happy and sadder.

Roman Polanski made bright examples of this genre - Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby.

In video games
In video games psychological horror is a subgenre of horror games. Such famous franchises as Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Amnesia, Phantasmagoria, and Doom used psychological horror elements.

Movie genres
Horror
Video game genres

Psychological horror


Decision stream is a directed acyclic graph of decision rules for classification and regression tasks (Fig. 1). This decision tree based method  avoids the problem of data exhaustion in terminal nodes by merging of leaves from the same/different levels of predictive model.

Decision stream provides:

– High accuracy due to the precise splitting of data with unpaired two-sample test statistics.

– Decrease of overfitting due to partition of data only into statistically representative groups.

– Reduction of complexity on every level of predictive model.

– Self-regulated depth of predictive model.

References

Artificial intelligence

Decision stream graph


"Bloodline" is the eighteenth episode of the third season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe, and the 61st episode overall. The storyline follows the pregnant Olivia Dunham of the parallel universe ("Fauxlivia") as she experiences a kidnapping and acceleration of her pregnancy; meanwhile, her fellow Fringe agents Lincoln Lee and Charlie Francis attempt to locate her.

The episode's script was written by co-executive producers Alison Schapker and Monica Owusu-Breen, while Dennis Smith directed. "Bloodline" featured the return of guest actors Seth Gabel, Kirk Acevedo, Ryan McDonald, Andre Royo, and Amy Madigan. The Fox network released a "movie-style trailer" in the days leading up to the episode's broadcast as a special promotion.

It first aired in the United States on March 25, 2011, to an estimated 3.9 million viewers. Broadcasting in the wake of a fourth season renewal, the episode's 1.5/5 ratings share was a fifteen percent increase from the previous week. "Bloodline" received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with several commentators characterizing the kidnapping mystery as predictable while also praising the depth of the parallel universe and its characters. Lead actress Anna Torv submitted the episode for consideration at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, but failed to receive a nomination.

Plot
In the parallel universe, Fauxlivia (Anna Torv) is returned home by her mother Marilyn (Amy Madigan) after undergoing a pre-natal test to see if she has viral propagated eclampsia, a virus that killed her sister and sister's baby during childbirth. She believes she is being followed, and contacts Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) at the Fringe division, who sends over a security detail. By the time they arrive, Fauxlivia has been kidnapped; though they try to follow a secret tracker each agent carries, her abductors have extracted it to throw Fringe off their tracks. Walternate (John Noble) and Lincoln believe the abduction to be an inside job due to this. Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) identifies a vehicle that has passed by Fauxlivia's home at a high frequency, that being the taxi that belongs to Henry (Andre Royo). Lincoln and Charlie (Kirk Acevedo) track down Henry, who explains he has been keeping an eye on Fauxlivia, surprised to have seen her return and seeming like a different person than his previous encounters with her; Henry is unaware that he had actually helped the prime universe's Olivia to escape ("Olivia" and "The Abducted"). Lincoln, suspicious of these events, forces Walternate to admit that Fauxlivia was switched with Olivia, and that the child Fauxlivia carries is his grandchild. Meanwhile, Marilyn learns that Fauxlivia's test for the virus is positive and warns Charlie that Fauxlivia will die if she has the child.

During the Fringe team's search, Fauxlivia finds herself being put under a treatment to accelerate her pregnancy, bringing her child near term. She is able to escape from her captors and contact Fringe division to identify her location, but struggles from labor pains as the child is about to be born. Henry drives Lincoln to her location, and they are able to help Fauxlivia to deliver her child, a son, before medical help arrives. Fauxlivia and her child recover under tight security ordered by Walternate, fearing for their safety. The doctors determine the accelerated pregnancy outpaced the virus, thus allowing both Fauxlivia and her child to survive.

In the epilogue, as September, (Michael Cerveris) an Observer, watches, a blood sample from the child is drawn discreetly by one of Fauxlivia's captors posing as an orderly, who transfers it to Brandon (Ryan McDonald), who is revealed to have developed the accelerated pregnancy procedure under Walternate's orders. Meanwhile, Lincoln and Charlie become somewhat distrustful of Walternate after learning what he hid from them. They consider that Colonel Broyles (Lance Reddick) disappeared around the same time that Fauxlivia returned, and wonder what else Walternate is hiding from them.

Production

"Bloodline" was co-written by co-executive producers Monica Owusu-Breen and Alison Schapker, while The Practice veteran, Dennis Smith, directed the installment. Editor Timothy A. Good has called "Bloodline" the second of two parts – the first half was the season's third episode "The Plateau", which Owusu-Breen and Schapker also co-wrote. Executive producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman had planned Fauxlivia's pregnancy since they conceived her character, but noted that "this isn't going to be a normal pregnancy that you see, either. And the pregnancy is [going to evolve] in a Fringe way that you don't comprehend yet. It's not going to be your traditional love triangle, 'I'm pregnant and having a baby' story. It's going to be Fringe-ified."

In late January 2011, TVLine's Michael Ausiello reported actor Andre Royo was returning for one episode later in the third season. Royo made his third guest appearance of the season in "Bloodline", as cab driver Henry Higgins from the parallel universe. It is his final credit on the series to date. Amy Madigan, who plays Olivia's mother Marilyn, also returned in a guest appearance. Previous guest stars Seth Gabel, Kirk Acevedo, Ryan McDonald, and Michael Cerveris returned as Lincoln Lee, Charlie Francis, Brandon Fayette, and September the Observer, respectively. The episode also featured one-time guest actors Kendall Cross as Nurse Joyce and Françoise Yip as Dr. Rosa Oporto.

Leading up to the episode's broadcast, Fox released a "movie-style trailer" as a promotion, something they had previously done with "Entrada" and "Marionette", two episodes from earlier in the season. The video recapped the Peter/Olivia/Fauxlivia love triangle from Fauxlivia's perspective and then previewed scenes in "Bloodline". As with other Fringe episodes, Fox released a science lesson plan in collaboration with Science Olympiad for grade school children, focusing on the science seen in "Bloodline", with the intention of having "students learn about gestation and how it is different from species to species."

Cultural references
Accelerated growth of yet-unborn children was a major plot element of "The Same Old Story", the second episode of the first season. While eclampsia is a real medical condition that can interfere with childbirth, the "viral-propagated eclampsia" presented in this episode is fictional. When Henry is located by the Fringe division, he is seen reading an "Opus the Peahen" comic, the parallel universe's counterpart to the "Opus" comic strip drawn by Berkeley Breathed. Also within the parallel universe, the movie Taxi Driver is shown to have been directed by Francis Ford Coppola rather than Martin Scorsese (though Robert De Niro was still able to improvise the "You talkin' to me?" scene), while the television series The West Wing is shown to be entering its twelfth season.

Reception

Ratings
"Bloodline" aired the day after Fringes fourth season renewal was announced by Fox Entertainment, which came in the wake of various actors communicating directly with fans to watch the series. Actor Lance Reddick noted of the renewal, "I know so often fans think that they need us... but I would be digging ditches or something else if it wasn't for you. So — thank you. Really." SFScope columnist Sarah Stegall was surprised but delighted by the network's decision, stating "That any network, let alone Fox, had the patience and the faith to renew this show is, for me, little short of a miracle. It was a week, it seems, for wonders."

"Bloodline" first aired in the United States on March 25, 2011. It was watched by an estimated 3.9 million viewers, earning a 1.5/5 ratings share among the 18–49 demographic, up from the previous episode's 1.3–1.4 rating. This was a 15 percent increase. Fringe helped Fox place in second for the night among adult viewers behind NBC, but the network fell into third place among total viewers behind NBC and ABC.

Reviews

"Bloodline" has received generally mixed to positive reviews from television critics. Sarah Stegall enjoyed it, commenting that "This was one of the more quietly brilliant episodes of Fringe to date. Reaching all the way back to the first season for its genesis, it was still firmly rooted in the most up-to-date events, tied together several characters in a cabal of resistance, paved the way for major drama down the way, and gave us some emotional highlights we cannot expect to see from Our Side characters." Entertainment Weekly staff writer Ken Tucker called the episode "a beautifully modulated hour, written by Alison Schapker and Monica Owusu-Breen, that took care to establish the anxiety felt by Altivia and her mother, Marilyn (Amy Madigan) about the pregnancy."

On a slightly less positive note, Noel Murray of The A.V. Club graded the episode with a B+. He remarked that it "starts out intense and crazy" but "becomes fairly predictable in its second half," as he correctly predicted Walternate's involvement in the abduction. Murray concluded, "Ultimately, 'Bloodline' is more of a plot-mover than most episodes of Fringe. There's no additional case to solve, and no profound theme to explore. If anything, it's like the writers decided to inject a serum into the belly of show and accelerate the story, to get Fauxlivia's baby out and to get on to the next phase." IGN's Ramsey Isler also didn't find the birth storyline all that shocking "since the number of people that had the power and knowledge to do this kind of thing was low." Rating the episode 7.5/10, Isler added that "the story could have used a bit more misdirection and a red herring or two to really keep us guessing, but that's a minor critique. Overall, Walternate's Machiavellian role in this story works, and the most important takeaway from this story is that it moved the overarching plot forward in one huge leap. Instead of waiting nine 'story' months for Fauxlivia's baby to pop out, we've already got the kid ready to fit into whatever plot twist the show runners have planned."

Some television critics have praised the parallel universe's characterization, with one noting that the "writers have made us care about the other side of this war, forced us to see the opposite numbers of our heroes as real and human and sympathetic; it's a brilliant move." The alternate performances of the actors in particular have been highlighted, especially those of Torv and Noble, but also those of Gabel, Acevedo, and Nicole.

Awards and nominations

Anna Torv submitted "Bloodline", along with the season three episodes "Olivia", "Entrada", Marionette", and "The Day We Died", for consideration in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series category at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. She failed to receive a nomination.

References

External links

 "Bloodline" at Fox.com

Fringe (season 3) episodes
2011 American television episodes

Bloodline (Fringe)


Toques et Clochers is an annual two-day charitable gastronomy festival in Aude, France dedicated to the celebration of Chardonnay production in the Limoux wine appellation, sponsored by the Sieur d'Arques wine cooperative.

The festival has taken place each year since 1991 during the weekend of Palm Sunday in the area of Limoux and Saint-Hilaire. Each year a different village in the appellation is chosen to host the festival and the money raised is used to restore the church in that village. On the first day of the festival,  the host village holds a celebration for the public, including wine-tasting, art exhibitions and music. On the second day, the Sieur d'Arques cooperative hosts an auction of local wines and a gala dinner.  The wine auction is presided over by Michelin starred chefs who also create the gala dinner, while an award-winning sommelier selects the wines.

In 2008, the auction of wines raised 537,750 euros.

The event's name refers to the tall hats worn by chefs (toques) and bell towers or steeples (clochers), since the money raised from the auctions is given to churches to restore their belltowers.

In 2018, the first day of the festival, due to be held in the village of Loupia, was cancelled as a mark of respect to those killed a day earlier in an Islamist terror attack in nearby  Trebes and Carcassonne.

References

External links

Food and drink festivals in France
Festivals in France
Wine-related events
Aude
Wine festivals

Toques et Clochers