title: Franks

text: As with other Germanic peoples, the laws of the Franks were memorised by "rachimburgs", who were analogous to the lawspeakers of Scandinavia. By the 6th century, when these laws first appeared in written form, two basic legal subdivisions existed: Salian Franks were subject to Salic law and Ripuarian Franks to Ripuarian law. Gallo-Romans south of the River Loire and the clergy remained subject to traditional Roman law. Germanic law was overwhelmingly concerned with the protection of individuals and less concerned with protecting the interests of the state. According to Michel Rouche, "Frankish judges devoted as much care to a case involving the theft of a dog as Roman judges did to cases involving the fiscal responsibility of , or municipal councilors".


title: Franks

text: The term "Frank" has been used by many of the Eastern Orthodox and Muslim neighbours of medieval Latin Christendom (and beyond, such as in Asia) as a general synonym for a European from Western and Central Europe, areas that followed the Latin rites of Christianity under the authority of the Pope in Rome. Another term with similar use was "Latins".


title: Franks

text: Modern historians often refer to Christians following the Latin rites in the eastern Mediterranean as "Franks" or "Latins", regardless of their country of origin, whereas they use the words "Rhomaios" and "Rûmi" ("Roman") for Orthodox Christians. On a number of Greek islands, Catholics are still referred to as () or "Franks", for instance on Syros, where they are called (). The period of Crusader rule in Greek lands is known to this day as the "Frankokratia" ("rule of the Franks").


title: Franks

text: During the Mongol Empire in the 13–14th centuries, the Mongols used the term "Franks" to designate Europeans. Persians used and spread the term in throughout the Middle East with the expansion of the language. The term "Frangistan" ("Land of the Franks") was used by Muslims to refer to Christian Europe and was commonly used over several centuries in Iran and the Ottoman Empire.


title: Franks

text: The Chinese called the Portuguese 佛郎機 ("Franks") in the 1520s at the Battle of Tunmen and Battle of Xicaowan. Some other varieties of Mandarin Chinese pronounced the characters as Fah-lan-ki.


title: Franks

text: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca (or "Frankish language") was a pidgin first spoken by 11th century European Christians and Muslims in Mediterranean ports that remained in use until the 19th century.


title: Franks

text: In the Thai usage, the word can refer to any European person. When the presence of US soldiers during the Vietnam War placed Thai people in contact with African Americans, they (and people of African ancestry in general) came to be called ("Black Farang", ). Such words sometimes also connote things, plants or creatures introduced by Europeans/Franks. For example, in Khmer, , literally "French Chicken", refers to a turkey and in Thai, is the name both for Europeans and for the guava fruit, introduced by Portuguese traders over 400 years ago. In contemporary Israel, the Yiddish word () has, by a curious etymological development, come to refer to Mizrahi Jews in Modern Hebrew and carries a strong pejorative connotation.


title: Franks

text: Some linguists (among them Drs. Jan Tent and Paul Geraghty) have suggested that the Samoan and generic Polynesian term for Europeans, "Palagi" (pronounced Puh-LANG-ee) or "Papalagi", might also be cognate, possibly a loan term gathered by early contact between Pacific islanders and Malays.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Suniel Shetty (born Sunil V. Shetty; 11 August 1961) is an Indian actor, film producer, television personality and entrepreneur who is predominantly active in Hindi films he has also worked in tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and kannada films. In a career spanning almost 30 years, he has acted in over 100 films. ".


title: Suniel Shetty

text: He is the owner of the production house Popcorn Entertainment Private Limited. He has produced a number of films including "Khel – No Ordinary Game", "Rakht" and "Bhagam Bhag", under the banner of Popcorn Motion Pictures.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: He made his debut in Hindi films in 1992 at the age of 31 with "Balwaan", opposite Divya Bharti. The film helped him to retain his position in Bollywood as an action hero. He went on to play the protagonist in various successful movies such as "Balwaan"(1992), = Arjun Singh "Waqt Hamara Hai"(1993), = Sunil Chaudhary ||"Pehchaan"(1993), = Kunal Verma "Dilwale"(1994), = Vikram Singh "Anth" (1994), || Vijay Saxena || "Mohra" (1994), = Vishal Agnihotri ||"Gopi Kishan" (1994), = Gopi Nath Chaudhary / Kishan Nath Chaudhary "Hum Hain Bemisaal" (1994),= Michael Dsouza Surakshaa(1995),= Raja Raghuveer (1995), || Raghuveer Verma || Takkar(1995),= Ravi Malhotra "Krishna", || Krishna / Sunil || Shastra (1996), || Vijay Khanna || "Sapoot"(1996), = Raj Singhania "Rakshak"(1996), = Raj Sinha "Border"(1997), = Bhairav Singh Rathod "Judge Mujrim"(1997), = Sunil / Dhaaga "Bhai"(1997), = Kundan "Qahar"(1997),= Amar Kapoor "Vinashak"(1998),= Arjun Singh and "Hu Tu Tu"(1999),= Aditya Patel He was involved primarily in action films throughout the 1990s, playing the male protagonist in most of the movies he acted in during the decade. From early 2000, he mainly appeared in multi-starrers in across genres. He also starred opposite Isha Koppikar in Arjun Rampal's debut movie "Pyaar Ishq Aur Mohabbat"(2001).Yash Sabharwal || "Hera Pheri" (2000),= Shyam Tripathi / Ghanshyam"Dhadkan" (2000),|| Dev Chopra || "Jungle" (2000),= Shivraj Mittal "Yeh Teraa Ghar Yeh Meraa Ghar"= Daya Shankar Manorilal Pandey (2001), "Main Hoon Na"(2004),= Exmajor Raghavan Datta ||"Phir Hera Pheri" (2006),= Shyam Tripathi / Ghanshyam || and "" (2010),= Narasimha In 2014, he changed the spelling of his name from Sunil to Suniel for numerological reasons. "Shootout at Lokhandwala"(2007),= Kaviraj Patil ( 2002),= Raja Chauhan "One Two Three" (2008) = Laxmi Narayan and "De Dana Dan" (2009).= Ram Mishra He even played negative roles in movies, including "Dhadkan" (2000),= Dev Chopra "Khel – No Ordinary Game" (2003),= Dev Mallya "" (2003),= Harshvardhan Bhatti "Main Hoon Na" (2004), "Rudraksh" (2004),= Bhuria " ( 2004) = Appa Kadam Naik " ( 2013) = Bhau / Eklavya Karmarkar "Cash"= Angad "No Problem"= Marcos and "A Gentleman" (2017).= Colonel Vijay Kumar Saxena || "Race - 4" ( 2023).= Exmajor Vijay Kumar Khanna


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Along with Mukesh Chhabra, he has also started an online casting company, F...the Couch (FTC). Shetty is the captain of the Mumbai Heroes cricket team in Celebrity Cricket League and owns the restaurants Mischief Dining Bar and Club H2O, in Mumbai. He has also featured as a host for India's leading fitness reality shows Biggest Loser Jeetega and India's Asli Champion Hai Dam?.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: In 2005, on the eve of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's 61st birth anniversary, the Mumbai Pradesh Youth Congress honoured Shetty with the Rajiv Gandhi award.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Shetty won the Filmfare Award for Best Villain in 2001 for "Dhadkan". In 2009, Shetty bagged South Asian International Film Festival's Best Actor Award for his role in Naxalites based Indian movie "".


title: Suniel Shetty

text: The actor has entrepreneurial ventures as well. Shetty produced films such as "Khel – No Ordinary Game", "Rakht" and "Bhagam Bhag" under the banner of Popcorn Motion Pictures.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: The FTC is a digital platform that discovers new talent in Bollywood provides a platform to new artists to make a place for themselves in Bollywood. Apart from being part of this project, Shetty has also been actively involved in realty and restaurant business.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: In 2021, Shetty appeared in the Sanjay Gupta's gangster drama film "Mumbai Saga", which was released on 19 March. He was last seen in Kiran Korrapati directed "Ghani", which released on 8 April.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: In 2019, Suneil invested an undisclosed amount in a Pune-based online health and fitness start up Fittr. Its founder Jitendra Chouksey launched Fittr in January 2016 as a community on Facebook to address the challenges in the fitness industry, Fittr now claims of over 100,000 fitness transformations, and a highly engaged community of 550,000 members. Its mobile app, Fittr, has received more than 500,000 downloads since September 2018.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Shetty has appeared as a host for India's leading fitness reality shows "Biggest Loser Jeetega" on Sahara One. and


title: Suniel Shetty

text: The actor owns Mischief Dining Bar and Club H2O, in Mumbai. Both the places are running successfully. He co-owns the water adventure park attached to cafe H2O. He closed down Mischief Bar in 2010, and instead opened a new restaurant called Little Italy. The restaurant was first owned by his father when it was an Udipi restaurant, Suniel then changed the restaurant into a bar, and then back into a restaurant with the different name with his father's blessings.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Suniel Shetty is captain of the Mumbai Heroes cricket team in the Celebrity Cricket League. He is also the co-founder of Ferit Cricket Bash that was launched in December 2018.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Suniel Shetty was participant in the Hiru Golden Film Awards 2014 and 2016 in Sri Lanka as a special guest.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: He started his luxury furniture and home lifestyle store in Mumbai, Worli in 2013 with his wife Mana.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Since 1991 he is married to Mana Shetty (née Monisha Kadri), a businesswoman, designer and social activist born to a Gujarati Muslim architect and a Punjabi Hindu social activist, and they have two children, a daughter Athiya Shetty and a son Ahan Shetty.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Both Athiya and Ahan have made their acting debuts respectively, Athiya in the film "Hero" (2015) and Ahan in Sajid Nadiadwala's film "Tadap (2021), the" Hindi remake of Telugu film RX 100. Mana runs an NGO for under-privileged kids.


title: Suniel Shetty

text: Shetty has a black belt in kickboxing. He owns clothing boutiques as well as restaurants specialising in Udupi cuisine.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest and most prestigious award of the British honours system. It is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British Armed Forces and may be awarded posthumously. It was previously awarded by countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, most of which have established their own honours systems and no longer recommend British honours. It may be awarded to a person of any military rank in any service and to civilians under military command. No civilian has received the award since 1879. Since the first awards were presented by Queen Victoria in 1857, two-thirds of all awards have been personally presented by the British monarch. The investitures are usually held at Buckingham Palace.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The VC was introduced on 29 January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War. Since then, the medal has been awarded 1,358 times to 1,355 individual recipients. Only 15 medals, of which 11 to members of the British Army and 4 to members of the Australian Army, have been awarded since the Second World War. The traditional explanation of the source of the metal from which the medals are struck is that it derives from a Russian cannon captured at the siege of Sevastopol. However, research has indicated another origin for the material. The historian John Glanfield has established that the metal for most of the medals made since December 1914 came from two Chinese cannons and that there is no evidence of Russian origin.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Because of its rarity, the VC is highly prized, and the medal has fetched over £400,000 at auctions. A number of public and private collections are devoted to the Victoria Cross. The private collection of Lord Ashcroft, amassed since 1986, contains over one-tenth of all Victoria Crosses awarded. After a 2008 donation to the Imperial War Museum, the Ashcroft collection went on public display alongside the museum's Victoria and George Cross collection in November 2010.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Beginning with the Centennial of Confederation in 1967, Canada, followed in 1975 by Australia and New Zealand, developed their own national honours systems, separate from and independent of the British or Imperial honours system. As each country's system evolved, operational gallantry awards were developed with the premier award of each system, with the Victoria Cross for Australia, the Canadian Victoria Cross and the Victoria Cross for New Zealand being created and named in honour of the Victoria Cross. They are unique awards of each honours system recommended, assessed, gazetted and presented by each country.


title: Victoria Cross

text: In 1854, after 39 years of peace, Britain found itself fighting a major war against Russia. The Crimean War was one of the first wars with modern reporting, and the dispatches of William Howard Russell described many acts of bravery and valour by British servicemen that went unrewarded.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Before the Crimean War, there was no official standardised system for recognition of gallantry within the British armed forces. Officers were eligible for an award of one of the junior grades of the Order of the Bath and brevet promotions while a Mention in Despatches existed as an alternative award for acts of lesser gallantry. This structure was very limited; in practice, awards of the Order of the Bath were confined to officers of field rank and brevet promotions or Mentions in Despatches were largely confined to those who were under the immediate notice of the commanders in the field, generally members of the commander's own staff.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Other European countries had awards that did not discriminate against class or rank; France awarded the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour, established 1802) and the Netherlands gave the Order of William (established in 1815). There was a growing feeling among the public and in the Royal Court that a new award was needed to recognise incidents of gallantry that were unconnected with the length or merit of a man's service. Queen Victoria issued a warrant under the royal sign-manual on 29 January 1856 (gazetted 5February 1856) that officially constituted the VC. The order was backdated to 1854 to recognise acts of valour during the Crimean War.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Queen Victoria had instructed the War Office to strike a new medal that would not recognise birth or class. The medal was meant to be a simple decoration that would be highly prized and eagerly sought after by those in the military services. To maintain its simplicity, Queen Victoria, under the guidance of Prince Albert, vetoed the suggestion that the award be called "The Military Order of Victoria" and instead suggested the name "Victoria Cross". The original warrant stated that the Victoria Cross would only be awarded to officers and men who had served in the presence of the enemy and had performed some act of valour or devotion. The first ceremony was held on 26 June 1857 at which Queen Victoria invested 62 of the 111 Crimean recipients in a ceremony in Hyde Park, London.


title: Victoria Cross

text: A single company of jewellers, Hancocks & Co, has been responsible for the production of every VC awarded since its inception.


title: Victoria Cross

text: It has long been widely believed that all the VCs were cast in bronze from the cascabels of two cannon that were captured from the Russians at the siege of Sevastopol. However, in 1990 Creagh and Ashton conducted a metallurgical examination of the VCs in the custody of the Australian War Memorial, and later the historian John Glanfield wrote that, through the use of X-ray studies of older Victoria Crosses, it was determined that the metal used for almost all VCs since December 1914 is taken from antique Chinese guns, replacing an earlier gun. Creagh noted the existence of Chinese inscriptions on the cannon, which are now barely legible due to corrosion. A likely explanation is that the cannon were taken as trophies during the First Opium War and held in the Woolwich repository.


title: Victoria Cross

text: It was also thought that some medals made during the First World War were composed of metal captured from different Chinese guns during the Boxer Rebellion. This is not so, however. The VCs examined by Creagh and Ashton both in Australia (58) and at the National Army Museum in New Zealand (14) spanned the entire time during which VCs have been issued and no compositional inconsistencies were found. It was also believed that another source of metal was used between 1942 and 1945 to create five Second World War VCs when the Sevastopol metal "went missing". Creagh accessed the Army records at MoD Donnington in 1991 and did not find any gaps in the custodial record. The composition found in the WW2 VCs, amongst them those for Edwards (Australia) and Upham (New Zealand), is similar to that for the early WW1 medals. This is likely to be due to the reuse of material from earlier pourings, casting sprues, defective medals, etc.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The remaining portion of the only remaining cascabel, weighing 358 oz (10kg), is stored in a vault maintained by 15 Regiment Royal Logistic Corps at MoD Donnington and may only be removed under armed guard. It is estimated that approximately 80 to 85 more VCs could be cast from this source.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The decoration is a bronze cross pattée, ″ (41mm) high, ″ (36mm) wide, bearing the crown of Saint Edward surmounted by a lion, and the inscription "for valour". This was originally to have been "for the brave", until it was changed on the recommendation of Queen Victoria, as it implied that not all men in battle were brave. The decoration, suspension bar, and link weigh about 0.87 troy ounces (27g).


title: Victoria Cross

text: The cross is suspended by a ring from a seriffed "V" to a bar ornamented with laurel leaves, through which the ribbon passes. The reverse of the suspension bar is engraved with the recipient's name, rank, number and unit. On the reverse of the medal is a circular panel on which the date of the act for which it was awarded is engraved in the centre.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The Original Warrant Clause1 states that the Victoria Cross "shall consist of a Maltese cross of bronze". Nonetheless, it has always been a cross pattée; the discrepancy with the warrant has never been corrected.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The ribbon is crimson, ″(38mm) wide. The original (1856) specification for the award stated that the ribbon should be red for army recipients and dark blue for naval recipients, but the dark blue ribbon was abolished soon after the formation of the Royal Air Force on 1April 1918. On 22 May 1920 King George V signed a warrant that stated all recipients would now receive a red ribbon and the living recipients of the naval version were required to exchange their ribbons for the new colour. Although the army warrants state the colour as being red, it is defined by most commentators as being crimson or "wine-red".


title: Victoria Cross

text: Since 1917 a miniature of the Cross has been affixed to the centre of the ribbon bar when worn without the Cross. In the event of a second award bar, a second replica is worn alongside the first.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The Victoria Cross is awarded for A recommendation for the VC is normally issued by an officer at regimental level, or equivalent, and has to be supported by three witnesses, although this has been waived on occasion. The recommendation is then passed up the military hierarchy until it reaches the Secretary of State for Defence. The recommendation is then laid before the monarch who approves the award with his or her signature. Victoria Cross awards are always promulgated in the "London Gazette" with the single exception of the award to the American Unknown Soldier in 1921. The Victoria Cross warrant makes no specific provision as to who should actually present the medals to the recipients. Queen Victoria indicated that she would like to present the medals in person and she presented 185 medals out of the 472 gazetted during her reign. Including the first 62 medals presented at a parade in Hyde Park on 26 June 1857 by Queen Victoria, nearly 900 awards have been personally presented to the recipient by the reigning British monarch. Nearly 300 awards have been presented by a member of the royal family or by a civil or military dignitary. About 150 awards were either forwarded to the recipient or next of kin by registered post or no details of the presentations are known.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The original royal warrant did not contain a specific clause regarding posthumous awards, although official policy was not to award the VC posthumously. Between the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and the beginning of the Second Boer War, the names of six officers and men were published in the "London Gazette" with a memorandum stating they would have been awarded the Victoria Cross had they survived. A further three notices were published in the "London Gazette" in September 1900 and April 1901 for gallantry in the Second Boer War. In an exception to policy for the Second Boer War, six posthumous Victoria Crosses, three to those mentioned in the notices in 1900 and 1901 and a further three, were granted on 8August 1902, the first official posthumous awards. Five years later in 1907, the posthumous policy was reversed for earlier wars, and medals were sent to the next of kin of the six officers and men whose names were mentioned in notices in the "Gazette" dating back to the Indian Mutiny. The Victoria Cross warrant was not amended to explicitly allow posthumous awards until 1920, but one quarter of all awards for World War I were posthumous.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The process and motivations of selecting the medal's recipients has sometimes been interpreted as inconsistent or overly political. The most common observation being that the Victoria Cross may be given more often for engagements that senior military personnel would like to publicly promote.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The 1920 royal warrant made provision for awards to women serving in the Armed Forces. No woman has been awarded a VC.


title: Victoria Cross

text: In the case of a gallant and daring act being performed by a squadron, ship's company or a detached body of men (such as marines) in which all men are deemed equally brave and deserving of the Victoria Cross, a ballot is drawn. The officers select one officer, the NCOs select one individual, and the private soldiers or seamen select two individuals. In all, 46 awards have been awarded by ballot with 29 of the awards during the Indian Mutiny. Four further awards were granted to Q Battery, Royal Horse Artillery at Korn Spruit on 31 March 1900 during the Second Boer War. The final ballot awards for the army were the six awards to the Lancashire Fusiliers at W Beach during the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, although three of the awards were not gazetted until 1917. The final seven ballot awards were the only naval ballot awards with three awards to two Q-ships in 1917 and four awards for the Zeebrugge Raid in 1918. The provision for awards by ballot is still included in the Victoria Cross warrant, but there have been no further such awards since 1918.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Between 1858 and 1881, the Victoria Cross could be awarded for actions taken "under circumstances of extreme danger" not in the face of the enemy. Six such awards were made during this period—five of them for a single incident during an Expedition to the Andaman Islands in 1867. In 1881, the criteria were changed again and the VC was only awarded for acts of valour "in the face of the enemy". Due to this, it has been suggested by many historians including Lord Ashcroft that the changing nature of warfare will result in fewer VCs being awarded.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The Victoria Cross was extended to colonial troops in 1867. The extension was made following a recommendation for gallantry regarding colonial soldier Major Charles Heaphy for action in the New Zealand Wars in 1864. He was operating under British command and the VC was "gazetted" in 1867. Later that year, the Government of New Zealand assumed full responsibility for operations, but no further recommendations for the Victoria Cross were raised for local troops who distinguished themselves in action. Following gallant actions by three New Zealand soldiers in November 1868 and January 1869 during the New Zealand Wars, an Order in Council on 10 March 1869 created a "Distinctive Decoration" for members of the local forces without seeking permission from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Although the governor was chided for exceeding his authority, the Order in Council was ratified by the Queen. The title "Distinctive Decoration" was later replaced by the title New Zealand Cross. In addition, in 1870 Victoria sent six ceremonial Highland broadswords to New Zealand, to be presented as "Swords of Honour" to Māori rangatira who had served with distinction during the New Zealand Land Wars. The swords were presented in a ceremony in Wellington in June 1870 to Mōkena Kōhere, Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui (Major Kemp), Te Pokiha Taranui, Henare Tomoana, Ropata Wahawaha, and Ihaka Whaanga.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The question of whether awards could be made to colonial troops not serving with British troops was raised in South Africa in 1881. Surgeon John McCrea, an officer of the South African forces was recommended for gallantry during hostilities which had not been approved by the British Government. He was awarded the Victoria Cross and the principle was established that gallant conduct could be rewarded independently of any political consideration of military operations. More recently, four Australian soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross in the Vietnam War although Britain was not involved in the conflict.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Indian troops were not originally eligible for the Victoria Cross since they had been eligible for the Indian Order of Merit since 1837, which was the oldest British gallantry award for general issue. When the Victoria Cross was created, Indian troops were still controlled by the Honourable East India Company and did not come under Crown control until 1860. European officers and men serving with the Honourable East India Company were not eligible for the Indian Order of Merit and the Victoria Cross was extended to cover them in October 1857. It was only at the end of the 19th century that calls for Indian troops to be awarded the Victoria Cross intensified. Indian troops became eligible for the award in 1911. The first awards to Indian troops appeared in the "London Gazette" on 7December 1914 to Darwan Sing Negi and Khudadad Khan. Negi was presented with the Victoria Cross by King George V during a visit to troops in France. The presentation occurred on 5December 1914 and he is one of a very few soldiers presented with his award before it appeared in the "London Gazette".


title: Victoria Cross

text: Since the Second World War, most but not all Commonwealth countries have created their own honours systems and no longer participate in the British honours system. This began soon after the Partition of India in 1947, when the new countries of India and Pakistan introduced their own systems of awards. The VC was replaced by the Param Vir Chakra (PVC) and Nishan-e-Haider (NH) respectively. Most if not all new honours systems continued to permit recipients of British honours to wear their awards according to the rules of each nation's order of wear. Sri Lanka, whose defence personnel were eligible to receive the Victoria Cross until 1972, introduced its own equivalent, the Parama Weera Vibhushanaya medal. Three Commonwealth realms—Australia, Canada and New Zealand—have each introduced their own decorations for gallantry and bravery, replacing British decorations such as the Victoria Cross with their own. The only Commonwealth countries that still can recommend the VC are the small nations that still participate in the British honours system, none of whose forces have ever been awarded the VC.


title: Victoria Cross

text: When the Union of South Africa instituted its own range of military decorations and medals with effect from 6April 1952, these new awards took precedence before all earlier British decorations and medals awarded to South Africans, with the exception of the Victoria Cross, which still took precedence before all other awards. The other older British awards continued to be worn in the order prescribed by the British Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Australia was the first Commonwealth realm to create its own VC, on 15 January 1991. Although it is a separate award, its appearance is identical to its British counterpart. Canada followed suit when in 1993 Queen Elizabeth signed Letters Patent creating the Canadian VC, which is also similar to the British version, except that the legend has been changed from "for valour" to the Latin ". This language was chosen so as to favour neither French nor English, the two official languages of Canada. New Zealand was the third country to adapt the VC into its own honours system. While the New Zealand and Australian VCs are technically separate awards, the decoration is identical to the British design, including being cast from the same gunmetal as the British VC. The Canadian Victoria Cross also includes metal from the same cannon, along with copper and other metals from all regions of Canada.


title: Victoria Cross

text: There have been five recipients of the Victoria Cross for Australia, four for action in Afghanistan and one awarded for action in the Second World War following a review. The first was to Trooper Mark Donaldson (Special Air Service Regiment) on 16 January 2009 for actions during Operation Slipper, the Australian contribution to the War in Afghanistan; Ben Roberts-Smith, Daniel Keighran and Cameron Baird were also awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia for actions in Afghanistan. Teddy Sheean was awarded the VC after the Australian Government convened an expert panel to review his case. The Victoria Cross for New Zealand has been awarded once: Corporal Willie Apiata (New Zealand Special Air Service) on 2July 2007, for his actions in the War in Afghanistan in 2004. The Canadian Victoria Cross has been cast once, to be awarded to the Unknown Soldier at the rededication of the Vimy Memorial on 7April 2007 (this date being chosen as it was the 90th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge), but pressure from veterans' organisations caused the plan to be dropped.


title: Victoria Cross

text: As the highest award for valour of the United Kingdom, the Victoria Cross is always the first award to be presented at an investiture, even before knighthoods, as was shown at the investiture of Private Johnson Beharry, who received his medal before General Sir Mike Jackson received his knighthood. Owing to its status, the VC is always the first decoration worn in a row of medals and it is the first set of post-nominal letters used to indicate any decoration or order. Similar acts of extreme valour that do not take place in the face of the enemy are honoured with the George Cross (GC), which has equal precedence but is awarded second because the GC is newer.


title: Victoria Cross

text: It is not statutory for "all ranks to salute a bearer of the Victoria Cross": There is no official requirement that appears in the official warrant of the VC, nor in Queen's Regulations and Orders, but tradition dictates that this occurs and, consequently, senior officers will salute a private awarded a VC or GC.


title: Victoria Cross

text: As there was no formal order of wear laid down, the Victoria Cross was at first worn as the recipient fancied. It was popular to pin it on the left side of the chest over the heart, with other decorations grouped around the VC. The Queen's Regulations for the Army of 1881 gave clear instructions on how to wear it; the VC had to follow the badge of the Order of the Indian Empire. In 1900 it was ordained in Dress Regulations for the Army that it should be worn after the cross of a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. It was only in 1902 that King Edward VII gave the cross its present position on a bar brooch. The cross is also worn as a miniature decoration on a brooch or a chain with mess jacket, white tie or black tie. As a bearer of the VC is not a Companion in an Order of Chivalry, the VC has no place in a coat of arms.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The original warrant stated that NCOs and private soldiers or seamen on the Victoria Cross Register were entitled to a £10 per annum annuity. In 1898, Queen Victoria raised the pension to £50 for those that could not earn a livelihood, be it from old age or infirmity. Today holders of the Victoria Cross or George Cross are entitled to an annuity, the amount of which is determined by the awarding government. Since 2015, the annuity paid by the British Government is £10,000 per year. This is exempted from tax for British taxpayers by Section 638 Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, along with pensions or annuities from other awards for bravery. In Canada, under the "Gallantry Awards Order", members of the Canadian Forces or people who joined the British forces before 31 March 1949 while domiciled in Canada or Newfoundland receive Can$3,000 per year. Under Subsection 103.4 of the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986, the Australian Government provides a Victoria Cross Allowance. Until November 2005 the amount was A$3,230 per year. Since then this amount has been increased annually in line with the Australian Consumer Price Index.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The original royal warrant involved an expulsion clause that allowed for a recipient's name to be erased from the official register in certain wholly discreditable circumstances and his pension cancelled. Eight were forfeited between 1861 and 1908. The power to cancel and restore awards is still included in the Victoria Cross warrant.


title: Victoria Cross

text: King George V felt very strongly that the decoration should never be forfeited and in a letter from his Private Secretary, Lord Stamfordham, on 26 July 1920, his views are forcefully expressed:


title: Victoria Cross

text: A total of 1,358 Victoria Crosses have been awarded since 1856 to 1,355 men. There are several statistics related to the greatest number of VCs awarded in individual battles or wars. The greatest number of Victoria Crosses awarded for a single day was 24 for deeds performed during the Indian Mutiny on 16 November 1857, 23 for deeds at Lucknow and one by Francis David Millet Brown for action at Narnoul, south of Delhi. The greatest number won by a single unit during a single action is seven, to the 2nd/24th Foot, for the defence of Rorke's Drift, 22–23 January 1879, during the Zulu War. The greatest number won in a single conflict is 628, during the First World War. Ishar Singh became the first Indian Sikh to receive the award. Eight of the 12 surviving holders of the Victoria Cross attended the 150th Anniversary service of remembrance at Westminster Abbey on 26 June 2006.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Three people have been awarded the VC and Bar, the bar representing a second award of the VC. They are Noel Godfrey Chavasse and Arthur Martin-Leake, both doctors in the Royal Army Medical Corps, for rescuing wounded under fire; and New Zealander Captain Charles Upham, an infantryman, for combat actions. Upham remains the only combatant soldier to have received a VC and Bar. Surgeon General William George Nicholas Manley, an Irishman, is the sole recipient of both the Victoria Cross and the Iron Cross. The VC was awarded for his actions during the Waikato-Hauhau Maori War, New Zealand on 29 April 1864, while the Iron Cross was awarded for tending the wounded during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Royal New Zealand Air Force Flying Officer Lloyd Allan Trigg has is the only serviceman ever awarded a VC on evidence solely provided by the enemy, for an action in which there were no surviving Allied witnesses. The recommendation was made by the captain of the German U-boat sunk by Trigg's aircraft. Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope was also awarded a VC on recommendation of the enemy, the captain of the "Admiral Hipper", but there were also numerous surviving Allied witnesses to corroborate his actions.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Since the end of the Second World War, the original VC has been awarded 15 times: four in the Korean War, one in the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation in 1965, four to Australians in the Vietnam War, two during the Falklands War in 1982, one in the Iraq War in 2004, and three in the War in Afghanistan for actions in 2006, 2012 and 2013.


title: Victoria Cross

text: In 1921, the British Unknown Warrior was awarded the US Medal of Honor and reciprocally the Victoria Cross was presented to the American Unknown Soldier of the First World War. This is the only ungazetted VC award following the normal British practice for both gallantry and meritorious awards to foreign recipients not being gazetted. It is included in the total of 1,358 awards.


title: Victoria Cross

text: In 1856, Queen Victoria laid an unnamed Victoria Cross beneath the foundation stone of Netley Military hospital. When the hospital was demolished in 1966 the VC, known as "The Netley VC", was retrieved and is now on display in the Army Medical Services Museum, Mytchett, near Aldershot. This VC is not counted in official statistics.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Since 1879, more than 300 Victoria Crosses have been publicly auctioned or advertised. Others have been privately sold. The value of the VC can be seen by the increasing sums that the medals reach at auctions. In 1955 the set of medals awarded to Edmund Barron Hartley was bought at Sotheby's for the then record price of £300 (approximately £ in present-day terms). In October 1966 the Middlesex Regiment paid a new record figure of £900 (approximately £ in present-day terms) for a VC awarded after the Battle of the Somme. In January 1969, the record reached £1700 (£) for the medal set of William Rennie. In April 2004 the VC awarded in 1944 to Sergeant Norman Jackson, RAF, was sold at an auction for £235,250. On 24 July 2006, an auction at Bonhams in Sydney of the VC awarded to Captain Alfred Shout fetched a world record hammer price of A$1million (approximately £410,000 at the time). In November 2009, it was reported that almost £1.5million was paid to St Peter's College, Oxford by Lord Ashcroft for the VC and bar awarded to Noel Chavasse. Vice Admiral Gordon Campbell's medal group, including the VC he received for actions while in command of HMS "Farnborough", was reportedly sold for a record £840,000.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Several VCs have been stolen and, being valuable, have been placed on the Interpol watch-list for stolen items. The VC awarded to Milton Gregg, which was donated to the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum in London, Ontario, Canada in 1979, was stolen on Canada Day (1 July 1980), when the museum was overcrowded and has been missing since. A VC awarded in 1917 to Canadian soldier Corporal Filip Konowal was stolen from the same museum in 1973 and was not recovered until 2004.


title: Victoria Cross

text: On 2 December 2007, nine VCs were among 100 medals (12 sets) stolen from locked, reinforced glass cabinets at the QEII Army Memorial Museum in Waiouru, New Zealand, with a value of around NZD$20million. Charles Upham's VC and Bar was among these. A reward of NZ$300,000, provided by Lord Ashcroft, was posted for information leading to the recovery of the decorations. On 16 February 2008 New Zealand Police announced all the medals had been recovered.


title: Victoria Cross

text: There are a number of collections of Victoria Crosses. The VC collection of businessman and politician Lord Ashcroft, amassed since 1986, contains 162 medals, over one-tenth of all VCs awarded. It is the largest collection of such decorations. In July 2008 it was announced that Ashcroft was to donate £5million for a permanent gallery at the Imperial War Museum where the 50 VCs held by the museum would be put on display alongside his collection. The Lord Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum opened on 12 November 2010, containing a total of 210 VCs and 31 GCs.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Prior to the November 2010 opening of the Ashcroft Gallery, the largest collection of VCs on public display was held by the Australian War Memorial, whose collection includes all nine VCs awarded to Australians at Gallipoli. Of the 101 medals awarded to Australians (96 VCs, and five VCs for Australia), this collection contains around 70 medals, including three medals awarded to British soldiers (Grady, 1854; Holbrook, 1914; and Whirlpool, 1858), and three of the VCs for Australia (Donaldson, 2008; Keighran, 2010; and Roberts-Smith, 2010).


title: Victoria Cross

text: In 2004, a national Victoria Cross and George Cross memorial was installed in Westminster Abbey close to the tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Westminster Abbey contains monuments and memorials to central figures in British History including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and James VI & I. One VC recipient, Lord Henry Percy, is buried, within a family vault, in the Abbey.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Canon William Lummis was a military historian who built up an archive on the service records and final resting places of Victoria Cross holders. This was then summarised into a pamphlet which was taken to be an authoritative source on these matters. However, Lummis was aware of short-comings in his own work and encouraged David Harvey to continue it. The result was Harvey's seminal book "Monuments to Courage." In 2007 the Royal Mail used material from Lummis' archives to produce a collection of stamps commemorating Victoria Cross recipients.


title: Victoria Cross

text: It is a tradition within the Australian Army for soldiers' recreational clubs on military bases to be named after a particular recipient of the Victoria Cross. Australia has another unique means of remembering recipients of the Victoria Cross. Remembrance Drive is a path through city streets and highways linking Sydney and Canberra. Trees were planted in February 1954 by Queen Elizabeth II in a park near Sydney Harbour and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, marking either end of the route, with various plantations along the roadsides in memory of the fallen. Beginning in 1995, 23 rest stop memorials named for Australian recipients of the VC from World War II onwards have been sited along the route, providing picnic facilities and public amenities to encourage drivers to take a break on long drives. 23 of the 26 memorial sites have been dedicated, with a further three reserved for the surviving VC recipients, including two of the newer Victoria Cross for Australia awards. Edward Kenna was honoured with the most recent rest stop on 16 August 2012, having died in 2009.


title: Victoria Cross

text: Valour Road is a residential street in the city of Winnipeg, Canada named in honour of three World War I recipients of the Victoria Cross who lived in the same block of that street. The story is also commemorated in a sixty-second short film commonly seen on Canadian television.


title: Victoria Cross

text: The subject of soldiers earning the VC has been popular with artists since the medal's inception. Notable are the fifty paintings by Louis William Desanges that were painted in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Many of these were exhibited at the Egyptian Gallery in Piccadilly, but in 1900, they were brought together by Lord Wantage as the "Victoria Cross Gallery" and exhibited in the town of Wantage, at that time in Berkshire. Later, the collection was broken up and many of the paintings were sent to the various regiments depicted. Some were damaged or destroyed. A number of the acts were also portrayed in a Second World War propaganda pamphlet, and the images commissioned by the Ministry of Information are presented in an online gallery available on the website of The National Archives. In 2016, portrait photographer Rory Lewis was commissioned by the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association to hold portrait sittings with all living recipients of the Victoria Cross and the George Cross.


title: John C. McGinley

text: John Christopher McGinley (born August 3, 1959) is an American actor. His best known roles include Perry Cox in "Scrubs", Bob Slydell in "Office Space", Captain Hendrix in "The Rock", Sergeant Red O'Neill in Oliver Stone's "Platoon," Marv in Stone's "Wall Street", FBI agent Ben Harp in "Point Break", and the serial killer Edgler Foreman Vess in the TV miniseries of "Intensity", based on the novel by Dean Koontz. He has written and produced for television and film. Apart from acting, McGinley is an author, a board member and international spokesman for the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, and a spokesman for the National Down Syndrome Society.


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley, who is one of five children, was born in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, the son of a schoolteacher and a stockbroker. His paternal great-grandfather was from Donegal, Ireland. McGinley was raised in Millburn, New Jersey, and attended Millburn High School, where he played wide receiver for the school's football team. He studied acting at Syracuse University, and later at New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1984. Upon completing his education, McGinley did a variety of different work, including Off Broadway and Broadway productions, and a two-year stint on the soap opera "Another World".


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley has had a prolific career, primarily as a supporting character actor. He was noticed by a casting scout while working as John Turturro's understudy in John Patrick Shanley's 1984 production of "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea", which led to a successful audition for the role of Sergeant Red O'Neill in the Oscar-winning "Platoon" (1986). McGinley had been cast in his first film role in Alan Alda's "Sweet Liberty" earlier in 1986. That was followed the next year with "Wall Street" (1987), and again the next with "Talk Radio" (1988). He was featured in a 1980s Subaru commercial. He appeared in the "Celebrity Challenge" version of "American Gladiators", losing to Dean Cain. McGinley wrote the script for, and co-starred in, the 1990 film "Suffering Bastards".


title: John C. McGinley

text: He worked continually throughout the 1990s, appearing in films such as "Point Break" (1991), "" (1991), "Article 99" (1992), "Wagons East" (1994), "Seven" (1995), "The Rock" (1996), "Set It Off" (1996), "Nothing to Lose" (1997) and "Office Space" (1999) (McGinley improvised several takes about his character's fondness for Michael Bolton). In 2007, he had a role as Chuck in the film "Are We Done Yet?" He had a small role as a gay highway patrolman in the film "Wild Hogs" which co-stars his "Article 99" co-star Ray Liotta, although they don't share any screen credit.


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley has done voice-over work on animated television series, including the superhero The Atom on several episodes of "Justice League Unlimited", a guest appearance as "The White Shadow", the secret government agent overseeing Huey Freeman on "The Boondocks", voicing The Whammer on the PBS Kids Go! series "WordGirl" as well as the lead character in the Sony PSP video game "Dead Head Fred".


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley received critical acclaim for his performance as a serial killer in Dean Koontz's suspense drama "Intensity" (1997). It became Fox Television's highest-rated miniseries. He worked with Koontz and Fox once more in "Sole Survivor" (2000).


title: John C. McGinley

text: In 2001, McGinley began work as a regular on the NBC television series "Scrubs" as the acerbic Dr. Perry Cox. Throughout the series Dr. Cox acts as an unwilling mentor to the protagonist J.D. (Zach Braff). McGinley has said that there are three things over the course of the series that he improvises: his constant usage of girls' names for JD, which he does with all his real friends; his whistle, which he describes as "a bad habit"; and his habit of touching his nose, a tribute to Robert Redford's character in "The Sting", and which he says means "It's gonna be OK."


title: John C. McGinley

text: Since the NFL season of 2007, McGinley has played the "Commish" of the More Taste League commercials for Miller Lite. He has done commercials for the Champions Tour, a professional golf tour for men over the age of 50. In 2008, McGinley was the narrator of the documentary of the 2008 Stanley Cup Championship of the Detroit Red Wings. In 2009, McGinley started narrating commercials for ESPN.com.


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley wrote a 2005 book titled "Untalkative Bunny: How to be Heard Without Saying a Word", which featured the title character from the show "Untalkative Bunny" on its cover.


title: John C. McGinley

text: In 2008, McGinley was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin.


title: John C. McGinley

text: In 2009, he was cast in the film adaptation of the comic book "", and he plays the role of the classic Superman villain, Metallo.


title: John C. McGinley

text: In 2012, it was announced that McGinley would be a recurring character on USA Network's "Burn Notice" as Michael Westen's original CIA trainer, Tom Card. He was first introduced in the second episode of the show's sixth season. In the same year, he appeared in a State Farm insurance commercial as a father wanting his college graduate son to move out.


title: John C. McGinley

text: He began 2013 in the Broadway revival of "Glengarry Glen Ross" as Dave Moss. "It was the best couple of months of my life," he said. In the same year, it was announced that TBS made a series order for the television series "Ground Floor", which stars McGinley. The series was canceled in 2015 after two seasons. In October 2014, McGinley hosted The E Street Radio channel on Sirius XM20 radio, discussing his appreciation of Bruce Springsteen's music, and their shared New Jersey roots.


title: John C. McGinley

text: In February 1997, McGinley married Lauren Lambert. Their son, Max, who has Down syndrome, was born that year. In December 2001, Lambert and McGinley divorced. In October 2002, he was chosen as "Dad of the Month" at iParenting.com. In August 2006, McGinley became engaged to yoga instructor Nichole Kessler in Malibu, whom he had dated for two years. The couple married on April 7, 2007, in a private ceremony at their home. They have two daughters.


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley owns a stake in one of Billy Gilroy's New York SoHo bistros, along with fellow actor Willem Dafoe.


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley serves on the board of the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, based in Denver. He is a celebrity Ambassador for the National Down Syndrome Society. In addition, he is a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics and was an integral part in crafting its "R-word: Spread The Word, To End The Word" campaign. McGinley is a vocal supporter for the special needs community, and commented in late 2011 on the experience of raising a teenager with Down syndrome along with two young daughters:


title: John C. McGinley

text: McGinley is an avid fan of the NHL Detroit Red Wings, and shows this by wearing a Red Wings jersey (usually Chris Chelios) in several "Scrubs" episodes. He was the narrator of the 2008 Championship DVD of the Red Wings. He maintains a home in Malibu, California, and is well known as a member of the "Malibu Mob", a group of celebrity friends and neighbors including John Cusack, Tony Danza, former Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios, big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, beach volleyball pro Gabrielle Reece, and tennis player John McEnroe. McGinley enjoys going golfing with John Cusack in his free time, and is a member of the Sherwood Lake Club.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Sadiq Aman Khan (; born 8 October 1970) is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's soft left and has been ideologically characterised as a social democrat.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Born in Tooting, South London, to a working-class British Pakistani family, Khan earned a law degree from the University of North London. He subsequently worked as a solicitor specialising in human rights issues and chaired the Liberty advocacy group for three years. Joining the Labour Party, Khan was a councillor for the London Borough of Wandsworth from 1994 to 2006 before being elected MP for Tooting at the 2005 general election. He was openly critical of several policies of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq and new anti-terror legislation. Under Blair's successor Gordon Brown, Khan was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in 2008, later becoming Minister of State for Transport. A key ally of the next Labour leader, Ed Miliband, he served in Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Minister for London.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan was elected Mayor of London at the 2016 mayoral election, defeating the Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, and resigned as an MP. As Mayor, he implemented the Hopper fare for unlimited bus and tram journeys for an hour, increased the cost and the area covered by the London congestion charge, and introduced new charges (the ULEZ and the T-Charge) for older and more polluting vehicles driving in the city. He also backed expansion at London City Airport and Gatwick Airport. He was a vocal supporter of the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe and People's Vote campaigns for the UK to remain in the European Union, and attracted international attention for his Twitter arguments with United States President Donald Trump. Khan established the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm following the 2020 George Floyd protests. Although Khan initially froze some Transport for London (TfL) fares, he has implemented transport fare rises since 2021 in return for a £1.6 billion bailout from the UK Government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also lobbied the government to introduce public health restrictions on several occasions throughout the pandemic. He was re-elected as Mayor in May 2021.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: He was included in the 2018 "Time" 100 list of most influential people in the world. Khan has been praised for making London's transport more accessible and reducing the number of polluting vehicles in central London. However, he has been criticised for the rising levels of gun and knife crimes in the city, along with his response to crime in general.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Sadiq Aman Khan was born on 8 October 1970 at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London to a working-class Sunni Muslim family. His grandparents migrated from Lucknow in United Provinces, British India to Pakistan following the partition of India in 1947.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: His father Amanullah and mother Sehrun arrived in London from Pakistan in 1968. Khan was the fifth of eight children, seven of whom were boys. In London, Amanullah worked as a bus driver and Sehrun as a seamstress.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan and his siblings grew up in a three-bedroom council flat on the Henry Prince Estate in Earlsfield. He attended Fircroft Primary School and then Ernest Bevin School, a local comprehensive. Khan studied science and mathematics at A-level, in the hope of eventually becoming a dentist. A teacher recommended that he read law instead, as he had an argumentative personality. The teacher's suggestion, along with the American television programme "L.A. Law", inspired Khan to do so. He read Law at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). His parents later moved out of their council flat and purchased their own home. Like his brothers, Khan was a fan of sport, particularly enjoying football, cricket, and boxing.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: From his earliest years, Khan worked: "I was surrounded by my mum and dad working all the time, so as soon as I could get a job, I got a job. I got a paper round, a Saturday job—some summers I laboured on a building site." The family continues to send money to relatives in Pakistan, "because we're blessed being in this country." He and his family often encountered racism, which led to him and his brothers taking up boxing at the Earlsfield Amateur Boxing Club. While studying for his degree, between the ages of 18 and 21, he had a Saturday job at the Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: After completing his law degree in 1991, Khan took his Law Society finals at the College of Law in Guildford. In 1994 he married Saadiya Ahmed, who was also a solicitor.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Also in 1994, Khan became a trainee solicitor at a firm of solicitors called Christian Fisher; the firm undertook mainly legal aid cases. The partners were Michael Fisher and Louise Christian. Khan became a partner at the firm in 1997, and like Christian, specialised in human rights law. When Fisher left in 2002, the firm was renamed "Christian Khan". Khan left the firm in 2004, after he became the prospective Labour candidate for the Tooting parliamentary constituency.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: During his legal career, he acted in actions against employment and discrimination law, judicial reviews, inquests, the police, and crime, and was involved in cases including the following:


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Before entering Parliament, Khan represented Tooting as a councillor on Wandsworth Council from 1994 to 2006, and was granted the title of Honorary Alderman of Wandsworth upon his retirement from local politics.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In 2003, Tooting Constituency Labour Party decided to open its parliamentary selection to all interested candidates, including the incumbent MP since 1974, Tom Cox. This prompted Cox, then in his mid-70s, to announce his retirement rather than risk de-selection. In the subsequent selection contest, Khan defeated five other local candidates to become Labour's candidate for the seat. He was elected to Parliament at the 2005 general election.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan was one of the Labour MPs who led the successful opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposed introduction of 90 days' detention without charge for those suspected of terrorism offences. In recognition of this, "The Spectator"—a right-wing magazine then edited by Boris Johnson—awarded him the "Newcomer of the Year Award" at the 2005 Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. The magazine's editorial board stated that he had received the award "for the tough-mindedness and clarity with which he has spoken about the very difficult issues of Islamic terror". In August 2006, he was a signatory of an open letter to Tony Blair that was signed by prominent Muslims and published in "The Guardian". The letter criticised UK foreign policy and in particular the 2003 invasion of Iraq, stating that Blair's policies had caused great harm to civilians in the Middle East and provided "ammunition to extremists who threaten us all".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan had to repay £500 in expenses in 2007 in relation to a newsletter sent to constituents featuring a "Labour rose", which was deemed to be unduly prominent. While the content of the newsletter was not deemed to be party political, the rose logo was found to be unduly prominent which may have had the effect of promoting a political party. There was no suggestion that Khan had deliberately or dishonestly compiled his expenses claims, which were not explicitly disallowed under the rules at that time. The rules were retrospectively changed disallowing the claim, which had previously been approved by the House of Commons authorities.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 3 February 2008, "The Sunday Times" claimed that a conversation between Khan and prisoner Babar Ahmad – a constituent accused of involvement in terrorism – at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes had been bugged by the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch. An inquiry was launched by the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw. There was concern that the bugging contravened the Wilson Doctrine that police should not bug MPs. The report concluded that the doctrine did not apply because it affected only bugging requiring approval by the Home Secretary, while in Khan's case the monitoring was authorised by a senior police officer. The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, then announced a further policy review and said the bugging of discussions between MPs and their constituents should be banned.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In June 2007, Blair stood down as both Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, to be replaced by Gordon Brown. Brown thought highly of Khan, who moved up the parliamentary ranks under Brown's Premiership. Brown made Khan a party whip, who was therefore charged with ensuring that Labour-sponsored legislation made it through the parliamentary process to become law. In July 2008, Khan helped push through a government proposal to permit the detention of those suspected of terror offences for 42 days without charge. For his part in this, Khan was criticised by Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti and others, who claimed that Khan had contravened his principles on civil liberties issues.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Cabinet reshuffle of 3 October 2008, Khan was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In 2008, the Fabian Society published Khan's book, "Fairness Not Favours". In this work, Khan argued that the Labour Party had to reconnect with British Muslims, arguing that it had lost the trust of this community as a result of the Iraq War. He also said that British Muslims had their own part to play in reconnecting with politicians, arguing that they needed to rid themselves of a victim mentality and take greater responsibility for their own community. In the House of Commons in January 2009, Khan criticised Pope Benedict XVI for the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson following his remarks about the Holocaust, a move he described as "highly unsavoury" and of "great concern".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In June 2009 he was promoted to Minister of State for Transport. In what was believed to be a first for an MP, Khan used his Twitter account to self-announce his promotion. Though Khan was not a member of the cabinet, he attended meetings for agenda items covering his policy area, thus becoming the first Muslim to attend the British Cabinet. As Transport Minister, Khan supported plans to expand Heathrow Airport with the addition of a third runway.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: During this period, Khan served as chairman of the socialist Fabian Society, remaining on its executive committee. In 2009, he won the Jenny Jeger Award ("Best Fabian Pamphlet") for his work "Fairness not Favours: How to re-connect with British Muslims".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In March 2010, Khan publicly stated that for a second successive year he would not be taking a pay rise as an MP or Minister, declaring "At a time when many people in Tooting and throughout the country are having to accept pay freezes I don't think it's appropriate for MPs to accept a pay rise."


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In 2010, Khan was re-elected as the MP for Tooting, despite a swing against his party of 3.6% and a halving of his previous majority. His campaign in Tooting had been supported by Harris Bokhari, who reportedly used anti-Ahmadiyya sentiment to mobilise Muslim voters at a mosque in Tooting to vote for Khan instead of the Liberal Democrat candidate, Nasser Butt, an Ahmadiyya. In 2019, Bokhari was appointed to join Khan's new Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Advisory Group. In the subsequent Labour leadership election Khan was an early backer of Ed Miliband, becoming his campaign manager. In the wake of Labour's 2010 election defeat, Acting Leader Harriet Harman appointed Khan Shadow Secretary of State for Transport. Khan orchestrated Ed Miliband's successful campaign to become Labour leader, and was appointed to the senior roles of Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Justice Secretary.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In April 2010 it was revealed that Khan had repaid falsely claimed expenses on two occasions, when literature was sent to his constituents. The first incident concerned letters sent out before the 2010 General Election which were ruled to have the "unintentional effect of promoting his return to office", the second a £2,550 repayment for Christmas, Eid, and birthday cards for constituents, dating back to 2006. Under House of Commons rules, pre-paid envelopes and official stationery can only be used for official parliamentary business. Khan's claim for the greetings cards was initially rejected, but he presented a new invoice no longer identifying the nature of the claim, and this was accepted. Khan attributed the improper claim for the cards to "inexperience" and human error and apologised for breaking the expenses rules.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In early 2013, Miliband appointed Khan as the Shadow Minister for London, a position that he held in addition to his other responsibilities. In December 2013, the Fabian Society published a collection of essays edited by Khan that was titled "Our London". Khan was also tasked with overseeing Labour's campaign for the 2014 London local elections, in which the party advanced its control in the city, gaining hold of twenty of the thirty-two boroughs. By this point, there was much talk of Khan making a bid for the London Mayoralty in 2016, when incumbent Mayor Boris Johnson would be stepping down. His options were affected by the outcome of the 2015 general election; if Labour won, then he would be expected to become a government minister, but if they lost then he would be free to pursue the Mayoralty. In December 2015, Khan voted against the Cameron government's plans to expand the bombing of targets in the Islamic State.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Polls had suggested that Labour could be the largest party in a hung parliament following the 2015 general election, but ultimately the Conservatives secured victory. In the vote, Khan was returned for a third term as MP for Tooting, defeating his Conservative rival by 2,842 votes. He was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015, but has said that he was "no patsy" to Corbyn and would stand up to him. He later stated that he nominated Corbyn to "broaden the debate" but did not then vote for him.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 9 May 2016, Khan resigned as an MP by his appointment to the ancient office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of The Three Chiltern Hundreds, a customary practice in the UK. This triggered a by-election in Tooting which was held on 16 June 2016.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: He is regularly named among the Top 100 London politicians in the "London Evening Standard"s annual poll of the 1,000 most influential Londoners and is an Ambassador for Mosaic Network, an initiative set up by Prince Charles.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In 2016, Sadiq Khan ran to become the mayor of London and was elected with 57% of the vote. He became just the third ever London Mayor and is London's first Muslim mayor and first ethnic minority mayor. Khan was officially sworn in as Mayor in a multi-faith ceremony held in Southwark Cathedral the following day. His first act as mayor was his appearance at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in a rugby stadium in North London, although due to delays with the results of the election, he officially took office on 9 May.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: After Labour's defeat at the 2015 general election, Khan resigned from the Shadow Cabinet. He then announced himself as a candidate to be the Labour nominee for the London Mayoral elections of 2016. Khan soon gained the support of prominent figures in the party, including former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, who was on Labour's leftist, socialist wing, and Oona King, who was on its centrist, Blairite wing. He also received the backing of the Labour-affiliated GMB and Unite unions, and the nomination of 44 of Labour's 73 parliamentary constituent parties in London, leaving him as one of the top two contenders.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan's main rival was Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith; Khan described him as a spoiled dilettante who "never finishes anything he starts". A YouGov poll for LBC suggested that while the other main contender to be the Labour nominee, Tessa Jowell, would defeat Goldsmith in a mayoral election, Khan would not. In hustings, Khan placed an emphasis on his working-class origins, which would play against Jowell's wealthier upbringing, and argued for the need for change in London, thereby insinuating that Jowell would represent too much continuity with the outgoing Johnson administration. In September 2015, Khan was announced as the winning nominee. He gained 48,152 votes (58.9%) against Jowell's 35,573 (41.1%). He was the favourite candidate in all three voting categories; Labour Party members, members of affiliated trade unions and organisations, and registered supporters who had paid £3 in order to vote.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan vowed that if elected, he would freeze public transport fares in London for four years. He claimed that this would deprive Transport for London (TfL) of £452 million, but TfL stated that it would deprive them of £1.9 billion, taking into account projected population growth over this period. Although he had previously backed Heathrow expansion, he now opposed it, instead calling for expansion at Gatwick Airport. He spoke of clamping down on foreign property investors, and proposed the establishment of both a "London living rent" tenure and a not-for-profit lettings agency that could undercut commercial operators in order to ease the high cost of renting in the city. He also called for house building on land owned by TfL, insisting that at least 50% of those constructed should be "genuinely affordable".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: A YouGov poll found that 31% of Londoners stated that they would not be "comfortable" with a Muslim mayor. He declared his opposition to homophobia, and said that he would have "zero tolerance for anti-Semitism". He openly condemned Islamic extremism and called on the Muslim community to take a leading role in combating it, although at the same time acknowledged the Islamophobia that many British Muslims faced. Khan declared that he would be "the most pro-business mayor ever", and met with groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses and City of London Corporation. Goldsmith's Conservative campaign emphasised connections between Khan and then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Both the Conservative campaign and several Conservative-aligned newspapers were accused of tarring Khan as an apologist for, or even sympathiser with, Islamic extremism.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: International press sources often focused on his religious identity, with many right-wing American media outlets reacting with horror at his election.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan won the election with 57% of the vote. The 1.3 million votes he received are the largest any UK politician has personally received to date. Various press sources noted that Khan's election made him the first actively affiliated Muslim to become mayor of a major Western capital.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: After the 2019 United Kingdom general election, following the resignation of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party, there were some speculations on whether Khan could run in the triggered leadership election. However, he ruled himself out of the leadership election, to run for a second term as mayor of London, which he explained he was 'absolutely' more interested in. In the 2021 London mayoral election, Khan was re-elected for a second term, defeating the Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey. It is expected that he will continue to serve as Mayor until at least 2024.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In August 2016, Khan declared his support for Owen Smith's failed bid to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party. Although describing him as a "principled Labour man", Khan said that Corbyn had failed to gain popularity with the electorate and that Labour would not win a general election under Corbyn's leadership.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 8 January 2021, Khan announced a planned council tax rise of 9.5% to help fund policing and free transport for pensioners and schoolchildren in London. Mr Khan's proposal would see an overall increase of 9.5% or £31.59 a year for an average Band D council tax payer. Since his first budget in 2017–18, Mr Khan has increased the Greater London Authority's council tax precept by 31%, from £280 a year to £363.66 a year for a Band D property. On the same day, Khan also ordered London residents to cease travelling after he declared the COVID-19 crisis in London a "major incident" with "out of control" spread, as infection rates for London were estimated to be around 1 in 30, with highs of 1 in 20 in some parts of the city.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In the buildup to the referendum on the UK's continuing membership of the European Union (EU), Khan was a vocal supporter of the "Remain" camp. He agreed to attend a Britain Stronger in Europe campaign event with the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to demonstrate cross-party support for remaining within the EU, for which he was criticised by Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who claimed that sharing a platform with the Conservatives "discredits us". After the murder of MP Jo Cox during the campaign, Khan called for the country to "pause and reflect" on the manner in which the Leave and Remain camps had been approaching the debate, stating that it had been marred by a "climate of hatred, of poison, of negativity, of cynicism". Following the success of the "Leave" vote, Khan insisted that all EU citizens living in London were welcome in the city and that he was grateful for the contribution that they made to it. He endorsed the Metropolitan Police's "We Stand Together" campaign to combat the rise in racial abuse following the referendum, and later backed the "London is Open" campaign to encourage businesses, artists, and performers to continue coming to the city despite Brexit.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 20 October 2018, Khan marched with People's Vote protestors from Park Lane to Parliament Square in support of a referendum on the final Brexit deal. The march was started by Khan and featured speeches by Delia Smith and Steve Coogan. The organisers of the march said that almost 700,000 people took part. Police stated that they were unable to estimate the numbers involved and a later police debriefing document prepared by Khan's Greater London Authority estimated the number to be 250,000.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 23 March 2019, Khan took part in the "Put It to the People" march in London in support of a second Brexit referendum. Khan addressed a rally at the end of the march alongside SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, Conservative peer Michael Heseltine, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, and MPs Jess Phillips, Justine Greening and David Lammy.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: While fasting for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2016, Khan declared that he would use the period as an opportunity to help "break down the mystique and suspicion" surrounding Islam in Britain and help to "get out there and build bridges" between communities, organising iftars to be held at synagogues, churches, and mosques. He then appeared at a Trafalgar Square celebration of Eid al-Fitr, endorsing religious freedom and lambasting "criminals who do bad things and use the name of Islam to justify what they do". Following the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, Khan attended a vigil in Old Compton Street, Soho, and insisted that he "will do everything in [his] power to ensure that LGBT Londoners feel safe in every part of our city"; later that month he marched in the LGBT Pride London parade.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom, protesters sprayed graffiti on the Statue of Winston Churchill, Parliament Square over two successive days, including, following the inscription "Churchill", the words "was a racist". As a result, Khan controversially announced that he had ordered the statue to be temporarily covered up to preserve it from further vandalism.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 9 June 2020, in response to the unrest, Khan said that he believed some statues of slavers in London "should be taken down", and established the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. The commission has been tasked with reviewing London's statues, street names, monuments, sculptures, artworks and other landmarks, with the potential for removal. The commission is in response to the anti-racist protests which saw protesters topple a Statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, whilst also defacing a number of statues across the country. That evening the statue of Robert Milligan, a merchant and slave trader, outside the Museum of London Docklands was removed by the local authority and the Canal & River Trust.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 11 June 2020, a joint statement from the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust announced that the Statue of Robert Clayton, together with that of Thomas Guy, would be removed from public view and that they would work with Khan on the issue.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On transport, Khan immediately announced the introduction of a "Hopper" bus ticket which would allow a passenger to take two bus and tram journeys within an hour for the price of one; it was intended to benefit those on low incomes most. In January 2018, this system was upgraded to offer unlimited journeys and allowing travel on Tube or rail services in between. In June 2016, Khan announced that his electoral pledge to prevent transport fare rises would only apply to "single fares" and pay as you go fares, and not daily, monthly, weekly, or yearly railcards; he was widely criticised for this. That same month, he ordered TfL to ban any advertising on its network that was deemed to body shame or demean women. In July he urged the government to allow TfL to take control of the failing Southern rail service, and in August launched the 24-hour Night Tube service on Fridays and Saturdays, an idea initially proposed by Johnson.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan backed expansion of London City Airport, removing the block on this instituted by Johnson's administration; environmentalist campaigners like Siân Berry stated that this was a breach of Khan's pledge to be London's "greenest ever" mayor.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Opposing expansion at Heathrow Airport, he urged Prime Minister Theresa May to instead support expansion at Gatwick Airport, stating that to do so would bring "substantial economic benefits" to London.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In August 2020, Khan announced that Crossrail, a new east–west rail link through the centre of London, referred to as the Elizabeth Line, has been delayed again until 2022, requiring an additional £1.1 billion in funding to complete the project. The line was originally due to open in 2018


title: Sadiq Khan

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Khan was criticized for closing stations and reducing services on the tube network resulting in overcrowding and putting key workers travelling to work at risk. On 17 March 2020 Khan announced the London Underground would begin running a reduced service due to the virus. Khan shut down the Waterloo & City line, several tube stations and the Night Tube. From 20 March, 40 tube stations were closed.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan was the first British political leader to call for face masks to be worn in public in April 2020. On 22 April, Khan warned that TfL could run out of money to pay staff by the end of April unless Boris Johnson's government stepped in. Two days later, TfL announced it was furloughing around 7,000 employees, about a quarter of its staff, to help mitigate a 90% reduction in fare revenues.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 7 May, Transport for London, the capital's transport authority which Khan chairs, requested a £2 billion government bail-out to keep services running until September 2020. Without an agreement with the government, deputy mayor for transport Heidi Alexander said TfL might have to issue a "Section 114 notice" – the equivalent of a public body going bust. On 14 May, Khan and UK Government agreed a £1.6 billion emergency funding package to keep Tube and bus services running. To achieve the bailout package, Khan had raise TfL fares by 1% above inflation, which went against a pledge he made during his mayoral election campaign to not increase fares. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps MP blamed Khan for the "poor condition of TfL’s financial position" during his four years as Mayor.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: From 22 June 2020, Khan has implemented an increase in the London Congestion Charge to £15 a day, from £11.50. Its hours of operation have also been extended to 7am – 10pm every day, including weekends. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers, police officers, firefighters and transport workers are also included in the charge, despite a campaign by the Metropolitan Police Federation to exempt them.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan began discussing with local leaders plans for further restrictions in London in late September 2020, and delivered a plan to the central government to introduce measures to curb the worsening outbreak and called for a "circuit-breaker lockdown" of London on 13 October 2020, citing advice from SAGE. The plan was not used; a second national lockdown was not introduced until 31 October. He declared a "major incident" due to a need for emergency coordination to mitigate the major strain on London's healthcare system in January 2021.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: According to polling in March 2021, 42% of Londoners agreed that Khan had handled COVID-19 "well", and 39% "badly".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In July 2021, Khan maintained a face mask requirement on London transport, despite the government removing the requirement nationwide, citing the risk of virus transmission. He later expressed frustration at the subsequent fall in compliance and TfL staff's inability to enforce these rules, and said he would lobby the government to introduce legal backing for the rule.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In his first weeks as Mayor, Khan criticised foreign investors for treating homes in London as "gold bricks for investment", instead urging them to invest in the construction of "affordable homes" for Londoners through a new agency, Homes for Londoners, which would be funded by both public and private money. Homes for Londoners is governed by a board and chaired by Khan.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: However, in contrast to one of his pre-election statements, he revealed that he no longer supported rent freezes in the city. By 2022, Khan had reverted to supporting rent freezes.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan vetoed the construction of a football stadium and two blocks of flats on Green Belt land in Chislehurst, after the plan had already been supported by Bromley Council, insisting that he would "oppose building on the Green Belt, which is now even more important than when it was created".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan launched a "No Nights Sleeping Rough" taskforce to tackle youth homelessness in London in October 2016.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan has called air pollution “the biggest public health emergency of a generation.” In October 2017, he introduced the Toxicity Charge (T-charge); operating within the same hours and zone as the London congestion charge, the T-Charge levied a £10 fine on top of that for older and more polluting vehicles (typically diesel and petrol ones registered before 2006) that do not meet . In that same year, he announced plans to establish a replacement: an "Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ)" that would charge owners of the most polluting cars a fine of £12.50 per day on top of the congestion charge. The all day, every day (except on Christmas Day) zone was introduced in 2019 in Central London, extended to the North and South Circulars in 2021, and will be extended to the whole of Greater London from 2023. The charge applies to diesel cars and vans whose engines aren't at the latest as well as most petrol cars pre-2005; in addition, non-compliant buses, coaches and lorries must pay £100. The initial zone resulted in a drop of the worst polluting vehicles entering the zone each day from 35,578 in March 2019 to 26,195 in April after the charge was introduced.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan criticised the UK government in June 2017 for its lack of drive in improving general air quality. He stated that the government's action plan on the issue lacked “serious detail, fails to tackle all emission sources, such as from buildings, construction or the river, and does not utilise the government’s full resources and powers”, reflecting its low prioritisation of the issue in the past.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In September, he announced that the first 50 air quality audits for primary schools in the worst-polluted areas of the city had been launched with the objective to reduce air pollution around public schools. The audits will continue until the end of 2017, with reports being published in 2018.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan plans to construct a tunnel under the Thames in Greenwich, the Silvertown Tunnel, something which his office claims is needed to relieve traffic congestion. However, environmentalists say it will induce more demand and lead to worsening air quality and car dependency, leading the Green Party, Liberal Democrats, some Conservatives, and even some Labour MPs and mayors to come out against the project. In July 2021, the London Labour regional conference called for the tunnel to be scrapped, by 74% to 26%.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Since Khan became Mayor, crime rates in London have been increasing in every reporting year, whereby London is currently "experiencing an upsurge in serious violent crime, particularly among teenagers and young men". In figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), crime in London was five times higher than the rest of the United Kingdom in 2019. Killings using a blade saw a 28 percent increase from 67 in 2018 to 86 in 2019.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: While knife crime in London fell for three years in a row, down from 14,159 in 2010–2011 to 9,680 in 2014–15, under Boris Johnson, Khan's predecessor as Mayor of London, Khan has presided over an increase in knife crime to 12,061 offences in 2016–17 and 14,695 in 2017–18. In February 2018, reported murders in London exceeded those in New York City for the first time. London recorded 45 murders during January through March 2018 whereas New York recorded 38.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: In an interview with LBC, Khan accepted responsibility for rising crime in London as the Police and Crime Commissioner for the city, but blamed budgetary cuts by the UK Conservative Government. Khan stated that knife crime is "rising across England & Wales" and that it is "clearly a national problem that requires national solutions." Following the 2019 London Bridge stabbing Khan stated, “You can’t disaggregate terrorism and security from cuts made to resources of the police, of probation, the tools that judges have … The key thing is we need to support the police and security service. (...) The point I am making is we can be safer, with more police and more resources.”


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Whilst Khan has been Mayor, London's murder rate is at a ten-year high. The Metropolitan police recorded 149 homicides in 2019 up to 30 December. In five years the homicide rate has increased by more than 50%, from 94 cases in 2014.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Writing for "The Spectator", the political commentator Nick Cohen described Khan as a centre-left social democrat, while the journalist Amol Rajan termed him "a torch-bearer for the social democratic wing" of the Labour Party. The BBC describe Khan as being located on the party's soft left. In an article for Al Jazeera, the Marxist commentator Richard Seymour described Khan as a centrist, while Matt Wrack, the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, characterised Khan as belonging to "that part of the Labour Party that was in government under Blair and Brown". The journalist Dave Hill described Khan as a social liberal.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan has described himself as a "proud feminist". In April 2019, Khan joined the Jewish Labour Movement. He criticised the Trump administration's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Khan said the British government should apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in British-ruled India. Khan condemned the plans for a protest march against Narendra Modi's government over India's treatment of Kashmir during the Hindu festival of Deepavali.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan quotes from the Quran and hadith when discussing terrorism. He received death threats from Islamic extremists after voting in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act. He was also threatened by the far-right group Britain First, which in 2016 threatened to take "direct action" against Khan where he "lives, works and prays" as part of an anti-Muslim campaign.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Journalist Dave Hill has said that Khan was "savvy, streetwise and not averse to a scrap", whilst also describing him as having a "joshing, livewire off-stage personality" which differed from the formal image he often projected while onstage.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan used to perform stand-up comedy before running for Mayor, including a ten-minute money-raising "Stand Up for Labour" routine. Comedian Arthur Smith stated that Khan could become a "good club-level comedian one day". During the 2016 Mayoral campaign, Goldsmith referred to Khan as "a caricature machine politician... the sort of politician who justified peoples' mistrust in politics", as evidence citing Khan's U-turn on supporting Heathrow expansion.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Another rival in the 2016 Mayoral campaign, George Galloway of the Respect Party, referred to Khan as a "flip-flop merchant" and a "product of the Blairite machine".


title: Sadiq Khan

text: There has been an ongoing political feud between Khan and former US president Donald Trump since 2016, when Khan criticised Trump over his proposed "Muslim ban" and Trump responded by attacking Khan a number of times on Twitter over the next several years. Shortly before Trump's 2019 state visit to the UK, Khan compared Trump to "European dictators of the 1930s and 40s". Upon arrival, Trump responded on Twitter by calling him a "stone-cold loser" and comparing him to another mayor he also targets, Bill de Blasio.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: On 9 June 2020, Khan said that he believed some statues of slavers in London "should be taken down", and established the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm to do so.


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan is a practising Muslim who observes the fast during Ramadan and regularly attends Al-Muzzammil Mosque in Tooting. Journalist Dave Hill described Khan as "a moderate, socially liberal Muslim". Khan has expressed the view that "too often the people who are 'representing' the Islamic faith aren't representative, they're angry men with beards. And that is not what Islam is about."


title: Sadiq Khan

text: Khan married Saadiya Ahmed, a fellow solicitor, in 1994. They have two daughters, both raised in the Islamic faith. He is a supporter of Liverpool F.C.


title: SD card

text: Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.


title: SD card

text: The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDisk, Panasonic (Matsushita) and Toshiba as an improvement over MultiMediaCards (MMCs), and has become the industry standard. The three companies formed SD-3C, LLC, a company that licenses and enforces intellectual property rights associated with SD memory cards and SD host and ancillary products.


title: SD card

text: The companies also formed the SD Association (SDA), a non-profit organization, in January 2000 to promote and create SD Card standards. SDA today has about 1,000 member companies. The SDA uses several trademarked logos owned and licensed by SD-3C to enforce compliance with its specifications and assure users of compatibility.


title: SD card

text: In 1999, SanDisk, Panasonic (Matsushita), and Toshiba agreed to develop and market the Secure Digital (SD) Memory Card. The card was derived from the MultiMediaCard (MMC) and provided digital rights management based on the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) standard and for the time, a high memory density.


title: SD card

text: It was designed to compete with the Memory Stick, a DRM product that Sony had released the year before. Developers predicted that DRM would induce wide use by music suppliers concerned about piracy.


title: SD card

text: The trademarked "SD" logo was originally developed for the Super Density Disc, which was the unsuccessful Toshiba entry in the DVD format war. For this reason the "D" within the logo resembles an optical disc.


title: SD card

text: At the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) trade show, the three companies announced the creation of the SD Association (SDA) to promote SD cards. The SD Association, headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States, started with about 30 companies and today consists of about 1,000 product manufacturers that make interoperable memory cards and devices. Early samples of the SD card became available in the first quarter of 2000, with production quantities of 32 and 64 MB cards available three months later.


title: SD card

text: The miniSD form was introduced at March 2003 CeBIT by SanDisk Corporation which announced and demonstrated it. The SDA adopted the miniSD card in 2003 as a small form factor extension to the SD card standard. While the new cards were designed especially for mobile phones, they are usually packaged with a miniSD adapter that provides compatibility with a standard SD memory card slot.


title: SD card

text: The microSD removable miniaturized Secure Digital flash memory cards were originally named T-Flash or TF, abbreviations of TransFlash. TransFlash and microSD cards are functionally identical allowing either to operate in devices made for the other. microSD (and TransFlash) cards are electrically compatible with larger SD cards and can be used in devices that accept SD cards with the help of a passive adapter, which contains no electronic components, only metal traces connecting the two sets of contacts. Unlike the larger SD cards, microSD does not offer a mechanical write protect switch, thus an operating-system-independent way of write protecting them does not exist in the general case. SanDisk conceived microSD when its Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and the CTO of Motorola concluded that current memory cards were too large for mobile phones.


title: SD card

text: The card was originally called T-Flash, but just before product launch, T-Mobile sent a cease-and-desist letter to SanDisk claiming that T-Mobile owned the trademark on T-(anything), and the name was changed to TransFlash.


title: SD card

text: At CTIA Wireless 2005, the SDA announced the small microSD form factor along with SDHC secure digital high capacity formatting in excess of 2 GB with a minimum sustained read and write speed of 17.6 Mbit/s. SanDisk induced the SDA to administer the microSD standard. The SDA approved the final microSD specification on July 13, 2005. Initially, microSD cards were available in capacities of 32, 64, and 128 MB.


title: SD card

text: The Motorola E398 was the first mobile phone to contain a TransFlash (later microSD) card. A few years later, its competitors began using microSD cards.


title: SD card

text: The SDHC format, announced in January 2006, brought improvements such as 32 GB storage capacity and mandatory support for FAT32 file system. In April, the SDA released a detailed specification for the non-security related parts of the SD memory card standard and for the Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) cards and the standard SD host controller.


title: SD card

text: In September 2006, SanDisk announced the 4 GB miniSDHC. Like the SD and SDHC, the miniSDHC card has the same form factor as the older miniSD card but the HC card requires HC support built into the host device. Devices that support miniSDHC work with miniSD and miniSDHC, but devices without specific support for miniSDHC work only with the older miniSD card. Since 2008, miniSD cards are no longer produced, due to market domination of the even smaller microSD cards.


title: SD card

text: The storage density of memory cards has increased significantly throughout the 2010s decade, allowing the earliest devices to offer support for the SD:XC standard, such as the Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II mobile phones, to expand their available storage to several hundreds of gigabytes.


title: SD card

text: In January 2009, the SDA announced the SDXC family, which supports cards up to 2 TB and speeds up to 300 MB/s. SDXC cards are formatted with the exFAT filesystem by default. SDXC was announced at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009 (January 7–10). At the same show, SanDisk and Sony also announced a comparable Memory Stick XC variant with the same 2 TB maximum as SDXC, and Panasonic announced plans to produce 64 GB SDXC cards. On March 6, Pretec introduced the first SDXC card, a 32 GB card with a read/write speed of 400 Mbit/s. But only early in 2010 did compatible host devices come onto the market, including Sony's Handycam HDR-CX55V camcorder, Canon's EOS 550D (also known as Rebel T2i) Digital SLR camera, a USB card reader from Panasonic, and an integrated SDXC card reader from JMicron. The earliest laptops to integrate SDXC card readers relied on a USB 2.0 bus, which does not have the bandwidth to support SDXC at full speed.