title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell also acted occasionally, including a recurring role as main antagonist "Dutch" Dixon on his series "Renegade". He also took a turn in an episode of "Silk Stalkings", in which the script called for one character to tell him, "You look just like that writer on TV," to which Cannell's character responds, "I get that all the time." Cannell appeared as himself in the 2009 pilot of the ABC show "Castle" and again in two episodes of season two. Along with James Patterson, Dennis Lehane, and Michael Connelly, he was one of Castle's poker buddies. In season three, following Cannell's death, an empty seat at the poker table is described as Cannell's, and remains empty for a full year in tribute to him.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Starting in 1995, Cannell turned his attention to writing novels. His first novel, "The Plan", was released in 1997 by Avon. As of 2010, he had written 18, 11 of which featured the character of detective Shane Scully of the Los Angeles Police Department. Seven are stand-alone novels. The last in the series, "Vigilante", was released December 2011 by St. Martin's Press.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell's TV series "The A-Team" was remade into a 2010 feature-length film. Cannell served as a producer and creative consultant for the project. His other series "21 Jump Street" was made into a 2012 feature by Columbia Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and into the sequel "22 Jump Street", which was released in June 2014.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell married his high school sweetheart, Marcia, in 1964. He "asked her to go steady in the eighth grade". Together they had two daughters, Tawnia and Chelsea, and two sons, Cody and Derek. Derek died in 1981 at age 15 when a sand castle he was building at the beach collapsed and suffocated him. This tragedy had occurred during the filming of the "Captain Bellybuster" episode of "The Greatest American Hero." Actor William Katt (an expert musician) wrote a song for Cannell, titled, "Cody the Cowboy". Cannell was so touched by this gift that he named his next son Cody in honor of the song.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell was dyslexic, and was a spokesman on the subject. According to an episode of Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story", Cannell frequently had to dictate ideas or even complete scripts with the help of his personal secretary Grace Curcio, an employee of 20 years. Following Grace's retirement in 2003, Kathy Ezso became his editor and executive assistant. He discussed his experiences as a dyslexic in the 2009 documentary "Dislecksia: The Movie".


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell wrote on a typewriter, an IBM Selectric, when not dictating to an assistant, and only used a computer for research purposes.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell died on September 30, 2010, from complications of melanoma. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. In tribute to his memory, the producers of "Castle" ended their third-season episode "Punked" with a new version of Cannell's production company logo, which featured video of Cannell at his typewriter tossing out a typed sheet, over a caption reading, "Stephen J. Cannell. Colleague. Mentor. Friend. We'll miss you, pal." The episode aired October 11, 2010 on ABC.


title: Stephen J. Cannell

text: Cannell sold his company in March 1995 to New World Communications for $30 million and News Corporation acquired New World in 1996. However, two of Cannell's series, "The A-Team" and "Hunter" are controlled by two other studios: Universal Television for the former and Sony Pictures Television for the latter and weren't part of the deal. Also part of the deal, Cannell would pay Fox for international and domestic sales for his series. On May 4, 1998, Cannell reacquired his library from Fox.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: Dyshidrosis is a type of dermatitis that is characterized by itchy blisters on the palms of the hands and bottoms of the feet. Blisters are generally one to two millimeters in size and heal over three weeks. However, they often recur. Redness is not usually present. Repeated attacks may result in fissures and skin thickening.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: The cause is unknown. Triggers may include allergens, physical or mental stress, frequent hand washing, or metals. Diagnosis is typically based on what it looks like and the symptoms. Allergy testing and culture may be done to rule out other problems. Other conditions that produce similar symptoms include pustular psoriasis and scabies.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: Avoiding triggers may be useful, as may a barrier cream. Treatment is generally with steroid cream. High strength steroid creams may be required for the first week or two. Antihistamines may be used to help with the itch. If this is not effective steroid pills, tacrolimus, or psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA) may be tried.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: About 1 in 2,000 people are affected in Sweden. Males and females appear to be affected equally. It explains about one in five cases of hand dermatitis. The first description was in 1873. The name comes from the word "dyshidrotic", meaning "difficult sweating", as problems with sweating was once believed to be the cause.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: The exact causes of dyshidrosis are unknown. Food allergens may be involved in certain cases. Cases studies have implicated a wide range of foods including tuna, tomato, pineapple, chocolate, coffee, and spices among others. A number of studies have implicated balsam of Peru. A 2013 study found that dyshydrosis on the hands increased among those allergic to house dust mites, following inhalation of house dust mite allergen.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: Dyshidrosis is diagnosed clinically, by gathering a patient's history and making careful observations (see signs and symptoms section). Severity of symptoms can also be assessed using the dyshidrotic eczema area and severity index (DASI). The DASI has been designed for clinical trials and is not typically used in practice.


title: Dyshidrosis

text: There are many treatments available for dyshidrosis. However, few of them have been developed or tested specifically on the condition.


title: Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II

text: A hypothetical military victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of World War II (1939–1945) is a common topic in speculative literature. Works of alternative history (fiction) and of counterfactual history (non-fiction), including stories, novels, and plays, often explore speculative public and private life in lands conquered by the coalition, whose principal powers were Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy.


text: The first work to inspire the genre was "Swastika Night" (1937), by Katherine Burdekin, a British novel published before Nazi Germany launched the Second World War in 1939. Later novels of alternative history include"The Man in the High Castle" (1962) by Philip K. Dick, "SS-GB" (1978) by Len Deighton, and "Fatherland" (1992) by Robert Harris. The stories deal with the politics, culture, and personalities who would have allowed the fascist victories against democracy, and with the psychology of daily life in totalitarian societies. The novels present stories of how ordinary citizens deal with fascist military occupation and with the resentments of being under colonial domination.


text: The literature uses the Latin term Pax Germanica to describe such fictional post-war outcomes. The term Pax Germanica was applied to the hypothetical Imperial German victory in the First World War (1914–1918), which usage derives from the term Peace of Westphalia used in the Latin-language documents that formally ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).


text: Academics, such as Gavriel David Rosenfeld in "The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism" (2005), have researched the media representations of 'Nazi victory'.


text: Helen White stated that a hypothetical world in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War is a harsher and grimmer place to live than the real world where Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers lost the War in 1945. Speculative literature about hypothetical military victories by the Axis Powers have generally been English-language literary work from the British Commonwealth and the United States as such protagonists tend to experience events from the perspective of military defeat and foreign military occupation. The literary tone of alternative history fiction presents the military victory of the Axis Powers as a melancholy background, against which the reader sees the unfolding of political plots in a socially strained atmosphere of foreign occupation and socio-economic domination.


text: "The Ultimate Solution" (1973), by Eric Norden, shows the Nazified people and society of the US as a morally hopeless nation and state; a state of affairs that concludes with a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The social story of "SS-GB" (1978), by Len Deighton, concludes with a US commando raid into Nazi occupied Great Britain, to rescue British nuclear scientists, while the British Resistance remains hopeful of eventual military liberation by the US. In "Clash of Eagles" (1990), by Leo Rutman, the people of New York City rebel against the Nazi occupation of the US. In "Fatherland" (1992), by Robert Harris, the story concludes with the protagonists exposing the Holocaust to the American people, thereby thwarting Hitler's rapprochement with the US, meant to solve the continual economic crises of the Greater German Reich. Harry Turtledove's "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" (2003) presents the Nazi world two generations after their victory in WWII, in a time and place that allowed political liberalization and democratization.


text: The novel "Swastika Night" (1937) presents the post-war world born from the victory of the Axis Powers: A dictatorship characterized by much "violence and mindlessness", which are justified by "irrationality and superstition". Published two years before Nazi Germany began the Second World War in 1939, "Swastika Night" is a work of future history and not a work of alternative history. The book reviewer Darragh McManus said that although the story and plot of the novel are “a huge leap of imagination, "Swastika Night" posits a terrifyingly coherent and plausible [world]”, that “considering when it was published, and how little of what we know of the Nazi régime today was then understood, the novel is eerily prophetic and perceptive about the nature of Nazism”.


text: The short story "I, James Blunt" (1941) is a work of war-time propaganda set in a fictional September 1944 when Great Britain is under Nazi rule. The story is told through the entries of a diary, which describe the social and economic consequences of military occupation, such as British workers sent to the shipyards of Nazi Germany and to Scottish shipyards to build warships to attack the U.S. The novel concludes with the diarist exhorting the readers of "I, James Blunt" to ensure that the story of the Nazi occupation of Great Britain remains as fiction.


text: The novel "We, Adolf I" (1945) presents a Nazi victory in the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) which allowed Hitler to crown himself emperor of the world. In Berlin, the Nazis build an imperial palace featuring architectural elements of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. In the course of the story, the despot Hitler enters a dynastic marriage with the Japanese Imperial princess in effort to produce a Fascist heir to rule the world after Hitler.


text: "The Last Jew: A Novel" ("Ha-Yehudi Ha'Aharon", 1946) tells the future history of a Nazi world ruled by the League of Dictators, wherein the last Jew to survive the Final Solution is discovered hiding in Madagascar. The League of Dictators plan the public execution of the last Jew as entertainment during the Olympic Games. Before they can realize the spectacular death of the last Jew, the Moon's excessive proximity to Earth, a negative consequence of Nazi lunar colonization, provokes a catastrophe that extinguishes life on planet Earth. The novel should not be confused with Yoram Kaniuk's novel "The Last Jew", which has been translated to English.


text: The stage play "Peace in Our Time" (1947) explores the nature of fascist rule in London and examines the deleterious effects of military occupation upon the mental health of the common man and the common woman. As a playwright, Coward was included in the Gestapo's Black Book of enemies-of-the-state to be arrested upon completion of Operation Sea Lion, the Nazi conquest of Great Britain.


text: The novel "The Man in the High Castle" (1962) presents an Axis victory after Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated in 1933, and the United States is divided between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.


text: Counterfactual scenarios are also written as a form of academic paper rather than necessarily as fiction and/or novel-length fiction:


text: The "All About History" Bookazine series came out with "What if...Book of Alternate History" (2019). Among the articles are "What if...Germany had won the Battle of Britain?" and "What if...The Allies had lost the Battle of the Atlantic?"


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich () or SS Division Das Reich was an elite division of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II, formed from the regiments of the "SS-Verfügungstruppe" (SS-VT). The division served during the invasion of France and took part in several major battles on the Eastern Front, including in the Battle of Prokhorovka against the 5th Guards Tank Army at the Battle of Kursk. It was then transferred to the West and took part in the fighting in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, ending the war fighting the Soviets in Hungary and Austria. The division committed the Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle massacres along with others on the Eastern Front.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In August 1939 Adolf Hitler placed the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH), later SS Division Leibstandarte, and the "SS-Verfügungstruppe" (SS-VT) under the operational command of the High Command of the German Army. The units' performance during the Invasion of Poland raised doubts over the combat effectiveness of the SS-VT. Himmler insisted that the SS-VT should be allowed to fight in its own formations under its own commanders, while the OKW tried to have the SS-VT disbanded altogether. Hitler was unwilling to upset either the army or Heinrich Himmler, and chose a third path. He ordered that the SS-VT form its own divisions but that the divisions would be under army command.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In October 1939 the "SS-Verfügungstruppe" regiments Deutschland, Germania and Der Führer were organized into the SS-Verfügungs-Division with Paul Hausser, a former army officer, as commander. Thereafter, the SS-VT and the LSSAH took part in combat training while under army commands in preparation for Fall Gelb, the invasion against the Low Countries and France in 1940.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In May 1940, the Der Führer Regiment was detached from the division and relocated near the Dutch border, with the remainder of the SS-VT Division behind the line in Münster, awaiting the order to invade the Netherlands. The regiment and LSSAH participated in the ground invasion of the Netherlands, which began on 10 May. An NCO in Der Führer’s 3rd Battalion, "Oberscharführer" Ludwig Kepplinger, became the first Waffen-SS recipient of the Knight’s Cross, awarded for leading a patrol over the ruined bridge at IJssel and taking Fort Westervoort by surprise.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: On the following day, the rest of the SS-VT Division crossed into the Netherlands, participating in the drive for the Dutch central front and Rotterdam, which they reached on 12 May. After that city had been captured, the SS-VT Division, along with other German formations, were sent to "mop up" the remaining French-Dutch force holding out in the area of Zeeland and the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: After the fighting in the Netherlands ended, the SS-VT Division was transferred to France. On 24 May the LSSAH, along with the SS-VT Division were positioned to hold the perimeter around Dunkirk and reduce the size of the pocket containing the encircled British Expeditionary Force and French forces. A patrol from the SS-VT Division crossed the canal at Saint-Venant, but was destroyed by British armor. A larger force from the SS-VT Division then crossed the canal and formed a bridgehead at Saint-Venant; 30 miles from Dunkirk. On the following day, British forces attacked Saint-Venant, forcing the SS-VT Division to retreat and relinquish ground. On 26 May the German advance resumed. On 27 May, Regiment Deutschland of the SS-VT Division reached the Allied defensive line on the Leie River at Merville. They forced a bridgehead across the river and waited for the SS Division Totenkopf to arrive to cover their flank. What arrived first was a unit of British tanks, which penetrated their position. The SS-VT managed to hold on against the British tank force, which got to within 15 feet of commander Felix Steiner's position. Only the arrival of the Totenkopf Panzerjäger platoon saved the Regiment Deutschland from being destroyed and their bridgehead lost. By 30 May, most of the remaining Allied forces had been pushed back into Dunkirk where they were evacuated by sea to England. The SS-VT Division next took part in the drive towards Paris.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: After the Battle of France, the SS-VT was officially renamed the Waffen-SS in July 1940. In December 1940 the Germania Regiment was removed from the "Verfügungs-Division" and used to form the cadre of a new division, SS Division Germania. By the start of 1941, the division was renamed "Reich" (in 1942 "Das Reich"), and "Germania" was renamed as SS Division Wiking.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In April 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. The LSSAH and Das Reich were attached to separate army Panzer Corps. Fritz Klingenberg, a company commander in Das Reich, led his men across Yugoslavia to the capital, Belgrade, where a small group in the vanguard accepted the surrender of the city on 13 April. A few days later Yugoslavia surrendered.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: For the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Das Reich fought under Army Group Center, taking part in the Battle of Yelnya near Smolensk; it was then in the spearhead of Operation Typhoon aimed at the capture of the Soviet capital. By the time the division took part in the Battle of Moscow, it had lost 60 percent of its combat strength. It was further reduced in the Soviet Winter counter-offensive: for example, the Der Führer Regiment was down to 35 men out of the 2,000 that had started the campaign in June. The division was "mauled". By February 1942, it had lost 10,690 men. By mid-1942, the division was pulled out of the fighting line and sent to the west to refit as a Panzergrenadier division.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In January 1943, the division was transferred back from France to the Eastern Front. There it participated in the fighting around Kharkov. Here the unit engaged in some heavy fighting against 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, among other units. Thereafter, it was one of three SS divisions which made up the II SS Panzer Corps, which took part in the Battle of Kursk that summer. The division operated in the southern sector of the Kursk bulge during the Battle of Prokhorovka. It was pulled out of the battle along with the other SS divisions when the offensive was discontinued, giving the strategic initiative to the Red Army. The Battle of Kursk was the first time that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate to its strategic depths. In October, the division was redesignated, this time as SS Panzer Division Das Reich to reflect its complement of tanks.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: In April 1944, Das Reich took up a new base near the city of Montauban in southern France. The location was chosen so that the division could respond quickly to the anticipated Allied invasion of France on either the Atlantic Coast or the Mediterranean Sea. In May the division received 37 Panzer IV and 55 Panther tanks, well below the official complement of 62 of each, but a full complement of 30 Sturmgeschütz III assault guns. Fuel and truck shortages hampered training and movement and many of the more than 15,000 men in the division were recent recruits and inadequately trained.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: The Allied Normandy landings took place on 6 June 1944. On 7 June Das Reich was ordered to move to Normandy to reinforce the German units contesting the Allied invasion. An unopposed movement of men and equipment by railroad would have taken three or four days over approximately . However, the option to move by rail had been preempted by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The rail cars to be used for transporting the tanks and equipment were unguarded. In the days before 6 June French operatives of the SOE's Pimento network, headed by Anthony Brooks, sabotaged the rail cars by draining the axle oil and replacing it with an abrasive powder that caused the axles of the cars to seize up. The powder had been parachuted in by SOE. The perpetrators of the sabotage were a 16 year old girl named Tetty, her boyfriend, her 14-year old sister, and several of their friends.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: As a consequence of the sabotage of the rail cars, Das Reich left Montauban on 8 June with 1,400 vehicles and proceeded northward by road. Travel by road caused the steel tracks of the tanks and assault guns to wear out; vehicles broke down frequently; and fuel was in short supply. Pinprick attacks by groups of resistors, called Maquis, killed 15 Germans on the first two days of the movement. More than 100 French were killed, many of them unarmed civilians. Das Reich was ordered to suppress the Maquis during its journey; "to break the spirit of the population by making examples." The division carried out the order by massacring hundreds of civilians on 9 and 10 June in Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane.(see below) Attacks by resistance forces mostly ended on 12 June as Das Reich moved into less favorable territory for ambushes.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: Air attacks hindered the progress of the division in the last phases of its northward journey. On 11 June British bombers attacked and destroyed several railcars full of much-needed gasoline at Châtellerault. The air strike was directed by the Special Air Service (SAS) group called Operation Bulbasket. After its advance elements crossed the Loire River on 13 June, the division was under constant air attacks during the day. As a result, Das Reich arrived only piecemeal to the Normandy battlefield between 15 and 30 June, its arrival delayed at least several days by the resistance attacks and air strikes. Rather than going on the offensive to try to push the Allies back into the sea, Das Reich initially found itself mostly plugging gaps in the German defenses. The division was not reunited until 10 July.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: On 4 August Hitler ordered a counter-offensive, Operation Lüttich, from Vire towards Avranches; the operation included Das Reich. The Allied forces were prepared for this offensive, and an air attack on the combined German units proved devastating. Paris was liberated on 25 August, and the last of the German forces withdrew over the Seine by the end of August, ending the Normandy campaign. The US 2nd Armored Division had encircled Das Reich and the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen around Roncey. In the process Das Reich and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division lost most of their armored equipment. Around Roncey P-47 Thunderbolts of the 405th Fighter group destroyed a German column of 122 tanks, 259 other vehicles, and 11 artillery pieces. A separate attack by British Hawker Typhoons close to La Baleine destroyed 9 tanks, 8 other armored vehicles, and 20 other vehicles. A column around La Chapelle was attacked at point blank range by 2nd Armored Division artillery. Over the course of two hours American artillery fired over 700 rounds into the column. The division suffered the loss of 50 dead, 60 wounded and 197 taken prisoner. Material losses were over 260 German combat vehicles destroyed. Beyond the town another 1,150 German soldiers were killed in combat. The division also lost an additional 96 armored combat vehicles and trucks. On 13 September 1944, the division reported having 12,357 officers and men, down from 17,283 on 1 July. The division surrendered to the U.S. Army in May 1945.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: During the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, members of the division committed crimes against the civilian population as well as Yugoslav prisoners of war in the area of Alibunar (Vojvodina, Serbia) where an estimated 200 people were murdered. 51 corpses were found in a mass grave in Alibunar's Serbian Orthodox Church's yard, as well as 54 others in the nearby settlement of Selište. The crimes were committed as a retaliation for the involvement of armed civilians during the fighting in the area and the murder of the regimental adjutant.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: A support unit of the division aided an SS extermination group in the slaughter of 920 Jews near Minsk in September 1941.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: After the Allied second front opened on 6 June 1944, all resistance groups joined "into the uprising". Part of the division was ordered to attack strongholds of the rural strongholds of French Resistance fighters as it moved to Normandy. After a successful FTP offensive on 7 and 8 June 1944, Das Reich was ordered to the Tulle-Limoges area. The arrival of the SS troops "rescued the beleaguered" army troops and ended the fighting in the city of Tulle. On 9 June, in reprisal for the German losses, the SS hanged 99 men from the town and another 149 were deported to Germany.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: The division massacred 642 French civilians in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944 in the Limousin region. SS-"Sturmbannführer" Adolf Diekmann, commander of the I Battalion, 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment (Der Führer) that committed the massacre, claimed that it was a just retaliation due to partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping of "Sturmbannführer" Helmut Kämpfe, commander of the III Battalion, although the German authorities had already executed ninety-nine people in the Tulle massacre, following the killing of some forty German soldiers in Tulle by the Maquis resistance movement.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane, and ordered all the townspeople to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers examined. All the women and children were locked in the church. The men were led to six barns and sheds. One of the six survivors of the massacre, Robert Hebras, described the killings as a deliberate act of mass murder. In 2013, he told the U.K. newspaper "The Mirror" that the SS intentionally burned men, women, and children after locking them in the church and spraying it with machine gun fire:


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: It was simply an execution. There were a handful of Nazis in front of us, in their uniforms. They just raised their machine guns and started firing across us, at our legs to stop us getting out. They were strafing, not aiming. Men in front of me just started falling. I got caught by several bullets, but I survived because those in front of me got the full impact. I was so lucky. Four of us in the barn managed to get away because we remained completely still under piles of bodies. One man tried to get away before they had gone – he was shot dead. The SS were walking around and shooting anything that moved. They poured petrol on bodies and then set them alight."


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: Marcel Darthout's experience was similar. His testimony appears in historian Sara Farmer's 2000 book "Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane":


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: We felt the bullets, which brought me down. I dove... everyone was on top of me. And they were still firing. And there was shouting. And crying. I had a friend who was lying on top of me and who was moaning. And then it was over. No more shots. And they came at us, stepping on us. And with a rifle they finished us off. They finished off my friend who was on top of me. I felt it when he died.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: Darthout and Hebras' eyewitness testimony was corroborated by other survivors of the massacre. One other survivor, Roger Godfrin, escaped from the school for refugees despite being shot at by SS soldiers. Only one woman, Marguerite Rouffanche, survived from the church. She later testified that at about five in the afternoon, two German soldiers placed a crate of explosives on the altar and attached a fuse to it. She and another women and her baby hid behind the sacristy; after the explosion they climbed on a stool and jumped out of a window three meters from the ground. A burst of machine gun fire hit all of them, but Rouffanche was able to crawl into the presbytery garden. The woman and infant were killed.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: Diekmann was later killed in the battle of Normandy in 1944. On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux, heard the case against the surviving sixty-five of the approximately two hundred SS soldiers who had been involved. Only twenty-one of them were present. Seven of them were Germans, but fourteen were Alsatians, (French nationals of Germanic culture). On 11 February, twenty defendants were found guilty, but were released after only a few months for lack of evidence. In December 2011 German police raided the homes of six former members of the division, all aged 85 or 86, to determine exactly what role the men had played that day. SS-"Brigadeführer" Heinz Lammerding, who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful business career in West Germany. The French government never obtained his extradition from the German authorities.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: Following the war, one of the regimental commanders of the division, Otto Weidinger, wrote an apologia of the division under the auspices of HIAG, the historical negationist organization and a lobby group of former Waffen-SS members. The unit narrative was extensive and strived for a so-called official representation of their history, backed by maps and operational orders. "No less than 5 volumes and well over 2,000 pages were devoted to the doings of the 2nd Panzer Division "Das Reich"", points out the military historian S.P. MacKenzie.


title: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich

text: The Das Reich divisional history was published by HIAG's publishing house Munin Verlag. Its express aim was to publish the "war narratives" of former Waffen-SS members, and the titles did not go through the rigorous processes of historical research or assessment common in the traditional historical works; they were negationist accounts unedited by professional historians and presented the former Waffen-SS members' version of events. The divisional history, like other HIAG publications, focused on the positive, "heroic" side of National Socialism. The French author Jean-Paul Picaper, who studied the Oradour massacre, notes the tendentious nature of Weidinger's narrative: it provided a sanitized version of history without any references to war crimes.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Z is a 1969 Algerian political thriller film, directed by Costa-Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly-fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of the democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. With its dark view of Greek politics and its downbeat ending, the film captures the director's outrage about the junta that then ruled Greece.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as the investigating magistrate, an analogue of Christos Sartzetakis, who would be the Greek president from 1985 to 1990. International stars Yves Montand and Irene Papas also appear but, despite their star billing have very little screen time. Jacques Perrin, who coproduced the film, plays a key role as a photojournalist.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The film's title refers to a popular Greek protest slogan (, ) meaning "he lives," in reference to Lambrakis.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: It was the first film and one of only a handful to be nominated by the Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film. It won the latter as well as the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film. At the 27th Golden Globe Awards, its producers refused the award to protest the film's exclusion from the Best Motion Picture – Drama category.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The story begins with the closing moments of a rather dull government lecture and slideshow on agricultural policy until the leader of the security police of a right-wing military-dominated government takes over the podium for an impassioned speech describing the government's program to combat leftism by using the metaphors "a mildew of the mind", an infiltration of "isms" and "sunspots".


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The scene shifts to preparations for a rally of the opposition faction in which the pacifist deputy is to give a speech advocating nuclear disarmament. There have been attempts by the government to prevent the speech from being delivered. The venue has been changed to a much smaller hall, logistical problems have appeared out of nowhere and the people handing out leaflets about the change of venue are attacked by thugs under the command of the police. On his way to the venue, the deputy is hit on the head by one of the right-wing anticommunist protestors, some of whom are sponsored by the government, but carries on with his sharp speech. As the deputy crosses the street from the hall after giving his speech, a delivery truck speeds past him, and a man on the open truck bed strikes him down with a club. The injury eventually proves fatal, and the police manipulate witnesses to force the conclusion that the deputy was simply run over by a drunk driver.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: However, the police do not control the hospital, where the autopsy disproves their interpretation. The examining magistrate, with the assistance of a photojournalist (Perrin), now uncovers sufficient evidence to indict not only the two right-wing militants who committed the murder but also four high-ranking military police officers. The action of the film concludes with one of the deputy's associates rushing to see his widow to give her the surprising news of the officers' indictments. The widow looks distressed and appears not to believe things will change for the better.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: An epilogue provides a synopsis of the subsequent turns of events. Instead of justice being served, the prosecutor is mysteriously removed from the case, several key witnesses die under suspicious circumstances, the assassins receive relatively short sentences, the officers receive only administrative reprimands, the deputy's close associates die or are deported and the photojournalist is sent to prison for disclosing official documents. The heads of the government resign after public disapproval, but before elections are carried out, a coup d'état occurs, and the military seize power. They ban modern art, popular music, avant-garde novelists, modern mathematics, classic and modern philosophers and the use of the term "Ζ" (, or , which is used by protesters against the former government), which refers to the deputy and means: "He lives."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The 1963 murder of Greek politician and physician Grigoris Lambrakis and subsequent military junta served as the basis for the story. Among Costa-Gavras' references to the actual events was the frequency with which the military compared ideologies to diseases, seen when the General compares -isms to mildew. The Magistrate was based on real-life Greek jurist Christos Sartzetakis. Costa-Gavras opted to show the Deputy had adulteries and conflicts with his wife to demonstrate he was simply a man.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Costa-Gavras was also motivated by the suspicious disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka in 1965. Some American viewers infer parallels between the film and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, particularly given how some stylistic elements seem to mimic the Zapruder film. That said, Costa-Gavras has stated that the Zapruder film had not been widely circulated in Europe at the time and that Kennedy's assassination did not influence the production.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Principal photography took place in Algiers at actor Jacques Perrin's suggestion, which the filmmakers approved for its Mediterranean environment and because the Ministry of Culture was accommodating. In Algiers, the Hotel St. Georges and the central square were filming locations, while Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was used for the ballet scenes. Marcel Bozzuffi performed his own stunts wrestling on the "Kamikaze" vehicle due to the production's lack of budget for professional stunt performers.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Costa-Gavras chose "Z" as the title of the film based on its common occurrence in Greek graffiti, for "He lives" (or even "Lambrakis you live; be our guide!" [Λαμπράκη ζεις, εσύ μας οδηγείς!; "Lambráki zis, esý mas odigís!"]); Costa-Gavras acknowledged a one-letter film title was unconventional and said Yves Montand expressed concern it would be confused with "Zorro", but Costa-Gavras said the novelty of the idea won him over.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The soundtrack, by Mikis Theodorakis, was a hit record. The Greek junta had placed the composer under house arrest but he was able to give his approval to Costa-Gavras for the use of existing musical pieces.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The film features, but does not credit, Pierre Henry's contemporary hit song, "Psyché Rock". The soundtrack as released on LP and CD replaces Henry's song with a similar track written by Theodorakis named "Café Rock."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: "The Happy Youth" and "Who's Not Talking About Easter" were among the poems adapted from Brendan Behan's play "The Hostage" by Theodorakis in 1962. By referring to the Irish struggle against British rule rather than Greek realities, they offered a way to circumvent censorship in Greece and condemn Greece's post-war right-wing establishment. "The Smiling Youth" (το γελαστό παιδί) was also one of the nicknames of Lambrakis.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Prints of the film were acquired by the Black Panther Party and shown at underground screenings. An advance copy of the film was shown at the United Front Against Fascism conference in 1969.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: At the time of release, "Chicago Sun-Times" film critic Roger Ebert, who named "Z" the best film of 1969, liked the screenplay and its message, and wrote, "["Z"] is a film of our time. It is about how even moral victories are corrupted. It will make you weep and will make you angry. It will tear your guts out...When the Army junta staged its coup in 1967, the right-wing generals and the police chief were cleared of all charges and 'rehabilitated.' Those responsible for unmasking the assassination now became political criminals. These would seem to be completely political events, but the young director Costa-Gavras has told them in a style that is almost unbearably exciting. "Z" is at the same time a political cry of rage and a brilliant suspense thriller. It even ends in a chase: Not through the streets but through a maze of facts, alibis and official corruption."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: In 2006, James Berardinelli wrote, ""Z" was the third feature film from Greek-born Costa-Gavras, but it is the movie that captured him to the world's attention, winning a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It introduced the director's signature approach of combining overt political messages with edge-of-the-seat tension." Jonathan Richards wrote in 2009, "It's hard to overstate the impact that this Oscar-winning procedural thriller had in 1969, on a world roiling in political activism, repression, and discord. In the U.S., the Vietnam War was on the front burner, the populace was passionately engaged, and the police riots outside the '68 Chicago Democratic Convention and the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton were raw wounds. With this stylish, intense indictment of the assassination of a leftist political leader by a right wing government cabal in his native Greece, director Costa-Gavras struck a nerve that resonated here and around the globe."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: Filmmakers Paul Greengrass and Aki Kaurismäki listed the film in their top 10 films of all time for the 2012 Sight and Sound poll.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: It is regarded as one of American filmmaker Oliver Stone's favorite films that inspired his filmmaking.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh listed "Z" as an inspiration on his film "Traffic" and even stated that he: "wanted to make it like [Costa-Gavras]'s Z".


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The American filmmaker William Friedkin listed "Z" as one of his favorite films and mentioned the film's influence on him when directing his film, "The French Connection": "After I saw "Z", I realized how I could shoot the French Connection. Because he [Costa-Gavras] shot 'Z' like a documentary. It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn't know what was gonna happen next. And that is an induced technique. It looks like he happened upon the scene and captured what was going on as you do in a documentary. My first films were documentaries too. So I understood what he was doing but I never thought you could do that in a feature at that time until I saw "Z"."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 94% "fresh" score based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The site's consensus states: "Powerfully effective, this anti-fascist political thriller stands out as both high-conscience melodrama and high-tempo action movie."


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The film was selected to be screened in the Cannes Classics section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: The film had a total of 3,952,913 admissions in France and was the 4th highest-grossing film of the year. It was also very popular in the United States grossing $17.3 million, being one of the top five highest-grossing non-English language films there.


title: Z (1969 film)

text: "Z" was the second foreign-language film in Academy history to receive a nomination for Best Picture, after "Grand Illusion".


title: Biometrics

text: Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance.


title: Biometrics

text: Biometric identifiers are the distinctive, measurable characteristics used to label and describe individuals. Biometric identifiers are often categorized as physiological characteristics which are related to the shape of the body. Examples include, but are not limited to fingerprint, palm veins, face recognition, DNA, palm print, hand geometry, iris recognition, retina, odor/scent, voice, shape of ears and gait. Behavioral characteristics are related to the pattern of behavior of a person, including but not limited to mouse movement, typing rhythm, gait, signature, behavioral profiling, and credentials. Some researchers have coined the term behaviometrics to describe the latter class of biometrics.


title: Biometrics

text: More traditional means of access control include token-based identification systems, such as a driver's license or passport, and knowledge-based identification systems, such as a password or personal identification number. Since biometric identifiers are unique to individuals, they are more reliable in verifying identity than token and knowledge-based methods; however, the collection of biometric identifiers raises privacy concerns about the ultimate use of this information.


title: Biometrics

text: Many different aspects of human physiology, chemistry or behavior can be used for biometric authentication. The selection of a particular biometric for use in a specific application involves a weighting of several factors. Jain "et al." (1999) identified seven such factors to be used when assessing the suitability of any trait for use in biometric authentication. Biometric authentication is based upon biometric recognition which is a advanced method of recognising biological and behavioural characteristics of an Individual.


title: Biometrics

text: Proper biometric use is very application dependent. Certain biometrics will be better than others based on the required levels of convenience and security. No single biometric will meet all the requirements of every possible application.


title: Biometrics

text: The block diagram illustrates the two basic modes of a biometric system. First, in verification (or authentication) mode the system performs a one-to-one comparison of a captured biometric with a specific template stored in a biometric database in order to verify the individual is the person they claim to be. Three steps are involved in the verification of a person. In the first step, reference models for all the users are generated and stored in the model database. In the second step, some samples are matched with reference models to generate the genuine and impostor scores and calculate the threshold. The third step is the testing step. This process may use a smart card, username, or ID number (e.g. PIN) to indicate which template should be used for comparison. "Positive recognition" is a common use of the verification mode, "where the aim is to prevent multiple people from using the same identity".


title: Biometrics

text: Second, in identification mode the system performs a one-to-many comparison against a biometric database in an attempt to establish the identity of an unknown individual. The system will succeed in identifying the individual if the comparison of the biometric sample to a template in the database falls within a previously set threshold. Identification mode can be used either for "positive recognition" (so that the user does not have to provide any information about the template to be used) or for "negative recognition" of the person "where the system establishes whether the person is who she (implicitly or explicitly) denies to be". The latter function can only be achieved through biometrics since other methods of personal recognition, such as passwords, PINs, or keys, are ineffective.


title: Biometrics

text: The first time an individual uses a biometric system is called "enrollment". During enrollment, biometric information from an individual is captured and stored. In subsequent uses, biometric information is detected and compared with the information stored at the time of enrollment. Note that it is crucial that storage and retrieval of such systems themselves be secure if the biometric system is to be robust. The first block (sensor) is the interface between the real world and the system; it has to acquire all the necessary data. Most of the times it is an image acquisition system, but it can change according to the characteristics desired. The second block performs all the necessary pre-processing: it has to remove artifacts from the sensor, to enhance the input (e.g. removing background noise), to use some kind of normalization, etc. In the third block, necessary features are extracted. This step is an important step as the correct features need to be extracted in an optimal way. A vector of numbers or an image with particular properties is used to create a "template". A template is a synthesis of the relevant characteristics extracted from the source. Elements of the biometric measurement that are not used in the comparison algorithm are discarded in the template to reduce the file size and to protect the identity of the enrollee. However, depending on the scope of the biometric system, original biometric image sources may be retained, such as the PIV-cards used in the Federal Information Processing Standard Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and Contractors (FIPS 201).


title: Biometrics

text: During the enrollment phase, the template is simply stored somewhere (on a card or within a database or both). During the matching phase, the obtained template is passed to a matcher that compares it with other existing templates, estimating the distance between them using any algorithm (e.g. Hamming distance). The matching program will analyze the template with the input. This will then be output for a specified use or purpose (e.g. entrance in a restricted area), though it is a fear that the use of biometric data may face mission creep.


title: Biometrics

text: Selection of biometrics in any practical application depending upon the characteristic measurements and user requirements. In selecting a particular biometric, factors to consider include, performance, social acceptability, ease of circumvention and/or spoofing, robustness, population coverage, size of equipment needed and identity theft deterrence. The selection of a biometric is based on user requirements and considers sensor and device availability, computational time and reliability, cost, sensor size, and power consumption.


title: Biometrics

text: Multimodal biometric systems use multiple sensors or biometrics to overcome the limitations of unimodal biometric systems. For instance iris recognition systems can be compromised by aging irises and electronic fingerprint recognition can be worsened by worn-out or cut fingerprints. While unimodal biometric systems are limited by the integrity of their identifier, it is unlikely that several unimodal systems will suffer from identical limitations. Multimodal biometric systems can obtain sets of information from the same marker (i.e., multiple images of an iris, or scans of the same finger) or information from different biometrics (requiring fingerprint scans and, using voice recognition, a spoken passcode).


title: Biometrics

text: Multimodal biometric systems can fuse these unimodal systems sequentially, simultaneously, a combination thereof, or in series, which refer to sequential, parallel, hierarchical and serial integration modes, respectively.


title: Biometrics

text: Fusion of the biometrics information can occur at different stages of a recognition system. In case of feature level fusion, the data itself or the features extracted from multiple biometrics are fused. Matching-score level fusion consolidates the scores generated by multiple classifiers pertaining to different modalities. Finally, in case of decision level fusion the final results of multiple classifiers are combined via techniques such as majority voting. Feature level fusion is believed to be more effective than the other levels of fusion because the feature set contains richer information about the input biometric data than the matching score or the output decision of a classifier. Therefore, fusion at the feature level is expected to provide better recognition results.


title: Biometrics

text: Spoof attacks consist in submitting fake biometric traits to biometric systems, and are a major threat that can curtail their security. Multi-modal biometric systems are commonly believed to be intrinsically more robust to spoof attacks, but recent studies have shown that they can be evaded by spoofing even a single biometric trait.


title: Biometrics

text: The discriminating powers of all biometric technologies depend on the amount of entropy they are able to encode and use in matching.


title: Biometrics

text: An early cataloguing of fingerprints dates back to 1885 when Juan Vucetich started a collection of fingerprints of criminals in Argentina. Josh Ellenbogen and Nitzan Lebovic argued that Biometrics originated in the identification systems of criminal activity developed by Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) and by Francis Galton's theory of fingerprints and physiognomy. According to Lebovic, Galton's work "led to the application of mathematical models to fingerprints, phrenology, and facial characteristics", as part of "absolute identification" and "a key to both inclusion and exclusion" of populations. Accordingly, "the biometric system is the absolute political weapon of our era" and a form of "soft control". The theoretician David Lyon showed that during the past two decades biometric systems have penetrated the civilian market, and blurred the lines between governmental forms of control and private corporate control. Kelly A. Gates identified 9/11 as the turning point for the cultural language of our present: "in the language of cultural studies, the aftermath of 9/11 was a moment of articulation, where objects or events that have no necessary connection come together and a new discourse formation is established: automated facial recognition as a homeland security technology."


title: Biometrics

text: Adaptive biometric systems aim to auto-update the templates or model to the intra-class variation of the operational data. The two-fold advantages of these systems are solving the problem of limited training data and tracking the temporal variations of the input data through adaptation. Recently, adaptive biometrics have received a significant attention from the research community. This research direction is expected to gain momentum because of their key promulgated advantages. First, with an adaptive biometric system, one no longer needs to collect a large number of biometric samples during the enrollment process. Second, it is no longer necessary to enroll again or retrain the system from scratch in order to cope with the changing environment. This convenience can significantly reduce the cost of maintaining a biometric system. Despite these advantages, there are several open issues involved with these systems. For mis-classification error (false acceptance) by the biometric system, cause adaptation using impostor sample. However, continuous research efforts are directed to resolve the open issues associated to the field of adaptive biometrics. More information about adaptive biometric systems can be found in the critical review by Rattani "et al."


title: Biometrics

text: In recent times, biometrics based on brain (electroencephalogram) and heart (electrocardiogram) signals have emerged. An example is finger vein recognition, using pattern-recognition techniques, based on images of human vascular patterns. The advantage of this newer technology is that it is more fraud resistant compared to conventional biometrics like fingerprints. However, such technology is generally more cumbersome and still has issues such as lower accuracy and poor reproducibility over time.


title: Biometrics

text: On the portability side of biometric products, more and more vendors are embracing significantly miniaturized biometric authentication systems (BAS) thereby driving elaborate cost savings, especially for large-scale deployments.


title: Biometrics

text: An operator signature is a biometric mode where the manner in which a person using a device or complex system is recorded as a verification template. One potential use for this type of biometric signature is to distinguish among remote users of telerobotic surgery systems that utilize public networks for communication.


title: Biometrics

text: John Michael (Mike) McConnell, a former vice admiral in the United States Navy, a former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, and Senior Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton promoted the development of a future capability to require biometric authentication to access certain public networks in his keynote speech at the 2009 Biometric Consortium Conference.


title: Biometrics

text: A basic premise in the above proposal is that the person that has uniquely authenticated themselves using biometrics with the computer is in fact also the agent performing potentially malicious actions from that computer. However, if control of the computer has been subverted, for example in which the computer is part of a botnet controlled by a hacker, then knowledge of the identity of the user at the terminal does not materially improve network security or aid law enforcement activities.


title: Biometrics

text: Rather than tags or tattoos, biometric techniques may be used to identify individual animals: zebra stripes, blood vessel patterns in rodent ears, muzzle prints, bat wing patterns, primate facial recognition and koala spots have all been tried.


title: Biometrics

text: Biometrics have been considered also instrumental to the development of state authority (to put it in Foucauldian terms, of discipline and biopower). By turning the human subject into a collection of biometric parameters, biometrics would dehumanize the person, infringe bodily integrity, and, ultimately, offend human dignity.


title: Biometrics

text: In a well-known case, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben refused to enter the United States in protest at the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator (US-VISIT) program's requirement for visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed. Agamben argued that gathering of biometric data is a form of bio-political tattooing, akin to the tattooing of Jews during the Holocaust. According to Agamben, biometrics turn the human persona into a bare body. Agamben refers to the two words used by Ancient Greeks for indicating "life", "zoe", which is the life common to animals and humans, just life; and "bios", which is life in the human context, with meanings and purposes. Agamben envisages the reduction to bare bodies for the whole humanity. For him, a new bio-political relationship between citizens and the state is turning citizens into pure biological life ("zoe") depriving them from their humanity ("bios"); and biometrics would herald this new world.


title: Biometrics

text: In Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, surveillance scholar Simone Browne formulates a similar critique as Agamben, citing a recent study relating to biometrics R&D that found that the gender classification system being researched "is inclined to classify Africans as males and Mongoloids as females." Consequently, Browne argues that the conception of an objective biometric technology is difficult if such systems are subjectively designed, and are vulnerable to cause errors as described in the study above. The stark expansion of biometric technologies in both the public and private sector magnifies this concern. The increasing commodification of biometrics by the private sector adds to this danger of loss of human value. Indeed, corporations value the biometric characteristics more than the individuals value them. Browne goes on to suggest that modern society should incorporate a "biometric consciousness" that "entails informed public debate around these technologies and their application, and accountability by the state and the private sector, where the ownership of and access to one's own body data and other intellectual property that is generated from one's body data must be understood as a right."


title: Biometrics

text: Other scholars have emphasized, however, that the globalized world is confronted with a huge mass of people with weak or absent civil identities. Most developing countries have weak and unreliable documents and the poorer people in these countries do not have even those unreliable documents. Without certified personal identities, there is no certainty of right, no civil liberty. One can claim his rights, including the right to refuse to be identified, only if he is an identifiable subject, if he has a public identity. In such a sense, biometrics could play a pivotal role in supporting and promoting respect for human dignity and fundamental rights.


title: Biometrics

text: The biometrics of intent poses further risks. In his paper in Harvard International Review, Prof Nayef Al-Rodhan cautions about the high risks of miscalculations, wrongful accusations and infringements of civil liberties. Critics in the US have also signaled a conflict with the 4th Amendment.


title: Biometrics

text: It is possible that data obtained during biometric enrollment may be used in ways for which the enrolled individual has not consented. For example, most biometric features could disclose physiological and/or pathological medical conditions (e.g., some fingerprint patterns are related to chromosomal diseases, iris patterns could reveal sex, hand vein patterns could reveal vascular diseases, most behavioral biometrics could reveal neurological diseases, etc.). Moreover, second generation biometrics, notably behavioral and electro-physiologic biometrics (e.g., based on electrocardiography, electroencephalography, electromyography), could be also used for emotion detection.


title: Biometrics

text: When thieves cannot get access to secure properties, there is a chance that the thieves will stalk and assault the property owner to gain access. If the item is secured with a biometric device, the damage to the owner could be irreversible, and potentially cost more than the secured property. For example, in 2005, Malaysian car thieves cut off a man's finger when attempting to steal his Mercedes-Benz S-Class.


title: Biometrics

text: As per the recent ISO/IEC 30107 standard, presentation attacks are defined as "presentation to the biometric capture subsystem with the goal of interfering with the operation of the biometric system". These attacks can be either impersonation or obfuscation attacks. Impersonation attacks try to gain access by pretending to be someone else. Obfuscation attacks may, for example, try to evade face detection and face recognition systems.


title: Biometrics

text: Biometrics are employed by many aid programs in times of crisis in order to prevent fraud and ensure that resources are properly available to those in need. Humanitarian efforts are motivated by promoting the welfare of individuals in need, however the use of biometrics as a form of surveillance humanitarianism can create conflict due to varying interests of the groups involved in the particular situation. Disputes over the use of biometrics between aid programs and party officials stalls the distribution of resources to people that need help the most. In July 2019, the United Nations World Food Program and Houthi Rebels were involved in a large dispute over the use of biometrics to ensure resources are provided to the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Yemen whose lives are threatened. The refusal to cooperate with the interests of the United Nations World Food Program resulted in the suspension of food aid to the Yemen population. The use of biometrics may provide aid programs with valuable information, however its potential solutions may not be best suited for chaotic times of crisis. Conflicts that are caused by deep-rooted political problems, in which the implementation of biometrics may not provide a long-term solution.


title: Biometrics

text: One advantage of passwords over biometrics is that they can be re-issued. If a token or a password is lost or stolen, it can be cancelled and replaced by a newer version. This is not naturally available in biometrics. If someone's face is compromised from a database, they cannot cancel or reissue it. If the electronic biometric identifier is stolen, it is nearly impossible to change a biometric feature. This renders the person's biometric feature questionable for future use in authentication, such as the case with the hacking of security-clearance-related background information from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in the United States.


title: Biometrics

text: Cancelable biometrics is a way in which to incorporate protection and the replacement features into biometrics to create a more secure system. It was first proposed by Ratha "et al."


title: Biometrics

text: "Cancelable biometrics refers to the intentional and systematically repeatable distortion of biometric features in order to protect sensitive user-specific data. If a cancelable feature is compromised, the distortion characteristics are changed, and the same biometrics is mapped to a new template, which is used subsequently. Cancelable biometrics is one of the major categories for biometric template protection purpose besides biometric cryptosystem." In biometric cryptosystem, "the error-correcting coding techniques are employed to handle intraclass variations." This ensures a high level of security but has limitations such as specific input format of only small intraclass variations.


title: Biometrics

text: Several methods for generating new exclusive biometrics have been proposed. The first fingerprint-based cancelable biometric system was designed and developed by Tulyakov "et al." Essentially, cancelable biometrics perform a distortion of the biometric image or features before matching. The variability in the distortion parameters provides the cancelable nature of the scheme. Some of the proposed techniques operate using their own recognition engines, such as Teoh "et al." and Savvides "et al.", whereas other methods, such as Dabbah "et al.", take the advantage of the advancement of the well-established biometric research for their recognition front-end to conduct recognition. Although this increases the restrictions on the protection system, it makes the cancellable templates more accessible for available biometric technologies


title: Biometrics

text: Soft biometrics are understood as not strict biometrical recognition practices that are proposed in favour of identity cheaters and stealers.


title: Biometrics

text: Traits are physical, behavioral or adhered human characteristics that have been derived from the way human beings normally distinguish their peers (e.g. height, gender, hair color). They are used to complement the identity information provided by the primary biometric identifiers. Although soft biometric characteristics lack the distinctiveness and permanence to recognize an individual uniquely and reliably, and can be easily faked, they provide some evidence about the users identity that could be beneficial. In other words, despite the fact they are unable to individualize a subject, they are effective in distinguishing between people. Combinations of personal attributes like gender, race, eye color, height and other visible identification marks can be used to improve the performance of traditional biometric systems. Most soft biometrics can be easily collected and are actually collected during enrollment. Two main ethical issues are raised by soft biometrics. First, some of soft biometric traits are strongly cultural based; e.g., skin colors for determining ethnicity risk to support racist approaches, biometric sex recognition at the best recognizes gender from tertiary sexual characters, being unable to determine genetic and chromosomal sexes; soft biometrics for aging recognition are often deeply influenced by ageist stereotypes, etc. Second, soft biometrics have strong potential for categorizing and profiling people, so risking of supporting processes of stigmatization and exclusion.


title: Biometrics

text: Many countries, including the United States, are planning to share biometric data with other nations.


title: Biometrics

text: In testimony before the US House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Homeland Security on "biometric identification" in 2009, Kathleen Kraninger and Robert A Mocny commented on international cooperation and collaboration with respect to biometric data, as follows:


title: Biometrics

text: According to an article written in 2009 by S. Magnuson in the National Defense Magazine entitled "Defense Department Under Pressure to Share Biometric Data" the United States has bilateral agreements with other nations aimed at sharing biometric data. To quote that article:


title: Biometrics

text: Certain members of the civilian community are worried about how biometric data is used but full disclosure may not be forthcoming. In particular, the Unclassified Report of the United States' Defense Science Board Task Force on Defense Biometrics states that it is wise to protect, and sometimes even to disguise, the true and total extent of national capabilities in areas related directly to the conduct of security-related activities. This also potentially applies to Biometrics. It goes on to say that this is a classic feature of intelligence and military operations. In short, the goal is to preserve the security of 'sources and methods'.


title: Biometrics

text: Countries using biometrics include Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Greece, China, Gambia, Germany, India, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Turkey Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela.


title: Biometrics

text: Among low to middle income countries, roughly 1.2 billion people have already received identification through a biometric identification program.


title: Biometrics

text: There are also numerous countries applying biometrics for voter registration and similar electoral purposes. According to the International IDEA's ICTs in Elections Database, some of the countries using (2017) Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) are Armenia, Angola, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Iraq, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somaliland, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.


title: Biometrics

text: India's national ID program called Aadhaar is the largest biometric database in the world. It is a biometrics-based digital identity assigned for a person's lifetime, verifiable online instantly in the public domain, at any time, from anywhere, in a paperless way. It is designed to enable government agencies to deliver a retail public service, securely based on biometric data (fingerprint, iris scan and face photo), along with demographic data (name, age, gender, address, parent/spouse name, mobile phone number) of a person. The data is transmitted in encrypted form over the internet for authentication, aiming to free it from the limitations of physical presence of a person at a given place.


title: Biometrics

text: About 550 million residents have been enrolled and assigned 480 million Aadhaar national identification numbers as of 7 November 2013. It aims to cover the entire population of 1.2 billion in a few years. However, it is being challenged by critics over privacy concerns and possible transformation of the state into a surveillance state, or into a Banana republic.§ The project was also met with mistrust regarding the safety of the social protection infrastructures. To tackle the fear amongst the people, India's supreme court put a new ruling into action that stated that privacy from then on was seen as a fundamental right. On 24 August 2017 this new law was established.


title: Biometrics

text: The current identity card, known as MyKad, was introduced by the National Registration Department of Malaysia on 5 September 2001 with Malaysia becoming the first country in the world to use an identification card that incorporates both photo identification and fingerprint biometric data on a built-in computer chip embedded in a piece of plastic.


title: Biometrics

text: Besides the main purpose of the card as a validation tool and proof of citizenship other than the birth certificate, MyKad also serves as a valid driver's license, an ATM card, an electronic purse, and a public key, among other applications, as part of the Malaysian Government Multipurpose Card (GMPC) initiative, if the bearer chooses to activate the functions.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Home on the Range is a 2004 American animated Western musical comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 45th Disney animated feature film, it was the last traditionally animated Disney film released until "The Princess and the Frog" in 2009 and "Winnie the Pooh" in 2011. The film was written and directed by Will Finn and John Sanford (in their feature directorial debuts) and produced by Alice Dewey Goldstone, from a story written by Finn, Sanford, Mark Kennedy, Michael LaBash, Sam Levine, and Robert Lence.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Named after the popular country song of the same name, the film features the voices of Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, Cuba Gooding Jr., Randy Quaid, and Steve Buscemi. "Home on the Range" is set in the Old West, and centers on a mismatched trio of dairy cows—brash, adventurous Maggie; prim, proper Mrs. Calloway; and ditzy, happy-go-lucky Grace. The three cows must capture an infamous cattle toed Alameda Slim for his bounty in order to save their idyllic farm from foreclosure. Aiding them in their quest is Lucky Jack, a feisty, peg-legged rabbit, and a selfish horse named Buck, eagerly working in the service of Rico, a famous bounty hunter, who seeks the glory for himself.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: "Home on the Range" premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on March 21, 2004, and was released in the United States on April 2. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $76.5 million at the box office.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: In 1889, Maggie is the only cow left on the Dixon Ranch after a wanted cattle rustler named Alameda Slim stole all the rest of Mr. Dixon's cattle. Dixon has no other choice than to sell Maggie to Pearl Gesner, a kind, aging woman who runs a small farm called Patch of Heaven. Sam Brown, the local Sheriff, arrives to tell Pearl that her bank is cracking down on debtors. Pearl has three days to pay the bank $750, or her farm will be sold to the highest bidder. Hearing this, Maggie convinces the other cows on the farm (Grace, a happy-go-lucky character, and Mrs. Calloway, who has had leadership go to her head) to go to town to attempt to win prize money at a fair. While the cows are in town, a bounty hunter named Rico (whom Buck, the Sheriff's horse, idolizes) drops a criminal off and collects the reward. Stating he needs a replacement horse to go after Alameda Slim while his own horse rests, he takes Buck. When Maggie finds out that the reward for capturing Slim is exactly $750, she convinces the other cows to try to capture him to save Patch of Heaven.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: That night, they hide among a large herd of steers, when Alameda Slim appears. Before any of them can do anything, Slim begins a yodeling song which sends all the cattle (except Grace, who is tone deaf) into a trance that causes them to dance madly and follow Slim anywhere. Grace is able to bring Maggie and Mrs. Calloway back to their senses just before Slim closes the path behind him with a rock slide to stop Rico and his men from chasing him. As Rico discusses with his men what his next move will be, Buck starts talking with Maggie, Grace, and Mrs. Calloway as old friends and miming actions. This causes Rico to believe Buck is frightened by cows, so he sends Buck back to the Sheriff. Buck escapes, determined to capture Slim for himself to prove his worth.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Maggie, Grace, and Mrs. Calloway continue their search for Slim, determined to pass Buck and get to Slim first, but they have a fallout when they lose the trail in a flash flood. Mrs. Calloway accuses Maggie of wanting to go after Slim only as a personal vendetta, arguing that she and Grace are better off without Maggie. The three spend the night under a large rock, with Maggie deciding to leave the next morning while Grace & Mrs. Calloway decide to return to Patch of Heaven to say their final farewells. The next morning, however, they are awakened by a peg-legged jackrabbit named Lucky Jack, who has also lost his home, an old mine, to Alameda Slim. Maggie decides to go after Slim with Lucky Jack in tow, but Grace convinces Mrs. Calloway that they help. Lucky Jack leads the three cows to Slim's lair in Echo Mine. At the mine, Slim reveals that he has been stealing all cattle from his former patrons. When his former patrons can no longer support their land, Slim buys the land when it is auctioned off, under the guise of the respectable-looking Yancy O'Dell, using the very money he gets from selling the cattle he stole.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: After arriving at Slim's lair, the cows capture Slim. They run off with Slim's accomplices and buyer in pursuit on a steam train. Rico arrives. When the chase stops, Rico is revealed to work for Slim. Crushed by this, Buck decides to help the cows and fights Rico while setting the other cattle free. Slim dons his Yancy O'Dell costume and leaves the cows stranded in the middle of the desert with the train, while he goes to attend the auction. However, the cows arrive using the train to the farm and expose Slim. Slim is arrested, and Patch of Heaven is saved by the reward money.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: A few weeks pass, and at the county fair, most of the livestock on Patch of Heaven have won prizes. Lucky Jack moves in with Jebb the Goat, and two steers and Slim's charming and gentlemanly steed Junior the Buffalo arrive unexpectedly to live at Patch of Heaven, expanding the farm.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Before he pitched the idea for "Pocahontas", director Mike Gabriel considered adapting Western legends such as Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Pecos Bill into animated films. When he pitched both projects at the Gong Show meeting, the executives were more interested in "Pocahontas", which went into production first.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: When "Pocahontas" was finished, Gabriel went back to his Western pitch and came up with an "idea that might combine "Captains Courageous" with a Western." Gabriel then developed his concept into a forty-page film treatment, which was well received by then-Feature Animation president Peter Schneider. Soon after, the project, then titled "Sweating Bullets", went into development. The story originated as a supernatural western about a timid cowboy who visits a ghost town and confronts an undead cattle hustler named Slim. It was later reconceived into a story about a little bull named Bullets, that wanted to be more like the horses that led the herd.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: In 1999, in an attempt to salvage the production and retain the existing characters and background art, story artist Michael LaBash suggested a different approach to the story with one that involved three cow protagonists who become bounty hunters to save the farm. Building on the idea, fellow story artists Sam Levine, Mark Kennedy, Robert Lence, and Shirley Pierce developed a new storyline. However, in 2000, Mike Gabriel and co-director Mike Giaimo were removed from the project because of persistent story problems. Returning to Disney Feature Animation after "The Road to El Dorado" at DreamWorks Animation, Will Finn, who was originally slated to be the supervising animator on Maggie, and John Sanford were brought onboard to direct by October 2000.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: In February 1998, Alan Menken had signed a long-term agreement with the Walt Disney Studios to compose songs and/or scores for animated and live-action motion pictures. Following this, according to Menken, he was attached to provide music for "Sweating Bullets" "maybe a year and a half after "Hercules"". Shortly after winning the ASCAP/Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, lyricist Glenn Slater was brought to the attention of Menken, who later invited Slater to work with him on "Sweating Bullets".


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Together, they wrote the first of the film's six original songs back in 1999; the first of which was "Little Patch of Heaven" recorded by k.d. lang before Finn and Sanford were brought on board as directors. The villain song "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo," which incorporates the "William Tell Overture," Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the "1812 Overture" into the yodel dance, was added following several story changes throughout production. Randy Quaid did sing much of “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo,” including the consonants heard during the yodels, but vowel sounds in the yodeling were overdubbed from ghost singers Randy Erwin and Kerry Christianson, two world champion yodelers. Following the September 11 attacks, Menken composed the song "Will the Sun Ever Shine Again" in reaction, which was performed by Bonnie Raitt.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: The soundtrack album of the film was released on March 30, 2004 by Walt Disney Records. It contains vocal songs performed by k.d. lang, Randy Quaid, Bonnie Raitt, Tim McGraw, and The Beu Sisters along with the film's score composed by Alan Menken.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: "Home on the Range" was scheduled for a 2003 release, while "Brother Bear" was originally slated for a spring 2004 release. However, Disney announced that the release dates were switched with both movies. Contrary to speculation, news writer Jim Hill stated the release date switch was not because "Home on the Range" was suffering from story rewrites, but to promote "Brother Bear" on the Platinum Edition release of "The Lion King".


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: "Home on the Range" was released on VHS and DVD on September 14, 2004. The DVD came with an animated short featuring the film's voice cast and animated intros to the DVD menu featuring the same cast. It was released on Blu-ray on July 3, 2012.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes reported that of critics gave positive reviews based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus is: "Though "Home on the Range" is likeable and may keep young children diverted, it's one of Disney's more middling titles, with garish visuals and a dull plot." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 50 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Nathan Rabin, reviewing for "The A.V. Club", praised the film describing it as "a sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, saying that "A movie like this is fun for kids: bright, quick-paced, with broad, outrageous characters. But "Home on the Range" doesn't have the crossover quality he great Disney films like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King". And it doesn't have the freshness and originality of a more traditional movie like "Lilo & Stitch". Its real future, I suspect, lies the in home video. It's only 76 minutes long, but although kids will like it, their parents will be sneaking looks at their watches." Claudia Puig of "USA Today" wrote favorably in her review that ""Home on the Range" is a throwback to old Disney cartoons: fun, rather than message-laden, with broad humor and entertaining action. The cheerful, plucky characters have heart and loyalty, and that's enough to make this a worthy family-friendly animated fest." Nell Minow of Common Sense Media gave the film four out of five stars, saying that "I love it when Disney doesn't take itself too seriously. No one tried to reach for the stars or make this into a classic. "Home on the Range" is just a cute little story about some not-so-contented cows who save the day. It modestly aspires to be nothing more than a lot of fun, and it does that job very well.


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: Elvis Mitchell of "The New York Times" criticized the weak comedy writing that "Unrestrained energy is hardly a bad thing for animation — the best cartoons are built on the contradictory pursuit of meticulously arranged anarchy—but they never seem needy, or desperate for laughs, as "Home on the Range" does. The film seems hungrier for a pat on the head than a chuckle." Similarly, "Los Angeles Times" film critic Kenneth Turan claimed ""Home on the Range" may be acceptable on reflection, but its formulaic desire to mix wisecracks for adults with pratfalls for kids is feeling thin, and its overall air of frantic hysteria does not wear well either." Michael Wilmington of "The Chicago Tribune" noted "Satirizing the movie Western can make for a great cartoon, as it does in Jiri Trnka's brilliant 1949 Czech short "Song of the Prairie," a puppet version of "Stagecoach." But "Home" isn't good satire or good slapstick. It does have those lyrical, catchy Menken tunes, and the film perks up whenever Raitt or lang sing one of them. But much of this movie is deadly. "Home" keeps milking the same gags and throwing the same bull, and after a while you feel cowed watching it."


title: Home on the Range (2004 film)

text: On its opening box office weekend, "Home on the Range" grossed about $14 million in box office estimates, opening fourth behind "", "Walking Tall", and "Hellboy". Following the disappointing box office weekend, financial analysts predicted that Disney would be forced to have write-down the production costs, which totaled more than $100 million. Following the latter release of "The Alamo", which also met poor box office returns, it was reported that Disney would have to write-down about $70 million. The film ended its box office run with $50 million in domestic earnings and $76.5 million worldwide.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: Icarus is a 2017 American documentary film by Bryan Fogel. It chronicles Fogel's exploration of the option of doping to win an amateur cycling race and happening upon a major international doping scandal when he asks for the help of Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2017, and was awarded the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award (Orwell Award). Netflix acquired the distribution rights and released "Icarus" globally on August 4, 2017. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: While investigating the furtive world of illegal doping in sports, Bryan Fogel connects with Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory. Rodchenkov creates a plan for Fogel to take banned performance-enhancing drugs in a way that will evade detection from drug-testing, helping Fogel's experiment to prove that the current way athletes are tested for drugs is insufficient. As Fogel continues his training, he and Rodchenkov become friends, and Rodchenkov eventually reveals that Russia has a state-sponsored Olympic doping program that he oversees.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: When allegations emerge in the international media over the possible existence of such a program, Fogel realizes that Rodchenkov is in danger of being "silenced" by the Russian government and has him flown to Los Angeles for his protection. Using Rodchenkov's knowledge of the doping program, they speak to the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the "New York Times", alleging that Russia has conspired to cheat in the Olympics for decades, and he was hired to ramp up the operation after the Russian team's embarrassing performance in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: On camera, Rodchenkov testifies that at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, with the help of the Federal Security Service, he and his team switched steroid-tainted urine of the Russian national team with clean samples, evading positive detection. He provides spreadsheets, discs, e-mails, and more incriminating evidence of Russian involvement, forcing the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee to investigate. After WADA's independent investigation confirms Rodchenkov's claims, U.S. Law Enforcement places him in protective custody. Rodchenkov's lawyer, Jim Walden, appears briefly in the film describing the threats to Rodchenkov's life and the suspicious deaths of two of Rodchenkov's associates.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: The film ends stating that the Russian government continues to deny it had any involvement with the program and that Rodchenkov remains in protective custody.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Icarus" is eye-opening viewing for professional sports enthusiasts, yet it should also prove thoroughly gripping even for filmgoers who might not necessarily be drawn to the subject." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has an average score of 68 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: Writing for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and called it "a crackling documentary".


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: The trailer for the film was screened during a February 2018 meeting of the U.S. Helsinki Commission (also known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe). During that meeting, attorney Jim Walden spoke about Rodchenkov's work as well as the need for better enforcement by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee in order to eliminate corruption and restore integrity to the international athletic community.


title: Icarus (2017 film)

text: At the 90th Academy Awards, the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. During his on-stage acceptance remarks at the Oscar ceremony, director Bryan Fogel said:We dedicate this award to Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, our fearless whistle-blower who now lives in great danger. We hope 'Icarus' is a wake-up call — yes, about Russia, but more than that, about the importance of telling the truth, now more than ever.


title: Marvel Family

text: The Marvel Family, also known as the Shazam Family (or "Shazamily"), are a group of superheroes who originally appeared in books published by Fawcett Comics and were later acquired by DC Comics. Created in 1942 by writer Otto Binder and artist Marc Swayze, the team was created as an extension of Fawcett's Captain Marvel franchise, and included Marvel's sister Mary Marvel, their friend Captain Marvel Jr., and, at various times, a number of other characters as well.


title: Marvel Family

text: Because Marvel Comics trademarked their own Captain Marvel comic book during the interim between the demise of the Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel comics in 1953 and DC's revival in 1972, DC Comics is today unable to promote and market Captain Marvel under that name. Since 1972, DC has instead used the trademark "Shazam!" for their comic book titles with the Marvel Family characters, and the name under which they market and promote the characters. When referring to the Marvel Family on comic book covers or various merchandise, they are by this legal necessity called the "Shazam Family".


title: Marvel Family

text: In 2012, DC officially changed Captain Marvel's name to "Shazam", making "Shazam Family" the name of the superhero's associates. In current continuity, the Shazam Family comprises the superpowered alter egos of Billy Batson (teenaged alter-ego of Shazam/Captain Marvel) and his foster siblings: Mary Bromfield (formerly Mary Marvel), Freddy Freeman (formerly Captain Marvel Jr.), Darla Dudley, Pedro Peña, and Eugene Choi.


title: Marvel Family

text: The Shazam Family made their cinematic debut in the DC Extended Universe film "Shazam!", released in 2019 by New Line Cinema and Warner Bros., and they are set to return for a sequel film, "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", in 2023.


title: Marvel Family

text: The Marvel Family was established in 1942 after the introductions of Captain Marvel's partners, the Lieutenant Marvels ("Whiz Comics" #21, September 1941), Captain Marvel Jr. ("Whiz Comics" #25, December 1941) and Mary Marvel ("Captain Marvel Adventures" #18, December 1942). With Junior and Mary's additions to his adventures, Captain Marvel became the first superhero to have a team of sidekicks who share his powers, abilities, and appearance; a concept later adapted for heroes such as Superman and Aquaman, among others.


title: Marvel Family

text: The members of the Marvel Family appeared both separately and together in many of Fawcett's comic book series, including "Whiz Comics", "Wow Comics", "Master Comics", "Captain Marvel Adventures", "Captain Marvel Jr.", "Mary Marvel", and "The Marvel Family". By the late 1940s, Marvel Family comics were among the most popular in the industry, and the Marvel Family had expanded to include both non-superpowered characters (Uncle Marvel and Freckles Marvel) and even talking animals (Hoppy the Marvel Bunny). By 1953, all of these books had ceased publication, due to Superman publisher DC Comics' lawsuit against Fawcett.


title: Marvel Family

text: In 1972, DC licensed the rights to the Marvel Family characters, and began publishing them in a comic series titled "Shazam!". Fawcett sold DC the rights to the characters in 1980, by which time "Shazam!" had been cancelled, and the Marvels had been relegated the back-up feature of "World's Finest Comics", and, later, "Adventure Comics". DC retconned Captain Marvel in 1986 with their "Legends" miniseries, establishing him as a solo hero without a team. Writer/artist Jerry Ordway resurrected the Marvel Family in 1995 with his "Power of Shazam!" series, establishing the team as being made up solely of Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. Following several attempts at relaunching the "Shazam!" franchise during the mid-2000s, the Marvel Family was temporarily dissolved by writers Geoff Johns and Jerry Ordway in "Justice Society of America" (vol. 3) #25, with only Captain Marvel Jr., now known as "Shazam", retaining his powers, but from another source. In the interim, Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel continued to appear in "Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam!", an all-ages comic book series published under DC's youth-oriented Johnny DC line which ran from 2008 to 2010. Captain Marvel Jr. joined the pair towards the end of the run of "Magic of Shazam!", following a brief period serving as the sidekick of the Marvels' enemy under the name Black Adam Jr.


title: Marvel Family

text: The Shazam Family was reintroduced during DC Comics' continuity-altering "Flashpoint" miniseries in 2011, as six kids who all spoke "Shazam!" in unison to become one superhero, Captain Thunder. In the later company-wide "New 52" reboot that followed "Flashpoint", the Captain Marvel character was renamed "Shazam" and starred in a backup segment of the "Justice League" series (second volume) from 2012 to 2013. These backups, by writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank, introduced Billy Batson/Shazam and his new Shazam Family, consisting of Billy and his five foster siblings, with whom he shares his powers.


title: Marvel Family

text: In 2022, DC published a facsimile edition of "Marvel Family Comics" No. 1 as a tie-in with the release of the film "Black Adam".


title: Marvel Family

text: The "World's Mightiest Mortal", Captain Marvel is the superpowered alter-ego of Billy Batson, an orphaned boy who speaks the name of the wizard Shazam to become an adult superhero. Billy has the powers of Solomon (wisdom), Hercules (strength), Atlas (stamina), Zeus (power), Achilles (courage), and Mercury (speed); and served as the wizard Shazam's champion and herald.


title: Marvel Family

text: In the Golden Age and Bronze Age comics, Billy chose to share his powers with his sister Mary and his friend Freddy Freeman, creating the Marvel Family. Outside of the Marvel Family, Captain Marvel served briefly as a member of both the Justice League International and the Justice Society of America.


title: Marvel Family

text: After the 2011 New 52 reboot of the "Shazam!" characters by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank, Billy Batson is a troubled foster child who has inherited the name, powers, and seat on the council of magic of the wizard Shazam. Becoming a hero inspired the initially brash and standoffish Billy to evolve into a noble hero and leader who embraces his new foster family. As "Shazam", Billy has powers and a red-uniformed appearance similar to the traditional version of Captain Marvel with the added ability to wield magic via the "living lightning" that powers him.


title: Marvel Family

text: In traditional "Shazam!" stories, Mary is Billy's once-lost twin sister Mary Batson. She is technically the oldest in the pair (adopted as Mary Bromfield), who found she could say the magic word "Shazam!" and become a Marvel as well. The Golden Age Mary Marvel remained a teenager in superhero form, while the modern version is transformed into an adult like her brother. The Golden Age Mary Marvel had a different set of patrons from Captain Marvel who contributed to her powers. They were Selene (grace), Hippolyte (strength), Ariadne (skill), Zephyrus (swiftness), Aurora (beauty) and Minerva (wisdom).


title: Marvel Family

text: During the 2007 and 2008 limited series "Countdown to Final Crisis" and "Final Crisis", Mary Marvel lost her powers and gained the powers of Marvel Family foe Black Adam. She temporarily became a villain working for Darkseid and possessed by the New God Desaad.