title: History of Mexico

text: Accused many times of electoral fraud, the PRI held almost all public offices until the end of the 20th century. Not until the 1980s did the PRI lose its first state governorship, an event that marked the beginning of the party's loss of hegemony.


title: History of Mexico

text: Emphasizing the need to upgrade infrastructure, modernize the tax system and labor laws, integrate with the U.S. economy, and allow private investment in the energy sector, Vicente Fox Quesada, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), was elected the 69th president of Mexico on 2 July 2000, ending PRI's 71-year-long control of the office. Though Fox's victory was due in part to popular discontent with decades of unchallenged PRI hegemony, also, Fox's opponent, president Zedillo, conceded defeat on the night of the election—a first in Mexican history. A further sign of the quickening of Mexican democracy was the fact that PAN failed to win a majority in both chambers of Congress—a situation that prevented Fox from implementing his reform pledges. Nonetheless, the transfer of power in 2000 was quick and peaceful.


title: History of Mexico

text: Fox was a very strong candidate, but an ineffective president who was weakened by PAN's minority status in Congress. Historian Philip Russell summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of Fox as president:


title: History of Mexico

text: President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN) took office after one of the most hotly contested elections in recent Mexican history; Calderón won by such a small margin (.56% or 233,831 votes.) that the runner-up, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) contested the results.


title: History of Mexico

text: Despite imposing a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants, Calderón ordered a raise on the salaries of the Federal Police and the Mexican armed forces on his first day as president.


title: History of Mexico

text: Calderón's government ordered massive raids on drug cartels upon assuming office in December 2006 in response to an increasingly deadly spate of violence in his home state of Michoacán. The decision to intensify drug enforcement operations has led to an ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Mexican drug cartels.


title: History of Mexico

text: Under President Calderón (2006-2012), the government began waging a war on regional drug mafias. So far, this conflict has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Mexicans and the drug mafias continue to gain power. Mexico has been a major transit and drug-producing nation: an estimated 90% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States every year moves through Mexico. Fueled by the increasing demand for drugs in the United States, the country has become a major supplier of heroin, producer and distributor of MDMA, and the largest foreign supplier of cannabis and methamphetamine to the U.S.'s market. Major drug syndicates control the majority of drug trafficking in the country, and Mexico is a significant money-laundering center.


title: History of Mexico

text: After the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in the U.S. on September 13, 2004, Mexican drug cartels have begun acquiring assault weapons in the United States. The result is that drug cartels have now both more gun power, and more manpower due to the high unemployment in Mexico.


title: History of Mexico

text: After taking office in 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pursued an alternative approach to dealing with drug mafias, calling for a policy of "hugs, not gunshots" ("Abrazos, no balazos"). This policy has been ineffective, and the death toll has not decreased. In October 2019, AMLO's government released drug lord Ovidio Guzmán López during the Battle of Culiacán as part of ceasefire negotiations.


title: History of Mexico

text: Former Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested by U.S. officials on 15 October 2020 at Los Angeles International Airport on drug and money-laundering charges. He was found to have used the alias "El Padrino" ("The Godfather") while working with the H-2 Cartel. The Mexican government warned of reviewing security agreements with the United States over not being given advance notice of the arrest.


title: History of Mexico

text: On 18 November 2020, American authorities agreed to drop charges against Cienfuegos. They also agreed to send him back to Mexico, where he is under investigation. Some American media outlets reported that the charges had been dropped under pressure from the Mexican federal government, which had threatened to expel DEA agents from the country. The President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador however has denied the acussation.


title: History of Mexico

text: On July 1, 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto was elected president of Mexico with 38% of the vote. He is a former governor of the state of Mexico and a member of the PRI. His election returned the PRI to power after 12 years of PAN rule. He was officially sworn into office on December 1, 2012.


title: History of Mexico

text: The "Pacto por México" was a cross party alliance that called for the accomplishment of 95 goals. It was signed on 2 December 2012 by the leaders of the three main political parties in Chapultepec Castle. The Pact has been lauded by international pundits as an example for solving political gridlock and for effectively passing institutional reforms. Among other legislation, it called for education reform, banking reform, fiscal reform and telecommunications reform, all of which were eventually passed. However, this pact was ultimately jeopardized when the center-right PAN and PRI pushed for a revaluation of, and end to, the monopoly of the state owned petroleum company, Pemex. This ultimately resulted in the dissolution of the alliance in December 2013 when the center-left PRD refused to collaborate on legislation that would have allowed for foreign investment in Mexico's oil industry.


title: History of Mexico

text: On July 1, 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president with 30,112,109 votes (53.19% of the total votes cast.) Lopez Obrador is the leader of the National Regeneration Movement and he headed the "Juntos Haremos Historia" coalition. The coalition also won 306/500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 69/100 federal Senate seats, several governorships, and numerous local elections.


title: History of Mexico

text: The administration has had to contend with the coronavirus pandemic. The number of cases has continued to rise, but Mexico has attempted the gradual reopening of the economy. At least 500 Cuban health workers are helping tackle the new coronavirus in Mexico City, Mexican officials say, making it likely the largest contingent the island has deployed globally as part of its response to the pandemic.


title: History of Mexico

text: AMLO made his first trip outside the country to travel to Washington D.C. to sign the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. U.S. President Donald Trump and AMLO met at White House, but Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau declined to attend, citing the coronavirus.


title: History of Mexico

text: In June 2021 midterm elections, López Obrador's left-leaning Morena’s coalition lost seats in the lower house of Congress. However, his ruling coalition maintained a simple majority, but López Obrador failed to secure the two-thirds congressional supermajority. The main opposition was a coalition of Mexico's three traditional parties: the center-right Revolutionary Institutional Party, right-wing National Action Party and leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.


title: History of Mexico

text: Works listed below are in English, some of which have been translated from the Spanish. There is a vast literature in Spanish.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Gazetted Officers are executive/managerial level ranked government officers in India. Authority for a Gazetted Officer officer to issue an official stamp comes from the President of India or the Governors of States. To that effect, they are de jure representatives and delegates of the Indian State and the President. If and only if a person's appointment is published in the "Gazette of India" or any state government gazette with their name, he/she is called Gazetted.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Any appointment released and published in the government gazette is called a gazetted appointment. The Gazette of India and state gazettes are official government publications, which publish the appointments or promotions of certain government officials along with other government ordinary/extraordinary notifications. An officer, who is appointed under the seal of the Governor at the state level or by the President of India at the national level (and in the Union Territories), requires being listed in the "Gazette of India" or state government gazette and is considered to be a Gazetted Officer. Many are honorary Justices of the Peace and have the same standing as some of the government officers. Such officers, among other functions, have the power to verify the documents for financial, industrial, immigration, and other purposes.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Indian Military ranks do not fall under the ""Central Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965"" law. However, Commissioned Officers and Junior Commissioned Officers(JCO) of Army, Navy and Air Force hold the commission or Warrant (in case of Navy JCOs) of the President of India, and are considered as equivalant to gazetted ranks of group A and B respectively. The ranks of Defence Servants are categorized as Commissioned Officers (CO), Junior Commissioned Officers (JCO) and Other Ranks (OR).


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: The civil service posts under the Union of India have been classified as Group A, B, and C. The Central Government of India or any State Government classifies civil service (government employees) into Group A (Gazetted/Executive), Group B (Gazetted), Group B (Non-Gazetted), Group C and Group D. Earlier classification was Class I (Gazetted), II (Gazetted), II (Non-Gazetted), III and IV. Class I or Group A is the highest rank class and Class IV or Group D is the least. The Government of India has plans to merge Group D into Group C. Class I and II (Gazetted) belong to the class of officers whose transfers, appointments, promotions and superannuation are published on a yearly basis in the official gazette of State or Union Government.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Group A (Gazetted), formerly called Class I, officials belong to the managerial or highest class of government employees who are placed in Level 10 and above in Pay matrices, Previously in the pay band 3 with 5400 grade pay and above in 6th CPC and Level 10 above in Pay Matrix in 7th CPC pay structure. However, Pay structure (Grade Pay or Level) is not the sole criteria and many though drawing pay in above pay structure due to financial upgradation under MACP Scheme, etc., may not be holding class I rank.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Group B (Gazetted), formerly called "'Class II (Gazetted)" examples include - [[Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Police Service|DANIPS]], [[Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service|DANICS]], Puducherry Civil Service, Puducherry Police Service, Section officers of AFHQ Civil Services and Central Secretariat Services, Chief Pharmacists, Appraiser/Superintendents of GST and Customs, Income Tax Officers, Asst. Audit/Accounts Officers of Indian Audit & Accounts Department,Asst. Accounts Officers of Defence Accounts Department, Indian P&T Accounts & Financial Services, Junior Works Manager (Indian Ordnance Factory's), PS and Sr. PS in various ministries, JCOs in Armed Forces, Principal/Headmaster of Government High School, Officers in State Civil Services, and Labour Enforcement Officers etc.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Government Employees falling under the category of Group C (formerly called class III) and Group D (formerly called class IV) are not gazetted. They do not have the personal authority to issue an official stamp on behalf of the Government. Further, Class III employees and Class IV employees serving in [[Public sector undertakings in India|central public sector undertakings]] are also classified as non-gazetted employees and officers of [[Public sector banks in India|central public sector banks]] can also attest financial documents.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Group B (Non-Gazetted), formerly called Class II (Non-Gazetted) examples are - Assistant Section Officers in various ministries, Stenographers Grade '1', Senior Pharmacists various different Health Departments Junior Engineers in different departments of Union and State Govts, Income Tax Inspectors,Customs / GST Inspectors, Sub-inspector in CAPF's etc.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Group C, formerly called Class III, are the public servants in non-supervisory roles. Examples are - Pharmacists, Lab technicians, Head Clerks / Section Heads, Police Head Constables, Typists, Stenographers, Tax Assistants, Telephone operators, TTEs, Junior Engineers, Senior Section Engineers of Railways, etc.


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: Group D (now subsumed in Group C), formerly Class IV category since stands upgraded to Group C lowest pay scale of PB1 Grade Pay Rs.1800 in 6th CPC pay structure en masse on account of implementation of recommendations of 6th CPC, though continuing to largely perform their erstwhile manual functions. Their recruitment qualification also stands upgraded to Matric or ITI. In 7th CPC pay structure they are in Level 1 in Pay Matrix. They are generally Manual workers (skilled or semi-skilled).


title: Gazetted Officer (India)

text: A Notary Public is also a Gazetted officer as per the law stated in the Notaries act, 1952. Section 6, Notaries act, 1952 states the annual publication of lists of notaries. It reads as:-


title: Larva

text: A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle.


title: Larva

text: The larva's appearance is generally very different from the adult form ("e.g." caterpillars and butterflies) including different unique structures and organs that do not occur in the adult form. Their diet may also be considerably different.


title: Larva

text: Larvae are frequently adapted to different environments than adults. For example, some larvae such as tadpoles live almost exclusively in aquatic environments, but can live outside water as adult frogs. By living in a distinct environment, larvae may be given shelter from predators and reduce competition for resources with the adult population.


title: Larva

text: Animals in the larval stage will consume food to fuel their transition into the adult form. In some organisms like polychaetes and barnacles, adults are immobile but their larvae are mobile, and use their mobile larval form to distribute themselves.


title: Larva

text: Some larvae are dependent on adults to feed them. In many eusocial Hymenoptera species, the larvae are fed by female workers. In "Ropalidia marginata" (a paper wasp) the males are also capable of feeding larvae but they are much less efficient, spending more time and getting less food to the larvae.


title: Larva

text: The larvae of some organisms (for example, some newts) can become pubescent and do not develop further into the adult form. This is a type of neoteny.


title: Larva

text: It is a misunderstanding that the larval form always reflects the group's evolutionary history. This could be the case, but often the larval stage has evolved secondarily, as in insects. In these cases the larval form may differ more than the adult form from the group's common origin.


title: Larva

text: Within Insects, only Endopterygotes show complete metamorphosis, including a distinct larval stage. Several classifications have been suggested by many entomologists, and following classification is based on Antonio Berlese classification in 1913. There are four main types of endopterygote larvae types:


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The Victoria Memorial is a large marble building on the Maidan in Central Kolkata, built between 1906 and 1921. It is dedicated to the memory of Queen Victoria, Empress of India from 1876 to 1901.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The largest monument to a monarch anywhere in the world, it stands in 64 acres of gardens and is now a museum under the control of the Ministry of Culture.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: Following the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, suggested that a fitting memorial to the late Queen-Empress should be created in Calcutta, now called Kolkata, then the capital of British India. He proposed the construction of a grand building with a museum and gardens.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The government officials, princes, politicians, and people of India responded generously to Lord Curzon's appeal for funds, and the total cost of construction of the monument, amounting to one crore, five lakhs of Rupees (₹), was entirely derived from their voluntary subscriptions.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The site chosen was near the present-day Raj Bhavan, known at the time as Government House. The construction of the Victoria Memorial was delayed by Curzon's departure from India in 1905, with a subsequent loss of local enthusiasm for the project. There was also some uncertainty about the strength of the foundations, and tests on them were carried out. On 4 January 1906, the new Prince of Wales laid the foundation stone.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The work of construction was entrusted to Messrs. Martin & Co. of Calcutta, and work on the superstructure began in 1910.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: In 1912, before construction was finished, King George V announced the transfer of the capital of India from Calcutta to New Delhi. Thus, the Victoria Memorial came to stand in what would be a major provincial city, rather than a capital.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: A smaller Victoria memorial was also constructed in the Hardoi District, which has since been converted into a city club for recreation. Mahatma Gandhi addressed meetings at Hardoi in the 1930s.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The architect of the Victoria Memorial was William Emerson (1843–1924). The design is in the Indo-Saracenic revivalist style which uses a mixture of British and Mughal elements with Venetian, Egyptian, Deccani architectural influences. The building is and rises to a height of . It is constructed of white Makrana marble.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The gardens of the Victoria Memorial were designed by Lord Redesdale and David Prain. Emerson's assistant, Vincent Jerome Esch, designed the bridge of the north aspect and the garden gates. In 1902, Emerson engaged Esch to sketch his original design for the Victoria Memorial.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: On top of the central dome of the Memorial is the figure of the Angel of Victory. Surrounding the dome are allegorical sculptures including "Art", "Architecture", "Justice", and "Charity" and above the North Porch are "Motherhood", "Prudence" and "Learning".


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The Victoria Memorial is built of white Makrana marble. In design it echoes the Taj Mahal with its dome, four subsidiaries, octagonal-domed chattris, high portals, terrace, and domed corner towers.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The Victoria Gallery displays several portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and paintings illustrating their lives, by Winterhalter, Frank Salisbury, and W. P. Frith. These are copies of works of art in England. They include Victoria receiving the sacrament at her coronation in Westminster Abbey in June 1838; Victoria's wedding to Prince Albert in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace in 1840; the christening of the Prince of Wales in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, 1842; the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Alexandra of Denmark in 1863; and paintings of Victoria at the service for her Golden Jubilee at Westminster Abbey in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee service at St Paul's Cathedral in June 1897.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: Queen Victoria's childhood rosewood pianoforte and her correspondence desk from Windsor Castle stand in the center of the room, having been presented to the Victoria Memorial by her son Edward VII. On the south wall hangs the oil painting by Vasily Vereshchagin of the state entry of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur in 1876.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: In the mid-1970s, the matter of a new gallery devoted to the visual history of Kolkata was promoted by Saiyid Nurul Hasan, the minister for education. In 1986, Hasan became the governor of West Bengal and chairman of the Victoria Memorial board of trustees. In November 1988, Hasan hosted an international seminar on the "Historical perspectives for the Kolkata tercentenary". The Kolkata gallery concept was agreed and a design was developed leading to the opening of the gallery in 1992. The Kolkata gallery houses a visual display of the history and development of Kolkata when the capital of India was transferred to New Delhi. The gallery also has a life-size diorama of Chitpur road in the late 1800s.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: The gardens at the Victoria memorial cover and are maintained by a team of 21 gardeners. They were designed by Redesdale and David Prain. On Esch's bridge, between narrative panels by Goscombe John, there is a bronze statue of Victoria, by George Frampton. Empress Victoria is seated on her throne. In the paved quadrangles and elsewhere around the building, other statues commemorate Hastings, Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, Robert Clive, Arthur Wellesley, and James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie. To the south of the Victoria, Memorial building is the Edward VII memorial arch. The arch has a bronze equestrian statue of Edward VII by Bertram Mackennal and a marble statue of Curzon by F. W. Pomeroy. The garden also contains statues of Lord William Bentinck, governor-general of India (1833–1835), George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon, governor-general of India (1880–84), and Rajendra Nath Mookerjee, a pioneer industrialist of Bengal.


title: Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

text: Following an order of the West Bengal High Court in 2004, an entry fee was imposed for the gardens, a decision welcomed by the general public except for few voices of dissent.


title: The Requin

text: The Requin (released as From Below in the UK) is a 2022 American horror thriller film written and directed by Le-Van Kiet. Stranded at sea after a massive tropical storm, a woman and her injured husband fight for survival as great white sharks circle below. Starring Alicia Silverstone and James Tupper, the film was released to video on demand on January 28, 2022.


title: The Requin

text: Jaelyn and her husband, Kyle are spending a holiday at a beach tourist retreat in Vietnam, housed in an overwater bungalow. Jaelyn is partially withdrawn and traumatized since she suffered a stillbirth during a homebirth, keeping contact with her family and friends mostly through social media; the trip is meant to restore her spirits again. However, on their second night, a violent tropical storm hits the resort. The bungalow is flooded and torn off its moorings, drifting away from the mainland, and Kyle's leg is severely injured.


title: The Requin

text: As the days pass, Jaelyn and Kyle try to take stock of their situation and wait for rescue. When a ship passes by, they try to create a smoke signal, but the fire instead destroys their shelter, forcing them to abandon it and climb onto a floating piece of wooden flooring. As they drift, Kyle apologizes to his wife for leaving her alone to deal with her trauma, and they reconcile. Soon afterwards, a great white shark attacks their raft and bites off Kyle's injured leg, leaving him to bleed to death. That night, the raft finally hits a beach; Jaelyn drags Kyle's body onto the sand and then collapses from exhaustion. As she wakes the next morning, the tide has come in, leaving Kyle floating in the water. Before Jaelyn can retrieve him, several sharks arrive and devour the body. When she wades back to shore, a shark attacks her and bites her leg before she can drive it off.


title: The Requin

text: After recovering, Jaelyn walks off along the coastline until she meets a local fisherman in his coracle, who stitches her wounds; but as she falls asleep, he dives down to check his weir and is fatally attacked by the shark. As the shark then assaults the coracle, Jaelyn first drives it off by shredding its head with a handheld outboard engine. Enraged, the shark returns and upends the coracle. As Jaelyn frantically wraps the coracle's anchor rope around herself to stop herself from sinking, the shark comes in for another attack, but its jaws accidentally close around the boat's raised anchor, driving one of its flukes directly through its brain and killing it. Climbing onto the upside-down coracle, Jaelyn drifts to a fishing village, where she is soon spotted by fishermen on the beach.


title: The Requin

text: The film was shot at the Universal Studios and Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida and has nearly 1,000 VFX shots.


title: The Requin

text: Simon Abrams, writing for rogerebert.com, gave it 2 1/2 stars out of 4, concluding "I don't think you can really love 'The Requin' based on its modest strengths, but there's enough here to make 89 minutes move a little faster."


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is a residential neighborhood within the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Old Fulton Street near the Brooklyn Bridge on the north, Cadman Plaza West on the east, Atlantic Avenue on the south, and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway or the East River on the west. Adjacent neighborhoods are Dumbo to the north, Downtown Brooklyn to the east, and Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill to the south.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Originally referred to as Brooklyn Village, it has been a prominent area of Brooklyn since 1834. The neighborhood is noted for its low-rise architecture and its many brownstone rowhouses, most of them built prior to the Civil War. It also has an abundance of notable churches and other religious institutions. Brooklyn's first art gallery, the Brooklyn Arts Gallery, was opened in Brooklyn Heights in 1958. In 1965, a large part of Brooklyn Heights was protected from unchecked development by the creation of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, the first such district in New York City. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Directly across the East River from Manhattan and connected to it by subways and regular ferry service, Brooklyn Heights is also easily accessible from Downtown Brooklyn. Columbia Heights, an upscale six-block-long street next to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, is sometimes considered to be its own neighborhood.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is part of Brooklyn Community District 2, and its primary ZIP Code is 11201. It is patrolled by the 84th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. The New York City Fire Department operates two fire stations near Brooklyn Heights: Engine Company 205/Ladder Company 118 at 74 Middagh Street, and Engine Company 224 at 274 Hicks Street.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights occupies a plateau on a high bluff that rises sharply from the river's edge and gradually recedes on the landward side. Before the Dutch settled on Long Island in the middle of the seventeenth century, this promontory was called Ihpetonga ("the high sandy bank") by the native Lenape American Indians.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Ferries across the East River were running as early as 1642, serving the farms in the area. The most significant of the ferries went between the current Fulton Street and Peck Slip in Manhattan, and was run by Cornelius Dirksen. The ferry service helped the lowland area to thrive, with both farms and some factories along the water, but the higher ground was sparsely used.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The area was heavily fortified prior to the Battle of Long Island in the American Revolutionary War. After British troops landed on Long Island and advanced towards Continental Army lines, General George Washington withdrew his troops here after heavy losses, but was able to make a skillful retreat across the East River to Manhattan without the loss of any troops or his remaining supplies.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: After the war, the 160-acre tract of land belonging to John Rapeljie, who was a Loyalist, was confiscated and sold to the Sands brothers, who tried to develop the part of the land on the palisade as a community they called "Olympia", but failed to make it come about, partly because of the difficulty of building there. They later sold part of their land to John Jackson, who created the Vinegar Hill community, much of which later became the Brooklyn Navy Yard.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights began to develop once Robert Fulton's New York and Brooklyn Steam Ferry Boat Company began regularly scheduled steam ferry service in 1814, with the financial backing of Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, one of the area's major landowners. Pierrepont had accumulated 60 acres of land, including 800 feet which directly overlooked the harbor, all of which he planned to sub-divide. Since his intention was to sell to merchants and bankers who lived in Manhattan, he needed easy access between Brooklyn Heights and New York City, which Fulton's company provided. Pierrepont bought – part of the Livingston estate, plus the Benson, De Bevoise and Reemsen farms – on what was then called "Clover Hill", now Brooklyn Heights, and built a mansion there. Pierrepont purchased and expanded Philip Livingston's gin distillery on the East River at what is now Joralemon Street, where he produced Anchor Gin.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Wishing to sub-divide and develop his property, Pierrepont realized the need for regularly scheduled ferry service across the East River, and to this end he became a prominent investor in Robert Fulton's New York and Brooklyn Steam Ferry Boat Company, using his influence on Fulton's behalf; he eventually became a part owner and a director of the company. Fulton's ferry began running in 1814, and Brooklyn received a charter as a village from the state of New York in 1816, thanks to the influence of Pierrepont and other prominent landowners. The city then prepared for the establishment of a street grid, although there were competing plans for the size of the lots. John and Jacob Hicks, who also owned property on Brooklyn Heights, north of Pierrepont's, favored smaller lots, as they were pitching their land to tradesman and artisans already living in Brooklyn, not attempting to lure merchants and bankers from Manhattan as Pierrepont was. To counter the Hickses' proposal, Pierrepont hired a surveyor and submitted an alternative. In the end, the Hickses' plan was adopted north of Clark Street, and Pierrepont's, featuring 25-by-100 foot (8-by-30 meter) lots, south of it.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Thanks to the influence of Pierrepont and other landowners, Brooklyn received a charter from the state as a village in 1816, which led to streets being laid out in a regular grid pattern, sidewalks being laid, water pumps being installed and the institution of a watch. After 1823, farms begin to be sub-divided into lots, which were advertised as suitable for a "country retreat" for Manhattanites, leading to a building boom that resulted in Brooklyn Heights becoming the "first commuter suburb", since it was easier and faster to get to Manhattan by ferry than it was to commute from upper Manhattan by ground transportation. A resident of the Heights could leave the office at three o'clock, have dinner at home at four o'clock, and still have time for a "leisurely drive to the outskirts of town", a "middle class paradise". The community's development was helped by the yellow fever epidemic of 1822, when many of the rich from the city abandoned it for an area that was advertised as "elevated and perfectly healthy at all seasons ... a select neighborhood and circle of society."


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Where there had been only seven houses in the Heights in 1807, by 1860 there were over six hundred of them, and by 1890 the area was almost completely developed. The buildings were designed in a wide variety of styles; development started in the northern part, and moved southward, so the architecture general changes in that direction as the preferred style of the time changed over the decades. Throughout the 19th century, Brooklyn Heights remained an elegant neighborhood, and became Brooklyn's cultural and financial center. Its development gave rise to offshoots such as Cobble Hill and, later, Carroll Gardens.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Prior to the Civil War, Brooklyn Heights was a locus of the Abolitionist movement, due to the speeches and activities of Henry Ward Beecher, the pastor of Plymouth Church, now the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. Beecher was a nationally known figure famous on the lecture circuit for his novel oratorical style, in which he employed humor, dialect, and slang. Under Beecher, so many slaves passed through Plymouth Church on their way to freedom in Canada that later generations have referred to the church as the "Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad". To dramatize the plight of those held in captivity, Beecher once brought a female slave to the church and held an auction, with the highest bidder purchasing not the slave, but her freedom. Beecher also raised money to buy other slaves out of captivity, and shipped rifles to abolitionists in Kansas and Nebraska in crates labelled "Bibles", which gave the rifles the nickname "Beecher's Bibles".


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, the Brooklyn end of which was near Brooklyn Heights' eastern boundary, began the process of making the neighborhood more accessible from places such as Manhattan. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT)'s Lexington Avenue subway line, which reached Brooklyn Heights in 1908, was an even more powerful catalyst in the neighborhood's development. The resulting ease of transportation into the neighborhood and the perceived loss of the specialness and "quality" began to drive out the merchants and patricians who lived there; in time their mansions were divided to become apartment houses and boarding houses. Artists began to move into the neighborhood, as well as writers, and a number of large hotels – the St. George (1885), the Margaret (1889), the Bossert (1909), Leverich Towers (1928), and the Pierrepont (1928), among others – were constructed. By the beginning of the Great Depression, most of the middle class had left the area. Boarding houses had become rooming houses, and the neighborhood began to have the appearance of a slum.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: During the 1940s and 1950s, the building of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) badly affected the neighborhood, as it took away the neighborhood's northwest corner, destroying whole rows of brownstones. At about the same time, plans began to be developed by New York's "master builder", Robert Moses, wielding the Housing Act of 1949, to replace brownstone rowhouses – which were the typical building form in the neighborhood – with large luxury apartment buildings. A prominent example of the intended outcome is the Cadman Plaza development of housing cooperatives in the northern part of the neighborhood, located on the site where the Brooklyn Bridge trolley terminal once stood. In 1959, the North Heights Community Group was formed to oppose destroying cheap low-rise housing in order to build the high-rise Cadman Plaza towers. Architect Percival Goodman presented an alternate plan to maintain all sound structures, which garnered 25,000 supporters. In early 1961, a compromise proposal came from City Hall calling for two 22-story towers with over 1,200 luxury and middle income units. The Brooklyn Heights Association fully supported the compromise plan despite strong opposition from the preservation community, including the North Heights Community Group. As a result, 1,200 residents were removed from their houses and apartments in late 1961 and early 1962 as construction began on the modified plan.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: One positive development came about when community groups – prominently the Brooklyn Heights Association, founded in 1910 – joined with Moses in the creation of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, also called the Esplanade, which was cantilevered over the BQE. It became a favorite spot among locals, offering magnificent vistas of the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan skyline across the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and spectacular fireworks displays over the East River. Moses originally proposed to build the BQE through the heart of Brooklyn Heights. Opposition to this plan led to the re-routing of the expressway to the side of the bluff, allowing creation of the Promenade.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: By the mid-1950s, a new generation of property owners had begun moving into the Heights, pioneering the "Brownstone Revival" by buying and renovating pre-Civil War period houses, which became part of the preservationist movement which culminated in the passage in 1965 of the Landmarks Preservation Law. In 1965, community groups which later became the Brooklyn Heights Association, succeeded in having the neighborhood designated the Brooklyn Heights Historic District by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the first such district in the city. This was followed in the following decades by the further gentrification of the neighborhood into a firmly middle-class area, which became "one of New York City's most pleasant and attractive neighborhoods."


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Starting in 2008, Brooklyn Bridge Park was built along the shoreline of the East River. the park was 90% complete, and it is now completed. The Squibb Park Bridge was constructed in 2013 to provide access between the park and the rest of Brooklyn Heights, but had to be demolished in 2019 due to various structural issues. A replacement bridge opened in 2020. By the early 2020s, increasing numbers of celebrities were moving to the neighborhood.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights was the first neighborhood protected by the 1965 Landmarks Preservation Law of New York City. The neighborhood is largely composed of blocks of picturesque rowhouses and a few mansions. A great range of architectural styles is represented, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Victorian Gothic, Romanesque, Neo-Grec, and Classical Revival, as well as a few 2/1/2-story late Federal houses from the early 19th century in the northern part of the neighborhood. Some houses were constructed of brick, but the dominant building material was brownstone or "Jersey freestone", a reddish-brown stone from Passaic County, New Jersey.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: A typical brownstone rowhouse was three or four stories tall, with the main floor above the street level and reached by stairs, referred to as a "stoop", a word derived from Dutch. The basement is typically a half-flight down from the street, and was used as the work area for servants, including the kitchen. The first floor would be the location of the public rooms, bedrooms were on the second floor, and servants' quarters were on the top floor. The rear of the lot would feature a private garden. Aside from rowhouses, a number of houses, particularly along Pierrepont Street and Pierrepont Place, are authentic mansions.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The concentration of over 600 pre-Civil War houses, one of the largest ensembles of such housing in the nation, and the human scale of the three, four- and five-story buildings creates a neighborly atmosphere.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights has very few high-rise buildings. Among these buildings are 75 Livingston Street, Hotel St. George, and the Concord Village co-op development on Adams Street. Additionally, Jehovah's Witnesses had its world headquarters in the northern part of Brooklyn Heights at 25 Columbia Heights. The organization restored a number of historic buildings to house their staff, including the former Hotel Bossert, once the seasonal home of many Dodgers players, on Montague Street. In 2010, the organization announced plans to begin selling off its numerous properties in the Heights and nearby downtown Brooklyn, given that it plans to relocate itself in upstate New York.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The executive offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers were, for many years, located in the Heights, near the intersection of Montague and Court Streets. A plaque on the office building that replaced the Dodgers' old headquarters at 215 Montague Street identifies it as the site where Jackie Robinson signed his major league contract.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims and Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Cathedral are located in Brooklyn Heights, as are the First Unitarian Congregational Society, the Long Island Historical Society, Packer Collegiate Institute, and St. Ann's and the Holy Trinity Church, among other historically notable buildings.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Brooklyn Heights was 22,887, a change of 339 (1.5%) from the 22,548 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 75.2% (17,210) White, 5.5% (1,259) African American, 0.2% (37) Native American, 8.8% (2,003) Asian, 0% (3) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (82) from other races, and 2.7% (618) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.3% (1,675) of the population.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The entirety of Community Board 2, which comprises Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, had 117,046 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 80.6 years. This is slightly lower than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are middle-aged adults and youth: 15% are between the ages of 0–17, 44% between 25–44, and 20% between 45–64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 9% and 12% respectively.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: As of 2016, the median household income in Community Board 2 was $56,599. In 2018, an estimated 22% of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene residents lived in poverty, compared to 21% in all of Brooklyn and 20% in all of New York City. One in twelve residents (8%) were unemployed, compared to 9% in the rest of both Brooklyn and New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 39% in Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, lower than the citywide and boroughwide rates of 52% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is patrolled by the 84th Precinct of the NYPD, located at 301 Gold Street. The 84th Precinct ranked 60th-safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. This was attributed to a high rate of property crimes in the neighborhood. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 40 per 100,000 people, Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 401 per 100,000 people is lower than that of the city as a whole.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The 84th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 82.3% between 1990 and 2018. The precinct reported 2 murders, 18 rapes, 147 robberies, 184 felony assaults, 126 burglaries, 650 grand larcenies, and 31 grand larcenies auto in 2018.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is served by two New York City Fire Department (FDNY) fire stations. Engine Co. 205/Ladder Co. 118 is located at 74 Middagh Street, serving the northern part of the neighborhood, while Engine Co. 224 is located at 274 Hicks Street, serving the southern part of the neighborhood.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: A third fire station, Engine Co. 207/Ladder Co. 110/Satellite 6/Battalion 31/Division 11, is located at 172 Tillary Street in nearby Fort Greene.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: , preterm births and births to teenage mothers are less common in Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene than in other places citywide. In Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, there were 74 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 11.6 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide). Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene have a relatively low population of residents who are uninsured, or who receive healthcare through Medicaid. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 4%, which is lower than the citywide rate of 12%. However, this estimate was based on a small sample size.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene is , lower than the citywide and boroughwide averages. Eleven percent of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene residents are smokers, which is slightly lower than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, 24% of residents are obese, 6% are diabetic, and 25% have high blood pressure—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In addition, 14% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Eighty-eight percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is slightly higher than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 86% of residents described their health as "good," "very good," or "excellent," more than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, there are 12 bodegas.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is covered by ZIP Code 11201. The United States Post Office operates three locations nearby: the DUMBO Automated Postal Center at 84 Front Street, the Cadman Plaza Station at 271 Cadman Plaza East, and the Municipal Station at 210 Joralemon Street.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene generally have a higher ratio of college-educated residents than the rest of the city . The majority of residents (64%) have a college education or higher, while 11% have less than a high school education and 25% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 40% of Brooklynites and 38% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene students excelling in math rose from 27 percent in 2000 to 50 percent in 2011, and reading achievement rose from 34% to 41% during the same time period.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is about equal to the rest of New York City. In Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene, 20% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, the same as the citywide average. Additionally, 75% of high school students in Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene graduate on time, equal to the citywide average.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: St. Ann's School, a K–12 school, is located in the neighborhood, with the main campus at 129 Pierrepont Street. Packer Collegiate Institute, a K-12 school, has also been located in the neighborhood, at 170 Joralemon Street, since its 1845 founding.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: St. Francis College is located on Remsen Street and occupies half a city block. It was founded as St. Francis Academy in 1859 by the Franciscan Brothers and was originally located on Baltic Street. St. Francis College was the first private school in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. , 2,000 full-time students and more than 400 part-time students from 80 countries attend the College. St. Francis College has been ranked by "The New York Times" as one of the more diverse colleges in the United States. The college has also been ranked by both "Forbes" magazine and "U.S. News & World Report" as one of the top baccalaureate colleges in the north.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL)'s Brooklyn Heights branch is located at 109 Remsen Street. The branch was formerly located at 280 Cadman Plaza West, which was shared with the Business & Career Library, but that site was sold to a developer and demolished.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights' first library was founded in 1857 by the Mercantile Library Association of the City of Brooklyn. The first BPL branch in the neighborhood, the Montague Street branch, was opened in 1903. The Brooklyn Heights branch building at 280 Cadman Plaza West opened in 1962 and originally contained an auditorium and children's room. It was renovated and expanded from 1990 to 1993, and upon the completion of the renovation, the Brooklyn Heights branch shared the site with the Business & Career Library. In 2013, BPL announced its intent to sell 280 Cadman Plaza West, and as part of this announcement, the Business and Career Library's functions were relocated to BPL's Central Branch. BPL then sold the Brooklyn Heights branch to developer Hudson Companies. Hudson Companies then demolished the structure and replaced it with a 34-story condominium, which would contain a smaller library at its base when it is completed in 2020. In the interim, the BPL branch moved to the temporary 109 Remsen Street location.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Brooklyn Heights is serviced by numerous subway services, specifically the at Jay Street–MetroTech; the at Clark Street; and the at Borough Hall/Court Street.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Although no bus routes actually stop in Brooklyn Heights, many MTA Regional Bus Operations bus routes are located nearby in Downtown Brooklyn. The also stops in Dumbo/Fulton Ferry, while the serve Cobble Hill.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: In June 2017, NYC Ferry's South Brooklyn route started stopping at Brooklyn Bridge Park Piers 1 and 6 in Brooklyn Heights.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Many of the streets in Brooklyn Heights are named after people who figured prominently in the neighborhood's history.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: Concerning the "fruit streets" in Brooklyn Heights – Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple Streets – the "WPA Guide to New York City" reports that before the Civil War, these streets, along with Poplar and Willow Streets, were named after prominent families, but that a member of the Middagh family expressed her dislike of these families by replacing the street signs with botanical names. The city would restore the proper names, and Middagh would put back her own signs. Several iterations of this game ended when Middagh's new names were given official status by a resolution of the alderman. In "Historically Speaking", Brooklyn borough historian John B. Manbeck says only that these street names "have questionable origins," as does Love Lane, which reputedly gets its name from the meetings that took place there between a pretty girl who lived nearby and her suitors.


title: Brooklyn Heights

text: There have been many noted residents of Brooklyn Heights. The dates listed are their respective birth and death dates. Famous residents include:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of gunsight footage by the Internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The footage was portrayed as classified, but the individual who leaked it, U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, testified in 2013 that the video was not classified. The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, showed the crew firing on a group of men and killing several of them, then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists. An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage, which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In the first strike, the crews of two Apaches directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of ten Iraqi men, including some armed, standing less than 100 meters away from U.S. ground troops at a location where insurgents earlier that day had attacked an American Humvee with small arms fire. Among the group were two Iraqi war correspondents working for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Seven men (including Noor-Eldeen) were killed during this first strike; Saeed Chmagh, who was injured, later died in a hospital.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The second strike, also using 30 mm rounds, was directed at a van whose driver, Saleh Matasher Tomal, appeared to happen to drive by and who proceeded to help the wounded Chmagh. However, the long version of the video shows that this van had already been targeted by one Apache (Crazyhorse 1/8), prior to the second strike, as it traveled south toward the Reuters employees who were simultaneously targeted by the other Apache (Crazyhorse 1/9) as they walked with the group of men north on the same road toward the van. Minutes after the first engagement ended, the van returned traveling in an opposite direction (north) once again on this same road. Two men assisting in the rescue effort were from a group of five standing at an intersection – seen in the upper right corner of the video when the Reuters employees arrive in the courtyard – reported to Apaches as being a second position combatants were using to attack the Humvee. Both of these men, Chmagh and Tomal, were killed in the second strike, and two of Tomal's children were badly wounded.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In a third strike, Apache pilots watched people, including some armed men, run into a building and engaged that building with several AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: According to Tom Raju, a reporter at CNN, "the soldiers of Bravo Company, 2–16 Infantry had been under fire all morning from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms on the first day of Operation Ilaaj in Baghdad". Al Jazeera stated that the Army had received "reports of small arms fire", but were unable to positively identify the gunmen. Apache helicopters were called in by a soldier in the Humvee (Hotel 2–6) under attack from the same position used by Namir Noor-Eldeen to photograph the vehicle. According to a military review, soldiers in that company "had been under sporadic small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire since" the operation—described as "clearing their sector and looking for weapons caches"—began.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The Air Weapons Team (AWT) of two Apache AH-64s from the 1st Cavalry Division had been requested by the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment (2–16), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, before July 12 to support Operation Ilaaj. Tasked to conduct escort, armed reconnaissance patrols, and counter-IED and counter-mortar operations, the two helicopters left Camp Taji at 9:24 a.m. They arrived on station in New Baghdad at 9:53 a.m., where sporadic attacks on coalition forces continued.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In the video on the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observe a gathering of men near a section of Baghdad in the path of advancing U.S. ground troops, some armed with AKMs and RPGs. The crew estimates the group is twenty men. Among the group are two journalists working for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. While the two are carrying media cards, a military officer claimed they were not wearing distinctive clothing identifying themselves as such. Noor-Eldeen has a camera and Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: A crew member requests authorization to engage after seeing five or six of the men moving in the direction of U.S. soldiers. A long shadow cast on the ground by a telephoto lens on Noor-Eldeen's camera is misidentified by the pilot as an additional RPG aimed at him and a U.S. Army Humvee directly below his aircraft. One second later he screams, "He's got an RPG!" Noor-Eldeen fails to photograph the Apache but three pictures of the U.S. Humvee appear on his camera's memory card when it was recovered by U.S. soldiers. The men become obscured behind a building as the Apache moves around the group. Both helicopters strafe a group of ten men with 30 mm rounds once they became visible again. After the lead helicopter fires, one of the crew shouts "Hahaha. I hit 'em" and another member of the crew responds "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Seven men were killed, including Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh, with three others being wounded. Once the group is eliminated, the Apache pilots direct the ground troops to move up to the position of the attack to clear the area.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: As the ground troops advanced, a wounded Chmagh was seen crawling and attempting to stand. As the U.S. soldiers moved towards the site of the attack, a van stopped near Chmagh. The military said that the van was "fair game under Army rules" , because it had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle. The Apache crew alerted the ground troops of the van and requested permission to engage the vehicle before the ground troops arrived. The Apache crew saw unarmed men exit the vehicle and move to Chmagh. The Apache crew requested permission to engage, stating it "looks like [the men] possibly, picking up bodies and weapons" from the scene, and repeated their request to shoot, before they received permission to begin firing on the van and its occupants. Chmagh was killed along with three other men, while two children, not known to be in the van to the U.S. forces, were injured. The children, a girl and boy, suffered injuries. The girl suffered from a stomach wound and glass in her eyes, and the boy a head injury. Just as the van was destroyed, U.S. ground troops made their final turn and arrived on the road with the van. The Apache crew then alerted the ground troops that they believed that they could see an injured child moving around inside the destroyed van. On the video, it is then seen that Army soldiers establish a perimeter around the site and extract the children from the burning van. When the helicopter pilots discover that they have killed a number of Iraqi civilians and wounded two children, one of them is heard to say: "Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The ground troops that secured the site of the first two strikes then receive small arms fire from nearby buildings.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: There is a period of 20 minutes not included on the leaked tape. According to the internal legal review, the helicopters engaged a group of armed insurgents, and that some were seen entering a nearby building.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: As the tape resumes, two men, one holding an AK-47, are seen walking. They split up and the footage follows one who appears to be armed. He walks into a building which has been identified as the source of fire at U.S. ground troops. They request permission to fire a missile at the building, describing it as "abandoned" or "under construction". The ground controller responds, "If you've [positively identified] the individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building". As the pilot positions the helicopter to attack the building, two unarmed men walk towards, and perhaps into, the building. As the gunner fires the first missile, another man is seen walking along the street in front of the building. The missile hits the building, and the man is caught in the explosion. The crew then reposition the helicopter and fire two more missiles into the upper floors of the building


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. Julian Assange said "permission to engage was given before the word 'RPG' was ever used". Politifact stated: "When Assange points out in the context of justifying the title 'Collateral Murder' that the word 'RPG' was not used until after permission to engage was given, he leaves the impression that the soldiers were given the okay to open fire on a group of unarmed men, or men believed to be unarmed. But the video and accompanying audio make clear that the soldiers in the helicopter said they spotted 'weapons' among those in the group—later identified by an internal army investigator as an AK-47 and an RPG." Assange later said "Based upon visual evidence, I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything". The legal review carried out by the U.S. Army stated that the two children were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Fox News said that of the attack "WikiLeaks appears to have done selective editing that tells only half the story. For instance, the Web site takes special care to slow down the video and identify the two photographers and the cameras they are carrying. …The Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body. WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: "The Guardian" stated "It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera". Glenn Greenwald of "Salon.com" said that "the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed". Greenwald called the second airstrike a "plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety". "The Australian" newspaper said the group was displaying "no obvious hostile action".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In "The Independent" on April 8, 2010, human rights activist Joan Smith wrote that the engagements were like a game to the helicopter crew. She wrote that the co-pilot urged a dying, unarmed journalist to pick up a weapon as he tried to crawl to safety and that "the Apache crew open[ed] fire on civilians". When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one initially responded, "Ah damn. Oh well", and a minute later continued, "Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle". Smith describes this reaction as inhuman. She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. She continued, "the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting huge psychological damage on combatants". In refusing to recognize this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their victims. She concluded that command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On "Democracy Now!", Josh Stieber, who was at the time assigned to Bravo Company 2–16, said that although it's natural to "judge or criticize the soldiers", in fact "this is how [they] were trained to act". He said that the debate should be re-framed, that it is more appropriate to ask "questions of the larger system" that teaches "doing these things is in the best interests of my own country". In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. In a later interview on the "World Socialist Web Site", Stieber said that the attack "exposes so clearly the fallacy of using war as a tool of foreign policy or as a way to supposedly spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Ethan McCord, a soldier who arrived on the scene after the attack, stated in an interview for the "Australian Broadcasting Corporation":


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On June 7, 2010, "The New Yorker" reported that Kristinn Hrafnsson, an investigative reporter who worked on the Collateral Murder video and later became a spokesman for WikiLeaks, said he had found the owner of the building involved in the incident. The owner told him that three families were living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter. The report stated that the helicopter crew did not know how many people were in the building when they destroyed it with missiles, and that "there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby". It concluded that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: A Pentagon spokesman said the video did not contradict the official finding that the helicopters' crew acted within the rules of engagement and said that the inquiry backed the assessment that the group of men were carrying a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Assange stated that the attack on the van was the most damning part of the video: "I'm very sceptical that was done under the rules of engagement; and, if it was legal, the rules of engagement must be changed". Fox News reported in 2010 that the rules of engagement in Iraq had not been changed since the incident occurred.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On the day of the attack the U.S. military reported that the two journalists were killed along with nine insurgents, and that the helicopter engagement was related to a U.S. troop raid force that had been attacked by small-arms fire and RPGs. U.S. forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl later stated: "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: "The Washington Post" reported it was unclear whether the journalists were killed by U.S. fire or by shooting from the targeted Iraqis. Captain James Hall stated they couldn't drive in Bradleys in fear of running over bodies. Major Brent Cummings claimed they took great pains to prevent the loss of innocent civilian lives.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Reuters reported that it could locate no witnesses who had seen gunmen in the immediate area. Reuters also stated that local police described the attack as "random American bombardment". Reuters subsequently asked the U.S. military to probe the deaths. They asked for an explanation of the confiscation of the journalists' two cameras, access to the on-board footage and voice communications from the helicopters involved, and access to the reports of the units involved in the incident, particularly logs of weapons taken from the scene.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On July 25, 2007, during an off-the-record briefing in Baghdad by the U.S. military, two Reuters editors were shown "less than three minutes of video from the Apache’s gun camera, up to the exact moment it opened fire the first time." The editors asked to see the remaining footage so Reuters could check whether it had been edited or manipulated. Their request was denied at the briefing and they were told to seek access under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Reuters requested a copy of the full video under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on the same day. In a personal statement during her court-martial, Chelsea Manning stated that the military had access to the video, and was actively examining it, yet it told Reuters in response to the FOIA request that the information might no longer exist. The Pentagon eventually blocked the FOIA request despite several follow-up requests by Reuters.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: An internal legal review by staff at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Iraq during July 2007 stated that the helicopters had attacked a number of armed insurgents within the rules of engagement, and that in an apparent case of civilian casualties two reporters working for Reuters had also been killed. The review was not released in full until 2010, after the video of the incident had been released by WikiLeaks.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: After the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement", WikiLeaks released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing the rules before, during, and after the attacks.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: "Washington Post" reporter David Finkel, who at the time was embedded with Bravo Company 2–16 Infantry, later covered the incidents of the day in his book, "The Good Soldiers". At a February 2013 pretrial hearing, Manning stated that Finkel "was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew". She said that she was "aghast" at Finkel's portrayal of the incident. "Reading his account," she explained, "one would believe the engagement was somehow justified as 'payback' for an earlier attack that led to the death of a soldier."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Early in 2010, the Internet whistleblower site WikiLeaks made a public request for assistance in decrypting a video it described as "US bomb strikes on civilians", specifically requesting access to supercomputer time. The site stated on its Twitter account on January 8, 2010, that it had a copy of gunsight footage of the incidents. The footage was released during an April 5 press conference at the US National Press Club, and subsequently on a designated website titled "Collateral Murder". WikiLeaks stated that the footage shows the "murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: WikiLeaks identified the leak's source as "a number of military whistleblowers". Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a U.S. Defense official confirmed the authenticity of the leaked audio and video. The military reported that it could not find its copy of the video.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: WikiLeaks released a 39-minute version, which shows all three incidents, and a 17-minute version, which shows only the first two incidents. Highlighted in the 17-minute version of the video are Noor-Eldeen with a camera and Chmagh talking on his mobile phone. Both videos depict the attack on the van, van driver, and two other men, and the aftermath when the two seriously injured children were evacuated by U.S. ground forces who arrived on the scene. The longer video shows the third attack, in which Hellfire missiles were fired into a building.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In an Al Jazeera English interview on April 19, 2010, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange explained why WikiLeaks titled the video "Collateral Murder":


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Assange in April 2010, asked him about the title: "You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called 'Collateral Murder'. That's not leaking, that's a pure editorial." Assange responded:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On 19 April 2010, Ethan McCord, who appears on the ground in the video, and Josh Steiber, a member of the same company who was not present on the day, wrote an open Letter of Reconciliation & Responsibility to the Iraqi People apologising for the events in the video. They wrote that:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, the widow of the man who had been driving the van, and the mother of the children McCord had carried out, responded to the open letter in 2010:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Bill Keller of "The New York Times" wrote, "But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn't call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric "Collateral Murder"." "The New York Times" wrote that "Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Captain Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command stated that the airstrike video "gives you a limited perspective, [it] only tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events". Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs. "Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat." He said that WikiLeaks "does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG". The WikiLeaks edited video did not add arrows pointing to these men, or label them, as it did with the men carrying cameras. WikiLeaks stated that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In an interview with Fox News Assange said that "it's likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons" and "based upon visual evidence I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything. ... Nearly every Iraqi household has a rifle or an AK. Those guys could have just been protecting their area". Fox News later stated that "although it could be argued AK-47 rifles are common household items, RPGs are not". A draft version of the video WikiLeaks produced made reference to the AK-47s and RPGs, but WikiLeaks said that ultimately they became unsure about the RPG, believing the long object could have been a camera tripod, so they decided not to point it out in the released version. Assange also said "it's ludicrous to allege that we have taken anything out of context in this video".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized WikiLeaks for releasing the video without providing any context. "These people can put out anything they want, and they're never held accountable for it. There's no before and there's no after". Gates said that the video provides the public with a view of warfare "as seen through a soda straw". Gates stated: "They're in a combat situation. The video doesn't show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops. It's obviously a hard thing to see. It's painful to see, especially when you learn after the fact what was going on. But you—you talked about the fog of war. These people were operating in split second situations.".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: "The New Yorker" praised its release, calling it "a striking artifact—an unmediated representation of the ambiguities and cruelties of modern warfare".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Daniel Ellsberg, a former United States military analyst who was known for having leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media, said of the airstrike:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Publicity of the incident ballooned following the release of the footage. The event was covered by Al Jazeera English and Reuters, and later by "The Washington Post", "The New York Times", "The Christian Science Monitor", the BBC, and CNN.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Assange stated that some of the press had not reported on the third airstrike, in which three Hellfire missiles were fired onto an apartment complex, which only appears in the longer unedited version of the two videos.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In an interview on NPR on April 6, the day after the "Collateral Murder" video release, David Finkel said that the Reuters reporters were not embedded with anyone, but working independently. He gave his view of the context of the killings:


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Finkel had reported the day in his book "The Good Soldiers", including conversations which closely matched the subsequently leaked video footage. On the same day as the NPR interview, Finkel was asked how he had seen the unedited video and whether WikiLeaks had shown it to him. He responded, "I hadn't heard of WikiLeaks before yesterday. I based the account in my book on multiple sources, all unclassified".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Assange said that Finkel had seen the video and that at least one individual at the offices of "The Washington Post" had a copy of the video for at least a year, prior to its release by WikiLeaks.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: "The Washington Post" has denied having any copy of the unedited video prior to WikiLeaks release of their edited version, and Finkel (who was on book leave from "The Washington Post" at the time) said that he has never made any statement about his sources for the story, except that it was "sourced ... from unclassified information and my presence in the area that day".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Ethan McCord, the soldier seen in the video carrying the injured boy, recalled in an interview on "The Marc Steiner Show" that on arrival at the scene, "The first thing I did was run up to the van". After attending to the girl's wounds and handing her to a medic, McCord was ordered to take position on the roof but he returned to the van to find the boy moving his hand. "I grabbed him and ran to the Bradley myself". McCord states he was yelled at for not "pulling security". "The first thing I thought of ... was my children at home". He later sought help for psychological trauma, but was ridiculed by his NCO and told that if he were to go to the mental health officer, "there would be repercussions".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: McCord discussed his experience in the battle in an interview with the "World Socialist Web Site" on April 28, 2010, stating, "What happened then was not an isolated incident. Stuff like that happens on a daily basis in Iraq." McCord also recalled being ordered to "kill every motherfucker on the street" in the event of an attack on their convoy. Describing doubts over his initial enthusiasm in Iraq, McCord said that "I didn’t understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we're being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people. ... The first real serious doubt, where I could no longer justify to myself being in Iraq or serving in the Army, was on that day in July 2007." In this interview, McCord reports that repercussions for seeking mental health help could include being labeled as a "malingerer", a crime under U.S. military law.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: McCord requested mental health assistance following his experiences on July 12, but was told by his superior officers to "get the sand out of [his] vagina" and to "suck it up and be a soldier".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: When interviewed by "Wired", McCord stated that he supported WikiLeaks in releasing the video, with some qualifications: "When it was first released I don't think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. In the video, you can clearly see that they did have weapons ... to the trained eye." McCord added, "I don't say that Wikileaks did a bad thing, because they didn't. ... I think it is good that they're putting this stuff out there. I don't think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war. ... It's very disturbing."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: James Spione made a short documentary film about the airstrikes called "Incident in New Baghdad", featuring a first-person account from Ethan McCord. It was nominated as a Documentary Short Subject for the 84th Academy Awards.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In May 2010, a 22-year-old American Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, was arrested after telling hacker Adrian Lamo she had leaked the airstrike video, along with a video of another airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. The Internet chats between Manning and Lamo were revealed to the public by "Wired".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: WikiLeaks said they were unable to confirm whether or not Manning was the source of the video, stating "we never collect personal information on our sources", but saying that "if [Manning is the] whistleblower then, without doubt, [s]he's a national hero" and "we have taken steps to arrange for [her] protection and legal defence".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On February 28, 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 specified charges. Her trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013. On July 30, Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. In addition to five or six espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment, reduction in rank from private first class to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. Pursuant to a commutation by President Obama, Chelsea Manning was released on May 17, 2017.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In a June 7, 2010, article in "The New Yorker", Raffi Khatchadourian addressed several issues involved in determining the legality of the attacks, including "proportionality", "positive identification" ("reasonable certainty" that the target has hostile intent), and "the treatment of casualties during an ongoing military operation".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Mark Taylor, an international law expert and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, told Al Jazeera "there's a case to be made that a war crime may have been committed." He added, "I think what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough." An article at "Gawker" stated that Reuters reporter Luke Baker had written an article claiming that the airstrikes may have been war crimes, but Reuters refused to run the story. Reuters responded, "It is absolutely untrue that this story was spiked. It was sent back for more reporting in an effort to incorporate a wider range of experts. The story was then overtaken by a more updated one out of Washington that incorporated reporting from the original piece."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: On April 5, 2010, the same day as the release of the video footage by WikiLeaks, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released a collection of documents including two investigative reports. Pentagon officials told the Reuters news agency that U.S. military lawyers were reviewing the video and could reopen an investigation into the incident, but a spokesperson later said that there were no plans to reopen the investigation.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The report states that at least two members of the group which were first fired on were armed, that two RPGs and one AKM or AK-47 rifle could be seen in the helicopter video, and that these weapons were picked up by the follow-up U.S. ground troops. The report concludes that the Reuters employees were in the company of armed insurgents. It also states that "The cameras could easily be mistaken for slung AK-47 or AKM rifles, especially since neither cameraman is wearing anything that identifies him as media or press". The report recommends encouraging journalists in Iraq to wear special vests to identify themselves, and to keep the U.S. military updated about their whereabouts. It claimed reporters' "furtive attempts to photograph the Coalition Ground Forces made them appear as hostile combatants".


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: According to the U.S. Army investigation report released by the United States Central Command, the engagement started at 10:20 Iraqi local time and ended at 10:41. A unit from Bravo Company 2–16 was within 100 meters of the individuals that were fired upon with 30 mm AH-64 Apache cannons. The company was charged with clearing their sector of any small armed forces, and had been under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The company was supported by two Apache helicopters from the 1st Cavalry Division's Aviation Brigade, call signs "Crazyhorse 1/8" and "Crazyhorse 1/9". Two men were identified by Crazyhorse 1/8 as carrying an RPG launcher and an AKM or AK-47.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: When the cameraman on the ground aimed his camera in the direction of Bravo Company 2–16, a pilot remarked "He's getting ready to fire". An Apache maneuvered around a building to get a clear field of fire and shot all nine men, killing eight. A passing van then stopped and attempted to load a wounded man. After getting permission to fire, the Apache crew fired on the van. When Bravo Company arrived at the scene, they reported finding two RPGs and an AK-47 or AKM. They also found two Canon EOS digital cameras with telephoto lenses. Two children were found in the van, a four-year-old girl with gunshot wounds and embedded windscreen glass wounds and an eight-year-old boy with multiple wounds, including brain damage arising from shrapnel damage to his right temporal lobe. Both children were said to have been evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day. This account of first bringing the wounded children to the Combat Support Hospital appears to be contradicted by orders by radio that form part of the video record, which forbids it and orders that the children be handed over to local police.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: While the Air Weapons Team was providing support at the first engagement area they were informed by ground troops that they were receiving small arms fire from the south/southwest. The crew for Crazyhorse 1/8 then located multiple individuals with weapons about 400 meters east of coalition forces and was given clearance to engage the targets. However, the co-pilot/gunner then observed a child and some other non-combatants in the vicinity of the individuals and decided to hold off on the engagement until the non-combatants were clear. After the non-combatants were clear Crazyhorse 1/8 engaged the targets. The crew for Crazyhorse 1/9 could not engage due to target obfuscation from buildings and dust.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The team observed several individuals from this group, some possibly wounded, run into a large multistory building. The co-pilot/gunner for Crazyhorse 1/9 spotted three individuals near this building get into a red SUV and drive away to the west. For about 5 to 10 minutes the team diverted its attention to this vehicle. However, according to the co-pilot for Crazyhorse 1/8 they failed to positively identify the occupants as combatants and returned to the previous engagement area.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: The events between the attack on the van and the attack on the building (approximately 30 minutes) were not captured on the leaked video footage. The military did not include the attack on the building in their report.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: Assange responded to the investigation report released by the Army in an interview with "Democracy Now!", stating that "the tone and language is all about trying to find an excuse for the activity. ... It's very clear that that is the approach, to try and find any mechanism to excuse the behavior, and that is what ended up happening."


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In May 2011 the Barcelona Human Rights Film Festival awarded the investigative film "Collateral murder, Hellfire", done by Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks spokesperson, and Ingi Ingason, with the award for International Journalism and Human Rights.


title: July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

text: In June 2011 the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) awarded the "Whistleblower Award" to the person who made the video "Collateral Murder" public via WikiLeaks.


title: Government cheese

text: Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries, Food Stamp recipients, and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States, as well as to food banks and churches. This processed cheese was used in military kitchens during World War II and has been used in schools since the 1950s.


title: Government cheese

text: Government cheese is a commodity cheese that was controlled by the US federal government from World War II to the early 1980's. Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk. The cheese, along with the butter and dehydrated milk powder, was stored in over 150 warehouses across 35 states.


title: Government cheese

text: The cheese was bought and stored by the government's Commodity Credit Corporation. Direct distribution of dairy products began in 1982 under the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program of the Food and Nutrition Service. According to the government, it "slices and melts well." The cheese was provided monthly, in unsliced block form, with generic product labeling and packaging.


title: Government cheese

text: The cheese was often from food surpluses stockpiled by the government as part of milk price supports. Butter was also stockpiled and then provided under the same program. Some government cheese was made of kosher products. That cheese product is also distributed to victims of a natural disaster following a state of emergency declaration.


title: Government cheese

text: That cheese became an important topic for the press in the 1980s, when the press learned about the milk products that were being stored across the nation while millions of Americans felt food insecurity. During the same time in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan's administration cut the budget on the US federal food stamp program.


title: Government cheese

text: On December 22, 1981, Reagan signed and authorized into law the finalized version of the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, which called for of cheese stockpiled by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to be released, saying that it would …


title: Government cheese

text: "…be distributed free to the needy by nonprofit organizations." Ronald Reagan, in his official statement about the distribution of the Cheese Inventory of the Commodity Credit Corporation, said, "The 1981 farm bill I signed today will slow the rise in price support levels, but even under this bill, surpluses will continue to pile up. A total of more than of cheese has already been consigned to warehouses, so more distributions may be necessary as we continue our drive to root out waste in government and make the best possible use of our nation's resources."


title: Government cheese

text: As the bill stated, any state that would ask for the cheese would get of it, in blocks. The logic behind the distribution was to remove waste effectively and to use all possible resources available in the United States. One representative from the United States Department of Agriculture remarked, "Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean."


title: Government cheese

text: The bill, while initially receiving significant support from the divided Congress, just barely passed the Democrat-controlled House by a count of 205 for and 203 against. In the Senate, where Republicans had gained control following the 1980 elections, the bill passed much more easily with 68 votes for and 32 against.


title: Government cheese

text: The distribution of government cheese was claimed to not have an adverse effect on commercially available cheeses, as the government was required to purchase dairy products like cheese to keep the commercial companies afloat. The government could then sell or give the cheese away to foreign countries. At the time of Ronald Reagan's signing of the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, the cheese stockpile equaled to more than 2 lb (1 kg) of cheese for each person living in the United States. The first dispersals of Government cheese were frequently moldy.


title: Government cheese

text: Those who received the cheese did not lose any food stamps and were not required to trade their food stamps in for the cheese. California was the first state to take the cheese; the first delivery that it received was for of cheese. Government cheese was provided to welfare, food stamp, and Social Security recipients at no cost to them. Government cheese was colored orange. It was distributed to low-income families through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. Government cheese was nominally removed in the 1990s when the dairy market stabilized.


title: Government cheese

text: Like traditional processed American cheese, it consists of a variety of cheese types and other ingredients, such as emulsifiers, blended together, and may be made of any of Cheddar cheese, Colby cheese, cheese curd, or granular cheese.


title: Government cheese

text: It has been argued that people in poverty, such as those entitled to government cheese, are more likely to become obese. Between 1988 and 1994, those individuals below the poverty line had an obesity rate of 29.2 percent. The Food Security Act of 1985 (the 1985 farm bill) attempted to reduce milk production, but has been labeled as a "hodgepodge of misdirected political compromise."


title: Government cheese

text: The nutrition facts on government cheese suggests a serving size of , or two slices, of cheese per serving. It also notes that the nutritional information represents the average nutritional value of "Processed American cheese" which was offered by the commodity food program. Per serving, the total fat content is 9 g, of which 6 g are saturated fat. Per serving, there are 30 mg of cholesterol and 380 mg of sodium.


title: Government cheese

text: The flavor of government cheese has been compared as ranging from mild cheddar to Velveeta cheese due to variations in ingredients. Some people reminisce both good or bad opinions concerning the flavor of government cheese. Affinity for government cheese is correlated with low socioeconomic status, however this correlation also overlaps with who was most likely to receive and consume it.


title: Government cheese

text: On August 23, 2016, the US Department of Agriculture stated that it planned to purchase approximately of cheese, worth $20 million, to give aid to food banks and food pantries from across the United States, to reduce a $1.2 billion cheese surplus that had been at its highest level in thirty years, and to stabilize farm prices. This purchase also added revenues for the dairy producers. Regarding the purchase, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, "This commodity purchase is part of a robust, comprehensive safety net that will help reduce a cheese surplus that is at a 30-year high while, at the same time, moving a high-protein food to the tables of those most in need. USDA will continue to look for ways within its authorities to tackle food insecurity and provide for added stability in the marketplace."


title: Government cheese

text: Currently, as part of the USDA Food Nutrition Service Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), eligible seniors over the age of 60 are provided one block of processed cheese food each month, supplied by participating dairies.