title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Investigative journalism often takes an implicit point of view on a particular public interest, by asking pointed questions and intensely probing certain questions. With outlets that otherwise strive for neutrality on political issues, the implied position is often uncontroversial—for example, that political corruption or abuse of children is wrong and perpetrators should be exposed and punished, that government money should be spent efficiently, or that the health of the public or workers or veterans should be protected. Advocacy journalists often use investigative journalism in support of a particular political position, or to expose facts that are only concerning to those with certain political opinions. Regardless of whether or not it is undertaken for a specific political faction, this genre usually puts a strong emphasis on factual accuracy, because the point of an in-depth investigation of an issue is to expose facts that spur change. Not all investigations seek to expose facts about a particular problem; some data-driven reporting does deep analysis and presents interesting results for the general edification of the audience which might be interpreted in different ways or which may contain a wealth of facts concerned with many different potential problems. A factually-constrained investigation with an implied public interest point of view may also find that the system under investigation is working well.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: New Journalism and Gonzo journalism also reject some of the fundamental ethical traditions and will set aside the technical standards of journalistic prose in order to express themselves and reach a particular audience or market segment. These favor a subjective perspective and emphasize immersive experiences over objective facts.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Tabloid journalists are often accused of sacrificing accuracy and the personal privacy of their subjects in order to boost sales. The 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal is an example of this. Supermarket tabloids are often focused on entertainment rather than news. A few have "news" stories that are so outrageous that they are widely read for entertainment purposes, not for information. Some tabloids do purport to maintain common journalistic standards but may fall far short in practice. Others make no such claims.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Some publications deliberately engage in satire, but give the publication the design elements of a newspaper, for example, "The Onion", and it is not unheard of for other publications to offer the occasional, humorous articles appearing on April Fool's Day.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: In countries without freedom of the press, the majority of people who report the news may not follow the above-described standards of journalism. Non-free media are often prohibited from criticizing the national government, and in many cases are required to distribute propaganda as if it were news. Various other forms of censorship may restrict reporting on issues the government deems sensitive. In the United States, freedom of the press is protected under the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Under the First Amendment, the government is not allowed to censor the press. The government does not have the right to try to control what is published and cannot prevent certain things from being published by the press. Prior constraint is an attempt by the government to prevent the expression of ideas before they are published. Some countries that have freedom of the press are the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan and a handful of countries in South America. Freedom of the press is also secured by the post-apartheid constitution of South Africa.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: There are a number of finer points of journalistic procedure that foster disagreements in principle and variation in practice among "mainstream" journalists in the free press. Laws concerning libel and slander vary from country to country, and local journalistic standards may be tailored to fit. For example, the United Kingdom has a broader definition of libel than does the United States.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Accuracy is important as a core value and to maintain credibility, but especially in broadcast media, audience share often gravitates toward outlets that are reporting new information first. Different organizations may balance speed and accuracy in different ways. "The New York Times", for instance, tends to print longer, more detailed, less speculative, and more thoroughly verified pieces a day or two later than many other newspapers. 24-hour television news networks tend to place much more emphasis on getting the "scoop." Here, viewers may switch channels at a moment's notice; with fierce competition for ratings and a large amount of airtime to fill, fresh material is very valuable. Because of the fast turn-around, reporters for these networks may be under considerable time pressure, which reduces their ability to verify information.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Laws with regard to personal privacy, official secrets, and media disclosure of names and facts from criminal cases and civil lawsuits differ widely, and journalistic standards may vary accordingly. Different organizations may have different answers to questions about when it is journalistically acceptable to skirt, circumvent, or even break these regulations. Another example of differences surrounding harm reduction is the reporting of preliminary election results. In the United States, some news organizations feel that it is harmful to the democratic process to report exit poll results or preliminary returns while voting is still open. Such reports may influence people who vote later in the day, or who are in western time zones, in their decisions about how and whether or not to vote. There is also some concern that such preliminary results are often inaccurate and may be misleading to the public. Other outlets feel that this information is a vital part of the transparency of the election process, and see no harm (if not considerable benefit) in reporting it.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Objectivity as a journalistic standard varies to some degree depending on the industry and country. For example, the government-funded BBC in the United Kingdom places a strong emphasis on political neutrality, but British newspapers more often tend to adopt political affiliations or leanings in both coverage and audience, sometimes explicitly. In the United States, major newspapers usually explicitly claim objectivity as a goal in news coverage, though most have separate editorial boards that endorse specific candidates and publish opinions on specific issues. Adherence to a claimed standard of objectivity is a constant subject of debate. For example, mainstream national cable news channels in the United States claim political objectivity but to various degrees, Fox News has been accused of conservative bias and MSNBC accused of liberal bias. The degree to which these leanings influence cherry-picking of facts, factual accuracy, the predominance of non-news opinion and commentators, audience opinion of the issues and candidates covered, visual composition, tone and vocabulary of stories is hotly debated.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: News value is generally used to select stories for print, broadcast, blogs, and web portals, including those that focus on a specific topic. To a large degree, news value depends on the target audience. For example, a minor story in the United States is more likely to appear on CNN than a minor story in the Middle East which might be more likely to appear on Al Jazeera simply due to the geographic distribution of the channels' respective audiences. It is a matter of debate whether this means that either network is less than objective, and that controversy is even more complicated when considering coverage of political stories for different audiences that have different political demographics (as with Fox News vs. MSNBC).


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Some digital media platforms can use criteria to choose stories which are different from traditional news values. For example, while the Google News portal essentially chooses stories based on news value (though indirectly, through the choices of large numbers of independent outlets), users can set Google Alerts on specific terms which define personal subjective interests. Search engines, news aggregators, and social network feeds sometimes change the presentation of content depending on the consumer's expressed or inferred preferences or leanings. This has both been cheered as bypassing traditional "gatekeepers" and whatever biases they may have in favor of audience-centric selection criteria, but criticized as creating a dangerous filter bubble which intentionally or unintentionally hides dissenting opinions and other content which might be important for the audience to see in order to avoid exposure bias and groupthink.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Audiences have different reactions to depictions of violence, nudity, coarse language, or to people in any other situation that is unacceptable to or stigmatized by the local culture or laws (such as the consumption of alcohol, homosexuality, illegal drug use, scatological images, etc.). Even with similar audiences, different organizations and even individual reporters have different standards and practices. These decisions often revolve around what facts are necessary for the audience to know.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: When certain distasteful or shocking material is considered important to the story, there are a variety of common methods for mitigating negative audience reaction. Advance warning of explicit or disturbing material may allow listeners or readers to avoid content they would rather not be exposed to. Offensive words may be partially obscured or bleeped. Potentially offensive images may be blurred or narrowly cropped. Descriptions may be substituted for pictures; graphic detail might be omitted. Disturbing content might be moved from a cover to an inside page, or from daytime to late evening when children are less likely to be watching.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: There is often considerable controversy over these techniques, especially concern that obscuring or not reporting certain facts or details is self-censorship that compromises objectivity and fidelity to the truth, and which does not serve the public interest.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: For example, images and graphic descriptions of war are often violent, bloody, shocking and profoundly tragic. This makes certain content disturbing to some audience members, but it is precisely these aspects of war that some consider to be the most important to convey. Some argue that "sanitizing" the depiction of war influences public opinion about the merits of continuing to fight, and about the policies or circumstances that precipitated the conflict. The amount of explicit violence and mutilation depicted in war coverage varies considerably from time to time, from organization to organization, and from country to country.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Reporters have also been accused of indecency in the process of collecting news, namely that they are overly intrusive in the name of journalistic insensitivity. War correspondent Edward Behr recounts the story of a reporter during the Congo Crisis who walked into a crowd of Belgian evacuees and shouted, "Anyone here been raped and speaks English?"


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Many print publications take advantage of their wide readership and print persuasive pieces in the form of unsigned editorials that represent the official position of the organization. Despite the ostensible separation between editorial writing and news gathering, this practice may cause some people to doubt the political objectivity of the publication's news reporting. (Though usually unsigned editorials are accompanied by a diversity of signed opinions from other perspectives.)


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Other publications and many broadcast media only publish opinion pieces that are attributed to a particular individual (who may be an in-house analyst) or to an outside entity. One particularly controversial question is whether media organizations should endorse political candidates for office. Political endorsements create more opportunities to construe favoritism in reporting, and can create a perceived conflict of interest.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Investigative journalism is largely an information-gathering exercise, looking for facts that are not easy to obtain by simple requests and searches, or are actively being concealed, suppressed or distorted. Where investigative work involves undercover journalism or use of whistleblowers, and even more if it resorts to covert methods more typical of private detectives or even spying, it brings a large extra burden on ethical standards.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Anonymous sources are double-edged—they often provide especially newsworthy information, such as classified or confidential information about current events, information about a previously unreported scandal, or the perspective of a particular group that may fear retribution for expressing certain opinions in the press. The downside is that the condition of anonymity may make it difficult or impossible for the reporter to verify the source's statements. Sometimes news sources hide their identities from the public because their statements would otherwise quickly be discredited. Thus, statements attributed to anonymous sources may carry more weight with the public than they might if they were attributed.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: The Washington press has been criticized in recent years for excessive use of anonymous sources, in particular to report information that is later revealed to be unreliable. The use of anonymous sources increased markedly in the period before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: One of the primary functions of journalism ethics is to aid journalists in dealing with many ethical dilemmas they may encounter. From highly sensitive issues of national security to everyday questions such as accepting a dinner from a source, putting a bumper sticker on one's car, publishing a personal opinion blog, a journalist must make decisions taking into account things such as the public's right to know, potential threats, reprisals and intimidations of all kinds, personal integrity, conflicts between editors, reporters and publishers or management, and many other such conundra. The following are illustrations of some of those.


title: Journalism ethics and standards

text: Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman of the National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand, argued that journalistic professionalism is a combination of two factors, secondary socialization of journalists in the workplace and the fetishization of journalistic norms and standards. In this way, undesirable traits in new journalists can be weeded out, and remaining journalists are free to cynically criticize journalistic professional norms as long as they keep working and following them. This criticism is adapted from interviews of twenty political journalists from BBC News, Sky News, "The Guardian", "The New York Times", "The Washington Post" and MSNBC/NBC News, and from philosopher Slavoj Žižek's concept of ideology.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Cyperus esculentus (also called chufa, tiger nut, atadwe, yellow nutsedge, and earth almond) is a species of plant in the sedge family widespread across much of the world. It is found in most of the Eastern Hemisphere, including Southern Europe, Africa and Madagascar, as well as the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. "C. esculentus" is cultivated for its edible tubers, called earth almonds or tiger nuts (due to the stripes on their tubers and their hard shell), as a snack food and for the preparation of "horchata de chufa", a sweet, milk-like beverage.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "Cyperus esculentus" can be found wild, as a weed, or as a crop. It is an invasive species outside its native range, and is readily transported accidentally to become invasive. In many countries, "C. esculentus" is considered a weed. It is often found in wet soils such as rice paddies and peanut farms as well as well-irrigated lawns and golf courses during warm weather.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "Cyperus esculentus" is an annual or perennial plant, growing to tall, with solitary stems growing from a tuber. The plant is reproduced by seeds, creeping rhizomes, and tubers. Due to its clonal nature, "C. esculentus" can take advantage of soil disturbances caused by anthropogenic or natural forces. The stems are triangular in section and bear slender leaves wide. The spikelets of the plant are distinctive, with a cluster of flat, oval seeds surrounded by four hanging, leaf-like bracts positioned 90 degrees from each other. They are long and linear to narrowly elliptic with pointed tips and 8 to 35 florets. The color varies from straw-colored to gold-brown. They can produce up to 2420 seeds per plant. The plant foliage is very tough and fibrous and is often mistaken for a grass. The roots are an extensive and complex system of fine, fibrous roots and scaly rhizomes with small, hard, spherical tubers and basal bulbs attached.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: The tubers are in diameter and the colors vary between yellow, brown, and black. One plant can produce several hundred to several thousand tubers during a single growing season. With cool temperatures, the foliage, roots, rhizomes, and basal bulbs die, but the tubers survive and resprout the following spring when soil temperatures remain above . They can resprout up to several years later. When the tubers germinate, many rhizomes are initiated and end in a basal bulb near the soil surface. These basal bulbs initiate the stems and leaves above ground, and fibrous roots underground. "C. esculentus" is wind pollinated and requires cross pollination as it is self–incompatible.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "C. esculentus" is a highly invasive species in Oceania, Mexico, some regions of the United States, and the Caribbean, mainly by seed dispersion. It is readily transported internationally, and is adaptable to in varied climate and soil environments. In Japan, it is an exotic clonal weed favorable to establish in wet habitats.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "C. esculentus" is cultivated in Spain, Nigeria, United States, Guatemala, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Yemen, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Sudan, South Sudan, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, and Mali, where they are used primarily as animal feed or as a side dish, but in Hispanic countries they are used mainly to make horchata, a sweet, milk-like beverage.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "Cyperus esculentus" cultivation requires a mild climate. Low temperature, shade, and light intensity can inhibit flowering. Tuber initiation is inhibited by high levels of nitrogen, long photoperiods, and high levels of gibberellic acid. Flower initiation occurs under photoperiods of 12 to 14 hours per day.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Tubers can develop in soil depths around 30 cm, but most occur in the top or upper part. They tolerate many adverse soil conditions including periods of drought and flooding and survive soil temperatures around . They grow best on sandy, moist soils at a pH between 5.0 – 7.5. The densest populations of "C. esculentus" are often found in low-lying wetlands. They do not tolerate salinity.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Chufa is normally planted on previously tilled flat soils with ridges to facilitate irrigation. Seeds are planted manually on these ridges, which are approximately apart. Distances between seeds may vary from and seeding depth is around . A typical seeding rate for chufa is about 120 kg of tubers/ha (107 lbs/acre).


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: They are planted between April and May and must be irrigated every week until they are harvested in November and December. Tubers develop about 6–8 weeks after seedling emergence and grow quickly during July and August. The maturing is around 90–110 days. The average yield can approach between 10 and 19 t/ha.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "C. esculentus" is extremely difficult to remove completely once established. This is due to the plant having a stratified and layered root system, with tubers and roots being interconnected to a depth of 36 cm or more. The tubers are connected by fragile roots that are prone to snapping when pulled, making the root system difficult to remove intact. Intermediate rhizomes can potentially reach a length of 60 cm. The plant can quickly regenerate if a single tuber is left in place. By competing for light, water and nutrients it can reduce the vigour of neighbouring plants. It can develop into a dense colony. Patch boundaries can increase by more than one meter per year. Tubers and seed disperse with agricultural activities, soil movement or by water and wind. They are often known as a contaminant in crop seeds. When plants are small they are hard to distinguish from other weeds such as "Dactylis glomerata" and "Elytrigia repens". Thus it is hard to discover in an early stage and therefore hard to counteract. Once it is detected, mechanical removal, hand removal, grazing, damping, and herbicides can be used to inhibit "C. esculentus".


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Harvest usually occurs in November or December and the leaves are scorched during the harvest. With a combine harvester, the tiger nut is pulled out of the ground. Immediately after harvesting, the tiger nuts are washed with water in order to remove sand and small stones. The drying occurs usually in the sun and can take up to three months. The temperatures and humidity levels have to be monitored very carefully during this period. The tiger nuts have to be turned every day to ensure uniform drying. The drying process ensures a longer shelf life. This prevents rot or other bacterial infections, securing quality and high nutrition levels.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Tiger nut loses a considerable amount of water during drying and storage. The starch content of the tiger nut tubers decreases and the reducing sugar (invert sugar) content increases during storage. Tiger nut can be stored dry and rehydrated by soaking without losing the crisp texture. Soaking is often done overnight. Dried tiger nuts have a hard texture and soaking is required to render them more easily edible and to ensure acceptable sensory quality.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: According to the "Consejo Regulador de Chufa de Valencia" (Regulating Council for Valencia's Tiger Nuts), the nutritional composition/100 ml of the Spanish beverage horchata de chufas is as follows: energy content around 66 kcal, proteins around 0.5 g, carbohydrates over 10 g with starch at least 1.9 g, fats at least 2 g.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Dried tiger nut has a smooth, tender, sweet, and nutty taste. It can be consumed raw, roasted, dried, baked or as tiger nut milk, tiger nut drink or oil.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: In Spain, the drink now known as horchata de chufa (also sometimes called horchata de chufas or, in West African countries such as Nigeria and Mali, "kunun aya") is the original form of horchata. It is made from soaked, ground and sweetened tiger nuts mixed with sugar and water. According to researchers at the University of Ilorin, kunu made from tiger nuts is an inexpensive source of protein.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: It remains popular in Spain, where a regulating council exists to ensure the quality and traceability of the product in relation to the designation of origin. There it is served ice-cold as a natural refreshment in the summer, often served with fartons. Horchata de chufa is also used instead of dairy milk by the lactose-intolerant.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: The majority of the Spanish tiger nut crop is utilised in the production of horchata de chufa. Alboraya is the most important production centre.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: The tubers are edible raw or cooked. They have a slightly sweet, nutty flavour, compared to the more bitter-tasting tuber of the related "Cyperus rotundus" (purple nutsedge). They are quite hard and are generally soaked in water before they can be eaten, making them much softer and giving them a better texture. They are a popular snack in West Africa. The tubers can also be dried and ground into flour.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: In Northern Nigeria, it is called "aya" and it is usually eaten fresh. It is sometimes dried and later rehydrated and eaten. A snack made by toasting the nuts and sugar coating it is popular among the Hausa children of Northern Nigeria. Also, a drink known as "kunun aya" is made by processing the nuts with dates and later sieved and served chilled.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: In Egypt, tiger nuts are known by the name "Hab el-Aziz" and after softening it by soaking in water, it is sold on hand carts as a street food. Its popularity was depicted in movies, such as the song named after it: Hab el Aziz.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Flour of roasted tiger nut is sometimes added to biscuits and other bakery products as well as in making oil, soap, and starch extracts. It is also used for the production of nougat, jam, beer, and as a flavoring agent in ice cream and in the preparation of kunu (a local beverage in Nigeria). Kunu is a nonalcoholic beverage prepared mainly from cereals (such as millet or sorghum) by heating and mixing with spices (dandelion, alligator pepper, ginger, licorice) and sugar. To make up for the poor nutritional value of kunu prepared from cereals, tiger nut was found to be a good substitute for cereal grains. Tiger nut oil can be used naturally with salads or for deep frying. It is considered to be a high quality oil. Tiger nut “milk” has been tried as an alternative source of milk in fermented products, such as yogurt production, and other fermented products common in some African countries and can thus be useful replacing milk in the diet of people intolerant to lactose to a certain extent.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: Since the tubers of "C. esculentus" contain 20-36% oil, it has been suggested as potential oil crop for the production of biodiesel. One study found that chufa produced 1.5 metric tonnes of oil per hectare (174 gallons/acre) based on a tuber yield of 5.67 t/ha and an oil content of 26.4%. A similar 6-year study found tuber yields ranging from 4.02 to 6.75 t/ha, with an average oil content of 26.5% and an average oil yield of 1.47 t/ha. The oil of the tuber was found to contain 18% saturated (palmitic acid and stearic acid) and 82% unsaturated (oleic acid and linoleic acid) fatty acids.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: The boiled nuts are used in the UK as a bait for carp. The nuts have to be prepared in a prescribed manner to prevent harm to the fish. The nuts are soaked in water for 24 hours, and then boiled for 20 minutes or longer until fully expanded. Some anglers then leave the boiled nuts to ferment for 24–48 hours, which can enhance their effectiveness. If the nuts are not properly prepared, they can be toxic to carp. This was originally thought to have been the cause of death of Benson, a large, well-known female carp weighing found floating dead in a fishing lake, with a bag of unprepared tiger nuts lying nearby, empty, on the bank. An examination of the fish by a taxidermist concluded tiger nut poisoning was not the cause of death, but rather the fish had died naturally.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: It has been suggested that the extinct hominin "Paranthropus boisei" (the "Nutcracker Man") subsisted on tiger nuts.


title: Cyperus esculentus

text: "C. esculentus" was one of the oldest cultivated plants in prehistoric and Ancient Egypt, where it was an important food. Roots of wild chufa have been found at Wadi Kubbaniya, north of Aswan, dating to around 16,000 BC. Dry tubers also appear later in tombs of the Predynastic period, around 3000 BC. During that time, "C. esculentus" tubers were consumed either boiled in beer, roasted, or as sweets made of ground tubers with honey. The tubers were also used medicinally, taken orally, as an ointment, or as an enema, and used in fumigants to sweeten the smell of homes or clothing. Chufa continued to be an important source of food in the Dynastic period, and cultivation of the plant remained exclusively in Egypt. The tomb of the vizier Rekhmire from the 15th century BCE, shows peasants preparing and measuring tiger nuts to make votive cakes as offerings to the god Amun. The modern name for tiger nuts in Egypt is حب العزيز "(Hab el Aziz = grains of Al-Aziz") named after the Fatimid ruler who was reputedly fond of it.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Società Sportiva Calcio Bari, commonly referred to as Bari, is an Italian football club based in Bari, Apulia. Bari currently plays in the . The team finished the 2021–22 season in first place in Serie C and earned promotion to Serie B for the 2022–23 season.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Bari was originally founded in 1908 and refounded several times, most recently in 2018. The club spent many seasons bouncing between the top two divisions in Italian football, Serie A and Serie B. The club was formerly known as A.S. Bari or F.C. Bari 1908 as well as other names, due to re-foundations. Bari usually plays in all-white with red detailing.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Statistically, Bari is the most successful club from the Apulia region, in terms of the all-time Serie A records. The club is among the elite in Southern Italian football and is ranked 17th in the all-time Serie A records. The club won the Mitropa Cup in 1990.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: One of the most notable achievements in the club's history was in the 1996 season, when forward Igor Protti became the top scorer in Serie A with 24 goals. The club is known in the wider footballing world for producing Antonio Cassano who was born in Bari, he shone at the club as a youngster.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Bari Foot-Ball Club was founded in the city on 15 January 1908. Like the majority of early Italian football clubs, foreign people were involved in the foundation of the club. Amongst the main founders were German Floriano Ludwig, Swiss Gustavo Kuhn and a native trader of Bari called Giovanni Tiberini.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: The first players included many non-Italians, the FBC Bari originals included; founder Ludwig, along with Barther (English), Bach (Swiss), Attoma, Roth (Swiss), Labourdette (Spanish), Jovinet (French), Giordano, Gazagne (French), Randi and Ziegler. Originally the club wore red shirts with white shorts, early on they would play against English sailors at the San Lorenzo field in the San Pasquale area of Bari.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Although the club was founded early on, clubs from the Mezzogiorno were not very well represented in the early Italian football championships and thus Bari did not take part in the early seasons. In fact only Campania had a regional section in the league from that area prior to the First World War. The war would see the original club becoming defunct, before being reorganised in 1924 under the same name.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: By this time other clubs from the city had begun playing too, including "Foot-Ball Club Liberty" who originally wore blue and white stripes, they were founded as a dissident club from the original Bari in 1909 and their rivals "Unione Sportiva Ideale" who wore green and black stripes and was founded in 1908. It was FBC Liberty who became the first ever side from the Province of Bari to take part in the Italian Football Championship, this was during the 1921–22 CCI season, when the main clubs in the country had a falling out with FIGC.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: The following season Ideale became the first side from Bari to progress to the Southern Italian semi-finals round, but lost out to Lazio. All three clubs featured in the championship for the first time in 1924–25 however FBC Bari were relegated and ceased to exist again in 1927, Liberty on the other hand reached the Southern semi-finals before losing out heavily to Alba Roma.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: During the 1926-1928 period the whole of Italian football was changing and beginning to become more organised, and several mergers were taking place in Naples, Florence and Rome around the same time. FBC Liberty opted to change their name into Bari FC and first used it on 6 February 1927 in a match against Audace Taranto, then on 27 February 1928 Bari FC merged with US Ideale to create Unione Sportiva Bari. The US Bari retaken the red and white colours of FBC Bari.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: After the Italian Championship of 1928–29, the league system was reorganised and Bari was placed in Serie B. One of their players was called up in the Italy national football team that season for the first time, in the form of Raffaele Costantino, this made Bari the first Serie B club to contribute a player and a scorer to the national side.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: The 1930s and 1940s were Bari's golden age, spending much of that time in Serie A with a finish of seventh in 1947 being the best they achieved.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: In the 1950s Bari went into a sharp decline and an equally rapid revival towards the end of the decade to spend three more years in Serie A (1958–61). Stars of the team in this period included Biagio Catalano and Raúl Conti. The club returned to Serie A twice more in this period (1963–64 and 1969–70) with the latter proving especially harrowing with only 11 goals scored, the lowest of any top-flight club. In 1974 Bari descended to Serie C, finishing that season with only 12 goals scored and 26 conceded in 38 games.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: By the late 1970s Bari were back in Serie B and on something of an upward swing, narrowly missing promotion in 1982. They managed promotion to Serie A in 1985 and acquired English players Gordon Cowans and Paul Rideout, but they were unable to prevent an instant return to Serie B.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: A return to Serie A in 1989 with stars including stalwart defender Giovanni Loseto, midfielder Pietro Maiellaro and Brazilian striker João Paulo saw a respectable 10th-place finish in 1990, their last season at the Della Vittoria. The following season saw Bari move to the San Nicola stadium, built for the 1990 World Cup, but by 1992, despite the signing of David Platt, and they would be relegated once more.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Promotion in 1994 saw another two-year stay in Serie A with Igor Protti clinching league topscorer in 1995-96 season, and another promotion in 1997 saw the emergence of promising youngsters like Nicola Ventola, Gianluca Zambrotta, Antonio Cassano and Diego De Ascentis. This time they managed a four-year stay in Serie A under the guidance of Eugenio Fascetti, despite his uneasy relationship with many sections of the club's support. The club has since had a generally indifferent spell in Serie B. However, having been near the top of the Serie B table for much of the 2008–09 season they gained promotion to Serie A on 8 May 2009, under the guidance of Antonio Conte.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: In November 2009, a take-over bid was rejected. A Texas-based company JMJ Holdings also gave an intent to take over in August 2009.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: With Leonardo Bonucci and Andrea Ranocchia as centre-back and Barreto as striker, Bari performed well in the first half of the season. Eventually Bari finished 10th. However, Bari lost €19 million in 2009 financial year, which meant Bari was quiet in the 2010 summer window (only Almirón and Ghezzal were the new significant signings plus the purchase of Barreto after the expiration of his loan, who broke his leg in mid-season) and in the January 2011 transfer window, they failed to find a replacement of Bonucci and Ranocchia. The company recovered from negative equity due to TV income increasing as well as the sale of Bonucci (a profit of €6.45 million). Bari had a positive equity of €870,653 on 31 December 2010 and a net income of 14 million in the 2010 calendar year, due to extraordinary income from selling the brand.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Bari were relegated to Serie B after the 2010–11 season finishing 17 points short of 17th placed Lecce. During the season, manager Giampiero Ventura was replaced by Bortolo Mutti in a failed attempt to save the club from relegation. On 4 March 2011, Bari played its 1,000th game in Serie A.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: On 13 June 2011, President Vincenzo Matarrese and the rest of the board of directors resigned after 28 years of controlling the club. Vincenzo Torrente was brought in to manage the side in the summer of 2011 and much of the playing roster was let go due to financial difficulties at the club and replaced by young players. Despite six and seven point penalties in the following two seasons, Bari under Torrente were able to achieve to mid-table Serie B finishes however, disconcertingly, attendances continued to dwindle. In the summer of 2013, Torrente resigned and was replaced by Carmine Gautieri, who also resigned after two weeks. The top job was then assigned to Roberto Alberti Mazzaferro.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: The financial position of the club continued to decline and the Mattarese family reduced the amount of money they put into the club. The club's debt reached €30m in February 2014. The club was declared bankrupt on 10 March 2014. The first bankruptcy auction, on 18 April 2014, was declared deserted due to the lack of a bid that met all of the criterion. The second auction, on 12 May 2014, also failed to find a successful bidder. The club was in real danger of disappearing.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: The third bankruptcy auction was held on 20 May 2014 with an asking price for the club of just €2m. A consortium F.C. Bari 1908 S.p.A. led by former Serie A referee Gianluca Paparesta successfully acquired the club assets and sports title. A strong spell of form towards the end of the season, where the club lost just two of its last 15 Serie B matches, meant that Bari qualified for the 2013–14 Serie B play-offs. Bari met Crotone in the quarter finals and won 3–0, setting up a clash against Latina, the side that finished 3rd in the regular season. The first leg of the play-off semifinal was a sell out with over 50,000 people attending the match, an incredible achievement considering the club recorded an attendance of less than 1,000 just a few months earlier. Bari were knocked out due to two draws (2–2 and 2–2).


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: In 2014–15 the team ended the season in 10th place. In 2015–16 Bari gained 5th place in the league and subsequent access to the play-off preliminary match against Novara but lost 3–4 after extra time at Stadio San Nicola.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: In December 2015, Cosmo Giancaspro acquired 5% shares of Bari. In April 2016 Noordin Ahmad signed a preliminary agreement to acquire 50% shares of the club but the deal collapsed; In June 2016 Cosmo Giancaspro became the sole director () of the club, after the entire share capital were acquired by an Italian company Kreare Impresa S.r.l. According to "La Repubblica", Kreare Impresa was owned by Giancaspro, but both Giancaspro and his company was involved in a money laundering investigation.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: On 16 July 2018, Bari were excluded by Co.Vi.Soc. from participating in 2018–19 Serie B due to financial reasons. The shareholders also tried to recapitalize the club and appeal the exclusion to Collegio di Garanzia of Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), however, it was rejected.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Thanks to the Article 52 of N.O.I.F., it was reported that Aurelio De Laurentiis, the owner of football club Napoli and film company Filmauro, had won the rights to establish a phoenix club of Bari and restart in 2018–19 Serie D. He also re-established the current Napoli in 2004. The new club will be named "S.S.C. Bari", with De Laurentiis stating his intention to bring it back to Serie A as fast as possible. The club was subsequently assigned to Group I of 2018–19 Serie D, traditionally destined to teams from Sicily and Calabria.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: On 23 August 2018, as part of a press conference, Aurelio De Laurentiis announced his eldest son, film producer Luigi De Laurentiis Jr., as the new Bari chairman.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Bari was promoted to Serie C at the end of the 2018–19 season. In the following seasons, the club was always


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: In the 2019–20 campaign, Bari ended the season in second place behind Reggina, and then making all the way to the playoff final where they were defeated by Reggiana after extra time, thus missing on immediate promotion to the Italian second division. Following a fourth place finish in the next season, the club hired Michele Mignani as head coach and strengthened the squad even further: this proved to be successful, as Bari won the Group C and gained promotion to Serie B on 3 April 2022, with four games yet to go.


title: S.S.C. Bari

text: Bari have had many managers and trainers, some seasons they have had co-managers running the team, here is a chronological list of them from 1928 onwards:


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (; sometimes known as Umar Sheikh, Sheikh Omar, Sheik Syed or by the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad; born 23 December 1973) is a British Pakistani terrorist. He became a member of the Islamist jihadist group Harkat-ul-Ansar or Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in the 1990s, and later of Jaish-e-Mohammed and was closely associated with Al-Qaeda.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: He was arrested-in-action during the 1994 kidnappings of Western tourists in India and served time in Indian prisons. He was released in 1999 and was provided safe passage into Afghanistan with the support of the Taliban in exchange for passengers aboard the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814. He is best-known for his role in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of "Wall Street Journal" reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Sheikh was arrested by Pakistani police on 12 February 2002, in Lahore, in connection with the Pearl kidnapping and was sentenced to death on 15 July 2002 by a special judge of an anti terrorism court for murdering Pearl. His complicity in the murder and the reasons behind it are in dispute. At his initial court appearance, he stated, "I don't want to defend this case. I did this... Right or wrong, I had my reasons. I think that our country shouldn't be catering to America's needs", but he subsequently appealed his conviction for murder, only admitting his role in the kidnapping of Pearl. Saeed's lawyer has stated he will base his client's appeal on the admission of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, made public in 2007, that he is the killer of Daniel Pearl. Sheikh's murder conviction was overturned (along with that of his accomplices Fahad Nasim Ahmed, Syed Salman Saqib and Sheikh Mohammad Adil) by Pakistan's Sindh High Court on 2 April 2020, and his seven-year sentence for kidnapping was considered as time-served. , he is imprisoned at the Kot Lakhpat Jail, Lahore (where he had been shifted to from Central Prison Karachi) but has been moved out of death row while his acquittal for Pearl's murder is in appeal at the Supreme Court of Pakistan.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Ahmed Omar Sheikh was born in London, England on December 23, 1974. His parents, Saeed and Qaissra Sheikh, emigrated from Pakistan to the UK in 1968 and ran a prosperous clothing business. He was the eldest of three siblings and in his youth he attended Forest School, Walthamstow, an independent school in North-East London, whose alumni include English cricket captain Nasser Hussain, filmmaker Peter Greenaway and singer Suzana Ansar. Between the ages of 14 and 16 he attended Aitchison College, the most exclusive boys boarding school in Pakistan, where his family had temporarily relocated. He later returned to the United Kingdom to continue at Forest School. "Reuters" journalist Daniel Flynn, who was a childhood friend, says that he was already an admirer of Pakistan's Islamist dictator General Zia-ul-Haq and returned to London as "a junior boxing champion and full of stories of contacts with organised crime, gun battles in the ghettos of Lahore, visits to brothels."


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Later, he attended the London School of Economics to study applied mathematics, statistics, economics and social psychology, but dropped out during his first year. "The Guardian" reported that a fellow student of Sheikh's at both the Forest School and the LSE, Syed Ali Hasan, had described him in 2002 as "bright but rather dysfunctional" and said that he had been suspended from school on several occasions because of his violent behavior. He was known for his violence since his childhood, having punched and thrown to the floor a teacher when he was eight years old, and grew up to be a bully. Becoming an adult, a "burly-chested six feet two inches" as per journalist Robert Sam Anson, he would eventually translate this violence into a love for martial arts and sports, participating in the 1992 World Armwrestling Championship in Geneva, while also being a chess champion during his days at the LSE. Noted for his academic abilities, he's also a polyglot who could speak five languages. "The Guardian" reported that Sheikh came into contact with radical Islamists at the LSE, quoting Hasan as saying "[he] told us he was going to Bosnia driving aid convoys, and he never came back to university".


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his book "In the Line of Fire", stated that Sheikh was originally recruited by British intelligence agency MI6 while studying at the London School of Economics. He alleges Sheikh was sent to the Balkans by MI6 to engage in operations. Musharraf later says, "At some point, he probably became a rogue or double agent".


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Omar Sheikh married Saadia Rauf (who holds an MA degree in English) in Lahore in December 2000 and became a father in November 2001.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: He travelled to Bosnia in 1993 during the Bosnian War and met other Pakistani Islamist militants with whom he went to an Afghan training camp and joined the anti-Indian terrorist group Harkat-ul-Ansar. He served five years in prison including the Delhi Tihar Jail in the 1990s in connection with the 1994 kidnappings of Westerners in India perpetrated by the Harkat-ul-Ansar (under the pseudonym of Al-Hadid), during which he had been caught. The abductees included three British citizens, Myles Croston, Paul Rideout, and Rhys Partridge, and one American, Béla Nuss; all of them were rescued unharmed.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: During his jail years, where he moved from jail to jail in different cities (e.g. New Delhi, Meerut, etc.), he was noted as wanting to read biographies of Adolf Hitler and Stalin and described "as a tough, militant youth with a sharp, calculating brain well capable of planning and executing terror acts with precision", while his counsel in Meerut, O.P. Sharma, remembers him as a "fanatic to the core" who "believed every non-Muslim is a kafir and must perish", that "there was no concept of democracy in Islam" and even that "at times he turned very violent and behaved like a mentally-challenged person" for instance when "he once beat up one of the deputy jailors at Meerut jail."


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: In 1999, Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked by five Pakistani militants belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly Harkat-ul-Ansar) while on the way from Kathmandu, Nepal to New Delhi, India. The hijackers demanded the release of fellow Harkat-ul-Mujahideen members Sheikh and Masood Azhar (who went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammed which Sheikh later joined) and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, leader of another Pakistan-based anti-India terror organization. The plane landed in Kandahar and Taliban militia surrounded the plane, pre-empting any Indian commando operation. After negotiations between the Indian government and the hijackers, the hostages were freed eight days after the hijacking occurred, although a passenger, Ripan Katyal, was stabbed to death by one of the hijackers. The three prisoners were released in exchange for the hostages, including Sheikh who was imprisoned at the Tihar Jail in Delhi.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Sheikh also had financial connections with Aftab Ansari, perpetrator of the kidnapping of Partha Pratim Roy Burman and the 2002 attack on American cultural centre in Kolkata.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: "The Times" has described Sheikh as "no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan's military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles of Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organisation." According to ABC, Sheikh began working for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1993. By 1994, he was operating training camps in Afghanistan and had earned the title of bin Laden's "special son."


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: In May 2002, "The Washington Post" quoted an unnamed Pakistani source as saying that the ISI paid Sheikh's legal fees during his 1994 trial in India on charges of kidnapping.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: On 6 October 2001, a senior-level US government official, told CNN that US investigators had discovered Sheikh (Sheik Syed), using the alias "Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad" had sent about $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohamed Atta. Investigators said "Atta then distributed the funds to conspirators in Florida in the weeks before the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil that destroyed the World Trade Center, heavily damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. In addition, sources have said Atta sent thousands of dollars – believed to be excess funds from the operation – back to Syed in the United Arab Emirates in the days before September 11." CNN later confirmed this.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: More than a month after the money transfer was discovered, the head of ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed resigned from his position. It was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating the possibility that Gen. Ahmed ordered Sheikh to send the $100,000 to Atta.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: "The Wall Street Journal" was one of the only Western news organisations to follow up on the story, citing the "Times of India": "US authorities sought General Mahmud Ahmed's removal after confirming that $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker Mohamed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the insistence of General Mahmud." Another Indian newspaper, the "Daily Excelsior", quoting FBI sources, reported that the "FBI's examination of the hard disk of the cellphone company Sheikh had subscribed to led to the discovery of the "link" between him and the deposed chief of the Pakistani ISI, Mahmud Ahmed. And as the FBI investigators delved deep, reports surfaced with regard to the transfer of $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the 11 September attacks, who flew the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 Boeing 767-223ER commercial airliner into the North Tower of World Trade Center. General Mahmud Ahmed, the FBI investigators found, fully knew about the transfer of money to Atta."


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: US investigators later said that this was a confusion with Mustafa al-Hawsawi, also known as Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad, who is currently held in Guantanamo Bay.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: The "Pittsburgh Tribune" notes that there "are many in Musharraf's government who believe that Saeed Sheikh's power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA."


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Sheikh rose to prominence with the 2002 killing of "Wall Street Journal" reporter Daniel Pearl, who at the time was in Pakistan investigating connections between the ISI and Islamic militant groups. In Pakistan, Sheikh was sentenced to death for killing Pearl, however his complicity in Pearl's execution and the reasons behind it are in dispute. Further adding to the confusion surrounding the issue is that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad personally claimed to have been Pearl's killer.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Saeed was seemingly implicated by Benazir Bhutto just before her own death in a hypothetical murder of Osama bin Laden (which must have occurred in late 2001 or 2002). Several commentators have noted that, as she had previously been speaking about one of the sons of bin Laden during the interview, in all likelihood, Bhutto simply misspoke and had intended to say, "Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered "Daniel Pearl"," rather than "the man who murdered bin Laden" – such an important revelation about bin Laden's fate would certainly not have been stated so casually. Additionally, in subsequent interviews, Bhutto spoke about bin Laden in the context of him being alive.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: The kidnapping (on January 23, 2002) and subsequent murder (on February 1, 2002) of American "Wall Street Journal" reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, who was following an investigative lead while working in post-9/11 Pakistan, was committed by several Islamist jihadist groups working in collaboration. Sheikh, a member of the Harkat ul-Ansar/Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and later Jaish-e-Mohammed, has admitted to planning and committing the kidnapping but denied being involved in Pearl's murder. The beheading video of Pearl was released by Jaish-e-Mohammed, under the pseudonym of "National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty" and Jaish member Amjad Farooqi was reportedly involved in the kidnapping and murder. In a January 2011 report prepared by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), members of other Pakistani terrorist groups such as Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan were also stated to be involved in Pearl's kidnapping and murder. The lead author of the report was Pearl's friend and colleague, journalist Asra Nomani. All of the aforementioned groups were operating under the Lashkar-e-Omar umbrella. Al-Qaeda leaders were also involved in the kidnapping and murder of Pearl, with Saif al-Adel playing a role in organizing the kidnapping and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was personally identified in investigative reports as the one who killed Pearl. Pearl was detained and later killed at an Al-Qaeda safe house in Karachi owned by Pakistani businessman Saud Memon. Matiur Rehman, another al-Qaeda leader has been identified as being involved in the kidnapping.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Sheikh was arrested by Pakistani police on 12 February 2002, in Lahore, in connection with the kidnapping of Pearl. Pearl after being kidnapped, had his throat slit, and then was beheaded on February 1, 2002. Sheikh told the Pakistani court, however, that he had surrendered to the Inter-Services Intelligence's Ijaz Shah a week earlier on February 5.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: Sheikh's lawyer Abdul Waheed Katpar claims Sheikh was arrested on 5 February 2002 and not on 12 February, and that evidence against the four suspects was fabricated by Pakistani police while the suspects were held in secret for a week. He also claims confessions were obtained under duress of torture and solitary confinement. However, Sheikh also told Pakistani officials in court in February 2002 that "as far as I know" Pearl had been killed.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: The CPI and ICIJ report concluded Omar Sheikh was the mastermind of the plot to kidnap Pearl, leading to his subsequent murder. The report also confirmed the role of three codefendants convicted with Sheikh in Pearl's case. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a former CIA captive, who had been tortured in 2003 in the CIA's archipelago of black sites, had confessed to the murder, and the report concluded his confession was credible. The report noted that FBI forensic experts had confirmed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession through "vein matching", identifying the pattern of the veins in the killer's hands in the video.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: In February 2014, "The Times of India" reported that Saeed had attempted suicide at the Central Prison Karachi (where he was being held at the time) but had been discovered in time by prison guards and was in a stable condition. The newspaper quoted a senior prison official as saying: "He is kept in a separate cell and section of the jail as he is no ordinary criminal. […] We have filed a case against him for attempted suicide and he can face additional punishment now". A second prison official said: "He is a very intelligent, strong and sharp criminal with dangerous designs. So his attempt to commit suicide comes as a surprise".


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: In the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, tensions increased dramatically between India and Pakistan. On 28 November, a hoax caller pretending to be then Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee threatened Pakistan President Zardari with war, leading to the Pakistan military being put on high alert. Military aircraft with live ammunition were scrambled to patrol above Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The same caller tried to get in touch with the real Pranab Mukherjee and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, claiming he was President Zardari but was unable to get through to either.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: A year after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan's "Dawn" newspaper revealed that the hoax caller had been Sheikh. Using a mobile phone smuggled into his prison cell, Sheikh made the calls using a British SIM card. After the source of the hoax calls became known, intelligence agents confiscated Sheikh's illegal phones and SIM cards and he was placed in solitary confinement.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: "The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl" (2006) a television documentary by Indian directors Ahmed Alauddin Jamal and Ramesh Sharma which aired on HBO compares the contrasting lives of Sheikh and Danel Pearl. Alyy Khan portrayed Sheikh in the film "A Mighty Heart" (2007) which was based on the memoir by Pearl's wife Mariane Pearl.


title: Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

text: In 2008, National Geographic Adventure's docudrama show Locked up Abroad broadcast the episode "India: Hostage to Terror" about Sheikh's 1994 kidnappings of Westerners in India. In 2017, an Indian biographical film "Omerta" based on the life of Sheikh was released. Rajkummar Rao portrays Sheikh and the film covers his initial radicalization, role in the 1994 kidnappings of Westerners in India, his release in exchange for hostages of the Indian Airlines flight 814, and his role in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl.


title: Faiyum

text: Faiyum ( ' , borrowed from ' from "the Sea, Lake") is a city in Middle Egypt. Located southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum Governorate. Originally called Shedet in Egyptian, the Greeks called it in , and later . It is one of Egypt's oldest cities due to its strategic location.


title: Faiyum

text: Originally founded by the ancient Egyptians as Shedet, its current name in English is also spelled as Fayum, Faiyum or Al Faiyūm. Faiyum was also previously officially named Madīnet Al Faiyūm (Arabic for "The City of Faiyum"). The name Faiyum (and its spelling variations) may also refer to the Faiyum Oasis, although it is commonly used by Egyptians today to refer to the city.


title: Faiyum

text: The modern name of the city comes from Coptic / ' (whence the proper name '), meaning "the Sea" or "the Lake", which in turn comes from late Egyptian "pꜣ-ym" of the same meaning, a reference to the nearby Lake Moeris; the extinct elephant ancestor "Phiomia" was named after it.


title: Faiyum

text: Archaeological evidence has found occupations around the Fayum dating back to at least the Epipalaeolithic. Middle Holocene occupations of the area are most widely studied on the north shore of Lake Moeris, where Gertrude Caton Thompson and Elinor Wight Gardner did a number of excavations of Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic sites, as well as a general survey of the area. Recently the area has been further investigated by a team from the UCLA/RUG/UOA Fayum Project.


title: Faiyum

text: According to Roger S. Bagnall habitation began in the fifth millennium BC and a settlement was established by the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC) called Shedet (Medinet el-Fayyum). It was the most significant centre of the cult of the crocodile god Sobek (borrowed from the Demotic pronunciation as "Soûkhos", and then into Latin as "Suchus"). In consequence, the Greeks called it "Crocodile City" ( "Krokodeilópolis"), which was borrowed into Latin as "Crocodīlopolis". The city worshipped a tamed sacred crocodile called, in Koine, "Petsuchos", "the Son of Soukhos", that was adorned with gold and gem pendants. The Petsoukhos lived in a special temple pond and was fed by the priests with food provided by visitors. When Petsuchos died, it was replaced by another.


title: Faiyum

text: Under the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the city was for a while called "Ptolemais Euergétis" (). Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) renamed the city "Arsinoë" and the whole nome after the name of his sister-wife Arsinoe II (316–270 or 268), who was deified after her death as part of the Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great, the official religion of the kingdom. Ptolemy II Philadelphus also established a town at the edge of Faiyum named "Philadelphia". It was laid out in a regular grid plan to resemble a typical Greek city, with private dwellings, palaces, baths and a theatre.


title: Faiyum

text: Under the Roman Empire, Arsinoë became part of the province of Arcadia Aegypti. To distinguish it from other cities of the same name, it was called "Arsinoë in Arcadia".


title: Faiyum

text: With the arrival of Christianity, Arsinoë became the seat of a bishopric, a suffragan of Oxyrhynchus, the capital of the province and the metropolitan see. Michel Le Quien gives the names of several bishops of Arsinoë, nearly all of them associated with one heresy or another.


title: Faiyum

text: The Catholic Church, considering Arsinoë in Arcadia to be no longer a residential bishopric, lists it as a titular see.


title: Faiyum

text: The 10th-century Bible exegete, Saadia Gaon, thought "el-Fayyum" to have actually been the biblical city of Pithom, mentioned in Exodus 1:11.


title: Faiyum

text: Around 1245, the region became the subject of the most detailed government survey to survive from the medieval Arab world, conducted by Abū ‘Amr ‘Uthman Ibn al-Nābulusī.


title: Faiyum

text: Faiyum is the source of some famous death masks or mummy portraits painted during the Roman occupation of the area. The Egyptians continued their practice of burying their dead, despite the Roman preference for cremation. While under the control of the Roman Empire, Egyptian death masks were painted on wood in a pigmented wax technique called encaustic—the Faiyum mummy portraits represent this technique. While previously believed to represent Greek settlers in Egypt, modern studies conclude that the Faiyum portraits instead represent mostly native Egyptians, reflecting the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Greek minority in the city.


title: Faiyum

text: The construction of the settlement of "Philadelphia" under Ptolemy II Philadelphus was recorded in detail by a 3rd-century BC Greek public official named Zeno (or Zenon, ). Zeno, a native of Kaunos in lower Asia Minor, came to Faiyum to work as private secretary to Apollonius, the finance minister to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and later to Ptolemy III Euergetes). During his employment, Zeno wrote detailed descriptions of the construction of theatres, gymnasiums, palaces and baths in the 250s and 240s BC, as well as making copious written records of various legal and financial transactions between citizens.


title: Faiyum

text: During the winter of 1914–1915, a cache of over 2,000 papyrus documents was uncovered by Egyptian agricultural labourers who were digging for sebakh near Kôm el-Kharaba el-Kebir. Upon examination by Egyptology scholars, these documents were found to be records written by Zeno in Greek and Demotic. These papyri, now referred to as the "Zenon Archive" or the "Zenon Papyri", have provided historians with a detailed record of 3rd-century BC Philadelphia society and economy. The discovery site was identified as the former location of ancient Philadelphia. Today, the precise location of the town is unknown, although archaeologists have identified two sites in north-east Faiyum as the possible location for Philadelphia.


title: Faiyum

text: Faiyum has several large bazaars, mosques, baths and a much-frequented weekly market. The canal called Bahr Yussef runs through the city, its banks lined with houses. There are two bridges over the river: one of three arches, which carries the main street and bazaar, and one of two arches, over which is built the Qaitbay mosque, that was a gift from his wife to honor the Mamluk Sultan in Fayoum. Mounds north of the city mark the site of Arsinoe, known to the ancient Greeks as Crocodilopolis, where in ancient times the sacred crocodile kept in Lake Moeris was worshipped.


title: Faiyum

text: The center of the city is on the canal, with four waterwheels that were adopted by the governorate of Fayoum as its symbol; their chariots and bazaars are easy to spot. The city is home of the football club Misr Lel Makkasa SC, that play in the Egyptian Premier League.


title: Faiyum

text: The highest record temperatures was on June 13, 1965, and the lowest record temperature was on January 8, 1966.


title: Groomsman

text: A groomsman or usher is one of the male attendants to the groom in a wedding ceremony and performs the first speech at the wedding. Usually, the groom selects close friends and relatives to serve as groomsmen, and it is considered an honor to be selected. From his groomsmen, the groom usually chooses one to serve as best man.


title: Groomsman

text: For a wedding with many guests, the groom may also ask other male friends and relatives to act as ushers without otherwise participating in the wedding ceremony; their sole task is ushering guests to their seats before the ceremony. Ushers may also be hired for very large weddings.


title: Groomsman

text: In a military officer's wedding, the roles of groomsmen are replaced by swordsmen of the sword honor guard. They are usually picked as close personal friends of the groom who have served with him. Their role includes forming the traditional saber arch for the married couple and guests to walk through.


title: Groomsman

text: The first recorded use of the word ‘groomsmen’, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was as recently as 1698, although the words ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ both date back to Old English.


title: Groomsman

text: The most visible duty of the groomsmen is helping guests find their places before the ceremony and to stand near the groom during the wedding ceremony.


title: Groomsman

text: Additionally, the groom may request other kinds of assistance, such as planning celebratory events such as a bachelor party, also called a stag-do or buck's night; helping make the wedding pleasant for guests by talking with people who are alone or dancing with unaccompanied guests or bridesmaids, if there is dancing at a wedding reception; or providing practical assistance with gifts, luggage, or unexpected complications. Groomsmen may also participate in local or regional traditions, such as decorating the newlywed couple's car.


title: Groomsman

text: Bridegroom-men formerly had important duties. The men were called bride-knights, and represented a survival of the primitive days of marriage by capture, when a man called his friends in to assist to "lift" or kidnap the bride, or from the need to defend the bride from would-be kidnappers.


title: Groomsman

text: The best man is the chief assistant to the groom at a wedding. While the role is older, the earliest surviving written use of the term "best man" comes from 1782, observing that "best man and best maid" in the Scottish dialect are equivalent to "bride-man and bride-maid" in England.


title: Groomsman

text: In most modern Anglophone countries, the groom extends this honor to someone who is close to him, generally a close friend or a relative (such as a sibling or cousin). When the groom wishes to give this honor to a woman, she may be termed the "best woman" or "best person", although traditionally she would still be referred to as the 'best man'. The bride's equivalent of the best man is the bridesmaid, or the maid/matron of honor. If this honoree is male, he may be called a "man of honor." During a wedding ceremony the best man stands next to the groom, slightly behind him. This means that the four people present at the altar are the officiant (such as a civil celebrant, priest, rabbi, minister, or other religious figure), the bride, groom, and best man. This is common in some western countries, although in others the best man and bridesmaid participate on an equal footing.


title: Groomsman

text: While the best man's required duties are only those of a friend, in the context of a western white wedding, the best man will typically:


title: Groomsman

text: The best man is not a universal custom. Even in places where a best man is customary, the role may be quite different when compared to other areas of the world.


title: Groomsman

text: In the past, the bachelor party was typically scheduled for a convenient evening during the week before the wedding. A type of farewell dinner, it was always hosted, and therefore organized and paid for, entirely by the groom. The dinner was seen as the groom's last chance to entertain his friends as a single man; after the wedding, dinner parties at his home would always be presided over by his wife in her role as hostess.


title: Groomsman

text: Common slang names for this event are "bachelor party, stag do", or "bucks' night" in different parts of the world. In many areas, this dinner is now most commonly organized by the best man; the costs can be shared by either all of the participants or all of the participants except for the groom, who becomes the guest of honor.


title: Halsey discography

text: American pop singer Halsey has released four studio albums, one live album, 14 extended plays (including one standard EP, seven compilation EPs, five remix EPs, and two live session EPs), 24 singles (including three as a featured artist), nine promotional singles, and 33 music videos. After being signed to Astralwerks, she released her debut EP "Room 93" on October 27, 2014, and then toured with larger acts to promote it and her upcoming album. Since her debut, Halsey has released nine Gold, 11 Platinum, seven Multiplatinum, and one Diamond single in the United States alone.


title: Halsey discography

text: Shortly after making her debut, Halsey earned her first chart entry on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 songs chart with the single "New Americana", which reached number 60 and served as the lead single for her debut studio album "Badlands" (2015). "Badlands" debuted at number two on the "Billboard" 200 albums chart in the United States with 115,000 equivalent sales with also reaching to the top ten in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other countries. Since its release it has been certified 2× Platinum in the US, Platinum in Canada and Norway, and Gold in Australia and Denmark. The album was followed by two more singles, "Colors", and a re-recorded version of the song "Castle" for the soundtrack of the 2016 film "". The following year Halsey found extreme success as a featured vocalist on "Closer", a collaboration with The Chainsmokers. It topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 for 12 consecutive weeks while topping the charts of over 20 other countries, has sold more than 15 million units worldwide, and earned Halsey a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.


title: Halsey discography

text: Halsey's follow up album, "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom" (2017), debuted at number one in the US with 106,000 sales in its first week, becoming her first number one album. It additionally debuted at number one in Canada and reached the top ten in Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand and was certified Platinum in the US, Canada, and Norway, Gold in Denmark, and Silver in the UK. All of the album's singles charted in the US with its lead single, "Now or Never" reaching number 17, "Bad at Love" at number five, and "Alone" at number 66.


title: Halsey discography

text: In July 2018, Halsey sang with Khalid on Benny Blanco's debut single "Eastside", which topped the charts of five countries and peaked at number nine in the US. It went on to spend over a year charting on the Hot 100 and has sold over three million units worldwide. In October of the same year, Halsey released "Without Me", which became one of her biggest songs to date, reaching the top three of several countries' music charts as well as topping the "Billboard" Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks. It has sold over 15 million units worldwide and ranked at number 12 on "Billboard" magazine's Decade End chart for the 2010s. It would later serve as the lead single for Halsey's third studio album, "Manic" (2020). "Manic" debuted at number two on the "Billboard" 200 with 239,000 in equivalent-album sales in its first week of release, making it the biggest album debut of Halsey's career. It also reached the top ten in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK. In the US, "Manic" became the most streamed female album of the year and the first Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Platinum album of 2020. The album was preceded by the release of the singles "Graveyard" and "You Should Be Sad", which peaked at number 34 and 26 in the US, respectively.


title: Halsey discography

text: •"*" denotes that the music video was originally featured in the "If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power" film.


title: Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty

text: The Byzantine Empire was ruled by the Palaiologos dynasty in the period between 1261 and 1453, from the restoration of Byzantine rule to Constantinople by the usurper Michael VIII Palaiologos following its recapture from the Latin Empire, founded after the Fourth Crusade (1204), up to the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. Together with the preceding Nicaean Empire and the contemporary "Frankokratia", this period is known as the late Byzantine Empire.


text: From the start, the regime faced numerous problems. The Turks of Asia Minor had begun conducting raids and expanding into Byzantine territory in Asia Minor by 1263, just two years after the enthronment of the first Palaiologos emperor Michael VIII. Anatolia, which had formed the very heart of the shrinking empire, was systematically lost to numerous Turkic "ghazis", whose raids evolved into conquering expeditions inspired by Islamic zeal, the prospect of economic gain, and the desire to seek refuge from the Mongols after the disastrous Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. The Palaiologoi were engaged on several fronts, often continually, while the empire's supply of food and manpower dwindled. In this period, the Byzantine Empire found itself continually at war, both civil and interstate, with most interstate conflicts being with other Christian empires. Most commonly, these comprised the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire, the remnants of the Latin Empire and even the Knights Hospitaller.


text: The loss of land in the East to the Turks and in the West to the Bulgarians coincided with two disastrous civil wars, the Black Death and the 1354 earthquake at Gallipoli which allowed the Turks to occupy the peninsula. By 1380, the Byzantine Empire consisted of the capital Constantinople and a few other isolated exclaves, which only nominally recognized the Emperor as their lord. Nonetheless, Byzantine diplomacy, political intrigue and the invasion of Anatolia by Timur allowed Byzantium to survive until 1453. The last remnants of the Byzantine Empire, the Despotate of the Morea and the Empire of Trebizond, fell shortly afterwards.


text: However, the Palaiologan period witnessed a renewed flourishing in art and the letters, in what has been called the Palaiologian Renaissance. The migration of Byzantine scholars to the West also helped to spark the Italian Renaissance.


text: Following the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire had fractured into the Greek successor-states of Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond, with a multitude of Frankish and Latin possessions occupying the remainder, nominally subject to the Latin Emperors at Constantinople. In addition, the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire allowed the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the various Turcoman emirates of Anatolia to make gains. Although Epirus was initially the strongest of the three Greek states, the Nicaeans were the ones who succeeded in taking back the city of Constantinople from the Latin Empire.


text: The Nicaean Empire was successful in holding its own against its Latin and Seljuk opponents. At the Battle of Meander Valley, a Turkic force was repelled and an earlier assault on Nicaea led to the death of the Seljuk Sultan. In the west, the Latins were unable to expand into Anatolia; consolidating Thrace against Bulgaria was a challenge that kept the Latins occupied for the duration of the Latin Empire.


text: In 1261, the Empire of Nicaea was ruled by John IV Laskaris, a boy of ten years. However, John IV was overshadowed by his co-emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos. Palaiologos was a leading noble of military standing and the main figure of the regency of John IV, who had used this role to propel himself to the throne, and set the stage for his becoming sole Emperor of the restored Byzantine Empire.


text: In 1261, while the bulk of the Latin Empire's military forces were absent from Constantinople, the Byzantine General Alexios Strategopoulos used the opportunity to seize the city with 600 troops. Thrace, Macedonia and Thessalonica had already been taken by Nicaea in 1246. Following the capture of Constantinople, Michael ordered the blinding of John IV in December 1261, so as to become sole emperor. As a result, Patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael, but he was deposed and replaced by Joseph I.


text: The Fourth Crusade and their successors, the Latin Empire, had done much to reduce Byzantium's finest city to an underpopulated wreck. Michael VIII began the task of restoring many monasteries, public buildings and defence works. The Hagia Sophia, looted in the Crusade of 1204, was refurbished to Greek Orthodox tradition. The Kontoskalion harbour and the walls of Constantinople were all strengthened against a possible new expedition by the Latin West. Many hospitals, hospices, markets, baths, streets and churches were built, some with private patronage. Even a new Mosque was built to compensate for the one burnt during the Fourth Crusade. These attempts were costly and crippling taxes were placed on the peasantry. Nonetheless, the city grew new cultural and diplomatic contacts, notably with the Mamelukes. Both had common enemies; Latin aggression, and later on, the Ottoman Turks.


text: The Sultanate of Rum was in chaos and decentralized ever since the Mongol invasions in ca. 1240. As a result, the greatest threat to Byzantium was not the Muslims but their Christian counterparts in the West — Michael VIII knew that the Venetians and the Franks would no doubt launch another attempt to establish Latin rule in Constantinople. The situation became worse when Charles I of Anjou conquered Sicily from the Hohenstaufens in 1266. In 1267, Pope Clement IV arranged a pact, whereby Charles would receive land in the East in return for assisting a new military expedition to Constantinople. A delay on Charles' end meant that Michael VIII was given enough time to negotiate a union between the Church of Rome and that of Constantinople in 1274, thus removing papal support for an invasion of Constantinople.


text: Unfortunately for Michael VIII, the new union was seen as a fake by Clement's successor, Martin IV. The Greek Church was excommunicated, and Charles was given renewed papal support for the invasion of Constantinople. In order to counter this, Michael VIII subsidized Peter III of Aragon's attempts to seize Sicily from Charles. Michael's efforts paid off with the outbreak of the Sicilian Vespers, a revolt that overthrew the Angevin King of Sicily and installed Peter III of Aragon as King of Sicily in 1281.


text: For the remainder of his life, Michael campaigned to drive the Latins out of Greece and the Balkans, and secure his position versus the Bulgarians. He was largely successful, regaining several islands in the Aegean, and establishing a foothold in the Peloponnese, that would grow to become the Despotate of the Morea. The downside however was that Michael's efforts in the West absorbed most of the Empire's manpower and resources, and neglected the Asian provinces, where a new and fateful threat was rising: the beylik of Osman I, who by 1263 had captured Sogut . Nevertheless, the border was kept relatively secure, and no significant losses occurred in Asia Minor during Michael's reign.


text: Michael VIII's foreign policy relied heavily on diplomacy; nevertheless, his construction projects and military campaigns against the remaining Latins were extensive as well as expensive; the Nicaean army was modeled around the Komnenian army, and while it was not as effective, it was just as burdensome on the treasury. The result was that heavy taxes were levied on the peasantry, something that the Ottomans would later use to their advantage, winning over these poverty-stricken peasants with promises of lower taxes.


text: The Second Council of Lyons and the ostensible union of the two Churches did little to avert Catholic aggression, while at the same time the Orthodox population, led by large parts of the priesthood, denounced Michael VIII as a traitor. His death in 1282 came as a relief to many, and his body was denied an Orthodox funeral, as a result of his policies towards Rome.


text: Michael VIII was a very energetic, ambitious and capable emperor who had enlarged and preserved the Empire and had once again made Byzantium a power to be reckoned with in the region. His army, however, was still small, and diplomacy was relied upon more than ever. An extortionate tax system supported his ambitious and successful foreign policies of expansion, as well as his numerous bribes and gifts to various potentates. He had put Byzantium on the road of recovery, but his achievements were still perilously fragile, as events would soon show.


text: Andronikos II was tied down with events in the West and the East. The Serbians under King Stefan Uroš II Milutin had begun invading the Balkans and took Skopje in 1282 and raids against Macedonia were launched throughout the 1290s. Byzantine counter-attacks failed to stop these, and as a result Andronikos was forced to resort to diplomacy, marrying his 5-year-old daughter to the Serbian King and ceding a number of forts from Ohrid to Stip to Strumica as a "dowry". Nonetheless, the Serbs continued their expansion.


text: Unlike his father, Andronikos II recognized the gravity of the situation in Asia Minor, and tried to drive out the Turks, utilizing a variety of methods. His first action was to move his court to Asia Minor, where he could better oversee the construction of fortifications and raise troop morale. His General, Alexios Philanthropenos, was an able commander, campaigning with some success against the Turks in the Meander Valley. Unfortunately Byzantium was robbed of his services when he staged an unsuccessful coup, leading to his blinding. Next Andronikos sent his son, Michael IX, and the Heteriarch George Mouzalon to attack the Turks who were laying siege to Nicomedia, but they were beaten at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302.


text: Not giving up, Andronikos hired the 6,500 strong "Catalan Company" of Almogavars, led by Roger de Flor. Originating from Catalonia, these hardy mercenaries were used to skirmishing against the Moors in Spain and now, for an extraordinarily high price, they drove the Turks back in Asia Minor. Once again, these successes were nullified when their leader, Roger de Flor, was assassinated on his way to meet Andronikos; the Catalans then revolted against imperial authority, and began pillaging and raiding cities in Thrace, leaving Asia Minor open to Turkish incursions. After this, Andronikos turned to diplomacy, asking the Ilkhanids of Persia to send troops to attack the Turks, but negotiations for such an alliance failed.


text: Andronikos II ordered the Union of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches to be canceled, a move which pleased many. But he also ordered drastic reductions in the military, and effectively disbanded the navy, which his father had worked hard to build up. As a result, tax reductions throughout the Empire were possible, earning him greater popularity while seriously undermining Byzantium's abilities to deal with its opponents. He debased the "hyperpyron" currency and heavily taxed the military elite of the "pronoiarioi", thereby further reducing Byzantium's military capability. While these solved some problems that Michael VIII had left for his son, it unraveled his father's attempts at restoring the power of the Byzantine Empire; where Michael VIII had attempted to deal with problems outside the Empire, Andronikos aimed to solve the internal problems resulting from his father's reign.


text: Andronikos II's policies were not successful in dealing with Byzantium's external problems; however, it would be threats from within the Empire that led to his abdication — in 1320 Andronikos III, the young (in his twenties) grandson of Andronikos II was disinherited by the Emperor. Andronikos III's brother Manuel Palaiologos had been accidentally murdered by Andronikos III's companions over a competitive love affair. His father (Michael IX), the son of Andronikos II, died of shock as a result of his son's death. Andronikos III did not take his disinheritance lightly — organizing an armed opposition, he succeeded in drawing support with promises of generous tax cuts, even beyond those enacted by Andronikos II. Andronikos II was powerless to stop the young usurper; he granted him Thrace as an appanage in 1321, the title of co-emperor in 1322, and after a small war where the Bulgarians and Serbians played the two sides against each other, Andronikos II was forced to abdicate and retire as a monk to a monastery, where he died in 1332.


text: Despite the calamities of the civil war, Andronikos III was about to revitalise the Empire. Although Asia Minor was at this point destined to fall to the Turks, it had been in a worse position in 1091 and yet still recovered by Byzantium.


text: Andronikos II attempted to solve Byzantium's internal problems more than his father had. The solutions he chose however had severe repercussions. They undermined the military and financial basis of the state, and the disasters suffered by his foreign policy failures further worsened the situation. Dissatisfaction from his failure, his old age and a "reckless grandson" culminated in his enforced abdication.


text: The rule of Andronikos III is characterized as the last genuine attempt to restore Byzantine fortunes. His attempts came close to fruition, but the many hostile neighbors of Byzantium eventually took their toll on an Empire in decline.


text: His first concern was that of Asia Minor. Nicaea, until 1261 the capital of the Empire, was under siege by Ottoman Turks. In the summer of 1329, Andronikos III launched a relief attempt which culminated in a defeat at the Battle of Pelekanon on June 10, and in 1331, the city fell. Not wishing to see Nicomedia or the other few remaining forts in Asia Minor suffer the same fate, Andronikos III sought to pay off the Ottomans with tribute — the Ottomans did not stop at this and seized Nicomedia as well in 1337.


text: Despite this, Andronikos III scored a few successes in the Aegean: in 1329, Chios was recovered, and in 1335, Andronikos arranged an alliance involving financial indemnities with the Turkic Emir Bahud-din Umur, Bey of Aydın, and was able to recover Lesbos and Phocaea from the Latins.


text: In Europe, Andronikos III had mixed results; Thessaly returned to Imperial rule in 1333, but Serbia once again began expanding southwards: led by the Byzantine renegade Syrgiannes Palaiologos, Serbian forces took five key forts from Byzantium in 1334 and forced it to recognize the new borders. Andronikos was then forced to recognize Serbian rule in Macedonia. In addition, Andronikos faced a further reversal when leading his army at Rousokastron where he was defeated by the Bulgarians under their leader Ivan Alexander. Nevertheless, Andronikos was able to bring back Epirus into the fold in 1341 through the use of diplomacy. The result was that while the Empire was reduced to its European territories, it had succeeded in bringing much of Greece under its control. Unfortunately for the newly expanded Byzantium, Stephen Dusan (ruling Serbia from 1331) decided to take these lands as well from Byzantium. The death of Andronikos III and the resulting chaos left the Empire in no position to fight back.


text: Although ultimately unsuccessful, the reign of Andronikos III was one of the last bright spots in Byzantine history, as the Empire's position was becoming increasingly precarious. Andronikos was able to score some successes in his life as he campaigned vigorously against the Genoese with success and reestablished some control over Epirus and Thessaly. Throughout his reign, he was also able to work with competent administrators such as John Kantakouzenos who, along with many of the nobles, supported Andronikos during the civil war with Andronikos II. However, numerous reversals against Byzantium's enemies such as Serbia and the rising Ottomans at battles such as Pelekanon further drained the power Byzantium had in comparison to its neighbors. This would be a situation that would not be helped by his sudden death in the 1340s which resulted in a civil war between the regency of John V(a coalition of Anna of Savoy, Alexios Apokaukos and the patriarch of Constantinople, John XIV) and the nobility who promoted John Kantakouzenos as emperor. In addition, diplomacy became less useful, as Byzantium's enemies realized that the Emperor had not the military or even economic might to back his word. While there was a general decline in the Empire's fortunes, Andronikos III's death would be the "coup de grâce" for the Empire — his 10-year-old son was led by a regency that was torn apart in dynastic rivalries which led to the Second Palaiologan Civil War and the recognition of John Kantakouzenos as emperor and a catastrophe from which Byzantium would never recover.


text: The Byzantine Empire entered into a new era of decay in 1341. The Empire was ravaged by multiple serious disasters — alongside wars and civil wars, renewed epidemics of bubonic plague swept through its diminished lands. The first outbreak occurred in 1347, and between the 1360s and 1420s, eight further outbreaks of plague are recorded. Cities were full of social unrest between the corrupt wealthy (who had been exploiting the tax system for their own benefit) and the countless landless peasants burdened by the demands of the government. Religious controversy, the cancer of Byzantium in the 7th and 8th centuries, once again emerged in the form of the Hesychasm controversy, which eventually became a doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox church. There were numerous earthquakes, destroying Byzantium's infrastructure — the fortress of Gallipoli was destroyed in 1354 by such an earthquake and the Ottoman Turks lost no time in taking it and establishing a bridgehead in Europe. Meanwhile, the Serbs continued pressing south, removing any nominal Imperial control in Epirus. The Empire shrunk in size and when the civil war ended, Byzantium would be a petty city state, hanging on to life through the respites of her foes, and soon to-be protectors.


text: John V, ten years old at his ascension, was guided by a regency consisting of his mother, Anna of Savoy, John VI Kantakouzenos and the Patriarch of Constantinople (John XIV Kalekas).


text: The Patriarch, aided by the ambitious Alexios Apokaukos, sparked the civil conflict when he convinced the Empress that John V's rule was threatened by the ambitions of Kantakouzenos. In September 1341, while Kantakouzenos was in Thrace, Kalekas declared himself as regent and launched a vicious attack on Kantakouzenos, his supporters and family. In October, Anna ordered Kantakouzenos to resign his command. Kantakouzenos not only refused, but declared himself Emperor at Didymoteichon, allegedly to protect John V's rule from Kalekas. Whether or not Kantakouzenos wished to be Emperor is not known, but the provocative actions of the Patriarch forced Kantakouzenos to fight to retain his power and started the civil war.


text: There were not nearly enough troops to defend Byzantium's borders at the time and there certainly was not enough for the two factions to split; consequently, foreigner mercenaries were brought in. Kantakouzenos hired Turks and Serbs — his main supply of Turkish mercenaries came from the Bey of Aydın, a nominal ally established by Andronikos III. The Regency of John V relied on Turkish mercenaries as well. However, Kantakouzenos began to draw support from the Ottoman Sultan Orhan, who wed Kantakouzenos' daughter in 1345. By 1347, Kantakouzenos had triumphed and entered Constantinople. However, in his hour of victory, he came to an accord with Anna and her son, John V: John V (now 15 years of age) and Kantakouzenos would rule as co-emperors, though John V would be the junior in this relationship. This unlikely partnership was not destined to last long.


text: Kantakouzenos had a son, Matthew Kantakouzenos — and any hope of keeping peace between John V and Matthew became more remote as the two grew older and more independent. John V wed Kantakouzenos' daughter, thus becoming his son in law, in a move designed to bind the two families, but it was destined to fail.


text: In 1353, Kantakouzenos was still hopeful that peace would be maintained, but in that year, John V launched a military attack on Matthew, thereby re-igniting the civil war. John V was demoted and exiled to the island of Tenedos, one of the few islands in the Aegean still under Byzantine control, while Kantakouzenos made his son Matthew co-emperor. John V would not give up so easy however, and in 1354 Ottoman troops began crossing over into Thrace in his support. The citizens of Constantinople became gripped with fear and in November of that same year, John V launched a successful coup with Genoan aid. Kantakouzenos now abdicated and retired to a monastery, where he would write his memoirs and thoughts until his death in 1383.


text: Matthew Kantakouzenos, no doubt disappointed with his father's failure, continued to resist John V. Since the Ottoman Sultan Orhan was his brother-in-law, he was able to obtain troops from him, but had barely begun his campaign when he was captured in the summer of 1356. He was forced to renounce his claims in 1357 and exiled to the Morea sometime between 1361 and 1383, though other sources indicate 1391 a possible date. At 25 years, John V had managed to establish himself firmly as ruler of the Empire, at the cost of bleeding out all its resources.


text: The lands ravaged and depopulated by the civil war were filled up by arriving Turks who colonised the land through a mixture of conquest and trade. The result was that Byzantium's power was undermined beyond all recovery — two hundred years ago Byzantium could rely on the people living in the lands of Anatolia, Greece, Macedonia and several large islands like Cyprus and Crete. Now the population under its control was limited to the few remaining cities in Byzantine possession, namely Thessalonica and Constantinople and the surrounding countryside, and the Despotate of the Morea. The immigration of Turks would be decisive in the survival of the Empire as it gave her most dire enemy, the Ottomans, a new power base, not in Asia but now in Europe.


text: John V Palaiologos now had to face the serious threat the Ottomans posed to Byzantium. In the 1360s, the Turks continued to drive through Thrace, taking Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian settlements.


text: Like his predecessors Alexios I Komnenos and Michael VIII, John V now turned to the Pope and offered the promise of a Union of the two Churches in the hopes of receiving military assistance. As a guarantee of compliance, John V offered his son, Manuel. In the past, Byzantium's cry for assistance were answered with mixed results — pillaging Crusaders would sack both friend and foe but the First Crusade had been largely beneficial and no doubt John V envisioned a repeat of such a Crusade. This time, however, the Papacy was unmoved by the calamity facing the Byzantine Empire.


text: Fortunately for John V, he had other European connections — his mother was Anna of Savoy, and her nephew (being John V's cousin) was concerned for the safety of his Greek counterpart. Sailing from Venice in June 1366 with dreams of initiating yet another Crusade, Amadeo VI of Savoy arrived at and seized the fortress of Gallipoli from the Ottomans and handed it back to the Byzantines, hoping that this would stem the tide of Turkish emigration into Thrace. However, the Turks had by now firmly established themselves in Thrace. Amadeo and John spent much time between 1367 and 1369 thinking of ways to stave off defeat. Amadeo returned to Europe via Rome and brought with him Byzantine envoys. The Pope again was uninterested, but called for John V to visit him. In 1369, when the Ottomans finally captured Adrianople (though some sources indicate 1365), John V rushed to Rome and confessed his Catholic faith both privately and at a public spectacle.