title: Videotape

text: While live recording has migrated to solid state (Panasonic P2, Sony SR MASTER or XDCAM-EX), optical disc (Sony's XDCAM) and hard disks, the high cost of solid state and the limited shelf life of hard-disk drives make them less desirable for archival use, for which tape is still used. , some news and production camera crews still have cameras that use tape formats, even in HD.


title: Chuck Close

text: Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera. He adapted his painting style and working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed by an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery.


title: Chuck Close

text: Chuck Close was born in Monroe, Washington. His father, Leslie Durward Close, died when Chuck was eleven years old. His mother's name was Mildred Wagner Close. As a child, Close had a neuromuscular condition that made it difficult to lift his feet and a bout with nephritis that kept him out of school for most of sixth grade. Even when in school, he did poorly due to his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time.


title: Chuck Close

text: Most of his early works were very large portraits based on photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family and friends, often other artists. Close said he had prosopagnosia (face blindness), and suggested that this condition is what first inspired him to do portraits.


title: Chuck Close

text: In an interview with Phong Bui in "The Brooklyn Rail", Close described an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock painting at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 14. I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I've been chasing that experience ever since."


title: Chuck Close

text: Close attended Everett Community College in 1958–1960. Local writer John Patric was an early anti-establishment intellectual influence on him, and a role model for the iconoclastic and theatric artist's persona Close learned to project in subsequent years.


title: Chuck Close

text: In 1962, Close received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1961, he won a coveted scholarship to the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, and the following year entered the graduate degree program at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. Among Close's classmates at Yale were Brice Marden, Vija Celmins, Janet Fish, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves, Jennifer Bartlett, Robert Mangold, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold.


title: Chuck Close

text: After Yale, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the United States, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. Close moved to New York City in 1967 and established himself in SoHo.


title: Chuck Close

text: Throughout his career, Close expanded his contribution to portraiture through the mastery of such varied drawing and painting techniques as ink, graphite, pastel, watercolor, conté crayon, finger painting, and stamp-pad ink on paper; printmaking techniques, such as mezzotint, etching, woodcuts, linocuts, and silkscreens; as well as handmade paper collage, Polaroid photographs, daguerreotypes, and Jacquard tapestries. His early airbrush techniques inspired the development of the ink jet printer.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. There, he emulated Willem de Kooning and seemed "destined to become a third-generation abstract expressionist, although with a dash of Pop iconoclasm". After a period in which he experimented with figurative constructions, Close began a series of paintings derived from black-and-white photographs of a female nude, which he copied onto canvas and painted in color. As he explained in a 2009 interview with Cleveland, Ohio's "The Plain Dealer" newspaper, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before." One photo of Philip Glass was included in his resulting black-and-white series in 1969, redone with watercolors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.


title: Chuck Close

text: Working from a gridded photograph, he built his images by applying one careful stroke after another in multi-colors or grayscale. He worked methodically, starting his loose but regular grid from the left hand corner of the canvas. His works are generally larger than life and highly focused. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."


title: Chuck Close

text: Close said he had prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he had difficulty recognizing new faces. By painting portraits, he was better able to recognize and remember faces. On the subject, Close said, "I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."


title: Chuck Close

text: Although his later paintings differed in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remained the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close put a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copied cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was "Big Self Portrait", a black and white enlargement of his face to a canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of Mars Black acrylic.


title: Chuck Close

text: His later work branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions. The "Big Self Portrait" is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.


title: Chuck Close

text: On December 7, 1988, Close felt a strange pain in his chest. That day he was at a ceremony honoring local artists in New York City and was waiting to be called to the podium to present an award. Close delivered his speech and then made his way across the street to Beth Israel Medical Center where he had a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. The cause was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse. He had also experienced neuromuscular problems as a child. Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles with physical therapy; he soon had slight movement in his arms and could walk, yet only for a few steps. He relied on a wheelchair thereafter. Close spoke candidly about the effect disability had on his life and work in the book "" written by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton and published by Random House.


title: Chuck Close

text: However, Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis restricted his ability to paint as meticulously as before, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial restrictions upon his hyperrealist approach well before the injury. That is, he adopted materials and techniques that did not lend themselves well to achieving a photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper or inked fingerprints were used as media to achieve astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved able to create his desired effects even with the most difficult of materials to control. Close made a practice, during his final years, of portraying artists who are similarly invested in portraiture, like Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, and Zhang Huan.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close was a printmaker throughout his career, with most of his prints published by Pace Editions, New York. He made his first serious foray into print making in 1972, when he moved himself and family to San Francisco to work on a mezzotint at Crown Point Press for a three-month residency. To accommodate him, Crown Point found the largest copper plate it could (36 inches wide) and purchased a new press, allowing Close to make a work that was 3 feet by 4 feet. In 1986 he went to Kyoto to work with Tadashi Toda, a highly respected woodblock printer.


title: Chuck Close

text: In 1995, curator Colin Westerbeck used a grant from the Lannan Foundation to bring Close together with Grant Romer, director of conservation at the George Eastman House. From that time on, Close also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such as tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, "Robert" (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions. In the daguerreotype photographs, the background defines the limit of the image plane as well as the outline of the subject, with the inky pitch-black setting off the light, reflective quality of the subject's face.


title: Chuck Close

text: In a 2014 interview with Terrie Sultan, Close said: "I've had two great collaborators in the God knows how many years I've been making prints. One was the late Joe Wilfer, who was called the 'prince of pulp' … and now I'm working with Don Farnsworth in Oakland at…Magnolia Editions: I do the watercolor prints with him, I do the tapestries with him. These are the most important collaborations of my life as an artist."


title: Chuck Close

text: Since 2012, Magnolia Editions has published an ongoing series of archival watercolor prints by Close which use the artist's grid format and the precision afforded by contemporary digital printers to layer water-based pigment on Hahnemuhle rag paper such that the native behavior of watercolor is manifested in each print: "The edges of each pixel bleed with cyan, magenta, and yellow, creating a kind of three-dimensional fog effect behind the intended color swatches." The watercolor prints are created using more than 10,000 of Close's hand-painted marks which were scanned into a computer and then digitally rearranged and layered by the artist using his signature grid.


title: Chuck Close

text: These works were called Close's first major foray into digital imagery: with the artist himself having said, "It's amazing how precise a computer can be working with light and color and water." A New York Times review noted that the "exaggerated breakdown of the image, particularly when viewed at close range," that characterizes Close's work "is also apparent in... [watercolor print] portraits of the artists Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Zhang Huan."


title: Chuck Close

text: Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image is composed of thousands of combinations of woven colored thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Roy Lichtenstein, and Close himself. They are produced in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth. Although many are translated from black-and-white daguerreotypes, all of the tapestries use multiple colors of thread. No printing is involved in their creation; colors and values appear to the viewer based on combinations of more than 17,800 colored warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads, in an echo of Close's typical grid format. Close's tapestry series began with a 2003 black-and-white portrait of Philip Glass. In August 2013 he debuted two color self-portraits at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. In reviewing this exhibition, Marion Weiss wrote .."Close's Jacquard tapestries are not obviously fragmented, but are created by repeating multicolor warp and weft threads that are optically blended. Thus, portraits of Lou Reed and Roy Lichtenstein, for example, seem 'whole.' It's only when we get closer that we see the individual threads, which are woven together."


title: Chuck Close

text: In 2010, Close was commissioned by MTA Arts & Design to create twelve large mosaics, totaling more than , for the 86th Street subway station on the New York City Subway's Second Avenue Line in Manhattan.


title: Chuck Close

text: "Vanity Fair's" 20th Annual Hollywood edition in March 2014 featured a portfolio of 20 Polaroid portraits of movie stars shot by Close, including Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, and Oprah Winfrey. Close requested that his subjects be ready to be photographed without makeup or hair-styling and used a large-format 20x24" Polaroid camera for the close-ups.


title: Chuck Close

text: A fragment of Close's portrait of singer-songwriter Paul Simon was used as the cover art for his 2016 album "Stranger to Stranger". The right eye appears on the cover; the entire portrait is in the liner notes.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close donated an original print of his "Self Portrait" in 2002 to the public library in Monroe, Washington, his hometown.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers and magazine illustrations. The exhibition captured the attention of the university administration which promptly closed it, citing the male nudity as obscene. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) came to the defense of Close and a landmark court case ensued. A Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice decided in favor of the artist against the university. When the university appealed Close chose not to return to Boston, and ultimately the decision was overturned by an appeals court. (Close was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts by the University of Massachusetts in 1995.)


title: Chuck Close

text: Close credited the Walker Art Center and its then-director Martin Friedman for launching his career with the purchase of "Big Self-Portrait" (1967–1968) in 1969, the first painting he sold. His first one-man show in New York City was in 1970 at Bykert Gallery. His first print was the focus of a "Projects" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial and the following year his portraits were the subject of an exhibition at the Walker Art Center. His work has since been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including a number of major museum retrospectives. After Close abruptly canceled a major show of his work scheduled for 1997 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art announced that it would present a major midcareer retrospective of the artist's work in 1998 (curated by Kirk Varnedoe and later traveling to the Hayward Gallery, London, and other galleries in 1999). In 2003 the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston presented a survey of his prints, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the following year. His most recent retrospective – "Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006", at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007 – travelled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He also participated in almost 800 group exhibitions, including documentas V (1972) and VI (1977), the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003), and the Carnegie International (1995).


title: Chuck Close

text: In 2013, Close's work was featured in an exhibit at White Cube in Bermondsey, London. "Process and Collaboration" displayed not only a number of finished prints and paintings but included plates, woodblocks, and mylar stencils which were used to produce a number of prints.


title: Chuck Close

text: In December 2014 his work was exhibited in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, which he visited.


title: Chuck Close

text: In 2016, Close's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Schack Art Center in Everett, Washington, where he attended high school and community college.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close's work is in the collections of most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis who published "Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967–2005" coauthored with curators Siri Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn.


title: Chuck Close

text: The recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 2000, the New York State Governor's Art Award, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many others, Close received over 20 honorary degrees including one from Yale University, his alma mater. In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1992. New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed the artist to the municipality's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a body mandated by the City Charter to advise the mayor and the cultural affairs commissioner. Close painted President Clinton in 2006 and photographed President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2010 he was appointed by Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. He resigned from the President's Committee in August 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Donald Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."


title: Chuck Close

text: In 2005, composer Philip Glass wrote a musical portrait of Close. The composition, a 15-minute piece for solo piano, was the idea of Bruce Levingston, a concert pianist, who commissioned it through the Premiere Commission and who performed the piece at a recital at Alice Tully Hall that year.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close was represented by the Pace Gallery (in New York City) from 1977, and subsequently by White Cube (in London) from 1999. Already in 1999, Close's "Cindy II" (1988), a portrait of the photographer Cindy Sherman sold for $1.2 million, against a high estimate of $800,000. In 2005, "John" (1971–1972) was sold at Sotheby's to the Broad Art Foundation for $4.8 million.


title: Chuck Close

text: In 2007, Close was honored by the New York Stem Cell Foundation and donated artwork for an exclusive online auction.


title: Chuck Close

text: In September 2012, Magnolia Editions published two tapestry editions and three print editions by Close depicting President Barack Obama. The first tapestry was unveiled at the Mint Museum in North Carolina in honor of the Democratic National Convention. These tapestries and prints were sold as a fundraiser to support the Obama Victory Fund. A number of the works were signed by both Close and Obama. Close previously sold work at auction to raise funds for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.


title: Chuck Close

text: In October 2013, Close donated a watercolor print of Genevieve Bahrenburg and a watercolor print self-portrait to ARTWALK NY, a cause that benefits the Coalition for the Homeless. In the same year work by Close was also sold to benefit the Lunchbox Fund.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close was one of eight artists who volunteered in 2013 to participate in President Barack Obama's Turnaround Arts initiative, which aims to improve low-performing schools by increasing student "engagement" through the arts. Close mentored 34 students in the sixth through eighth grades at Roosevelt School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of eight schools in the nation to participate in this public-private partnership developed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Domestic Policy Council. Close was honored by mayor Bill Finch with a key to the city at the November 7 reception at the Housatonic Community College Museum of Art, where five of Close's watercolor prints were exhibited alongside artwork by students participating in the program.


title: Chuck Close

text: In 1998, PBS broadcast documentary filmmaker Marion Cajori's Emmy-nominated short, "Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress." In 2007, Cajori made "Chuck Close", a full-length expansion of the first film. British art critic Christopher Finch wrote a biography, "Chuck Close: Life", which was published in 2010, a sequel of sorts to Finch's 2007 book, "Chuck Close: Work", a career-spanning monograph.


title: Chuck Close

text: Another documentary film was made on Close in 1998, titled Chuck Close: Eye To Eye: ART/new york No. 48, by his classmate at Yale University Paul Tschinkel.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close appeared on "The Colbert Report" on August 12, 2010, where he said that he watches the show every night.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close was the subject of a Heinemann book, "Rocks in His Shoes: The Story of Chuck Close", by Myka-Lynne Sokoloff, written for the Fountas & Pinnell "Leveled Literacy Intervention" series.


title: Chuck Close

text: On December 20, 2017, "The New York Times" and "The Huffington Post" published stories detailing two women accusing Close of sexual misconduct, saying Close invited the women to his studio to pose for what they thought would be portraits, and then Close asked them to pose nude and made vulgar comments to them. Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment in 2007 and 2013. In response to the accusations, Close issued a statement to "The New York Times", saying "If I embarrassed anyone or made them feel uncomfortable, I am truly sorry, I didn't mean to. I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we’re all adults." On January 16, 2018, "Hyperallergic" published the accounts of four more women who alleged Close harassed them. Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment from 2001, 2009, and 2013. Most of the allegations were from women in their 20s, during the time that Close was in his 60s and 70s. Many of the allegations were from college students, including from Yale University. Following the allegations, the Dean of the Yale School of Art, Marta Kuzma, "decided that in the best interest of the students, faculty, and greater community of the Yale School of Art that Mr. Close will no longer serve as a member of the Dean’s Council."


title: Chuck Close

text: The National Gallery of Art cancelled a Chuck Close exhibition, planned to open May 2018, due to the allegations.


title: Chuck Close

text: After Close died, his neurologist, Thomas M. Wisniewski, said that Close's inappropriate sexual behavior, alleged to have occurred from at least 2001 to 2013, could be attributed to his 2015 diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. Wisniewski said that Close "was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part of his underlying medical condition," and that this type of dementia "destroys that part of the brain that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts," adding that "sexual inappropriateness and disastrous financial decisions are common presenting symptoms."


title: Chuck Close

text: Close lived and worked in Bridgehampton and Long Beach, New York (both on the south shore of Long Island) and New York City's East Village. He had two daughters with Leslie Rose. They divorced in 2011. Close married artist Sienna Shields in 2013. They later divorced.


title: Chuck Close

text: Close was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2015. He died on August 19, 2021, in Oceanside, New York, at the age of 81, from congestive heart failure.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Billabong International Limited is an Australian company focused on surfing, primarily a clothing retailer that also produces accessories, such as watches and backpacks, and skateboard and snowboard products under other brand names. Founded in 1973 by Gordon and Rena Merchant, the company first traded on the Australian Securities Exchange in August 2000. The name "billabong" is derived from the Wiradjuri word "bilabaŋ" that refers to a "creek that runs only during the rainy season". As of September 2013, Von Zipper, and Element were two of the prominent brands that Billabong owns. Honolua Surf Company, Kustom, Palmers Surf, Xcel, Tigerlily, Sector 9, and RVCA were the company's other brands.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In 2018, Billabong International Limited was acquired by Boardriders, Inc, owner of rival brand Quiksilver.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: From late 2012 onwards, following the company's decline in the period since 2008, Billabong International has been the subject of several protracted bidding and takeover processes in which the company's former United States chief Paul Naude has been a participant. During one period, Billabong used a corporate turnaround strategy to return the company to profitability, which it achieved in 2014.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In December 2016, former chief executive Matthew Perrin was found guilty of fraud and forgery by a jury in the district court in Brisbane, and was sentenced to jail in January 2017.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Billabong was founded in the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, in 1973 by Gordon Merchant. At first, he designed and created board shorts at his home, and then sold them to local surf shops. Surfers soon realized the durability of Merchant's shorts that was the result of his triple-stitching technique. Merchant understood that his company needed to expand to achieve success, so Billabong started to sponsor contests, which increased the public's awareness of Merchant's products, and the company expanded. By the 1980s, Billabong board shorts were present throughout Australia.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Based upon his success in Australia, Merchant decided to export Billabong's products, and by the late 1980s, Merchant's board shorts were available in other countries, including New Zealand, Japan, and South Africa. In the 1990s, the surf industry as a whole grew significantly, and Billabong was a part of this growth process. The company was first traded on the Australian Securities Exchange 2000, which provided the company with the funds to further expand and acquire other companies.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: As the company developed further, it acquired new brands and retail outlets to move beyond the wholesale business, and the first decade of the 21st century was a particularly active period of expansion for Billabong. Von Zipper, an eyewear brand, was acquired in early 2001 and the acquisition of skateboarding apparel and hard-good brand Element was announced in July 2001.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: The acquisition of the Kustom surf shoe brand, as part of Billabong's purchase of the Australian Gold Coast-based Palmers Surf company, was disclosed in September 2004. The following year in December, an official press release was published to announce the acquisition of Nixon Inc., a watch and accessories brand in the board-sports market.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: The acquisition of wetsuit and technical watersport accessories brand Xcel became effective on 1 September 2007, and Jodhi Meares's former Tigerlily brand was acquired in December of the same year. The Tigerlily decision represented the first time that Billabong had acquired a brand focused exclusively on the 'girls' market, and the management intended to position the new addition so that it complimented the company's own 'Billabongs Girls' line.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In 2008, Billabong continued with the consistent acquisition activity that occurred in 2007 and announced four acquisitions over four successive months. Following the acquisition of the Gold Coast store Kirra Surf in May, the company announced its acquisition of the retail operations of Quiet Flight, a retail company on the East Coast of the United States that had already been operating licensed Billabong and Element retail outlets in Times Square, New York City. The Quiet Flight deal resulted in the addition of 14 Quiet Flight and Surf Warehouse retail stores, most of which were located in Florida, USA. Then in June 2008, the founders of the Sector 9 skateboard company accepted an offer from Billabong that also included the purchase of the Gullwing skateboard truck brand. Finally, in August, Billabong confirmed the acquisition of board-sport accessories brand DaKine, which specialises in backpacks, bags, gloves, and accessories, in a press release that projected that "DaKine is expected to contribute approximately 4% of Billabong International Limited’s Group sales in the 2008-09 financial year".


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Billabong's retail expansion continued into late 2008 with the November purchase of the United Kingdom (UK)-based 13-store retail chain Two Seasons for an undisclosed sum. Billabong only announced a single acquisition in 2009 with the purchase of Swell, a US-based online retailer of board-sports brands, for an undisclosed sum.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Billabong began 2010 with the signing of a 10-year licensing deal with popular skateboard company Plan B, and Plan B subsequently entered into a partnership arrangement with Element. In May 2010, Billabong's retail expansion continued with the acquisition of American surf retailer Becker Surf and Sport in May (the Becker deal included the business's online operations, but not its surfboard operations), followed by the purchase of prominent Canadian action sports retailer West 49 in late June. Further acquisitions were then announced in the remainder of 2010; the acquisition of apparel brand RVCA was confirmed in July and the label's founder Pat Tenore explained his decision in the Billabong press release: "One of the key things about Billabong is its respect for the creative independence of each of its brands and that level of flexibility will allow RVCA to maintain its identity while benefiting from the support of the wider Billabong group"; after RVCA, Billabong then returned to the retail market and ended the year with the October acquisition of the Australian retail stores Surf Dive ‘n' Ski and Jetty Surf—from vendor General Pants Group—for an undisclosed amount.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: On 16 February 2012, trading in Billabong shares was halted at the company's request because of reports of a 776 million takeover offer from TPG Capital, a US private equity firm.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: On 17 February 2012, Billabong announced its intention to undergo a major restructure. Up to 150 stores closed, and 400 full-time jobs would be lost internationally, including up to 80 in Australia. About 48.5% of its Nixon watches and accessories brand name will be sold to Trilantic Capital Partners to establish Nixon as a joint venture.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: The partial sale would give about US$285 (or A$265.78) million in net proceeds to Billabong. Proceeds from the sale will be used to reduce debt. In February 2012, TPG Capital made two takeover proposals, neither of which was accepted. Billabong announced that Gordon Merchant, who owns 15% of the company's shares, had rejected both the offers.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: On 27 August 2012, chief executive Launa Inman presented her four-year plan to try to return Billabong to positive sales growth and increase earnings. The plan included a range of measures with the key focus being on simplifying the business, leveraging its namesake brand, improving its supply chain and e-commerce offerings. The new initiatives are estimated to cost roughly A$80 million. In September 2012, two private equity firms, TPG Capital and Bain Capital, were bidding for ownership of Billabong.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: The company was to finalise a takeover deal with either of two American private equity suitors; a refinancing deal was nearing completion as of 5 June 2013. On 4 June 2013, Billabong stated that it was unable to reach an agreement with US private equity funds Altamont Capital Partners and Sycamore Partners, 16 months after the first takeover move emerged.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: A media report published on 18 July 2013 conveyed that the takeover process had "exploded into acrimony", as two US hedge funds contested the offer from Altamont Partners that was accepted by the company on 16 July 2013. Acting together, the hedge funds claimed that they had made a superior offer to the one that was accepted, whereby a debt-for-equity swap was proposed that would result in a 60% stake in Billabong. As of 19 July 2013, Billabong rejected the claim from hedge funds Centerbridge Partners and Oaktree Capital, stating that the proposal in question was conditional, so could not be accepted.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: As of 23 August 2013, Billabong confirmed that is considering a rival deal from US hedge funds Centerbridge and Oaktree after the company had initially announced that plans to accept a US$300 million loan from an Altamont-led consortium. The two hedge funds offered a higher price than Altamont, as well as a lower interest rate on a loan. Also as of this date, Billabong shares gained 6.8%, to 58.75 cents.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: A media report on 27 August 2013 stated that Billabong would be moving ahead with the $US325 million refinancing proposal from Altamont and Blackstone. As of the same date, Centerbridge and Oaktree were actively pursuing Billabong directors in relation to their deal that they believe is significantly superior to the accepted proposal. The consortium also claimed that they could finalise the details and a recapitalisation within a brief time period, and would allow Altamont-installed acting boss Scott Olivet to remain if their offer succeeds. The company's chairman Ian Pollard explained:


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: We are nearing the end of a long process that has caused distraction, impacted on staff morale and has been very costly. The company looks forward to refocusing, reinvigorating its brands and rebuilding the business on a solid, long-term financial footing.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Pollard stated on 29 August 2013 that the chance of Billabong considering the Centerbridge and Oaktree consortium offer was low. At the time of the interview, Pollard explained that Billabong's board is still evaluating the proposal, but also stated that the board is hesitant to overlook the deal brokered with Altamont and Blackstone.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: As of 21 September 2013, Billabong's deal with Altamont was no longer valid, and the company was in the process of seeking approval from shareholders to finalise an arrangement with Centerbridge and Oaktree, and their affiliates. If brokered, the deal will mean that the Centerbridge and Oaktree consortium will control most of the company's senior debt, it will own up to 40.8% of Billabong's shares, and will also be entitled to install three representatives on Billabong's board. On 21 September 2013, the Centerbridge and Oaktree consortium appointed new chief executive Neil Fiske; as of this date, Billabong was also continuing the search for a buyer for the Canadian skateboard retail chain West 49.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: The company's sale of the West 49 retail chain was announced on 4 November 2013, with fashion retailer YM Inc. identified as the buyer. West 49 was sold for about CA$9–11 million, and Billabong has also entered into a two-year nonexclusive wholesale agreement with YM Inc. worth approximately CA$34 million. The ownership of 92 West 49 retail stores, located across Canada, was to be transferred through the deal.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In January 2014, Oaktree Capital Management and Centerbridge Partners refinanced Billabong's debt for a 40.8 percent ownership. Billabong International, announced that it was selling, with the help of Guggenheim Securities, its 51 percent stake in SurfStitch and its 100 percent stake in Swell.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In 2000, the company was listed with sales of A$225 million that grew to A$1.7 billion in 2011. Profits of A$249 million were achieved in 2007. For the six months to 31 December 2011, Billabong experienced a 71% drop in net profit to A$16.097 million.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In early 2013, Billabong revealed earnings collapses across core business markets that "decimated its business". Losses in the December half are A$536.6 million. A late August 2013 media report stated, "the Billabong label itself is now deemed essentially worthless, according to Billabong's accounts" following the declaration of an A$859.5 million loss for fiscal year 2013. Billabong's brands were worth A$90 million at the end of June 2013, and on the morning of 27 August 2013, the company stated that global sales of A$1.34 billion were down by 13.5% in reported terms for 2012–13. The company returned to profitability in 2015—for the 2014 earning reports—with a net profit after tax around A$25.7 million. This was first time the company became profitable since 2011.


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: In 2009, as part of the Q150 celebrations, Billabong was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as an iconic "innovation and invention".


title: Billabong (clothing)

text: Billabong sponsors teams of riders in different subcultures who play an ambassador-like role for both the brand and the corresponding lifestyle. As of 26 August 2013, a skateboard team is no longer listed on its website. Surfing is continuing to gain popularity, so more money is being put into it; now Billabong sponsors hundreds of surfers.


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo on 8 October 2021. Maria Ressa (b. 1963) and Dmitry Muratov (b. 1961) received the prize "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: The formal award ceremony was held in Oslo on 10 December 2021, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. In 2020, the ceremony returned to its former venue, the Atrium of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, after being held in Oslo City Hall during the period 1990–2019. In 2021, the ceremony returned to Oslo City Hall.


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: There were 329 candidates for the prize when nominations closed on 31 January 2021. The Norwegian News Agency reported earlier in 2021 that Maria Ressa had been nominated by Jonas Gahr Støre, the designated Prime Minister following the 2021 election, and many sources in Russia claim that Dmitry Muratov was nominated by Mikhail Gorbachev.


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: Different groups of qualified nominators may nominate candidates, including members of national assemblies and national governments, heads of state, judges of certain international courts, (full) professor-level academics in relevant fields, and former laureates; a significant proportion of the nominations are submitted by Norwegian MPs and academics. Nominations are submitted to the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee, usually in a Scandinavian language (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) or English. Nominations for the 2021 prize opened on 1 September 2020 and closed on 31 January 2021 (Norwegian time).


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: There are 329 candidates in 2021, 234 individuals and 95 organizations. The Nobel Foundation is not allowed to publish nominations for at least 50 years. Individual nominators can, and sometimes do, choose to publish their nomination, and Norwegian media often report nominations by qualified nominators such as members of parliament and qualified academics.


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: The Norwegian News Agency reported on 31 January 2021 that the 2021 nominees confirmed by qualified Norwegian nominators (MPs or academics) before the deadline included the following candidates:


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: On 8 October 2021, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the prize to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." As a result, the Nobel Prize Committee was criticized for rewarding Muratov and not jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as an attempt by the Committee "to keep the maximum distance from the current political process" in Russia. Muratov has said that he would have given the prize to Alexei Navalny if it were his choice. The U.S. government assessed that Russian intelligence was behind an attack on Dmitry Muratov for criticizing the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are elected by the Norwegian Parliament and are responsible for selecting the laureate in accordance with the will of Alfred Nobel; the committee's members in 2021 are:


title: 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

text: The award ceremony was held in Oslo on 10 December 2021, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. In 2020 the ceremony returned to its former venue, the Atrium of the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, after being held in Oslo City Hall during the period 1990–2019. In 2021 the ceremony was once again held in Oslo City Hall.


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal welfare is the well-being of non-human animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity, disease, immunosuppression, behavior, physiology, and reproduction, although there is debate about which of these best indicate animal welfare.


title: Animal welfare

text: Respect for animal welfare is often based on the belief that nonhuman animals are sentient and that consideration should be given to their well-being or suffering, especially when they are under the care of humans. These concerns can include how animals are slaughtered for food, how they are used in scientific research, how they are kept (as pets, in zoos, farms, circuses, etc.), and how human activities affect the welfare and survival of wild species.


title: Animal welfare

text: There are two forms of criticism of the concept of animal welfare, coming from diametrically opposite positions. One view, held by some thinkers in history, holds that humans have no duties of any kind to animals. The other view is based on the animal rights position that animals should not be regarded as property and any use of animals by humans is unacceptable. Accordingly, some animal rights proponents argue that the perception of better animal welfare facilitates continued and increased exploitation of animals. Some authorities therefore treat animal welfare and animal rights as two opposing positions. Others see animal welfare gains as incremental steps towards animal rights.


title: Animal welfare

text: The predominant view of modern neuroscientists, notwithstanding philosophical problems with the definition of consciousness even in humans, is that consciousness exists in nonhuman animals. However, some still maintain that consciousness is a philosophical question that may never be scientifically resolved. Remarkably, a new study has managed to overcome some of the difficulties in testing this question empirically, and devised a unique way to dissociate conscious from nonconscious perception in animals. In this study conducted in rhesus monkeys, the researchers built experiments predicting completely opposite behavioral outcomes to consciously vs. non-consciously perceived stimuli. Strikingly, the monkeys' behaviors displayed these exact opposite signatures, just like aware and unaware humans tested in the study.


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal protection laws were enacted as early as 13th century AD by Genghis Khan in Mongolia, where they protected wildlife during breeding season (March to October).


title: Animal welfare

text: Early legislation in the Western world on behalf of animals includes the Ireland Parliament (Thomas Wentworth) "An Act against Plowing by the Tayle, and pulling the Wooll off living Sheep", 1635, and the Massachusetts Colony (Nathaniel Ward) "Off the Bruite Creatures" Liberty 92 and 93 in the "Massachusetts Body of Liberties" of 1641.


title: Animal welfare

text: In 1776, English clergyman Humphrey Primatt authored "A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals", one of the first books published in support of animal welfare. Marc Bekoff has noted that "Primatt was largely responsible for bringing animal welfare to the attention of the general public."


title: Animal welfare

text: Since 1822, when Irish MP Richard Martin brought the "Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822" through Parliament offering protection from cruelty to cattle, horses, and sheep, an animal welfare movement has been active in England. Martin was among the founders of the world's first animal welfare organization, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or SPCA, in 1824. In 1840, Queen Victoria gave the society her blessing, and it became the RSPCA. The society used members' donations to employ a growing network of inspectors, whose job was to identify abusers, gather evidence, and report them to the authorities.


title: Animal welfare

text: One of the first national laws to protect animals was the UK "Cruelty to Animals Act 1835" followed by the "Protection of Animals Act 1911". In the US it was many years until there was a national law to protect animals—the "Animal Welfare Act of 1966"—although there were a number of states that passed anti-cruelty laws between 1828 and 1898. In India, animals are protected by the "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960".


title: Animal welfare

text: Significant progress in animal welfare did not take place until the late 20th century. In 1965, the UK government commissioned an investigation—led by Professor Roger Brambell—into the welfare of intensively farmed animals, partly in response to concerns raised in Ruth Harrison's 1964 book, "Animal Machines". On the basis of Professor Brambell's report, the UK government set up the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee in 1967, which became the Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1979. The committee's first guidelines recommended that animals require the freedoms to "stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs." The guidelines have since been elaborated upon to become known as the Five Freedoms.


title: Animal welfare

text: In the UK, the "Animal Welfare Act 2006" consolidated many different forms of animal welfare legislation.


title: Animal welfare

text: A number of animal welfare organisations are campaigning to achieve a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW) at the United Nations. In principle, the Universal Declaration would call on the United Nations to recognise animals as sentient beings, capable of experiencing pain and suffering, and to recognise that animal welfare is an issue of importance as part of the social development of nations worldwide. The campaign to achieve the UDAW is being co-ordinated by World Animal Protection, with a core working group including Compassion in World Farming, the RSPCA, and the Humane Society International (the international branch of HSUS).


title: Animal welfare

text: The 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report identified animal welfare as one of several key missing issues in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal welfare science is an emerging field that seeks to answer questions raised by the keeping and use of animals, such as whether hens are frustrated when confined in cages, whether the psychological well-being of animals in laboratories can be maintained, and whether zoo animals are stressed by the transport required for international conservation. Ireland leads research into farm animal welfare with the recently published Research Report on Farm Animal Welfare.


title: Animal welfare

text: A major concern for the welfare of farmed animals is factory farming in which large numbers of animals are reared in confinement at high stocking densities. Issues include the limited opportunities for natural behaviors, for example, in battery cages, veal and gestation crates, instead producing abnormal behaviors such as tail-biting, cannibalism, and feather pecking, and routine invasive procedures such as beak trimming, castration, and ear notching. More extensive methods of farming, e.g. free range, can also raise welfare concerns such as the mulesing of sheep, predation of stock by wild animals, and biosecurity.


title: Animal welfare

text: Farmed animals are artificially selected for production parameters which sometimes impinge on the animals' welfare. For example, broiler chickens are bred to be very large to produce the greatest quantity of meat per animal. Broilers bred for fast growth have a high incidence of leg deformities because the large breast muscles cause distortions of the developing legs and pelvis, and the birds cannot support their increased body weight. As a consequence, they frequently become lame or suffer from broken legs. The increased body weight also puts a strain on their hearts and lungs, and ascites often develops. In the UK alone, up to 20 million broilers each year die from the stress of catching and transport before reaching the slaughterhouse.


title: Animal welfare

text: Another concern about the welfare of farmed animals is the method of slaughter, especially ritual slaughter. While the killing of animals need not necessarily involve suffering, the general public considers that killing an animal reduces its welfare. This leads to further concerns about premature slaughtering such as chick culling by the laying hen industry, in which males are slaughtered immediately after hatching because they are superfluous; this policy occurs in other farmed animal industries such as the production of goat and cattle milk, raising the same concerns.


title: Animal welfare

text: Captive cetaceans are kept for display, research and naval operations. To enhance their welfare, humans feed them fish which are dead, but are disease-free, protect them from predators and injury, monitor their health, and provide activities for behavioral enrichment. Some are kept in lagoons with natural soil and vegetated sides. Most are in concrete tanks which are easy to clean, but echo their natural sounds back to them. They cannot develop their own social groups, and related cetaceans are typically separated for display and breeding. Military dolphins used in naval operations swim free during operations and training, and return to pens otherwise. Captive cetaceans are trained to present themselves for blood samples, health exams and noninvasive breath samples above their blow holes. Staff can monitor the captives afterwards for signs of infection from the procedure.


title: Animal welfare

text: Research on wild cetaceans leaves them free to roam and make sounds in their natural habitat, eat live fish, face predators and injury, and form social groups voluntarily. However boat engines of researchers, whale watchers and others add substantial noise to their natural environment, reducing their ability to echolocate and communicate. Electric engines are far quieter, but are not widely used for either research or whale watching, even for maintaining position, which does not require much power. Vancouver Port offers discounts for ships with quiet propeller and hull designs. Other areas have reduced speeds. Boat engines also have unshielded propellers, which cause serious injuries to cetaceans who come close to the propeller. The US Coast Guard has proposed rules on propeller guards to protect human swimmers, but has not adopted any rules. The US Navy uses propeller guards to protect manatees in Georgia. Ducted propellers provide more efficient drive at speeds up to 10 knots, and protect animals beneath and beside them, but need grilles to prevent injuries to animals drawn into the duct. Attaching satellite trackers and obtaining biopsies to measure pollution loads and DNA involve either capture and release, or shooting the cetaceans from a distance with dart guns. A cetacean was killed by a fungal infection after being darted, due to either an incompletely sterilized dart or an infection from the ocean entering the wound caused by the dart. Researchers on wild cetaceans have not yet been able to use drones to capture noninvasive breath samples.


title: Animal welfare

text: Other harms to wild cetaceans include commercial whaling, aboriginal whaling, drift netting, ship collisions, water pollution, noise from sonar and reflection seismology, predators, loss of prey, disease. Efforts to enhance the life of wild cetaceans, besides reducing those harms, include offering human music. Canadian rules do not forbid playing quiet music, though they forbid "noise that may resemble whale songs or calls, under water".


title: Animal welfare

text: In addition to cetaceans, the welfare of other wild animals has also been studied, though to a lesser extent than that of animals in farms. Research in wild animal welfare has two focuses: the welfare of wild animals kept in captivity and the welfare of animals living in the wild. The former has addressed the situation of animals kept both for human use, as in zoos or circuses, or in rehabilitation centers. The latter has examined how the welfare of non-domesticated animals living in wild or urban areas are affected by humans or natural factors causing wild animal suffering.


title: Animal welfare

text: Some of the proponents of these views have advocated carrying out conservation efforts in ways that respect the welfare of wild animals, within the framework of the disciplines of compassionate conservation and conservation welfare, while others have argued in favor of improving the welfare of wild animals for the sake of the animals, regardless of whether there are any conservation issues involved at all. The welfare economist Yew-Kwang Ng, in his 1995 "Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering", proposed welfare biology as a research field to study "living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defined as net happiness, or enjoyment minus suffering)."


title: Animal welfare

text: The European Commission's activities in this area start with the recognition that animals are sentient beings. The general aim is to ensure that animals do not endure avoidable pain or suffering, and obliges the owner/keeper of animals to respect minimum welfare requirements. European Union legislation regarding farm animal welfare is regularly re-drafted according to science-based evidence and cultural views. For example, in 2009, legislation was passed which aimed to reduce animal suffering during slaughter and on 1 January 2012, the European Union Council Directive 1999/74/EC came into act, which means that conventional battery cages for laying hens are now banned across the Union.


title: Animal welfare

text: The Animal Welfare Act 2006 makes owners and keepers responsible for ensuring that the welfare needs of their animals are met. These include the need: for a suitable environment (place to live), for a suitable diet, to exhibit normal behavior patterns, to be housed with, or apart from, other animals (if applicable), and to be protected from pain, injury, suffering and disease.


title: Animal welfare

text: Anyone who is cruel to an animal, or does not provide for its welfare needs, may be banned from owning animals, fined up to £20,000 and/or sent to prison for a maximum of six months.


title: Animal welfare

text: In the UK, the welfare of research animals being used for "regulated procedures" was historically protected by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA) which is administrated by the Home Office. The Act defines "regulated procedures" as animal experiments that could potentially cause "pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm" to "protected animals". Initially, "protected animals" encompassed all living vertebrates other than humans, but, in 1993, an amendment added a single invertebrate species, the common octopus.


title: Animal welfare

text: Primates, cats, dogs, and horses have additional protection over other vertebrates under the Act. Revised legislation came into force in January 2013. This has been expanded to protect "...all living vertebrates, other than man, and any living cephalopod. Fish and amphibia are protected once they can feed independently and cephalopods at the point when they hatch. Embryonic and foetal forms of mammals, birds and reptiles are protected during the last third of their gestation or incubation period." The definition of regulated procedures was also expanded: ""A procedure is regulated if it is carried out on a protected animal and may cause that animal a level of pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm equivalent to, or higher than, that caused by inserting a hypodermic needle according to good veterinary practice."" It also includes modifying the genes of a protected animal if this causes the animal pain, suffering, distress, or lasting harm. The ASPA also considers other issues such as animal sources, housing conditions, identification methods, and the humane killing of animals.


title: Animal welfare

text: Those applying for a license must explain why such research cannot be done through non-animal methods. The project must also pass an ethical review panel which aims to decide if the potential benefits outweigh any suffering for the animals involved.


title: Animal welfare

text: In the United States, a federal law called the Humane Slaughter Act was designed to decrease suffering of livestock during slaughter.


title: Animal welfare

text: The Georgia Animal Protection Act of 1986 was a state law enacted in response to the inhumane treatment of companion animals by a pet store chain in Atlanta. The Act provided for the licensing and regulation of pet shops, stables, kennels, and animal shelters, and established, for the first time, minimum standards of care. Additional provisions, called the Humane Euthanasia Act, were added in 1990, and then further expanded and strengthened with the Animal Protection Act of 2000.


title: Animal welfare

text: In 2002, voters passed (by a margin of 55% for and 45% against) Amendment 10 to the Florida Constitution banning the confinement of pregnant pigs in gestation crates. In 2006, Arizona voters passed Proposition 204 with 62% support; the legislation prohibits the confinement of calves in veal crates and breeding sows in gestation crates. In 2007, the Governor of Oregon signed legislation prohibiting the confinement of pigs in gestation crates and in 2008, the Governor of Colorado signed legislation that phased out both gestation crates and veal crates. Also during 2008, California passed Proposition 2, known as the "Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act", which orders new space requirements for farm animals starting in 2015.


title: Animal welfare

text: In the US, every institution that uses vertebrate animals for federally funded laboratory research must have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Each local IACUC reviews research protocols and conducts evaluations of the institution's animal care and use which includes the results of inspections of facilities that are required by law. The IACUC committee must assess the steps taken to "enhance animal well-being" before research can take place. This includes research on farm animals.


title: Animal welfare

text: According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, researchers must try to minimize distress in animals whenever possible: "Animals used in research and testing may experience pain from induced diseases, procedures, and toxicity. The Public Health Service (PHS) Policy and Animal Welfare Regulations (AWRs) state that procedures that cause more than momentary or slight pain or distress should be performed with appropriate sedation, analgesia, or anesthesia.


title: Animal welfare

text: However, research and testing studies sometimes involve pain that cannot be relieved with such agents because they would interfere with the scientific objectives of the study. Accordingly, federal regulations require that IACUCs determine that discomfort to animals will be limited to that which is unavoidable for the conduct of scientifically valuable research, and that unrelieved pain and distress will only continue for the duration necessary to accomplish the scientific objectives. The PHS Policy and AWRs further state that animals that would otherwise suffer severe or chronic pain and distress that cannot be relieved should be painlessly killed at the end of the procedure, or if appropriate, during the procedure."


title: Animal welfare

text: The National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals also serves as a guide to improve welfare for animals used in research in the US. The Federation of Animal Science Societies' Guide for the Care and Use of Agricultural Animals in Research and Teaching is a resource addressing welfare concerns in farm animal research. Laboratory animals in the US are also protected under the Animal Welfare Act. The United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) enforces the Animal Welfare Act. APHIS inspects animal research facilities regularly and reports are published online.


title: Animal welfare

text: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the total number of animals used in the U.S. in 2005 was almost 1.2 million, but this does not include rats, mice, and birds which are not covered by welfare legislation but make up approximately 90% of research animals.


title: Animal welfare

text: Positive conditions – Providing good animal welfare is sometimes defined by a list of positive conditions which should be provided to the animal. This approach is taken by the Five Freedoms and the three principles of Professor John Webster.


title: Animal welfare

text: John Webster defines animal welfare by advocating three positive conditions: Living a natural life, being fit and healthy, and being happy.


title: Animal welfare

text: High production – In the past, many have seen farm animal welfare chiefly in terms of whether the animal is producing well. The argument is that an animal in poor welfare would not be producing well, however, many farmed animals will remain highly productive despite being in conditions where good welfare is almost certainly compromised, e.g., layer hens in battery cages.


title: Animal welfare

text: Emotion in animals – Others in the field, such as Professor Ian Duncan and Professor Marian Dawkins, focus more on the feelings of the animal. This approach indicates the belief that animals should be considered as sentient beings. Duncan wrote, "Animal welfare is to do with the feelings experienced by animals: the absence of strong negative feelings, usually called suffering, and (probably) the presence of positive feelings, usually called pleasure. In any assessment of welfare, it is these feelings that should be assessed." Dawkins wrote, "Let us not mince words: Animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals."


title: Animal welfare

text: Welfare biology – Yew-Kwang Ng defines animal welfare in terms of welfare economics: "Welfare biology is the study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defined as net happiness, or enjoyment minus suffering). Despite difficulties of ascertaining and measuring welfare and relevancy to normative issues, welfare biology is a positive science."


title: Animal welfare

text: Dictionary definition – In the "Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary", animal welfare is defined as "the avoidance of abuse and exploitation of animals by humans by maintaining appropriate standards of accommodation, feeding and general care, the prevention and treatment of disease and the assurance of freedom from harassment, and unnecessary discomfort and pain."


title: Animal welfare

text: American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has defined animal welfare as: "An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress." They have offered the following eight principles for developing and evaluating animal welfare policies.


title: Animal welfare

text: Terrestrial Animal Health Code of World Organisation for Animal Health defines animal welfare as "how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behaviour, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress. Good animal welfare requires disease prevention and veterinary treatment, appropriate shelter, management, nutrition, humane handling and humane slaughter/killing. Animal welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment that an animal receives is covered by other terms such as animal care, animal husbandry, and humane treatment."


title: Animal welfare

text: Coping – Professor Donald Broom defines the welfare of an animal as "Its state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment. This state includes how much it is having to do to cope, the extent to which it is succeeding in or failing to cope, and its associated feelings." He states that "welfare will vary over a continuum from very good to very poor and studies of welfare will be most effective if a wide range of measures is used." John Webster criticized this definition for making "no attempt to say what constitutes good or bad welfare."


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal welfare often refers to a utilitarian attitude towards the well-being of nonhuman animals. It believes the animals can be exploited if the animal suffering and the costs of use is less than the benefits to humans. This attitude is also known simply as "welfarism".


title: Animal welfare

text: An example of welfarist thought is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's meat manifesto. Point three of eight is:


title: Animal welfare

text: Robert Garner describes the welfarist position as the most widely held in modern society. He states that one of the best attempts to clarify this position is given by philosopher Robert Nozick:


title: Animal welfare

text: Welfarism is often contrasted with the animal rights and animal liberation positions, which hold that animals should not be used by humans and should not be regarded as human property. However, it has been argued that both welfarism and animal liberation only make sense if it is assumed that animals have "subjective welfare".


title: Animal welfare

text: New welfarism was coined by Gary L. Francione in 1996. It is a view that the best way to prevent animal suffering is to abolish the causes of animal suffering, but advancing animal welfare is a goal to pursue in the short term. Thus, for instance, new welfarists want to phase out fur farms and animal experiments but in the short-term they try to improve conditions for the animals in these systems, so they lobby to make cages less constrictive and to reduce the numbers of animals used in laboratories.


title: Animal welfare

text: Within the context of animal research, many scientific organisations believe that improved animal welfare will provide improved scientific outcomes. If an animal in a laboratory is suffering stress or pain it could negatively affect the results of the research.


title: Animal welfare

text: Increased affluence in many regions for the past few decades afforded consumers the disposable income to purchase products from high welfare systems. The adaptation of more economically efficient farming systems in these regions were at the expense of animal welfare and to the financial benefit of consumers, both of which were factors in driving the demand for higher welfare for farm animals. A 2006 survey concluded that a majority (63%) of EU citizens "show some willingness to change their usual place of shopping in order to be able to purchase more animal welfare-friendly products."


title: Animal welfare

text: The volume of scientific research on animal welfare has also increased significantly in some countries.


title: Animal welfare

text: Some individuals in history have, at least in principle, rejected the view that humans have duties of any kind to animals.


title: Animal welfare

text: "For we see and hear by their cries that animals die with pain, although man disregards this in a beast, with which, as not having a rational soul, we have no community of rights."


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal rights advocates, such as Gary L. Francione and Tom Regan, argue that the animal welfare position (advocating for the betterment of the condition of animals, but without abolishing animal use) is inconsistent in logic and ethically unacceptable. However, there are some animal right groups, such as PETA, which support animal welfare measures in the short term to alleviate animal suffering until all animal use is ended.


title: Animal welfare

text: According to PETA's Ingrid Newkirk in an interview with "Wikinews", there are two issues in animal welfare and animal rights. "If I only could have one thing, it would be to end suffering", said Newkirk. "If you could take things from animals and kill animals all day long without causing them suffering, then I would take it... Everybody should be able to agree that animals should not suffer if you kill them or steal from them by taking the fur off their backs or take their eggs, whatever. But you shouldn't put them through torture to do that."


title: Animal welfare

text: Abolitionism holds that focusing on animal welfare not only fails to challenge animal suffering, but may actually prolong it by making the exercise of property rights over animals appear less unattractive. The abolitionists' objective is to secure a moral and legal paradigm shift, whereby animals are no longer regarded as property. In recent years documentaries such as watchdominion.com have been produced, exposing the suffering occurring in animal agriculture facilities that are marketed as having high welfare standards.


title: Animal welfare

text: World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE): The intergovernmental organisation responsible for improving animal health worldwide. The OIE has been established "for the purpose of projects of international public utility relating to the control of animal diseases, including those affecting humans and the promotion of animal welfare and animal production food safety."


title: Animal welfare

text: World Animal Protection: Protects animals across the globe. World Animal Protection's objectives include helping people understand the critical importance of good animal welfare, encouraging nations to commit to animal-friendly practices, and building the scientific case for the better treatment of animals. They are global in a sense that they have consultative status at the Council of Europe and collaborate with national governments, the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health.


title: Animal welfare

text: Animal Welfare Institute (AWI): An American non-profit charitable organization founded by Christine Stevens in 1951 with the goal of reducing suffering inflicted on animals by humans. It is one of the oldest animal welfare organizations in the US.


title: Animal welfare

text: Canadian Council on Animal Care: The national organization responsible for overseeing the care and use of animals involved in Canadian Science.


title: Animal welfare

text: Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (CFHS): The only national organization representing humane societies and SPCAs in Canada. They provide leadership on animal welfare issues and spread the message across Canada.


title: Animal welfare

text: The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association: Brings in veterinary involvement to animal welfare. Their objective is to share this concern of animals with all members of the profession, with the general public, with government at all levels, and with other organizations such as the CFHS, which have similar concerns.


title: Animal welfare

text: Compassion in World Farming: Founded over 40 years ago in 1967 by a British farmer who became horrified by the development of modern, intensive factory farming. "Today we campaign peacefully to end all cruel factory farming practices. We believe that the biggest cause of cruelty on the planet deserves a focused, specialised approach – so we only work on farm animal welfare."


title: Animal welfare

text: "Promote simple vegan living and self-reliance as a remedy against the exploitation of humans, animals and the Earth.


title: Animal welfare

text: Promote the use of trees and vegan-organic farming to meet the needs of society for food and natural resources.


title: Animal welfare

text: Promote a land-based society where as much of our food and resources as possible are produced locally."


title: Animal welfare

text: National Animal Interest Alliance: An animal welfare organization in the United States founded in 1991 promotes the welfare of animals, strengthens the human-animal bond, and safeguards the rights of responsible animal owners, enthusiasts and professionals through research, public information and sound public policy. They host an online library of information about various animal-related subjects serving as a resource for groups and individuals dedicated to responsible animal care and well-being.


title: Animal welfare

text: National Farm Animal Care Council: Their objectives are to facilitate collaboration among members with respect to farm animal care issues in Canada, to facilitate information sharing and communication, and to monitor trends and initiatives in both the domestic and international market place.


title: Animal welfare

text: National Office of Animal Health: A British organisation that represents its members drawn from the animal medicines industry.


title: Animal welfare

text: Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: A registered charity comprising over 50 communities.


title: Animal welfare

text: Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: A well-known animal welfare charity in England and Wales, founded in 1824.


title: Animal welfare

text: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare: A UK registered charity, established in 1926, that works to develop and promote improvements in the welfare of all animals through scientific and educational activity worldwide.


title: Chief of the General Staff (Russia)

text: The Chief of the General Staff () is the head of the General Staff and the highest ranking officer of the Russian Armed Forces or is also the senior-most uniformed military officer. He is appointed by the President of Russia, who is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The position dates to the period of the Russian Empire. The current Chief of the General Staff is Army General Valery Gerasimov.


title: Moo shu pork

text: Moo shu pork (木须肉, also spelled mù xū ròu, moo shi pork, mu shu or mu xu pork) is a dish of northern Chinese origin, originating from Shandong. It invariably contains egg, whose yellow color is reminiscent of blossoms of the osmanthus tree, after which the dish is named.


title: Moo shu pork

text: In its traditional Chinese version, moo shu pork consists of sliced pork tenderloin, cucumber, and scrambled eggs, stir fried in lard together with bite-sized cuttings of wood ear mushrooms (black fungus) and enoki mushrooms. Historically the original dish in Shandong cuisine contained bamboo shoots. It was adapted into Beijing cuisine replacing bamboo with crunchy daylily blossoms. When home-cooked either may be replaced with cucumber. The dish is seasoned with minced ginger and garlic, scallions, soy sauce, and rice cooking wine (usually "huangjiu"). The dish is traditionally eaten by itself.


title: Moo shu pork

text: The dish is prepared with julienned pork, cabbage, scrambled egg, carrots, and wood ear mushrooms (black fungus). Hoisin sauce is painted on the inside of a thin flour-and-water pancake, or recently, sometimes, a Mexican tortilla, which is then used to wrap the filling.


title: Moo shu pork

text: In the United States, the dish seems to have appeared in Chinese restaurants in New York City and Washington, D.C. in approximately 1966, receiving mention in a "New York Times" guide to Washington restaurants published that year. One of the first restaurants in Manhattan to serve the dish was Pearl's, one of the best known New York City Chinese restaurants to serve non-Cantonese food in the 1960s. A 1967 article in "The New York Times" states that another of the first restaurateurs to serve the dish in Manhattan was Emily Kwoh, the owner of the Mandarin House, Mandarin East, and Great Shanghai restaurants.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Jason McCourty (born August 13, 1987) is a former American football cornerback who played 13 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). Drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the sixth round, 203rd overall, in the 2009 NFL Draft, he also played for the Cleveland Browns, the New England Patriots, and the Miami Dolphins. In a rare feat, McCourty went from playing for an 0-16 team one year (the 2017 Browns), to winning a Super Bowl the following season (LIII with the 2018 Patriots).


title: Jason McCourty

text: He played college football at Rutgers. He primarily played cornerback throughout his first eleven NFL seasons, but became the starting free safety for the Miami Dolphins in 2021.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Jason McCourty started 3 years as a cornerback for Rutgers University. He ended his college career with 148 tackles, 2 interceptions, 20 pass breakups and finished second in the Big East in kickoff returns as a senior. His twin brother, Devin, started alongside him as a cornerback at Rutgers. McCourty graduated with a bachelor's degree in information technology.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Coming out of Rutgers, McCourty was not a highly sought after prospect and did not receive an invitation to the NFL Combine. On March 23, 2009, he participated at Rutgers' pro day, along with Kenny Britt, Mike Teel, Tiquan Underwood, Courtney Greene, Kevin Brock, Kevin Malast, and nine other teammates. 41 team representatives and scouts from 27 NFL teams attended Rutgers pro day to scout one of the most talented teams in school history. McCourty ran the fastest time of any player there in the 40-yard dash.


title: Jason McCourty

text: The Tennessee Titans selected McCourty in the sixth round (203rd overall) of the 2009 NFL Draft. He was the second player from Rutgers that the Tennessee Titans drafted after first-rounder Kenny Britt and was the 31st cornerback that was drafted in 2009 draft.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Throughout training camp, he competed for the fifth cornerback spot on the roster against rookie Ryan Mouton, DeMarcus Faggins, Tanard Davis, and Jeremy Haynes. Head coach Jeff Fisher named McCourty the fourth cornerback on the Titans' depth chart to start the regular season, behind Cortland Finnegan, Nick Harper, and Cary Williams.


title: Jason McCourty

text: He made his professional regular season debut in the Tennessee Titans' season-opening 13–10 loss at the Pittsburgh Steelers. In Week 3, he made his first career tackle and finished the Titans' 24–27 loss at the New York Jets with three solo tackles. On October 4, 2009, McCourty earned his first career start in place of Cortland Finnegan, who suffered a hamstring injury the previous week. McCourty finished the 37–17 loss at the Jacksonville Jaguars with four solo tackles. The following week, he started his second consecutive game in the absence of Finnegan and recorded a season-high eight combined tackles during their 31–9 loss against the Indianapolis Colts. During Week 8, McCourty was surpassed on the depth chart by newly acquired free agent Roderick Hood. He also missed the Titans' Week 10 victory against the Buffalo Bills due to an injury. McCourty finished his rookie season in with 29 combined tackles (24 solo) in 15 games and three starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty entered training camp competing for the job as the starting cornerback against Ryan Mouton, rookie Alterraun Verner, and Tye Hill after the role was left vacant by the departure of Nick Harper during the off-season. Head coach Jeff Fisher named McCourty the starting cornerback, alongside Cortland Finnegan, to start the regular season.


title: Jason McCourty

text: He started the Tennessee Titans' season-opener against the Oakland Raiders and recorded a season-high eight combined tackles and a pass deflection in their 38–13 victory. On September 26, 2010, he collected four combined tackles, broke up a pass, and intercepted a pass by Eli Manning in the endzone before leaving the Titans' 29–10 victory at the New York Giants with an arm injury. It was later reported that McCourty had suffered a broken right forearm and would have to undergo surgery. On September 28, 2010, McCourty underwent surgery and missed the next four games (Weeks 4–7). Upon his return in Week 8, he was relegated to being the third cornerback behind Finnegan and Verner for the rest of the season. On October 31, 2010, McCourty made three solo tackles, a pass deflection, and intercepted a pass by Philip Rivers during their 33–25 loss at the San Diego Chargers. He finished the season with 47 combined tackles (37 solo), ten pass deflections, and two interceptions in 12 games and six starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On January 28, 2011, the Tennessee Titans announced the firing of head coach Jeff Fisher after a six-year tenure and a disappointing 6-10 season in 2010. Throughout training camp, McCourty competed against Alterraun Verner for the role as the starting cornerback. Head coach Mike Munchak named McCourty the starting cornerback, opposite Cortland Finnegan, to begin the 2011 regular season.


title: Jason McCourty

text: In Week 2, McCourty collected four solo tackles, broke up a pass, an interception, and made his first career sack on Baltimore Ravens' quarterback Joe Flacco during their 26–13 victory. On October 9, 2011, he made a season-high 14 combined tackles (eight solo) and deflected a pass in a 38-17 loss at the Pittsburgh Steelers. McCourty was sidelined for the Titans' Week 14 loss to the New Orleans Saints due to a concussion he suffered the previous week against the Buffalo Bills. He finished the season with a career-high 103 combined tackles (83 solo, 13 pass deflections), two interceptions, a sack, and a forced fumble in 15 games and 15 starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On August 23, 2012, the Tennessee Titans signed McCourty to a six-year, $43 million contract extension that includes $20 million guaranteed and a signing bonus of $9 million.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty and Verner entered the regular season as the starting cornerback duo after Cortland Finnegan departed to the St. Louis Rams in free agency. In Week 5, McCourty recorded a season-high nine combined tackles and deflected a pass during a 30–7 loss at the Minnesota Vikings. On November 11, 2012, he collected a season-high nine solo tackles and deflected a pass as the Titans' routed the Miami Dolphins 37–3. On December 17, 2012, he made five combined tackles, two pass deflections, and intercepted quarterback Mark Sanchez twice during a 14–10 victory against the New York Jets. McCourty finished the season with 92 combined tackles (73 solo), a career-high 15 pass deflections, and four interceptions in 16 games and 16 starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty and Verner remained the starting cornerbacks to start the 2013 season. In Week 6, McCourty made a season-high nine combined tackles and forced a fumble as the Titans lost 20-13 at the Seattle Seahawks. He finished the season with 65 combined tackles (54 solo) and 11 pass deflections in 16 games and 16 starts. The Tennessee Titans did not qualify for the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On January 4, 2014, the Tennessee Titans fired head coach Mike Munchak after two consecutive losing seasons. Head coach Ken Whisenhunt named McCourty the starting cornerback, alongside Coty Sensabaugh, to start the regular season.


title: Jason McCourty

text: He started the Tennessee Titans' season-opener at the Kansas City Chiefs and recorded three solo tackles, two pass deflections, and two interceptions off passes by Alex Smith during their 26-10 victory. In Week 6, McCourty recorded a season-high 11 combined tackles (ten solo) and a pass deflection in the Titans' 16-14 win against the Jacksonville Jaguars. McCourty finished the season with 85 combined tackles (77 solo), 11 pass deflections, and three interceptions in 16 games and 16 starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty suffered a groin injury that sidelined him for the majority of training camp and the entire preseason. His groin injury ultimately caused him to miss the first three games (Weeks 1-3) after requiring surgery that took place on August 24, 2015. Head coach Ken Whisenhunt named Perrish Cox and Coty Sensabaugh the starting cornerbacks to start the regular season in McCourty's place. McCourty was named a co-defensive captain during the 2015 season.


title: Jason McCourty

text: In Week 8, McCourty recorded a season-high seven combined tackles during the Titans' 20-6 loss at the Houston Texans. He aggravated his groin injury during the game and missed the remainder of the season. On November 4, 2015, the Tennessee Titans fired head coach Ken Whisenhunt after a 1-6 start. They promoted tight ends coach Mike Mularkey to interim head coach for the remainder of the season. On November 16, 2015, he was placed on the team's injured reserve with a groin injury that required surgery. He finished the season with 15 combined tackles (ten solo) in four games and four starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Head coach Mike Mularkey named McCourty and Perrish Cox the starting cornerbacks to start the 2016 regular season. In Week 4, he recorded four combined tackles, deflected a pass, and an interception in the Titans' 27-20 loss at the Houston Texans. On October 27, 2016, McCourty collected a season-high 11 combined tackles (eight solo) and two pass deflections in their 36-22 win against the Jacksonville Jaguars. In Week 15, McCourty left the Titans' 19-17 victory at the Kansas City Chiefs in the first quarter after he sustained a chest injury in the first quarter that sidelined him for the last two games (Weeks 16-17) of the season. He finished the season with 69 combined tackles (60 solo), 12 pass deflections, and two interceptions in 14 games and 14 starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On April 13, 2017, the Titans released McCourty after eight seasons with the team, after he rejected a pay cut. The Titans had recently signed free agent cornerback Logan Ryan; they were also considering selecting a cornerback in the upcoming 2017 NFL Draft, which had a deep group of cornerbacks available.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On May 16, 2017, the Cleveland Browns signed McCourty to a two-year, $6 million contract, with a signing bonus of $1.25 million and a total of $2 million guaranteed.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Throughout training camp, he competed for a job as the starting cornerback against Joe Haden, Jamar Taylor, and Briean Boddy-Calhoun. Head coach Hue Jackson named him the starting cornerback, alongside Jamar Taylor, after the Browns released Joe Haden.


title: Jason McCourty

text: In Week 2, McCourty made four combined tackles, two pass deflections, forced a fumble on Alex Collins, and intercepted a pass by Joe Flacco during the Browns' 24-10 loss at the Baltimore Ravens. On October 15, 2017, McCourty made a solo tackle, deflected a pass, and returned an interception by Deshaun Watson for a 56-yard touchdown in a 33-17 loss at the Houston Texans. The interception returned for a touchdown marked McCourty's first touchdown of his career. He missed two consecutive games (Weeks 7-8) after he suffered an ankle injury. On December 10, 2017, he collected a season-high ten combined tackles (eight solo) in their 27-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers. He finished the season with 69 combined tackles (60 solo), 12 pass deflections, two interceptions, and a touchdown in 14 games and 14 starts.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Despite Jason's efforts, the 2017 Cleveland Browns became the second team in NFL history to finish 0–16 after the 2008 Detroit Lions.


title: Jason McCourty

text: On March 15, 2018, the Cleveland Browns traded McCourty to the New England Patriots along with a 2018 seventh-round pick for New England's 2018 sixth-round pick. The trade placed McCourty and his twin brother Devin on the same NFL team for the first time in their careers. Safety Duron Harmon switched his jersey number to 21 so that McCourty could have jersey number 30. McCourty appeared in all 16 regular season games for the Patriots, and started in 12. He finished the 2018 season with 70 combined tackles (54 solo) and 1 interception. McCourty helped the Patriots reach Super Bowl LIII where they beat the Los Angeles Rams 13–3. In the third quarter, with the Patriots leading 3–0, McCourty broke up a pass in the end zone to Rams receiver Brandin Cooks, preventing a touchdown. After the game, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick called the play "huge.”


title: Jason McCourty

text: In week 5 against the Washington Redskins, McCourty recorded his first interception of the season off Colt McCoy in the 33-7 win.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty signed with the Miami Dolphins on May 7, 2021. He was placed on injured reserve on October 26, 2021.


title: Jason McCourty

text: McCourty's identical twin brother, Devin McCourty, is a Pro Bowl safety for the New England Patriots. They are among only 13 sets of twins in NFL history . They were the first set to play in a Super Bowl together, as well as the first to win one, doing so in Super Bowl LIII.


title: Jason McCourty

text: Jason and Devin McCourty jointly delivered the 2019 commencement address at Rutgers; they also received honorary doctorates from their alma mater.


title: SE postcode area

text: The SE (South Eastern) postcode area covers a broad radial swathe of the south-east of the London post town from the Albert Embankment to West Heath and the nearest edges of Sidcup and Selhurst. It loosely corresponds to the boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham and Greenwich plus indicated parts of the boroughs of Croydon (north), Lambeth (east), Bexley (west) and Bromley (its northwest corner).


title: SE postcode area

text: The postcode area originated in 1857 as the SE district. In 1868 it gained some of the area of the short-lived S district, with the rest going to SW. It was divided into numbered districts in 1917, by giving the district closest to London that hosted the head office the suffix "1" and all others alphabetically based on a locally important parish, chapelry, topological or built environment feature administering or close to the local distribution office. SE28 is a late addition carved out of the existing districts SE2 and SE18 to reflect the building up of a new London district in what had been the meadows and marshes by the tidal Thames in the parish of Plumstead: Thamesmead.


title: SE postcode area

text: Unlike SW, where a consecutive 50%, there ten, districts can more officially be traced into two alphabetical groups excluding SW1, SE has always technically followed the norm in that SE1 is the only head district. However SE19 was drawn up to serve the key distribution office serving Norwood after a complete alphabetical series so that those surrounding it and SE21 (Dulwich): SE20 and SE22 to SE27 are strictly alphabetical afresh (Anerley to West Norwood) but it has never technically been a "head district". The postcode area is part of the London post town. There are no dependent localities used in the postcode area. SE1P is a non-geographic postcode district for PO boxes located in SE1.


title: SE postcode area

text: The approximate coverage of the postcode districts, with the historic postal district names shown in "italics":


title: SE postcode area

text: SE1 has a very long tidal Thames frontage and is in Central London as is SE11 named after Kennington, close to Westminster. SE2–SE18 spread across the north and east of the postcode area; enquiring into their naming system explains how SE2, SE7, SE8, SE10, SE16 and SE18 also front the river. Postcode districts SE19–SE27 form a group in the southwest. Addition SE28 is in the northeast corner of the first group. The postcode area maps roughly to the combined area of the London Borough of Southwark, London Borough of Lewisham and Royal Borough of Greenwich. the eastern part of the London Borough of Lambeth, the northern part of the London Borough of Croydon, the western part of the London Borough of Bexley and the northwestern part of the London Borough of Bromley are within the postcode area.


title: SE postcode area

text: In 2002, some residents in West Heath, a slight projection with neighbouring areas, wished to have their postcodes changed from SE2 to the adjacent DA7 postcode district, citing higher insurance for their houses, belongings and cars as reasons to change. Royal Mail has said it will not consider changes to postcodes for these reasons.


title: Square academic cap

text: The square academic cap, graduate cap, cap, mortarboard (because of its similarity in appearance to the mortarboard used by brickmasons to hold mortar) or Oxford cap is an item of academic dress consisting of a horizontal square board fixed upon a skull-cap, with a tassel attached to the centre. In the UK and the US, it is commonly referred to informally in conjunction with an academic gown as a "cap and gown". It is also sometimes termed a square, trencher, or corner-cap. The adjective academical is also used.


title: Square academic cap

text: The cap, together with the gown and sometimes a hood, now form the customary uniform of a university graduate in many parts of the world, following a British model.


title: Square academic cap

text: The mortarboard may have developed from the biretta, a similar-looking hat worn by Roman Catholic clergy. The biretta itself may have been a development of the Roman "pileus quadratus", a type of skullcap with superposed square and tump (meaning small mound). A reinvention of this type of cap is known as the Bishop Andrewes cap. The Italian "biretta" is a word derived from the Medieval Latin "birretum" from the Late Latin "birrus" "large hooded cloak", which is perhaps of Gaulish origin, or from Ancient Greek πυρρός "pyrrhos" "flame-colored, yellow".


title: Square academic cap

text: In the UK, the tassel is shorter and is gathered at the button at the centre of the board. The U.S. style is slightly longer, gathered at a cord attached to the button.


title: Square academic cap

text: At the University of Cambridge, undergraduates by ancient convention used to cut their tassels very short so that the tassel does not extend beyond the edge of the board. After they graduated, they wore the square cap with the tassel at the normal length. This convention has now fallen into disuse; few people now wear headgear with academic dress at any time and undergraduates in particular have no need to wear the cap.


title: Square academic cap

text: The American Council on Education (ACE) code states that "The tassel should be black or the colour appropriate to the subject," and makes an exception only for the gold tassel. The gold metallic tassel is reserved for those entitled to wear the doctoral gown, as is the use of velvet for headwear. Only one tassel is worn at a time.


title: Square academic cap

text: For schools where the graduation regalia is rented or borrowed by the student, the tassel might be a part of the rental or provided separately. Some schools that do not provide a tassel for graduates to keep may offer a souvenir tassel that is not worn with the regalia.


title: Square academic cap

text: As with other forms of headdress, academic caps are not generally worn indoors by men (other than by the Chancellor or other high officials), but are usually carried.