title: Martín Palermo

text: The coach of the 2010 national team, Diego Maradona, recalled Palermo to the national team and introduced him as a substitute in a 2010 World Cup qualifying match against Paraguay after a 10-year exile from the international scene.


title: Martín Palermo

text: A couple of weeks later he was once again called up to play a friendly against Ghana. In this game, Palermo was part of the starting eleven and made the most of it by scoring both of Argentina's goals, resulting in a 2–0 win. Palermo's next match was on 10 October, a 2010 World Cup qualifier against Peru. Palermo sealed a 2–1 victory for Argentina with a 93rd-minute strike, causing Maradona to describe the goal after the game as ""one more miracle of Saint Palermo.""


title: Martín Palermo

text: On 19 May 2010, Palermo was selected as part of the Argentina national team's 23-man final roster for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Palermo's first World Cup. On 22 June 2010, Palermo played his first World Cup match, coming in as a substitute in the second half of Argentina's final group match against Greece. In the 89th minute, he scored his first ever World Cup goal on a rebound from a shot by Lionel Messi. Argentina won the match 2–0 and finished at the top of their group. This goal also made Palermo the oldest Argentine national footballer to score a goal in World Cup play, an honor previously held by Diego Maradona.


title: Martín Palermo

text: On the 26 November 2012, Palermo was announced as the head coach of Godoy Cruz Antonio Tomba alongside former teammate Roberto Abbondanzieri. Placing fourteenth in the Argentine Primera Division Torneo Inicial and seventh place in the Argentine Primera Division Torneo Final of the recently known as Superliga. As the 2012–13 season ended so did his tenure at the club.


title: Martín Palermo

text: On the 18 April 2014, Palermo was appointed as head coach of Arsenal de Sarandi. He took charge for the 2014–15 season, where the club managed to place in ninth. On 19 April 2015, he announced his departure from the club, resigning from his position.


title: Martín Palermo

text: His next role was with Chilsean side Union Espanola; In his first season, 2016–17, they finished as the runner-up of the Chilean Primera Division. However in his second season, with results suffering the club decided to part ways with Palermo in November 2018.


title: Martín Palermo

text: Palermo returned to management and on 22 January 2019, when he was confirmed as the new manager of Mexican side C.F. Pachuca on a one year deal after Pako Ayestarán resigned. He left at the end of his contract, and did not get another job until November 2020, when he was appointed the manager of Curicó Unido, his time there was largely unsuccessful and nine months later he resigned from his post.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe ("Eʋe" or "Eʋegbe" ) is a language spoken by approximately 20 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and also in some other countries like Liberia and southwestern Nigeria. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called the Gbe languages. The other major Gbe language is Fon, which is mainly spoken in Benin. Like many African languages, Ewe is tonal as well as a possible member of the Niger-Congo family.


title: Ewe language

text: The German Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann published many dictionaries and grammars of Ewe and several other Gbe languages. Other linguists who have worked on Ewe and closely related languages include Gilbert Ansre (tone, syntax), Herbert Stahlke (morphology, tone), Nick Clements (tone, syntax), Roberto Pazzi (anthropology, lexicography), Felix K. Ameka (semantics, cognitive linguistics), Alan Stewart Duthie (semantics, phonetics), Hounkpati B. Capo (phonology, phonetics), Enoch Aboh (syntax), and Chris Collins (syntax).


title: Ewe language

text: Some of the commonly named Ewe ('Vhe') dialects are "Aŋlɔ, Tɔŋu (Tɔŋgu), Avenor, Agave people, Evedome, Awlan, Gbín, Pekí, Kpándo, Vhlin, Hó, Avɛ́no, Vo, Kpelen, Vɛ́, Danyi, Agu, Fodome, Wancé, Wací, Adángbe" (Capo).


title: Ewe language

text: "Ethnologue" 16 considers Waci and Kpesi (Kpessi) to be distinct enough to be considered separate languages. They form a dialect continuum with Ewe and Gen (Mina), which share a mutual intelligibility level of 85%; the Ewe varieties Gbin, Ho, Kpelen, Kpesi, and Vhlin might be considered a third cluster of Western Gbe dialects between Ewe and Gen, but Kpesi is as close or closer to the Waci and Vo dialects, which remain in Ewe in that scenario. Waci intervenes geographically between Ewe proper and Gen; Kpesi forms a Gbe island in the Kabye area.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe is itself a dialect cluster of the Gbe languages, which include Gen, Aja, and Xwla and are spoken from the southern part of Ghana to Togo, Benin and Western Nigeria. All Gbe languages share at least some intelligibility with one another. Some coastal and southern dialects of Ewe include Aŋlɔ, Tongu (Tɔŋu), Avenor, Dzodze, and Watsyi. Some inland dialects indigenously characterized as Ewedomegbe include: Ho, Kpedze, Hohoe, Peki, Kpando, Aveme, Liati, Fódome, Danyi, and Kpele. Though there are many classifications, distinct variations exist between towns that are just miles away from one another.


title: Ewe language

text: The nasal consonants are not distinctive since they appear before only nasal vowels; therefore, Ewe is sometimes said to have no nasal consonants. However, it is more economical to argue that nasal are the underlying form and so are denasalized before oral vowels.


title: Ewe language

text: Palatalization of alveolar consonants before a high-front vowel occur in the Southern dialect, and are heard as .


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast vs. and vs. . The "f" and "v" are stronger than in most languages, and , with the upper lip noticeably raised, and thus more distinctive from the rather weak and .


title: Ewe language

text: The tilde (˜) marks nasal vowels, though the Peki dialect lacks . Many varieties of Ewe lack one or another of the front mid vowels, and some varieties in Ghana have the additional vowels and .


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe does not have a nasal–oral contrast in consonants. It does, however, have a syllabic nasal, which varies as , depending on the following consonant, and carries tone. Some authors treat it as a vowel, with the odd result that Ewe would have more nasal than oral vowels, and one of these vowels has no set place of articulation. If it is taken to be a consonant, there is the odd result of a single nasal consonant that cannot appear before vowels. If nasal consonants are taken to underlie , however, there is no such odd restriction, and the only difference from other consonants is that only nasal stops may be syllabic, a common pattern cross-linguistically.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe is a tonal language. In a tonal language, pitch differences are used to distinguish one word from another. For example, in Ewe the following three words differ only by tone:


title: Ewe language

text: Phonetically, there are three tone registers, High, Mid, and Low, and three rising and falling contour tones. However, most Ewe dialects have only two distinctive registers, High and Mid. These are depressed in nouns after voiced obstruents: High becomes Mid (or Rising), and Mid becomes Low. Mid is also realized as Low at the end of a phrase or utterance, as in the example 'buffalo' above.


title: Ewe language

text: In writing, tones are marked by acute accent, grave accent, caron, and circumflex. They may be used along with the tilde that marks nasal vowels.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe has phrases of overt politeness, such as "meɖekuku" (meaning "please") and "akpe" (meaning "thank you").


title: Ewe language

text: The African Reference Alphabet is used when Ewe is represented orthographically, so the written version is somewhat like a combination of the Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet.


title: Ewe language

text: An "n" is placed after vowels to mark nasalization. Tone is generally unmarked, except in some common cases, which require disambiguation: the first person plural pronoun "mí" 'we' is marked high to distinguish it from the second person plural "mi" 'you', and the second person singular pronoun "wò" 'you' is marked low to distinguish it from the third person plural pronoun "wó" 'they/them'


title: Ewe language

text: The Ewe use a system of giving the first name to a child, based on the day of the week that the child was born. That arises from a belief that the real name of a child can be determined only after the child has shown its character. However, as a child is a person, not an object, the child must be referred to by some name in the interim and so a name is provided based on the day of birth. A final name is given at a naming ceremony, seven days after the date of birth.


title: Ewe language

text: As a matter of pride in their heritage, especially since the 1970s, many educated Ewe, who were given Western names, have dropped those names formally/legally or informally and use their birthday name as their official name.


title: Ewe language

text: Often, people are called by their birthday name most of the time; the given name being used only on formal documents. In such cases, children with the same birth name are delineated by suffixes: -gã meaning big, -vi meaning little. So for example, after the birth of another Kofi, the first child called Kofi becomes Kofigã, and the new child Kofi. A subsequent Kofi, would be Kofivi, or Kofitse, mostly among Wedome and Tɔngu Ewes. Sometimes, the renaming happens twice, as the second Kofi might have originally been called Kofivi, while the eldest retained Kofi, thereby necessitating that they both be renamed on the birth of a third Kofi.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe is a subject–verb–object language. The possessive precedes the head noun. Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Ewe also has postpositions rather than prepositions.


title: Ewe language

text: Ewe is well known as a language having logophoric pronouns. Such pronouns are used to refer to the source of a reported statement or thought in indirect discourse, and can disambiguate sentences that are ambiguous in most other languages. The following examples illustrate:


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Africa Proconsularis was a Roman province on the northern African coast that was established in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, and the coast of western Libya along the Gulf of Sirte. The territory was originally inhabited by Berber people, known in Latin as "Mauri" indigenous to all of North Africa west of Egypt; in the 9th century BC, Phoenicians built settlements along the Mediterranean Sea to facilitate shipping, of which Carthage rose to dominance in the 8th century BC until its conquest by the Roman Republic.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: It was one of the wealthiest provinces in the western part of the Roman Empire, second only to Italy. Apart from the city of Carthage, other large settlements in the province were Hadrumetum (modern Sousse, Tunisia), capital of Byzacena, and Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Algeria).


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Rome's first province in northern Africa was established by the Roman Republic in 146 BC, following its elimination of Carthage by Scipio Aemilianus in the Third Punic War. "Africa Proconsularis" or "Africa Vetus" (Old Africa), was governed by a proconsul. It is possible that the name "Africa" comes from the Berber word "afer", "ifri" or "Aourigha" (whose name would have been pronounced Afarika) that designated a tribe.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Utica, which had fought on the side of the Romans in the war, was formed as the administrative capital. The remaining territory was left in the domain of the Berber Numidian client king Massinissa. At this time, the Roman policy in Africa was simply to prevent another great power from rising on the Northwest Africa.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: In 118 BC, the Numidian prince Jugurtha attempted to reunify the smaller kingdoms. However, upon his death, much of Jugurtha's territory was placed in the control of the Berber Mauretanian client king Bocchus; and, by that time, the romanisation of Africa was firmly rooted. In 27 BC, when the Republic had transformed into an Empire, the province of Africa began its Imperial occupation under Roman rule.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Several political and provincial reforms were implemented by Augustus and later by Caligula, but Claudius finalized the territorial divisions into official Roman provinces. Africa was a senatorial province. After Diocletian's administrative reforms, it was split into "Africa Zeugitana" (which retained the name "Africa Proconsularis", as it was governed by a proconsul) in the north; "Africa Byzacena" to its adjacent south (corresponding to eastern Tunisia), and "Africa Tripolitania" to its adjacent south (corresponding to southern Tunisia and northwest Libya), all of which were part of the "Dioecesis Africae". Old Africa ("Africa Vetus"), which generally includes the areas mentioned, was also known by the Romans (Pliny) as "Africa propria", of which Carthage was its capital.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The region remained a part of the Roman Empire until the Germanic migrations of the 5th century. The Vandals crossed into Northwest Africa from Spain in 429 and overran the area by 439 and founded their own kingdom, including Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearics. The Vandals controlled the country as a warrior-elite but faced strong resistance from the native Berbers. The Vandals also persecuted Chalcedonian Roman Africans and Berbers, as the Vandals were adherents of Arianism (the semi-trinitarian doctrines of Arius, a priest of Egypt). Towards the end of the 5th century, the Vandal state fell into decline, abandoning most of the interior territories to the Mauri and other Berber tribes of the region.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: In AD 533, Emperor Justinian, using a Vandal dynastic dispute as pretext, sent an army under the general Belisarius to recover Africa. In a short campaign, Belisarius defeated the Vandals, entered Carthage in triumph and re-established Roman rule over the province. The restored Roman administration was successful in fending off the attacks of the Amazigh desert tribes, and by means of an extensive fortification network managed to extend its rule once again to the interior.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The northwest African provinces, together with the Roman possessions in Spain, were grouped into the Praetorian prefecture of Africa, this time separate from Praetorian prefecture of Italy, and transferred to Exarchate of Africa by Emperor Maurice. The Exarchate prospered, and from it resulted the overthrow of the emperor Phocas by Heraclius in 610. Heraclius briefly considered moving the imperial capital from Constantinople to Carthage.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: After 640, the exarchate managed to stave off the Muslim Conquest, but in 698, the Muslim Umayyad army from Egypt sacked Carthage and conquered the Exarchate, ending Roman and Christian rule in Northwest Africa.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The Roman military presence of Northwest Africa was relatively small, consisting of about 28,000 troops and auxiliaries in Numidia and the two Mauretanian provinces. Starting in the 2nd century AD, these garrisons were manned mostly by local inhabitants. A sizable Latin-speaking population developed that was multinational in background, sharing the northwest African region with those speaking Punic and Berber languages. Imperial security forces began to be drawn from the local population, including the Berbers.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Abun-Nasr, in his "A History of the Maghrib", said that "What made the Berbers accept the Roman way of life all the more readily was that the Romans, though a colonizing people who captured their lands by the might of their arms, did not display any racial exclusiveness and were remarkably tolerant of Berber religious cults, be they indigenous or borrowed from the Carthaginians. However, the Roman territory in Africa was unevenly penetrated by Roman culture. Pockets of non-Romanized Berbers continued to exist throughout the Roman period, even such as in the rural areas of the deeply romanised regions of Tunisia and Numidia."


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: By the end of the Western Roman Empire nearly all of the Maghreb was fully romanised, according to Mommsen in his "The Provinces of the Roman Empire". Roman Africans enjoyed a high level of prosperity. This prosperity (and romanisation) touched partially even the populations living outside the Roman limes (mainly the Garamantes and the Getuli), who were reached with Roman expeditions to Sub-Saharan Africa.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The prosperity of most towns depended on agriculture. Called the "granary of the empire", Northwest Africa, according to one estimate, produced one million tons of cereals each year, one-quarter of which was exported. Additional crops included beans, figs, grapes, and other fruits. By the 2nd century, olive oil rivaled cereals as an export item. In addition to the cultivation of slaves, and the capture and transporting of exotic wild animals, the principal production and exports included the textiles, marble, wine, timber, livestock, pottery such as African Red Slip, and wool.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The incorporation of colonial cities into the Roman Empire brought an unparalleled degree of urbanization to vast areas of territory, particularly in Northwest Africa. This level of rapid urbanization had a structural impact on the town economy, and artisan production in Roman cities became closely tied to the agrarian spheres of production. As Rome's population grew, so did her demand for Northwest African produce. This flourishing trade allowed the Northwest African provinces to increase artisan production in rapidly developing cities, making them highly organized urban centers. Many Roman cities shared both consumer and producer model city aspects, as artisanal activity was directly related to the economic role cities played in long-distance trade networks.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The urban population became increasingly engaged in the craft and service sectors and less in agrarian employment, until a significant portion of the town's vitality came from the sale or trade of products through middlemen to markets in areas both rural and abroad. The changes that occurred in the infrastructure for agricultural processing, like olive oil and wine production, as trade continued to develop both cities and commerce directly influenced the volume of artisan production. The scale, quality, and demand for these products reached its acme in Roman Northwest Africa.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The Northwest African provinces spanned across regions rich with olive plantations and potters' clay sources, which led to the early development of fine Ancient Roman pottery, especially African Red Slip "terra sigillata" tableware and clay oil lamp manufacture, as a crucial industry. Lamps provided the most common form of illumination in Rome. They were used for public and private lighting, as votive offerings in temples, lighting at festivals, and as grave goods. As the craft developed and increased in quality and craftsmanship, the Northwest African creations began to rival their Italian and Grecian models and eventually surpassed them in merit and in demand.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: The innovative use of molds around the 1st century BC allowed for a much greater variety of shapes and decorative style, and the skill of the lamp maker was demonstrated by the quality of the decoration found typically on the flat top of the lamp, or discus, and the outer rim, or shoulder. The production process took several stages. The decorative motifs were created using small individual molds, and were then added as appliqué to a plain archetype of the lamp. The embellished lamp was then used to make two plaster half molds, one lower half and one upper half mold, and multiple copies were then able to be mass-produced. Decorative motifs ranged according to the lamp's function and to popular taste.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Ornate patterning of squares and circles were later added to the shoulder with a stylus, as well as palm trees, small fish, animals, and flower patterns. The discus was reserved for conventional scenes of gods, goddesses, mythological subjects, scenes from daily life, erotic scenes, and natural images. The strongly Christian identity of post-Roman society in Northwest Africa is exemplified in the later instances of Northwest African lamps, on which scenes of Christian images like saints, crosses, and biblical figures became commonly articulated topics. Traditional mythological symbols had enduring popularity as well, which can be traced back to Northwest Africa's Punic heritage. Many of the early Northwest African lamps that have been excavated, especially those of high quality, have the name of the manufacturer inscribed on the base, which gives evidence of a highly competitive and thriving local market that developed early and continued to influence and bolster the economy.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: After a period of artisanal, political, and social decline in the 3rd century AD, lamp-making revived and accelerated. The introduction of fine local red-fired clays in the late 4th century triggered this revival. African Red Slip ware (ARS), or African Terra Sigillata, revolutionized the pottery and lamp-making industry.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: ARS ware was produced from the last third of the 1st century AD onwards, and was of major importance in the mid-to-late Roman periods. Famous in antiquity as "fine" or high-quality tableware, it was distributed both regionally and throughout the Mediterranean basin along well-established and heavily trafficked trade routes. Northwest Africa's economy flourished as its products were dispersed and demand for its products dramatically increased.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Initially, the ARS lamp designs imitated the simple design of 3rd- to 4th-century courseware lamps, often with globules on the shoulder or with fluted walls. More ornate designs appeared before the early 5th century as demand spurred on the creative process. The development and widespread distribution of ARS finewares marks the most distinctive phase of Northwest African pottery-making.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: These characteristic pottery lamps were produced in large quantities by efficiently organized production centers with large-scale manufacturing abilities. They can be attributed to specific pottery-making centers in northern and central Tunisia by way of chemical analysis, allowing archeologists to trace distribution patterns from their source through the regions and across the Mediterranean. Some major ARS centers in central Tunisia are Sidi Marzouk Tounsi, Henchir el-Guellal (Djilma), and Henchir es-Srira, all of which have ARS lamp artifacts attributed to them by the microscopic chemical makeup of the clay fabric as well as macroscopic style prevalent in that region.


title: Africa (Roman province)

text: Local pottery markets fueled the economy of not only the towns, but the entire region and supported markets abroad. Certain vessel forms, fabrics, and decorative techniques like rouletting, appliqué, and stamped décor, are specific for a certain region and even for a certain pottery center. If neither form nor decoration of the material is identifiable, it is possible to trace an item using chemical analysis, not just to a certain region but even to its place of production by comparing its makeup to a matrix of important northeastern and central Tunisian potteries.


title: Mafia state

text: In politics, a mafia state is a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise. According to US diplomats, the expression "mafia state" was coined by Alexander Litvinenko.


title: Mafia state

text: In a critical review of Moisés Naím's essay in "Foreign Affairs", Peter Andreas pointed to the long existence of Italian mafia and Japanese Yakuza, writing that there were close relationships between those illicit organisations and respective governments. According to Andreas, these examples speak against incidences of mafia states as a historically new threat.


title: Mafia state

text: In Italy, there are three main mafia organisations that originated in the 19th century: the Cosa Nostra originating from the region of Sicily, the Camorra originating from the region of Campania, and the 'Ndrangheta originating from the region of Calabria.


title: Mafia state

text: Former Prime Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, had legal action against him, with a trial for mafia association on 27 March 1993 in the city of Palermo. The prosecution accused the former prime minister of "[making] available to the mafia association named Cosa Nostra for the defense of its interests and attainment of its criminal goals, the influence and power coming from his position as the leader of a political faction". Prosecutors said in return for electoral support of Salvo Lima and assassination of Andreotti's enemies, he had agreed to protect the Mafia, which had expected him to fix the Maxi Trial. Andreotti's defense was predicated on character attacks against the prosecution's key witnesses who were themselves involved with the mafia. Andreotti was eventually acquitted on 23 October 1999. However, together with the greater series of corruption cases of Mani pulite, Andreotti's trials marked the purging and renewal of Italy's political system.


title: Mafia state

text: The Camorra Casalesi clan rose in the 1980s, gaining control of large areas of the local economy "partly by manipulating politicians and intimidating judges". The clan was heavily involved in the Naples waste management crisis that dumped toxic waste around Campania in the 1990s and 2000s; the boss of the clan, Gaetano Vassallo, admitted to systematically working for 20 years to bribe local politicians and officials to gain their acquiescence to dumping toxic waste.


title: Mafia state

text: Kosovo, a partially recognised independent state formerly part of Serbia, was called a "mafia state" by Italian MEP Pino Arlacchi in 2011, and also by Moisés Naím in his 2012 essay "Mafia States" in the "Foreign Affairs". Naím pointed out that Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi is allegedly connected to the heroin trade. Many other crime allegations have been made, and investigated by several countries, against Thaçi.


title: Mafia state

text: Naím also labeled Montenegro as a "mafia state" in the same essay, describing it as a hub for cigarette smuggling.


title: Mafia state

text: Transnistria, an unrecognised break-away state from Moldova, has long been described by journalists, researchers, politicians and diplomats as a quasistate whose economy is dependent on contraband and gunrunning, with some having directly referred to Transnistria as a mafia state.


title: Mafia state

text: For instance, in 2002, Moldova's president, Vladimir Voronin, called Transnistria a "residence of international mafia", "smuggling stronghold" and "outpost of Islamic combatants". The allegations were followed by attempts of customs blockade. Reacting to the allegations, Russian state-run RTR aired an investigative program revealing that Transnistrian firms were conducting industrial-level manufacturing of small arms purposely for subsequent illegal trafficking via the Ukrainian port of Odessa. According to the program, the trade was controlled by and benefited from Transnistria's founder and then-ruler Igor Smirnov.


title: Mafia state

text: However, more recent investigations and monitoring missions did not prove continuity in arms trafficking concerns. According to regular reports of the European Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM), there have been no signs of significant weapons smuggling from Transnistria. During the press-conference on 30 November 2006 head of EUBAM Ferenc Banfi officially stated that organised smuggling of weapons in Transnistria did not exist. In 2013, Ukrainian Foreign Minister and acting chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Leonid Kozhara gave an interview to "El País", commenting on situation in Transnistria and results of work of the EUBAM mission. According to Kozhara, there have been no cases of arms traffic found.


title: Mafia state

text: Some experts from Russia and Transnistria state that allegations of Transnistria being a "mafia state", "black hole of Europe", "heaven for arms trafficking", etc. are a carefully planned defamation campaign paid by the Moldovan government and aimed at producing negative image of Transnistria. Officials from the European Union and the OSCE, say they have no evidence that the Tiraspol regime has ever trafficked arms or nuclear material. Much of the alarm is attributed to efforts by the Moldovan government to increase pressure on Transnistria.


title: Mafia state

text: The term has been used by slain Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko and media to describe the political system in Russia under Vladimir Putin's rule. This characterization came to prominence following the United States diplomatic cables leak, which revealed that US diplomats viewed Russia as "a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a 'virtual mafia state.'" In his book titled "Mafia State", journalist and author Luke Harding argues that Putin has "created a state peopled by ex-KGB and FSB officers, like himself, [who are] bent on making money above all." In the estimation of American diplomats, "the government [of Russia] effectively [is] the mafia." Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has also described Russia as a "mafia state".


title: Mafia state

text: According to the "New Statesman", "the term had entered the lexicon of expert discussion" several years before the cables leak, "and not as a frivolous metaphor. Those most familiar with the country had come to see it as a kleptocracy with Vladimir Putin in the role of "capo di tutti capi", dividing the spoils and preventing turf wars between rival clans of an essentially criminal elite." In 2008, Stephen Blank noted that Russia under Putin is "a state that European officials privately call a Mafia state" that "naturally gravitates toward Mafia-like behavior."


title: Mafia state

text: Nikolay Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said "it's pretty hard to damage the Russian image in the world because it's already not very good".


title: Mafia state

text: The scholar of Law and Economics Edgardo Buscaglia describes the political system of Mexico as a "Mafiacracy". Buscaglia characterises the condition between the state, the economy and organized crime in Mexico as a mutual interweaving, Mexico has also been labeled as a Narco-state (a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade).


title: Mafia state

text: Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez has also been evaluated as creating the conditions for President Nicolás Maduro to consolidate a "mafia state", according to political scientists in "Policy Studies" in 2021. Moisés Naím, Venezuelan writer and the author of "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy", wrote in an article for the American magazine "Foreign Policy": "In mafia states such as Bulgaria, Guinea-Bissau, Montenegro, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Venezuela, the national interest and the interests of organised crime are now inextricably intertwined."


title: Mafia state

text: During the 1990s, Aruba, an overseas constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was alleged to be a mafia state under then Prime Minister Henny Eman. The Sicilian Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan was said to "own" over 60% of the island through investments in hotels, casinos, and donations towards Eman's election-campaign. These claims later turned out to be exaggerated, however.


title: Mafia state

text: According to journalist Masha Gessen in 2016, sociologist Bálint Magyar had popularized the term "mafia state" to describe the administration of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Magyar argued that Orbán's method of taking power in Hungary, removing rivals and politicizing institutions for personal power created a kind of regime known as a "mafia state". Magyar said that besides Hungary, other such states included Azerbaijan, Russia, and Kazakhstan as of 2016.


title: Mafia state

text: In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had labelled Switzerland as a mafia state, stating that "Switzerland is behaving like a criminal organisation and it is involved in money laundering, assassinations and terrorism."


title: Mafia state

text: Jonathan Benton, the former head of a United Kingdom anti-corruption agency, described Malta as a "mafia state" where money laundering transactions of hundreds of millions of euros are made every year without any problem. He made this statement while speaking on BBC radio following the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: Robert Michael O'Hare Jr. (May 6, 1952 – September 28, 2012) was an American actor who performed on stage and television. He was best known for playing the lead role of space station Commander Jeffrey Sinclair in the science fiction television series "Babylon 5", a role he left after the first season due to serious mental health issues.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: Robert Michael O'Hare Jr. was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Chicago Heights. His parents were of Irish and Italian descent. He attended Chicago's Mendel Catholic Preparatory High School, where he played football, to defy his doctor who told him he would never be in athletics because of his asthma. He received several awards and scholarship offers based on his football ability and scholastic performance.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: Coming from a career military family, he considered joining the US Navy or having a career in professional football, but attended Harvard University, where he studied English literature and played on the Harvard Crimson football team. He joined the university's drama groups and was a performer in “The Wrongway Inn”, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ production for 1972. That same year, he went for an “acting tryout” to the New York area, and was cast as Beef Saunders in "Good News!" at Goodspeed Musicals. He was a member of the Harvard Glee Club during its 1973 World Tour. He left Harvard in 1974 to study at the Juilliard School of Drama. He later took lessons from Sanford Meisner in the mid-1980s.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: O'Hare appeared in a number of theatrical productions on Broadway and in regional theaters, including an acclaimed revival of Shaw's "Man and Superman" with Philip Bosco; in the role of Col. Jessup in the original stage version of "A Few Good Men;" as Captain Solyony in Chekhov’s "Three Sisters". Other notable roles included Alfred in a 1986 stage revival of "Little Murders"; Jake in "A Lie of the Mind" and John in "Lips Together, Teeth Apart".


title: Michael O'Hare

text: He was the first white actor nominated by the African-American theater community of New York for the AUDELCO Award for Best Actor, for his performance as Captain Jaap van Tonder in Michael Picardie's play "Shades of Brown", about apartheid in South Africa.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: He co-starred in the biographical TV movie "Marciano" and an unsold TV pilot "Keefer" with William Conrad in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, he appeared mainly as guest on a range of television shows, including "Trapper John, M.D."; "T.J. Hooker"; "Kate & Allie"; "The Equalizer"; "Tales from the Darkside"; and "Rage of Angels: The Story Continues".


title: Michael O'Hare

text: He was the lead character in Michael Lengsfield's CINE-award-winning short film "Short Term Bonds" in 1988, screened at the 1989 Sundance festival.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: In 1992, he was cast in the lead role of Commander Jeffrey Sinclair in the science fiction television series "Babylon 5". He appeared in the pilot and throughout the show's first season in 1994. He left the cast for mental health reasons that were not disclosed at the time but made guest appearances in the second and third seasons.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: Subsequently, he had one guest role on "The Cosby Mysteries" and appeared twice on "Law & Order", the last time in 2000. He did some voiceover work for commercials and read a radio adaptation of the science fiction novella "Think Like a Dinosaur" for Seeing Ear Theater.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski revealed after O'Hare's death that the actor had had severe mental illness. During the filming of the first season of "Babylon 5", O'Hare began having paranoid delusions, and halfway through, his hallucinations worsened. It became increasingly difficult for O'Hare to continue working, his behavior was becoming increasingly erratic, and he was often at odds with his colleagues. Straczynski offered to suspend production for several months to accommodate treatment; however O'Hare feared that such a hiatus would put the series at risk, and he didn't want to jeopardize others' jobs. Straczynski agreed to keep O'Hare's condition secret to protect his career, and O'Hare agreed to complete the first season, but would be written out of the second season so that he could seek treatment. His departure from the cast was announced without explanation, except that it was mutual and amicable.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: His treatments were only partially successful. He reappeared in a cameo appearance early in season two ("The Coming of Shadows") and returned in season three for a two-part episode ("War Without End") which closed his character's story arc. At that time, Straczynski promised O'Hare to keep his condition secret "to my grave". O'Hare told him to instead "keep the secret to "my" grave", arguing that fans deserved to eventually learn the real reason for his departure, and that his experience could raise awareness and understanding for people with mental illness. He made no further appearances on "Babylon 5," but continued to support the show and appeared at conventions and signing events until his retirement from public appearances in 2000.


title: Michael O'Hare

text: On September 28, 2012, Straczynski posted that O'Hare had had a heart attack in New York City five days earlier, and had remained in a coma until his death that day. Eight months later, Straczynski revealed the circumstances of O'Hare's departure from "Babylon 5" at a presentation about the series at the Phoenix Comicon.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: Daniel Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield; March 21, 1973) is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr and the team-messaging application Slack.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In 1973, Butterfield was born in Lund, British Columbia, to Norma and David Butterfield. For the first five years of his life he grew up in a log cabin without running water or electricity. His family lived on a commune in remote Canada after his father fled the US to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War. His family moved to Victoria when Butterfield was five years old. As a child, Butterfield taught himself how to code, and changed his name to Stewart when he was 12.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: Butterfield was educated at St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia and made money in university designing websites. He received a B.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Victoria in 1996 and went on to earn a Master of Philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge in 1998.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In 2000, Butterfield worked with Jason Classon to build a startup called Gradfinder.com. Following Gradfinder.com's acquisition, he worked as a freelance web designer. Butterfield also created a contest called the 5K competition, centered on people with the ability to design websites under 5 kilobytes.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In the summer of 2002, he co-founded Ludicorp with Caterina Fake and Jason Classon in Vancouver. Ludicorp initially developed a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called "Game Neverending". After the game failed to launch, the company started a photo-sharing website called Flickr. In March 2005, Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo!, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he left Yahoo! on July 12, 2008.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In 2009, Butterfield co-founded a new company called Tiny Speck. Tiny Speck launched its first project, the massively multiplayer game Glitch, on September 27, 2011. Glitch was later closed due to its failure to attract a sufficiently large audience. The game world closed down on December 9, 2012, but the website remained online. In January 2013, the company announced that it would make the most of the game's art available under a Creative Commons license. On December 9, 2014, a fan project to relaunch Glitch under the name Eleven began alpha testing.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In August 2013, Butterfield announced the release of Slack, an instant-message-based team communication tool, built by Tiny Speck while working on Glitch. After its public release in February 2014, the tool grew at a weekly rate of 5 to 10 percent, with more than 120,000 daily users registered in the first week of August. In early 2014, the data for Slack's first six-month usage period showed that nearly 16,000 users were registered without any advertising.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: That same year, Butterfield secured an office for Slack employees in San Francisco, and was expected to commence recruitment during the second half of the year.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: As of December 2015, Slack had raised US$340 million in venture capital and had more than 2 million daily active users, of which 570,000 were paid customers.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In June 2019, the company announced its initial public offering with an opening price of $38.50 and a market capitalization of US$21.4 billion.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In December 2022, Butterfield announced his departure as CEO of Slack and leaving Salesforce early in January 2023.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In 2005, Butterfield was named one of "Businessweek"'s "Top 50" Leaders in the entrepreneur category. In the same year, he was also named in the TR35, a list collated by MIT in its "MIT Technology Review" publication, as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 years. In 2006, he was named in the "Time 100", "Time" magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and also appeared on the cover of "Newsweek" magazine.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In November 2008, Butterfield received the "Legacy Distinguished Alumni Award" from the University of Victoria.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In 2015, Stewart was named the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovator for 2015, awarded TechCrunch’s Founder of the Year Crunchie, and included in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment, Advertising Age’s Creative 50, and Details’ Digital Mavericks lists.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: In May 2017, he featured in "Masters of Scale", a podcast series by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, along with other successful businesspeople such as Mark Zuckerberg, John Elkann, and Brian Chesky. In it, he discussed the scaling strategy adopted by Slack.


title: Stewart Butterfield

text: Butterfield was married to Caterina Fake, his Flickr co-founder, from 2001 to 2007. They have one daughter together, who was born in 2007. In May 2019 he became engaged to Jennifer Rubio, co-founder of Away Luggage.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: The first step towards the current FACh is taken by Teniente Coronel training as a pilot in France. Although a local academy was created, the first officers were sent to France for their training as well. One of them, Captain Manuel Ávalos Prado, took command over the Chilean military aviation school, which was officially established in February 1913, and remained in command until 1915. The Military Aviation School () was named in honor of him in 1944, and still carries that name today.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: In those early years many aviation milestones were achieved; conquering the height of the Andes was one of the main targets as well as long distance flights. Typical aircraft of that era were Avro 504, Bleriot XI, Bristol M.1C, DH.9, and SE5a. In the following decade, the Airmail Line of Chile () was created on 5 March 1929 as a branch of the military aviation. This postal airline later developed into the National Airline () that is still the leading airline in Chile today. Shortly afterwards, on 21 March 1930, the existing aviation elements of the army and navy were amalgamated into a dedicated department: the Department of the Air Force () effectively creating the current independent Air Force. It was initially named National Air Force (). The international airport of Chile carries the name of Lan's founding father and first commander of the air force, Air Commodore Arturo Merino Benítez. Its baptism of fire was in the 1931 sailors' rebellion in Coquimbo, where Air Force attack aircraft and bombers and 2 transport planes converted into bombers contributed to its failure.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: The first outlines of the organization of the current air force were visible in 1945 with the inception of Transport Group 1, later renumbered Group 10, with two C-45s and a single T-6 Texan at Los Cerrillos. Two years later the first FACh flight to Antarctica was performed. The fifties meant entry into the jet age for the FACh, and Grupo 7 was the first unit to receive them in 1954. Chile got its aircraft from both the United States and Europe. The American supply consisted of Lockheed F-80, Lockheed T-33, Beech T-34 Mentor, Cessna T-37, Cessna A-37 Dragonfly and Northrop F-5E/F for example, whereas the British supplied Hawker Hunters and the French delivered various helicopters and Dassault Mirage 50 aircraft.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: During the military coup d'état on September 11, 1973, the Chilean Air Force conducted Operation Silence, Hunters from the 7th Aviation Squadron destroyed several transmission antennas belonging to pro-government radio stations. After accomplishing their mission, the aircraft performed attack runs on the presidential residence at Las Condes and the presidential palace, a pilot mistakenly opened fire on the Air Force Hospital when attacking the residence, no casualties were reported.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: The Chilean air force hosted the joint exercise Salitre with other friendly nations in 2014. It also participated in several United Nations peacekeeping missions overseas in 5 occasions.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: The Chilean Air Force reported one of its C-130 Hercules transport aircraft carrying 38 people en route to Antarctica missing on December 9, 2019. The aircraft was on its way to Antarctica’s King George Island to provide logistic support to a military base when radio contact was lost. On 11 December 2019, aircraft debris was located 18 miles South of where the plane last made contact and no survivors were found. The cause of the crash is unknown.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: The Air Force also maintains the Air Force Special Forces (), comparable to a United States Air Force Combat Control Team. They may be up to 350 strong, and their roles include assault, reconnaissance, Air Traffic Control, Fire Support, and Command, control, and communications.


title: Chilean Air Force

text: Chile also maintains its own aviation industry, ENAER. The design of the T-35 Pillán trainer, based on the Piper PA-28 Dakota, is the best known example, seeing some export success as well. Furthermore, the assembly of the A-36/T-36 Halcón (CASA C-101) was achieved as well. Performing maintenance on most types in the current inventory, such as minor modifications on F-5E aircraft for example, the industry is of significant importance to the air force. ENAER is reported to be in talks with Embraer of Brazil to codesign the first indigenous South American military transport plane. Also, under the Pacer Amstel programme, with initial Dutch support, and later locally ENAER upgraded an F-16 combat jet, which for the Chilean Air Force is an advance for their maintenance of the F-16 fleet (becoming the 5th country to modify their jets under authorization).


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The Good Soldier Švejk () is an unfinished satirical dark comedy novel by Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, published in 1921–1923, about a good-humored, simple-minded, middle-aged man who pretends to be enthusiastic to serve Austria-Hungary in World War I.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: "The Good Soldier Švejk" is the abbreviated title; the original Czech title of the work is Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války, literally The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War. The book is the most translated novel of Czech literature, having been translated into over 50 languages.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Hašek originally intended "Švejk" to cover a total of six volumes, but had completed only three (and started on the fourth) upon his death from heart failure on January 3, 1923.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The novel as a whole was originally illustrated (after Hašek's death) by Josef Lada and more recently by Czech illustrator Petr Urban.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Following Hašek's death, journalist Karel Vaněk was asked by the publisher Adolf Synek to complete the unfinished novel. Vaněk finished the fourth book in 1923 and in the same year also released the fifth and the sixth volumes, titled "Švejk in Captivity" ("Švejk v zajetí") and "Švejk in Revolution" ("Švejk v revoluci"). Novels were published until 1949. In 1991 volumes 5 and 6 were again released as "Švejk in Russian Captivity and Revolution" ("Švejk v Ruském zajetí a v revoluci"), in two volumes or combined.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The novel is set during World War I in Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire full of long-standing ethnic tensions. Fifteen million people died in the war, one million of them Austro-Hungarian soldiers, including around 140,000 who were Czechs. Hašek participated in this conflict and examined it in "The Good Soldier Švejk".


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Many of the situations and characters seem to have been inspired, at least in part, by Hašek's service in the 91st Infantry Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The novel also deals with broader anti-war themes: essentially a series of absurdly comic episodes, it explores the pointlessness and futility of conflict in general and of military discipline, Austrian military discipline in particular. Many of its characters, especially the Czechs, are participating in a conflict they do not understand on behalf of an empire to which they have no loyalty.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The character of Josef Švejk is a development of this theme. Through (possibly feigned) idiocy or incompetence, he repeatedly manages to frustrate military authority and expose its stupidity in a form of passive resistance: the reader is left unclear, however, as to whether Švejk is genuinely incompetent, or acting quite deliberately with dumb insolence. These absurd events reach a climax when Švejk, wearing a Russian uniform, is mistakenly taken prisoner by his own side.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: In addition to satirising Habsburg authority, Hašek repeatedly sets out corruption and hypocrisy attributed to priests of the Catholic Church.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no one can decide whether he is merely an imbecile or is craftily undermining the war effort. He is arrested by a member of the state police, Bretschneider, after making some politically insensitive remarks, and is sent to prison. After being certified insane he is transferred to a madhouse, before being ejected.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Švejk gets his charwoman to wheel him (he claims to be suffering from rheumatism) to the recruitment offices in Prague, where his apparent zeal causes a minor sensation. He is transferred to a hospital for malingerers because of his rheumatism. He finally joins the army as batman to army chaplain Otto Katz. Katz was well able to avoid being sent to the front, managing to have a soft military job in Prague.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: However, Katz loses Švejk at cards to Senior Lieutenant Lukáš, whose batman he then becomes - which would eventually lead him to the front.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Lukáš is posted with his march battalion to barracks in České Budějovice, in Southern Bohemia, preparatory to being sent to the front. After missing all the trains to Budějovice, Švejk embarks on a long anabasis on foot around Southern Bohemia in a vain attempt to find Budějovice, before being arrested as a possible spy and deserter (a charge he strenuously denies) and escorted to his regiment.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The regiment is soon transferred to Bruck an der Leitha, a town on the border between Austria and Hungary. Here, where relations between the two nationalities are somewhat sensitive, Švejk is again arrested, this time for causing an affray involving a respectable Hungarian citizen and engaging in a street fight. He is also promoted to company orderly.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The unit embarks on a long train journey towards Galicia and the Eastern Front. Close to the front line, Švejk is taken prisoner by his own side as a suspected Russian deserter, after arriving at a lake and trying on an abandoned Russian uniform. Narrowly avoiding execution, he manages to rejoin his unit. The unfinished novel breaks off abruptly before Švejk has a chance to be involved in any combat or enter the trenches, though it appears Hašek may have conceived that the characters would have continued the war in a POW camp, much as he himself had done.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The book includes numerous anecdotes told by Švejk (often either to deflect the attentions of an authority figure or to insult them in a concealed manner) which are not directly related to the plot.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The characters of "The Good Soldier Švejk" are generally either used as the butt of Hašek's absurdist humour or represent fairly broad social and ethnic stereotypes found in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. People are often distinguished by the dialect and register of Czech or German they speak, a quality that does not translate easily. Many German- and Polish-speaking characters, for example, are shown as speaking comedically broken or heavily accented Czech, while many Czechs speak broken German; much use is also made of slang expressions.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Some characters are to varying degrees based on real people who served with the Imperial and Royal 91st Infantry Regiment, in which Hašek served as a one-year volunteer. (Much research has been conducted into this issue and the results are part of the catalog of all 585 people, both real and fictitious, that appear in the novel.)


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: A number of literary critics consider "The Good Soldier Švejk" to be one of the first anti-war novels, predating Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front". Joseph Heller said that if he had not read "The Good Soldier Švejk", he would never have written his novel "Catch-22".


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Sue Arnold, writing in "The Guardian", stated "Every harassed negotiator, every beleaguered political wife and anyone given to ever-increasing moments of melancholy at the way things are should keep a copy of Hasek's classic 'don't let the bastards get you down' novel to hand. It's anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-religion and - praise indeed - even funnier than Catch-22."


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The seeming idiocy and suspected subversion of Švejk has entered the Czech language in the form of words such as "švejkovina" ("švejking"), "švejkovat" ("to švejk"), "švejkárna" (situational and systemic absurdity), etc. The name has also entered the English dictionary, in the form of "Schweik", "A person likened to the character of Schweik, pictured as an unlucky and simple-minded but resourceful little man oppressed by higher authorities," and the derivative forms "to Schweik", "Schweikism", and "Schweikist".


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: In the British television documentary "Hollywood" (1979), a history of American silent films, director Frank Capra claimed the screen character of comedian Harry Langdon, which Capra helped to formulate, was partially inspired by "The Good Soldier Švejk".


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: At Prague's NATO summit in 2002, a man dressed as the Good Soldier and using Svejk's typical crutches to support himself, appeared at an anti-alliance protest, shouting at the top of his voice: "To Baghdad, Mrs Muller, to Baghdad...", showing just how deep the character is etched on the Czech psyche.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: Švejk is the subject of films, plays, an opera, a musical, comic books, and statues, even the theme of restaurants in a number of European countries. The novel is also the subject of an unpublished operetta by Peter Gammond. Švejk has many statues and monuments, for example, at Humenné in Slovakia; Przemyśl and Sanok in Poland; St. Petersburg, Omsk, and Bugulma in Russia and Kyiv, Lviv, and Donetsk in Ukraine. In Kraków, there is a plaque on a building where the author was imprisoned for 7 days for vagrancy by the Austrian authorities. There has been speculation that Hašek got the idea for Švejk at that time, based on one of his fellow prisoners in the jail. The first statue of Švejk in the Czech Republic was unveiled in August 2014, in the village of Putim in South Bohemia.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: It is the most translated novel of Czech literature (58 languages in 2013). Excerpts of "Der Brave Soldat Schwejk" Chapter 1, translated into German by Max Brod, were published two days after Hašek's death in the Prague German language paper, "Prager Tagblatt", January 5, 1923. Following Max Brod's first steps toward a German translation, he introduced the book to Grete Reiner, Executive Editor of the anti-fascist magazine "Deutsche Volkszeitung". Her translation of Švejk into German in 1926 was largely responsible for the speedy dissemination of Švejk's fame across Europe. It was one of the books burned by the National Socialists in 1933. Her translation was said to be one of Bertolt Brecht's favourite books. Grete Reiner-Straschnow was murdered in Auschwitz on 9 March 1944. After the war, many other translations followed and Švejk became the most famous Czech book abroad.


title: The Good Soldier Švejk

text: The first translation by Paul Selver was heavily abridged, reducing the novel to about two thirds of its original length. Selver's translation also bowdlerized the original text, omitting paragraphs and occasionally pages that may have seemed offensive: despite this he has been praised for preserving some of the tension in the work between Literary and Common Czech. Cecil Parrott, former British ambassador to Czechoslovakia, produced the first unabridged translation of the work. The translation by Sadloň (and Book One collaborator Joyce) is the latest, American translation by a native Czech speaker.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: The fourth season of "Gilmore Girls", an American dramedy television series, began airing on September 23, 2003 on The WB. The season concluded on May 18, 2004, after 22 episodes. The season aired Tuesday nights at 8/7c.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: Rory begins attending Yale and discovers Paris has arranged for them to be roommates. At first Rory seems to be adjusting to college life fairly well, but eventually finds the workload to be overwhelming. Paris begins a romance with a much older professor, Asher Flemming, and breaks up with her boyfriend.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: Lorelai oversees renovations on the Dragonfly Inn. Although Sookie is pregnant, she and Lorelai start a catering business to make ends meet. As the construction drags on, Lorelai feels the financial crunch. After Sookie gives birth, she is distracted with the baby and Lorelai is resentful for having to shoulder more responsibility concerning the Inn.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: Richard is hard at work with his new insurance business, and takes on Jason Stiles as a partner. Lorelai and Jason begin dating, but she insists they keep the relationship a secret from her parents. When the Richard's business and wealth are threatened by a lawsuit, he throws Jason under the bus. Lorelai and Emily are angry about Richard's behavior. However, when Jason feels he must sue Richard in retaliation, Lorelai breaks up with him. A rift develops between Richard and Emily that culminates in their separation.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: Dean marries his high school girlfriend, Lindsay, despite having lingering feelings for Rory. He gets work on the Inn's construction crew. His marriage hits a rocky patch when Lindsay wants to buy a house and Dean may have to drop out of college to earn enough money.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: Luke's historically flaky sister Liz, seems to have found stability as a jewelry maker on the Renaissance fair circuit. Jess returns to get his car, and asks Rory to runaway with him but she refuses. Liz marries T.J, a dim-witted but kind man. Luke and Lorelai go out on a date and he expresses that he's serious about pursuing a relationship with her.


title: Gilmore Girls (season 4)

text: When the Dragonfly Inn has a test-run, Jason shows up and is in denial that he and Lorelai have broken up. Luke and Lorelai confirm they are dating. Rory loses her virginity to Dean, despite him still being married to Lindsay. Lorelai is upset when she finds out and has a fight with Rory.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The fourth season of "Fear the Walking Dead", an American horror-drama television series on AMC, premiered on April 15, 2018, and concluded on September 30, 2018, consisting of sixteen episodes. The series is a companion series to "The Walking Dead", which is based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, with the season premiere containing the first crossover between the two series. The executive producers are Kirkman, David Alpert, Greg Nicotero, Gale Anne Hurd, Scott M. Gimple, Andrew Chambliss, and Ian B. Goldberg, with Chambliss and Goldberg assuming the role of showrunner after Dave Erickson's departure from the series, while the series also moved to a new filming location, Austin, Texas.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The season marks a departure from the previous entries, with the story shifting from being a prequel to running concurrently with "The Walking Dead". In addition to the group of Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), her daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), her drug-addicted son Nick (Frank Dillane), his lover Luciana Galvez (Danay García), and grifter Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) from the previous seasons, the story follows original series character Morgan Jones (Lennie James) as he encounters them amid their conflict with the antagonistic Vultures. Several new characters are also introduced in the fourth season, including journalist Althea Szewczyk-Przygocki (Maggie Grace), police officer John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), and nurse June (Jenna Elfman).


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The fourth season features nine actors receiving main cast billing status, with five returning from the third season, while four new cast members are introduced. Lennie James (who was a main cast member in "The Walking Dead"), moved to the main cast after his departure from "The Walking Dead". Maggie Grace, Garret Dillahunt and Jenna Elfman were added to the main cast. This is the first season not to include Cliff Curtis, Mercedes Mason, Daniel Sharman, Sam Underwood, Dayton Callie, Rubén Blades and Lisandra Tena (since their first appearances), who were all credited as main cast members in previous seasons.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: On April 14, 2017, AMC renewed the series for a 16-episode fourth season and announced that Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg would replace the departing Dave Erickson as showrunners. Production began in November 2017 in Austin, Texas. Michael E. Satrazemis, a director of photography for "The Walking Dead" and director of 12 episodes, joined "Fear the Walking Dead" as a directing-producer.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: In November 2017, it was reported that Lennie James who portrays Morgan Jones on "The Walking Dead" would crossover and join the main cast in the fourth season. The fourth season also sees the additions of several new series regulars, played by Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, and Maggie Grace.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: On April 21, 2018, Colman Domingo revealed that he would be directing the twelfth episode of this season.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The fourth season features a redesigned title sequence with new theme music. Each episode of the season has a different title card, and tells a story which will become apparent once the season is completed. "The Hollywood Reporter" reflected on the new intro, calling the new season, "a Western with zombies, very much by design."


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The new showrunners also were inspired by Westerns; Chambliss stated, "It all started with the themes we set out at the beginning: isolation and community. Those themes run through a lot of classic Western stories." Visually, the season is inspired by John Ford and Sergio Leone's Westerns, using "Once Upon a Time in the West" as a template for directors. Chambliss said, "it's all about having wide shots, not moving the characters, but moving the characters within the frame. When we get to the editing room, it's really about slowing down the cutting pattern, and harkening back to that style of filmmaking. It does infuse the show with a different feel than what we've seen before. It's something that we're very excited for people to see."


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: The third episode of the season features the death of Nick Clark, played by Frank Dillane. In an interview after the episode had aired, Dillane revealed he asked to leave the show prior to the fourth season. The actor explained:


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: On March 15, 2018, it was announced that the season premiere and the season eight finale of "The Walking Dead" would be screened at AMC, Regal, and Cinemark theaters across the United States on April 15, the same day as the televised airing, for "Survival Sunday: "The Walking Dead" & "Fear the Walking Dead"". The episodes marked the first crossover between the two series. The cinema screening also included an extra half-hour of exclusive bonus content.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the fourth season has an approval rating of 80% based on 6 reviews, with an average rating of 6.85/10. The site's critical consensus is, ""Fear the Walking Dead" shuffles onward confidently in its fourth season with a bevy of horrifying set-pieces and heartbreaking twists, but some viewers may be dispirited by the series' constant reshuffling of its characters." TVLine reevaluated the series for its fourth season, giving it a "B+" grade. Reviewer Charlie Mason wrote, "it's gone from being an adequate stopgap between seasons of "The Walking Dead" to a show that's as good or arguably even better than the one from which it was spun off." He also praised the addition of Jenna Elfman and Garret Dillahunt and that season 4 has had several genuine surprises in its storytelling.


title: Fear the Walking Dead (season 4)

text: However, the decision to kill off lead character Madison Clark, portrayed by Kim Dickens, was met with intense criticism. Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", television critic Maureen Ryan highlighted the character as "one of TV's — and cable's — rare mature female leads" and cited her "baffling" demise as an example of Hollywood's ageist practices, adding, "the fact that this decision comes from "The Walking Dead" franchise, which has come under fire for its treatment of women and people of color in the past, is even more depressing."


title: Common crane

text: The common crane (Grus grus), also known as the Eurasian crane, is a bird of the family Gruidae, the cranes. A medium-sized species, it is the only crane commonly found in Europe besides the demoiselle crane ("Grus virgo") and the Siberian crane ("Leucogeranus leucogeranus"). Along with the sandhill ("Antigone canadensis") and demoiselle cranes and the brolga ("Antigone rubicunda"), it is one of only four crane species not currently classified as threatened with extinction or conservation dependent on the species level. Despite the species' large numbers, local extinctions and extirpations have taken place in part of its range, and an ongoing reintroduction project is underway in the United Kingdom.


title: Common crane

text: The first formal description of the common crane was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae" under the binomial name "Ardea grus". The current genus "Grus" was erected by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. "Grus" is the Latin word for a "crane".


title: Common crane

text: The common crane is a large, stately bird and a medium-sized crane. It is long with a wingspan. The body weight can range from , with the nominate subspecies averaging around and the eastern subspecies ("G. g. lilfordi") averaging . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is long, the tarsus is and the exposed culmen is .


title: Common crane

text: Males are slightly heavier and larger than females, with weight showing the largest sexual size dimorphism, followed by wing, central toe, and head length in adults and juveniles.


title: Common crane

text: This species is slate-grey overall. The forehead and lores are blackish with a bare red crown and a white streak extending from behind the eyes to the upper back. The overall colour is darkest on the back and rump and palest on the breast and wings. The primaries, the tips of secondaries, the alula, the tip of the tail, and the edges of upper tail coverts are all black and the greater coverts droop into explosive plumes. This combination of colouration ultimately distinguishes it from similar species in Asia, like the hooded ("G. monacha") and black-necked cranes ("G. nigricollis"). The juvenile has yellowish-brown tips to its body feathers and lacks the drooping wing feathers and the bright neck pattern of the adult, and has a fully feathered crown. Every two years, before migration, the adult common crane undergoes a complete moult, remaining flightless for six weeks, until the new feathers grow.


title: Common crane

text: It has a loud trumpeting call, given in flight and display. The call is piercing and can be heard from a considerable distance. It has a dancing display, leaping with wings uplifted, described in detail below.


title: Common crane

text: This species is found in the northern parts of Europe and across the Palearctic to Siberia. Formerly the species was spread as far west as Ireland, but about 200 years ago, it became extinct there. However, it has since started to return to Ireland naturally and there are now plans to help it return to Ireland on a greater scale. The common crane is an uncommon breeder in southern Europe, smaller numbers breeding in Greece, former-Yugoslavia, Romania, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Larger breeding populations can be found in Scandinavia, especially Finland and Sweden. The heart of the breeding population for the species is in Russia, however, where possibly up to 100,000 cranes of this species can be found seasonally. It is distributed as a breeder from Ukraine to the Chukchi Peninsula in Russia. The breeding population extends as far south as Manchuria but almost the entire Asian breeding population is restricted to Russia. Approximately 48-50 breeding pairs exist in the UK, with population centres in Somerset and Norfolk. In May 2021, ecologists in Ireland got excited and optimistic that a pair of common cranes, which have arrived in the midlands, will become the first to breed there in over 300 years.


title: Common crane

text: The species is a long distance migrant predominantly wintering in northern Africa. Autumn migration is from August to October in the breeding areas, but from late October to early December at the wintering sites. Spring migration starts in February at wintering sites up to early March, but from March through May at the breeding areas. Migration phenology of common cranes is changing due to climate change. Important staging areas occur anywhere from Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany to China (with a large one around the Caspian Sea) and many thousand cranes can be seen in one day in the Autumn. Some birds winter in southern Europe, including Portugal, Spain and France. Most eastern common cranes winter in the river valleys of Sudan, Ethiopia, Tunisia and Eritrea with smaller numbers in Turkey, northern Israel, Iraq and parts of Iran. The third major wintering region is in the northern half of Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan. Minimal wintering also occurs in Burma, Vietnam and Thailand. Lastly, they winter in eastern China, where they are often the most common crane (outnumbering black-necked cranes ten-to-one). Migrating flocks fly in a "V" formation.


title: Common crane

text: It is a rare visitor to Japan and Korea, mostly blown over from the Chinese wintering population, and is a rare vagrant to western North America, where birds are occasionally seen with flocks of migrating sandhill cranes.


title: Common crane

text: In Europe, the common crane predominantly breeds in boreal and taiga forest and mixed forests, from an elevation of sea-level to . In northern climes, it breeds in treeless moors, on bogs, or on dwarf heather habitats, usually where small lakes or pools are also found. In Sweden, breeders are usually found in small, swampy openings amongst pine forests, while in Germany, marshy wetlands are used. Breeding habitat used in Russia are similar, though they can be found nesting in less likely habitat such as steppe and even semi-desert, so long as water is near. Primarily, the largest number of common cranes are found breeding in wooded swamps, bogs and wetlands and seem to require quiet, peaceful environs with minimal human interference. They occur at low density as breeders even where common, typically ranging from 1 to 5 pairs per .


title: Common crane

text: In winter, this species moves to flooded areas, shallow sheltered bays, and swampy meadows. During the flightless moulting period there is a need for shallow waters or high reed cover for concealment. Later, after the migration period, the birds winter regularly in open country, often on cultivated lands and sometimes also in savanna-like areas, for example on the Iberian Peninsula.


title: Common crane

text: The common crane is omnivorous, as are all cranes. It largely eats plant matter, including roots, rhizomes, tubers, stems, leaves, fruits and seeds. They also commonly eat, when available, pond-weeds, heath berries, peas, potatoes, olives, acorns, cedarnuts and pods of peanuts. Notably amongst the berries consumed, the cranberry, is possibly named after the species.


title: Common crane

text: Animal foods become more important during the summer breeding season and may be the primary food source at that time of year, especially while regurgitating to young. Their animal foods are insects, especially dragonflies, and also snails, earthworms, crabs, spiders, millipedes, woodlice, amphibians, rodents, and small birds.


title: Common crane

text: Common cranes may either forage on land or in shallow water, probing around with their bills for any edible organism. Although crops may locally be damaged by the species, they mostly consume waste grain in winter from previously harvested fields and so actually benefit farmers by cleaning fields for use in the following year. As with other cranes, all foraging (as well as drinking and roosting) is done in small groups, which may variously consist of pairs, family groups or winter flocks.


title: Common crane

text: This species usually lays eggs in May, though seldom will do so earlier or later. Like most cranes, this species displays indefinite monogamous pair bonds. If one mate dies, a crane may attempt to court a new mate the following year. Although a pair may be together for several years, the courtship rituals of the species are enacted by every pair each spring. The dancing of common cranes has complex, social meanings and may occur at almost any time of year. Dancing may include bobs, bows, pirouettes, and stops, as in various crane species. Aggressive displays may include ruffled wing feathers, throwing vegetation in the air and pointing the bare red patch on their heads at each other. Courtship displays begin with a male following the female in a stately, march-like walk. The unison call, consists of the female holding her head up and gradually lowering down as she calls out. The female calls out a high note and then the male follows with a longer scream in a similar posture. Copulation consists of a similar, dramatic display.


title: Common crane

text: The nesting territory of common cranes is variable and is based on the local habitat. It can range in size from variously . In common with sandhill cranes (and no other crane species), common cranes "paint" their bodies with mud or decaying vegetation, apparently in order to blend into their nesting environment. The nest is either in or very near shallow water, often with dense shore vegetation nearby, and may be used over several years. The size and placement of the nest varies considerably over the range, with Arctic birds building relatively small nests. In Sweden, an average nest is around across.


title: Common crane

text: The clutch of the common crane usually contains two eggs, with seldom one laid and, even more rarely, 3 or 4. If a clutch is lost early in incubation, the cranes may be able to lay another one within a couple of weeks. The incubation period is around 30 days and is done primarily by the female but occasionally by both sexes. If humans approach the nest both parents may engage in a distraction display but known ground predators (including domestic dogs ("Canis lupus familiaris")) are physically attacked almost immediately.


title: Common crane

text: New hatchlings are generally quite helpless but are able to crawl away from danger within a few hours, can swim soon after hatching and can run with their parents at 24 hours old. Chicks respond to danger by freezing, using their camouflaged brownish down to defend them beyond their fierce parents. Young chicks use their wings to stabilise them while running, while by 9 weeks of age they can fly short distances. The adult birds go through their postbreeding moult while caring for their young, rendering them flightless for about 5 to 6 weeks around the time the young also can't fly yet. According to figures of cranes wintering in Spain, around 48% birds have surviving young by the time they winter and around 18% are leading two young by winter. By the next breeding season, the previous years young often flock together. The age of sexual maturity in wild birds has been estimated at variously from 3 to 6 years of age.


title: Common crane

text: This species could live up to 30 or 40 years of age. But the data on longevity (43 years) and life expectancy (12 years, N=7 cranes) were published with captive cranes. Common cranes living in the wild must show shorter lives. Successful breeders, the best subjects in the population, are guessed to live on average 12 years. Unsuccessful breeding cranes, therefore, may have shorter lives. Elementary survival analysis with the Euring database reports a life expectancy at birth (LEB) of c. 5 years. This LEB of 5 years was similar to that estimated for other crane species, as for example the Florida Sandhill cranes ("G. canadensis") (LEB = 7 years). Reports of tagged common cranes have increased rapidly in the last decades. Therefore, longevity and life expectancy at birth of wild common cranes will be updated.


title: Common crane

text: The common crane is a fairly social bird while not breeding. Flocks of up to 400 birds may be seen flying together during migration. Staging sites, where migrating birds gather to rest and feed in the middle of their migration, may witness thousands of cranes gathering at once. However, the flocks of the species are not stable social units but rather groups that ensure greater safety in numbers and collectively draw each other's attention to ideal foraging and roosting sites. Possibly due to a longer molt, younger and non-breeding cranes are usually the earliest fall migrants and may band together at that time of year. During these migratory flights, common cranes have been known to fly at altitudes of up to , one of the highest of any species of bird, second only to the Ruppell's Griffin Vulture.


title: Common crane

text: Cranes use a kleptoparasitic strategy to recover from temporary reductions in feeding rate, particularly when the rate is below the threshold of intake necessary for survival. Accumulated intake of common cranes during daytime at a site of stopover and wintering shows a typical anti-sigmoid shape, with greatest increases of intake after dawn and before dusk.


title: Common crane

text: There are few natural predators of adult cranes, although white-tailed eagle ("Haliaeetus albicilla"), Bonelli's eagles ("Aquila fasciata") and golden eagles ("Aquila chrysaetos") are a potential predatory threat to common cranes of all ages. The crane has been known to counterattack eagles both on the land and in mid-flight, using their bill as a weapon and kicking with their feet. Common cranes were additionally recorded as prey for Eurasian eagle-owls ("Bubo bubo") in the Ukok Plateau of Russia. Mammals such as wild boar ("Sus scrofa"), wolverine ("Gulo gulo") and red foxes ("Vulpes vulpes") are attacked at the nest, as they are potential predators. When facing off against mammals, cranes jab with their bill, hit with their wings and kick with their feet. The cranes nimbly avoid strikes against themselves by jumping into the air. It is probable that they are threatened by a wider range of large mammalian predators as is the black-necked crane but these have not yet been recorded. Herbivorous mammals such as red deer ("Cervus elaphus") may also be attacked at the nest, indicating the high aggressiveness of the birds while nesting. The determined attack of a parent crane often assures safety from predators, but occasional losses to predation are inevitable. The carrion crow ("Corvus corone") is locally a successful predator of common cranes' eggs, trickily using distraction displays to steal them. Other species of "Corvus" may also cause some loss of eggs, with common ravens ("Corvus corax") also taking some small chicks. Common cranes may loosely associate with any other crane in the genus "Grus" in migration or winter as well as greater white-fronted geese and bean geese.


title: Common crane

text: The global population is 600,000 (2014 estimate) with the vast majority nesting in Russia and Scandinavia. In some areas the breeding population appears to be increasing, such as in Sweden, whereas on the fringes of its range, it is often becoming rare to non-existent. In Ireland, it died out as a breeding species in the 18th century, but a flock of about 30 appeared in County Cork in November 2011, and a smaller flock a year later. It was additionally extirpated as a breeder from Austria around 1900, from Hungary by 1952 and from Spain by 1954. The recovering German breeding population of 8,000 pairs is still also a fraction of the size of the large numbers that once bred in the country. Poland has 15,000 breeding pairs, 50 pairs breed in the Czech Republic and 2009 was the first confirmed breeding in Slovakia.


title: Common crane

text: In Great Britain, the common crane became extirpated in the 17th century, but a tiny population now breeds again in the Norfolk Broads and is slowly increasing and a reintroduction began in 2010 in the Somerset levels. A total of 93 birds were released between 2010 and 2014 as part of the reintroduction effort, and there are now 180 resident birds in the UK. In 2016, a wild crane was born in Wales for the first time in over 400 years.


title: Common crane

text: The main threat to the species, and the primary reason for its decline in the Western Palearctic, comes from habitat loss and degradation, as a result of dam construction, urbanisation, agricultural expansion, and drainage of wetlands. Although it has adapted to human settlement in many areas, nest disturbance, continuing changes in land use, and collision with utility lines are still potential problems. Further threats may include persecution due to crop damage, pesticide poisoning, egg collection, and hunting. The common crane is one of the species to which the "Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds" (AEWA) applies.


title: Common crane

text: In Ireland, despite being extinct for over 200 years, the common crane plays a very important part in Irish culture and folklore and so thus recent efforts to encourage it back to Ireland are received with much enthusiasm.


title: Common crane

text: The Kranich Museum in Hessenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, is dedicated to art and folklore related to the common crane.


title: Common crane

text: The common crane is the sacred bird of the god Hephaestus, and it features heavily in the god's iconography.


title: Common crane

text: In Indian states of Rajsthan and Gujarat this crane is described in lots of folk songs. Like- anewly married woman (whose husband has gone to far away place for earning) will sing a song to crane to take a message to her husband and request to tell him to come home early.


title: Gifted education

text: Gifted education (also known as gifted and talented education (GATE), talented and gifted programs (TAG), or G/T education) is a broad group of special practices, procedures, and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented.


title: Gifted education

text: The main approaches to gifted education are enrichment and acceleration. An enrichment program teaches additional, related material, but keeps the student progressing through the curriculum at the same rate as other students. For example, after the gifted students have completed the normal work in the curriculum, an enrichment program might provide them with additional information about a subject. An acceleration program advances the student through the standard curriculum faster than normal. This is done through many different approaches.


title: Gifted education

text: There is no standard global definition of what a gifted student is; multiple definitions exist. Most definitions select the students who are the most skilled or talented in a given area, e.g., the students with the most skill or talent in music, language, logical reasoning, or mathematics. The percentage of students selected varies, generally with 10% or fewer being selected for gifted education programs. However, since students vary in their aptitudes and achievements, a student who is not gifted in one area, such as music, may be considered gifted in another, such as language. Consequently, even if all programs agreed to include only the top 5% of students in their area, more than just 5% of students would be identified as gifted.


title: Gifted education

text: Attempts to provide gifted education can be classified in several ways. Most gifted students benefit from a combination of approaches at different times.


title: Gifted education

text: Pupils are advanced to a higher-level class covering material more suited to their abilities and preparedness. This may take the form of skipping grades or completing the normal curriculum in a shorter-than-normal period of time ("telescoping"). Subject acceleration (also called partial acceleration) is a flexible approach that can advance a student in one subject, such as mathematics or language, without changing other studies, such as history or science. This type of acceleration is usually based upon achievement testing, rather than IQ.


title: Gifted education

text: Some colleges offer early entrance programs that give gifted younger students the opportunity to attend college early. In the U.S., many community colleges allow advanced students to enroll with the consent of school officials and the pupil's parents.


title: Gifted education

text: Acceleration presents gifted children with academic material from established curricula that is commensurate with their ability and preparedness, and for this reason is a low-cost option from the perspective of the school. This may result in a small number of children taking classes targeted at older children. For the majority of gifted students, acceleration is beneficial both academically and socially. Whole grade skipping is considered rapid acceleration. Some advocates have argued that the disadvantages of being retained in a standard mixed-ability classroom are substantially worse than any shortcomings of acceleration. For example, psychologist Miraca Gross reports: "the majority of these children [retained in a typical classroom] are socially rejected [by their peers with typical academic talents], isolated, and deeply unhappy. Children of IQ 180+ who are retained in the regular classroom are even more seriously at risk and experience severe emotional distress." These accelerated children should be placed together in one class if possible. Research suggests that acceleration might have an impact long after students graduate from high school. For example, one study shows that high-IQ individuals who experienced full-grade acceleration earned higher incomes as adults.


title: Gifted education

text: Cluster grouping is the gathering of four to six gifted and talented and/or high achieving students in a single classroom for the entire school day. Cluster teachers are specially trained in differentiating for gifted learners. Clusters are typically used in upper elementary grades. Within a cluster group, instruction may include enrichment and extensions, higher-order thinking skills, pretesting and differentiation, compacting, an accelerated pace, and more complexity in content.


title: Gifted education

text: Like acceleration, colloquium provides advanced material for high school students. In colloquium, students take Advanced Placement (AP) courses. However, colloquium is different from AP classes because students are usually given more projects than students in AP classes. Students in colloquium also generally study topics more in depth and sometimes in a different way than students enrolled in AP classes do. Colloquium is a form that takes place in a traditional public school. In colloquium, subjects are grouped together. Subjects are taught at different times of the day; however, usually what is being taught in one subject will connect with another subject. For example, if the students are learning about colonial America in History, then they might also be analyzing text from The Scarlet Letter in English. Some schools may only have colloquium in certain subjects. In schools where colloquium is only offered in English and History, colloquium students usually take Advanced Placement courses in math and science and vice versa.


title: Gifted education

text: In compacting, the regular school material is compacted by pretesting the student to establish which skills and content have already been mastered. Pretests can be presented on a daily basis (pupils doing the most difficult items on a worksheet first and skipping the rest if they are performed correctly), or before a week or longer unit of instructional time. When a student demonstrates an appropriate level of proficiency, further repetitive practice can be safely skipped, thus reducing boredom and freeing up time for the student to work on more challenging material.


title: Gifted education

text: On the primary school level, students spend all class time with their peers, but receive extra material to challenge them. Enrichment may be as simple as a modified assignment provided by the regular classroom teacher, or it might include formal programs such as Odyssey of the Mind, Destination Imagination or academic competitions such as Brain Bowl, Future Problem Solving, Science Olympiad, National History Day, science fairs, or spelling bees. Programmes of enrichment activities may also be organised outside the school day (e.g. the ASCEND project in secondary science education). This work is done in addition to, and not instead of, any regular school work assigned. Critics of this approach argue that it requires gifted students to do more work instead of the same amount at an advanced level. On the secondary school level sometimes an option is to take more courses such as English, Spanish, Latin, philosophy, or science or to engage in extracurricular activities. Some perceive there to be a necessary choice between enrichment and acceleration, as if the two were mutually exclusive alternatives. However, other researchers see the two as complements to each other.


title: Gifted education

text: Some gifted students are educated in either a separate class or a separate school. These classes and schools are sometimes called "congregated gifted programs" or "dedicated gifted programs."


title: Gifted education

text: Some independent schools have a primary mission to serve the needs of the academically gifted. Such schools are relatively scarce and often difficult for families to locate. One resource for locating gifted schools in the United States can be found on the National Association for Gifted Children's "Resource Directory" accessible through their home page. Such schools often need to work to guard their mission from occasional charges of elitism, support the professional growth and training of their staff, write curriculum units that are specifically designed to meet the social, emotional, and academic talents of their students, and educate their parent population at all ages.


title: Gifted education

text: Some gifted and talented classes offer self-directed or individualized studies, where the students lead a class themselves and decide on their own task, tests, and all other assignments. These separate classes or schools tend to be more expensive than regular classes, due to smaller class sizes and lower student-to-teacher rations. Not-for-profit (non-profit) schools often can offer lower costs than for-profit schools. Either way, they are in high demand and parents often have to pay part of the costs.


title: Gifted education

text: Activities such as reading, creative writing, sport, computer games, chess, music, dance, foreign languages, and art give an extra intellectual challenge outside of school hours.


title: Gifted education

text: An umbrella term encompassing a variety of educational activities conducted at home, including those for gifted children: part-time schooling; school at home; classes, groups, mentors and tutors; and unschooling. In many US states, the population of gifted students who are being homeschooled is rising quite rapidly, as school districts responding to budgetary issues and standards-based policies are cutting what limited gifted education programs remain in existence, and families seek educational opportunities that are tailored to each child's unique needs.


title: Gifted education

text: Gifted students are pulled out of a heterogeneous classroom to spend a portion of their time in a gifted class. These programs vary widely, from carefully designed half-day academic programs to a single hour each week of educational challenges. Generally, these programs are ineffective at promoting academic advancement unless the material covered contains extensions and enrichment to the core curriculum. The majority of pull-out programs include an assortment of critical thinking drills, creative exercises, and subjects typically not introduced in standard curricula. Much of the material introduced in gifted pull-out programs deals with the study of logic, and its application to fields ranging from philosophy to mathematics. Students are encouraged to apply these empirical reasoning skills to every aspect of their education both in and outside of class.


title: Gifted education

text: Self-pacing methods, such as the Montessori Method, use flexible grouping practices to allow children to advance at their own pace. Self-pacing can be beneficial for all children and is not targeted specifically at those identified as gifted or talented, but it can allow children to learn at a highly accelerated rate. Directed Studies are usually based on self-pacing.


title: Gifted education

text: These offer a variety of courses that mainly take place in the summer. Summer schools are popular in the United States. Entrance fees are required for such programs, and programs typically focus on one subject, or class, for the duration of the camp.