title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Adultery (zina-e-mohsen) is punishable by 100 lashes for unmarried people and by death on the fourth offense. It is punishable by death by stoning (under moratorium since 2002, officially replaced in 2012, by an unspecified punishment) for married people and in all cases of incest. If an unmarried non-Muslim male has sexual relations with a Muslim female, the non-Muslim male will be put to death. Four witnesses (rather than two witnesses) are required to prove adultery, the person must confess four times, or they must be convicted by judge's knowledge (through definite circumstantial evidence). If the person confesses twice and is "repentant" or the victim's family forgives the adulterer, the judge can give a tazir sentence of 99 lashes instead, or imprisonment. Convictions and executions for this crime are extremely rare, usually only carried out in the case of death and rare even then.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Between 1979 and 2002, 40–76 adultery/incest executions (by stoning) were recorded for both men and women. After 2002, allegedly eight men were stoned to death and one woman hanged. Even if the actual numbers are higher, the punishment is nonetheless rare in proportion to confirmed cases of adultery. The punishment is given mostly in aggravated circumstances when the four witnesses or a confession is available and the spouse died. Most adulterers go unpunished, or receive a lighter sentence. Divorce is usually the most common method in dealing with adultery.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Rape (zina-be-onf) is related to adultery, has the same proof requirements, and is punishable by death by hanging. In Iran, for most part, convictions are made either by confession or "judge's knowledge", rather than witnesses. 10–15% of executions in Iran are for rape.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In many cases the rape victim settles the case by accepting compensation (jirah) in exchange for withdrawing the charges or forgiving the rapist. This is similar to diyyeh, but equal to a woman's dowry. A woman can also receive diyya for injuries sustained. Normally, the rapist still faces tazir penalties, such as 100 lashes and jail time for immoral acts, and often faces further penalties for other crimes committed alongside the rape, such as kidnapping, assault, and disruption of public order.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Sodomy (lavat) is punishable by death. The judge can determine the type of death, but in practice, it is always hanging. The proof requirements are the same as for adultery, and such sentences are very rare. If one of the consenting participants was under 18, the punishment is 100 lashes for the minor. If the guilty is repentant, they generally receive a reduced sentence of 99 lashes. All people convicted of sodomy spend one year in prison in addition, and can be sentenced to more prison time at the judge's discretion. Few people are sentenced to death for sodomy, but prior to 2012, both partners could receive the death penalty.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Sodomy rape (lavat-be-onf) is punishable by death for the rapist. Proof requirements and procedure are the same as regular rape. Most sodomy executions are for rape alleged by the Iranian Government, not consensual sodomy.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Apostasy (murrtaad) is not codified in the penal code, but is nevertheless subject to prosecution by Iranian courts, due to the primary role of Sharia in the legal system. Some two hundred members of the Baha'i religion, an indigenous faith, but proscribed as a form of apostasy, have been hanged, while many have been and are imprisoned. A range of serious and petty sanctions are routinely placed on the Baha'i community, including a ban on young adherents attending university. The death sentence could be given for a male, though the last such execution was in 1990. A case is Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian Christian Pastor sentenced to death for apostasy 21–22 September 2010 in the province of Gilan, but the sentence has not been carried out. For women, the maximum sentence is life in prison.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Blasphemy (sabb-al-nabi) of the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter, or his family is a crime in Iran, and a blasphemer would be found guilty of apostasy as well by default. Blasphemy is punishable by death or imprisonment.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: For all other hudud crimes, the fourth offense would be a capital offense, unless the person repents.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Other hudud crimes include incest, theft (serghat-e-haddi), lesbianism (mosahegheh), false accusation of sex crimes (ghazf), pimping (ghavvadi), and drunkenness (shurb-e-khamr). However, for all but the most serious cases, the crime is punished through the tazir code, and the judge gives a discretionary sentence.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Consumption of alcohol (one glass) is punished by 80 lashes, but repeated offences may lead to death penalty, although rarely exercised. In 2012, two men were sentenced to death after a third offense in Khorasan. The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court, but it may be commuted to flogging if the convicted repent.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: It is uncertain if it also applies to drug crimes. Most drinking cases are settled through tazir punishments (e. g., imprisonment and/or fines), rather than whipping.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: The execution of minors in Iran has been a major issue for human rights groups and the Western media. As of May 2009, there were at least 137 known juvenile offenders awaiting execution in Iran, but the total number could be much higher, as many death penalty cases in Iran are believed to go unreported. Of the 43 child offenders recorded as having been executed since 1990, 11 were still under the age of 18 at the time of their execution, while the others were either kept on death row until they had reached 18, or were convicted and sentenced after reaching that age. In 2006, a teenage girl of the age of 16, Atefah Sahaaleh, was sentenced to death, and executed two weeks later by hanging in a public square for the charges of adultery and "crimes against chastity". Death row prisoners sentenced while underage include at least one at 13-year-old (executed at 21) and a 14-year-old (executed at 18).


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Despite signing the convention on the Rights of the Child, Iran, according to human rights groups, is the world's largest executioner of juvenile offenders. This has been ascribed to the difference in definition of a "minor" between non-Muslim and (some) Muslim countries. Article 49 of the Islamic Penal Code in Iran defines a child as "someone who has not reached the age of puberty (bulugh) as stipulated by Islamic law and as specified in the 1991 Civil Code as 15 lunar years for boys and nine lunar years for girls. Since 1995, Iran's Supreme Court has commuted non-murder death sentences to 2–8 years in prison.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In February 2012, Iran adopted a new penal code, which officially banned the death penalty for minors under the age of 18 in favor of "social penalties" and "educational programs". Minors who commit murder when aged 15–18 can still receive the death penalty in rare cases if the judge is confident that the perpetrator had reached full adult mental development at the time of the crime and that it was committed intentionally with a well thought-out plan. For minors by default and for young adults (older than 18) with low mental development, execution is not used and the perpetrator is prosecuted in a juvenile court. Iran uses the lunar Islamic calendar to determine the age of criminal responsibility, which is shorter than the standard solar calendar, so as a result some people sentenced to death at the age of 18 would be 17 years old in solar calendar years.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Iran has garnered Western media attention and criticism for carrying out executions of minors, despite having signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids executing child offenders for crimes committed under the age of 18. Iran justifies its actions by claiming dispensation in cases where the convention is deemed "incompatible with Islamic jurisprudence". Iran has also been criticized for using stoning as capital punishment, though in 2005, an Iranian judiciary spokesman strongly denied the accusations of stoning and executing minors, describing them as "propaganda against the Iranian state".


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: At Berlin International Film Festival, on 29 February 2020 Iranian film about executions ("There Is No Evil") won top prize.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Compared to other countries that use hanging (such as Japan or Malaysia) with a complex gallows designed to drop the condemned and break the neck, Iran's gallows are very simple and inexpensive. They consist only of a frame and a stool, with some stools able to hold up to seven people at a time and having wheels. Public executions are usually carried out by a mobile crane. Sometimes, the victim is suspended from the crane, but more often, the crane is used as a gallows, and the person is pulled off a stool (see Upright jerker). The victim is usually blindfolded. Iranian nooses are thick, with 7–10 knotted coils, and are often made of blue plastic rope with little to no drop. Death is caused by strangulation and carotid reflex (where blood vessels to the head are cut off), taking 10–20 minutes, causing visible pain and distress to the condemned.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Famous hangings in Iran include Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri in 1908, and serial killer Mohammed Bijeh, the "Desert Vampire", who raped and murdered 17 boys, in 2005. At dawn, on 27 July 2007, 29 men were hanged in Evin Prison on various charges of murder and drug trafficking. In 2010, Shahla Jahed was hanged in Tehran for the 2002 murder of the wife of Iran footballer Nasser Mohammadkhani. In 2006, a teenage girl of the age of 16, Atefah Sahaaleh, was sentenced to death, and executed two weeks later by hanging in a public square for the charges of adultery and "crimes against chastity". In 2009, a public execution of two men in Sirjan for armed robbery was broken up when relatives stormed the gallows and cut the men down while still alive; they were later re-captured and hanged until dead. A video of the incident was posted on the Internet.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: The firing squad is legal, but seldom used in Iran today. Historically, it was used for military and political crimes. In 1974, under the Shah's regime, Marxist activists Khosrow Golesorkhi and Keramat Daneshian were executed by firing squad on charges of conspiring to kidnap Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince of Iran. They were shot after a televised trial in Tehran. This case was one of the big events that turned public opinion against the Shah. During the 38 years in which the Shah reigned, 1,000 or more people were sentenced to death for crimes against the government, mostly by firing squad after conviction by a special SAVAK military tribunal. After the 1953 coup, scores of Communists were executed. Common criminals were executed mostly by hanging in this period.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In the years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, thousands of people were sentenced to be shot for political offenses, drug trafficking, and crimes against the Islamic Republic by the newly established Revolutionary Courts. These included many of the Shah's former ministers, such as former prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveida, and the head of SAVAK General Nematollah Nassiri. By 1980, one year after the Shah had been overthrown, over 700 people had been shot by the new Islamic Republic. Many of the members of the former regime are suspected to have been unjustly executed in biased trials. A campaign against drug trafficking resulted in the executions of many for drug possession, including addicts, often based on minimal evidence. Some of these people were also alleged opponents of the regime. Many executions also took place after the Kurdistan revolt of 1979–1980.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: While the number of executions had dropped by 1980, after the start of the Iran-Iraq War a crackdown on dissidents, political opponents, and common criminals was responsible for another increase in executions. From 1981 to 1984, after Mujahedeen-e-Khalq bombings killing many government officials, a crackdown against opponents and terrorist groups such as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq organization resulted in the execution of hundreds or possibly thousands of people. Many others were hanged or shot for other crimes such as adultery, robbery, murder, and drug trafficking.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 1982, a purge of the communists in Iran (such as the Tudeh Party) resulted in executions of the party's leaders and some members on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. Political executions continued on a lesser scale. When the Islamic Penal Code of Iran was adopted in 1982, ordinary crimes began to be punished by hanging once again by regular, non-Revolutionary courts. Political opponents continued to be shot by Revolutionary Courts, but on a lesser scale.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 1988, after an invasion by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq organization (see Operation Mersad), the government secretly executed 2,000–4,000 political prisoners, many former members or sympathizers of the Mujahedeen group, former communists, and other dissidents. Those executed had all renounced their former ties to their old opposition organizations and many were about to finish their prison sentences when they were suddenly and secretly executed. The charges were "moharebeh" or apostasy, seen by critics as a gross example of using a religious charge for political reasons. They were executed by hanging for most part, but a few were executed by firing squad.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Since 1988, political executions have been less common, although extrajudicial killing of high-profile regime opponents continued until 1998, such as the Chain murders. Since the late 1980s, virtually all executions have been carried out by hanging, both political or criminal.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Critics of the Revolutionary Courts complained about the process, stating that the trials lacked defense attorneys, were too short (often lasting hours, even minutes), and could not be appealed and that there was a lack of evidence and convictions were often based on strong rumors, with political opponents being unjustly prosecuted and sentences. Critics also complained that the judges were biased, unfair, too rigid, used the death sentence much too often, and applied the death penalty to undeserving people. There were also criticisms of confessions obtained through torture. When asked what if a person was wrongfully executed, one of the judges said that an innocent person "would receive a reward by God in heaven"; so, little care was taken to see if the accused were actually guilty.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Ayatollah Khomeini himself was sentenced to death by firing squad for treason against the Shah in 1964, by a military court, but his sentence was commuted to exile in Iraq (General Hassan Pakravan, another head of SAVAK who helped commute Khomeini's sentence, was one of the first shot upon Khomeini's return).


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: One of the most famous "hanging" judges in Iran was a cleric, Sadegh Khalkhali, the first head of the Revolutionary Court, who sentenced drug traffickers and former members of the Shah's government alike to be shot. He personally sentenced 800–2,000 people to death. In 1980, Jahangir Razmi won the Pulitzer Prize for his famous photo "Firing Squad in Iran", which showed seven Kurds and two Shah's policemen being executed minutes after being convicted for "terrorism and crimes against God" by Khalkhali in the airport in Sanandaj, during a revolt by Kurdish armed groups. Their trial lasted 30 minutes.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: After many years of not being used, the firing squad was last used in 2008, to execute a man convicted of raping 17 children, according to the Fars News Agency.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Individuals sentenced to stoning are placed in a stoning pit, buried to the neck (women) or waist (men), and others hurl stones at them until they escape the stoning pit, are incapacitated, or are dead, but because men (unlike women) are only buried to the waist, men occasionally do escape the stoning pit, which terminates the penalty. Mohammad-Javad Larijani, chief of Iran's Human Rights Council (in 2010), rejected international condemnations of stoning, saying that, "in the eyes of some people, stoning is a lesser punishment than execution because there is a chance you should survive."


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: (However, there are at least two newspaper reports of women managing to pull themselves out of their hole while being stoned, but being killed nonetheless after being forced back into the hole.) Iranian law mandates that stones used must be small enough to not kill instantly. According to Shappi Khorsandi, in stoning executions in Iran, most victims are dead within two hours of the first stone throw.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: While "Iran does not publish how many people are stoned or sentenced to stoning each year", and it is "very difficult to provide systematic reporting and empirical data on stoning of women inside Iran", information has been gleaned by human rights groups from newspaper reports. Reports from Amnesty International and International Committee Against Executions (ICAE) tally a total of 150 people executed by stoning in Iran from 1980 to 2009.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Stoning was temporarily blocked as legal punishment by Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini's order in 1981. Following vociferous domestic and international controversy over stoning in the early years of the Islamic Republic, the government placed a moratorium on stoning in 2002. In January 2005, the Iranian judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad was quoted as saying, "Stoning has been dropped from the penal code for a long time, and in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments being carried out", further adding that if stoning sentences were passed by lower courts, they were overruled by higher courts, and "no such verdicts have been carried out". Contradicting this, in 2008 "the Iranian Judiciary confirmed that a man was stoned to death for adultery in Qazvin Province on 5 July", and according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, "six people were stoned to death between 2006 and 2008 and an additional 13 people await their sentence from Iranian prisons". In 2012, stoning was officially removed from the code and replaced by an unspecified death penalty. In theory, it could still be used as a punishment because the penal code allows judges to impose sentencing according to "valid Islamic sources" and Sharia punishments. There were reports by the opposition Melli-Mazhabi Web site of a stoning sentence being carried out in 2012. The Tehran Forensic Medicine Department rejected those claims without providing explanations for the causes of death.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: As of 19 November 2019, the International Federation for Human Rights issued a statement that "stoning for adultery" was still "stipulated in law" in Iran; that "several persons are still on death-row" with a sentence of stoning, and that "in 2018, two women were sentenced to stoning".


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Iran is accused of using this form of execution for homosexuality. According to Amnesty International in 2008, Tayyeb Karimi and Yazdan were convicted of abduction, rape and theft and sentenced to death by a judge in Shiraz, Fars province, southern Iran, in May 2007. They were to be thrown off a cliff or from a great height. The judge ordered that they be executed in the way described. Four other men have been sentenced to 100 lashes each for their involvement in the same crimes.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Although, by law, all executions must take place in "public", the place is not specified. In most cases, executions take place in the main prison of the county or province where the crime took place, in front of witnesses (family, prosecutors, other prisoners).


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Criminals from Tehran are hanged in Evin Prison (and according to some reports in Ghezel Hesar Prison in some cases). In the Karaj area, Gohardasht Prison carries out executions. Tehran's Qasr Prison also conducted executions until it closed in 2005. In Mashhad, executions are carried out in Vakilabad Prison. The gallows are typically located in a large indoor shed, or in a remote courtyard.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: 1–2 days prior to the execution, the prisoner is informed of their execution date and moved to solitary confinement. In murder cases (and often rape cases), both the victim's and prisoner's family are required to be there by law, in order to keep the possibility of a forgiveness settlement open. In non-murder executions, sometimes, the prisoner's family is informed after the fact. Usually the condemned may see relatives prior to the execution. The prisoner's attorney may also attend the execution.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Executions are carried out at 4 am local time, just before the call for morning salat (prayer). When the platform is moved away, the condemned dies of strangulation and loss of blood to the brain. Usually they fall unconscious within seconds. If the condemned struggles after being released, the prison guards will typically pull down on the rope to speed up the death.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In the case of a murder, the victim's next of kin is allowed to pull the stool out from under the condemned. There have been occasions where the victim's family pardoned the murderer right at the foot of the gallows. A few times, the person was pardoned and cut down from the gallows after surviving the hanging process.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Public executions in Iran are less common, sometimes applied to those found guilty of crimes such as gang rape, child murder, murder during an armed robbery, or massive drug trafficking. Public executions were restricted between the 1920s and 1950s for the most part, but became common after the Islamic Revolution, usually carried out from mobile cranes. In 2008, Iran banned public execution; however, the moratorium has not gone into effect as of 2011, according to Amnesty International. They take place when the prosecutor requests and the judge accepts that since the criminal's crimes were so terrible they "caused public outrage", the criminal must die at the spot where the crime was committed. The Supreme Court must also approve the sentence. It is estimated that about 5–10% of executions are carried out in public, usually around 6 am local time.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 2002, the "Black Vultures", the nickname of a group of five men who assaulted and gang raped dozens of women in northern Tehran, were hanged in public from cranes, two in the main bus terminal and three in the main square of Lavizan district.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 2 August 2007, Maijid and Hossein Kavousifar were hanged in downtown Tehran for murdering a judge, as well as shooting and killing two innocent bystanders during an earlier bank robbery.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 5 January 2011, a man only identified by Iranian media as "Yaghub" was hanged in the main square of the Sa'adat Abad district in Tehran, where he had in October 2010 murdered a man by repeatedly stabbing him and then stood over the victim while he bled to death threatening to kill anyone who intervened. The murder was recorded on a mobile phone.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In July 2005, the Iranian Student News Agency covered the execution of Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni in Mashhad who, as initially reported by Iranian sources, were executed for committing homosexual acts; however, when disturbing photos of the hanging were widely distributed around the Internet, and drew international attention and condemnation, it resulted in subsequent allegations by the Iranian regime that they were executed for the rape of a 13-year-old boy. The executions of the two teenagers divided the human rights community over whether it was a gay issue, but all human rights groups condemned the hangings, as they were for crimes allegedly committed when the boys were minors. The initial report from the Iranian Student News Agency, a government press agency, had stated that they were hanged for sodomizing and raping a 13-year-old boy (his father was interviewed about the case in the local Mashad newspaper). Online gay advocacy groups such as OutRage! asserted that they were hanged for being homosexuals; other groups, in light of evidence that the teenagers were convicted of rape, emphasized that the executions were a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Iran is a signatory to both), which prohibit the execution of minors. After the international outcry, the Iranian government repeated once again that the hangings were for raping the boy. Human Rights Watch, while not agreeing with the brutality of the hangings, stated it was "deeply disturbed about the apparent indifference of many people to the alleged rape of a 13-year-old". However, others still allege that they were hanged for being gay. Later that year, another two young men, referred to in the media by their first names, Mokhtar and Ali, were hanged in the northern city of Gorgan for "lavat" (sodomy).


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 2010, Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad-Reza Ali Zamani were hanged in Tehran for moharebeh, alleged terrorism, and being a member of the banned Kingdom Assembly of Iran. When they were executed, their execution was falsely reported as being connected to the 2009 election protests, possibly in order to intimidate the opposition, despite their arrest months before the election. Abdolreza Ghanbari's moharebeh death sentence for protesting in the 2009 Ashura protests was upheld in March 2012, meaning that his execution could be carried out at any time. In 2012, 5 Ahwazi Arabs were hanged in retaliation for the alleged death of a policeman during riots a year before. In 2011, when the riots originally took place, 9 men were hanged in retaliation for alleged "deaths and rapes" during the riots, three of them in public. One of them was 16 years old when hanged.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 2011, two policemen were hanged in Tehran for beating to death three protesters in the Kahrizak Detention Center during the 2009 election protests.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: In 2014, Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged for killing a man she alleged was trying to sexually abuse her, despite an international campaign that sought to avoid her execution.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 3 May 2016, Reza Hosseini, 34, was executed in Ghezel Hesar prison on alleged drug charges after a revolutionary court trial that lasted a couple of minutes. His wife insists Hosseini was innocent. She says Hosseini was arrested because he got into an altercation with the authorities, and the drugs were actually discovered by authorities in another place. Hosseini never pleaded guilty. At that, Judge Tayerani replied: "If you are innocent, then you will go to heaven after you are hanged."


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 20 December 2018, Human Rights Watch urged the regime in Iran to investigate and find an explanation for the death of Vahid Sayadi Nasiri, who had been jailed for insulting the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. According to his family, Nasiri had been on hunger strike, but he was denied medical attention before he died.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 12 September 2020, Navid Afkari was executed for murder. The U.S. State Department believed he had been tortured into giving a false confession.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 5 September 2022, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported that the two women, LGBT rights activists Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani and Elham Choubdar, had been sentenced to death on charges of "corruption on earth" and human trafficking. The European Union condemned the death sentences on 13 September 2022.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 8th December 2022, Mohsen Shekari, aged 23, was executed by hanging. A Revolutionary Court had found him guilty of emnity against God and of wounding a member of a paramilitary force with a machete. He had been taking part in the Mahsa Amini protests.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: On 12 December 2022, Majidreza Rahnavard, aged 23 was publicly hanged in Mashhad for Moharebeh in connection to killing two members of the Basij Resistance Force, Danial Rezazadeh, and Hossein Zeinalzadeh, during the Mahsa Amini protests. His execution resulted in international condemnation. The execution was carried out only 23 days after his arrest. Human rights organizations such as the United Nations have expressed distress and concern that protesters are being sentenced to death following sham trials with no due process. Rahnavard's mother was only informed of his execution after his death and was later given the cemetery's name and plot number. Upon arrival at the cemetery, Rahnavard’s family were welcomed by the sight of security Guards burying his body. A vote was cast in November by the UN Human Rights Council to initiate an investigation into Iran's handling of the demonstrations. Still, Tehran refused to cooperate because the mission was "political." On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022, Iran's expulsion from the UN Commission on the Status of Women will be put to a vote, which the UN Watch predicts will pass overwhelmingly despite Tehran's objections. Australia and New Zealand have recently joined the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada in blacklisting a handful of Iranian officials and entities in response to the ongoing protests, which Tehran has condemned. Rahnavard's execution on Monday, similar to Shekari's, showed how quickly the Iranian judiciary is handling cases involving the protests. He was executed less than a month after his arrest. On November 17, the judiciary claimed Rahnavard committed a "terrorist" act, and two days later, he was reportedly arrested for “Moharebeh,” the Farsi definition for "waging war against God." Majidreza Rahnavard’s trial took place in Mashhad, Khorasan-e Razavi Province, over the course of just one session before a "Revolutionary Court." November 29th where he was convicted of “enmity against God” (Moharebeh). Rahnavard was denied access to a lawyer of his own choice. He was assigned a lawyer, but he didn't present a defense, just like Mohsen Shekari, who, according to Iran human rights, was denied access to his lawyer during his interrogation and legal proceedings.


title: Capital punishment in Iran

text: Furthermore, the acceleration of this specific use of the death penalty proves it to be a dictatorship that is the most uncompromising and extreme element, all under the leadership of supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Ali Khamenei is an Iranian cleric and politician who previously served as president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. This shows the level of power in his voice and actions. Originally, the protests sparked opposition to force the veiling of women in general to the death in custody of 22- year-old Mahsa Amini. Khamenei holds power as he can sway over pragmatic voices. It saddens the world as more individuals are being executed for having a voice and fighting injustice. A dozen others have been suspected and sentenced to this death penalty, and other activists are being warned to be careful. Certain situations, such as closed-door hearings, are an aspect of this as well. Another young male of the age of 23-years-old Mahan Sedarat faces execution after the judiciary confirmed his sentence. Through social media, others were raising awareness and attempting to revote his sentence and save his life. The young man was transferred to Rajaei Shahr prison in the city of Karaj, which is in the west of the capital of Tehran, which ended up being the place where his tragic execution occurred for being a human rights activist. It is known that at least 488 people have officially been killed during the protest in Iran for standing up for what they believe in. From a bigger perspective, another 18,200 have likely been detained by officials in Iran.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands, that develops technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and intercept it in rivers before it can reach the ocean. After initial testing and prototyping in the North Sea they deployed their first full-scale prototype in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It ran into difficulty after two months and was towed to Hawaii for inspection and repair. In June 2019, their second prototype system was deployed. They also deployed their river technology, the Interceptor, in two locations in 2019, revealed the project publicly in October 2019, and deployed another in 2020. In 2021, they announced that the prototype testing of System 002 was successful. In 2022, the first Interceptor Original deployed in the United States was installed at Ballona Creek near Los Angeles, California.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The organization conducts scientific research into oceanic plastic pollution. It was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, a Dutch-born inventor-entrepreneur of Croatian and Dutch origin who serves as its CEO. It has conducted two expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre, the Mega Expedition and the Aerial Expedition, and continues to publish scientific papers. Their ocean system consists of a floating barrier at the surface of the water in the oceanic gyres, that collects marine debris as the system is pushed by wind, waves and current, and slowed down by a sea anchor. The project aims to launch a total of 60 such systems, and they predict this capability could clean up 50% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in five years from full scale deployment.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In late October 2019, the organization announced a new initiative, the Interceptor, which would aim to drastically reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the oceans from rivers, with Slat explaining how "1% of rivers are responsible for 80% of the pollution in the world's seas".


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: Boyan Slat proposed the cleanup project and supporting system in 2012. In October, Slat outlined the project in a TED-talk. The initial design consisted of long, floating barriers fixed to the seabed, attached to a central platform shaped like a manta ray for stability. The barriers would direct the floating plastic to the central platform, which would remove the plastic from the water. Slat did not specify the dimensions of this system in the talk.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In 2014, the design was revised, replacing the central platform with a tower detached from the floating barriers. This platform would collect the plastic using a conveyor belt. The floating barrier was proposed to be 100 km long. They also conducted and published their feasibility study. In 2015, this design won the London Design Museum Design of the Year, and the .


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In 2015, scale model tests were conducted in controlled environments. Tests took place in wave pools at Deltares and MARIN. The purpose was to test the dynamics and load of the barrier, when exposed to currents and waves, and to gather data for continued computational modeling.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: A 100-metre segment went through a test in the North Sea, off the coast of the Netherlands in the summer of 2016. The purpose was to test the endurance of the materials chosen and the connections between elements. The test indicated that conventional oil containment booms could not endure the harsh environments the system would face. They changed the floater material to a hard-walled HDPE pipe, which is flexible enough to follow the waves, and rigid enough to maintain its open U-shape. More prototypes were deployed to test component endurance.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: On May 11, 2017, The Ocean Cleanup announced new design changes and their plan to test their new drifting system in the North Pacific in 2017.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The Ocean Cleanup performed more scale model tests in 2018. The sea anchors were removed because the wind moved the system faster than the plastic. The opening of the U would face the direction of travel, which would be achieved by having the underwater screen deeper in the middle of the system, creating more drag.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: On September 9, 2018, "System 001" (nicknamed "Wilson" in reference to the floating volleyball in the 2000 film "Cast Away)" deployed from San Francisco. The ship "Maersk Launcher" towed the system to a position 240 nautical miles off the coast, where it was put through a series of sea trials. It consisted of a long barrier with a wide skirt hanging beneath it. It is made from HDPE, and consists of 50x12 m sections joined. It was unmanned and incorporates solar-powered monitoring and navigation systems, including GPS, cameras, lanterns and AIS. The barrier and the screen mounting were produced in Austria by an Austrian supplier.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: When the tests were complete, and the organization deemed it okay to move forward, it was towed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for real-world duty. It arrived on October 16, 2018, and was deployed in operational configuration. "System 001" encountered difficulties retaining the plastic collected. The system collected debris, but soon lost it because the barrier did not retain a consistent speed through the water.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In November, the project attempted to widen the mouth of the U by 60-70m but failed. In late December, mechanical stress caused an 18-meter section to detach. Shortly thereafter, the rig began its journey to Hawaii for inspection and repair. During the two months of operation, the system had captured some 2,000 kg of plastic.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In mid-January 2019, the Wilson system completed its 800-mile journey and arrived in Hilo Bay, Hawaii. The Ocean Cleanup planned to return the repaired system to duty by summer. In mid-June, after four months of root cause analyses and redesign, a new revamped testing system (001/B) was deployed. In August, the team announced that after trying multiple alternatives, a water-borne parachute attached to slow the system, and expanding the cork line used to hold the screen in place would be tested. In October they announced that the new system successfully captured and collected plastic, and even microplastics. The model was also more efficient and smaller, making offshore adjustments possible.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In June 2019, they deployed System 001/B, a smaller test system. They tested speeding up the system with a string of inflatable buoys installed across the system's opening, and slowing down the system with a parachute sea anchor. The sea anchor was found to best capture plastic. This edition used simpler connections between the barrier and skirt, eliminated stabilizing structures and reduced the barrier size by two-thirds.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In October, The Ocean Cleanup unveiled their new river cleanup technology, The Interceptor, the first scalable solution to intercept river plastic and prevent it from reaching the ocean. Two systems were deployed in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Klang (Malaysia).


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In January, extreme flooding broke the barrier of Interceptor 001 in Jakarta. Although this was part of the design to reduce the force on the whole structure, the barrier was replaced with a newer model that has a stronger screen, simpler design, and an adjustable better-defined weak link.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In December, The Ocean Cleanup announced that production of the Interceptor series was to begin for global scale-up.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: On October 24, they launched their first product made from plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses, with funding going to their continued cleanup. They worked with DNV GL to develop a certification for plastic from water sources and the sunglasses were certified to originate from the GPGP.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In July 2021, a new design called System 002, also known as "Jenny", was deployed in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for testing. In October, the organization announced that the system had gathered of trash. In October, the project announced plans for System 003, which will span .


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In July 2022, the Ocean Cleanup announced that an Interceptor Original would be deployed near the mouth of Ballona Creek in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. It is the first Interceptor Original installed in the United States, and the second 3rd generation Interceptor Original to be deployed globally. On 25 July 2022, the project announced that it had removed more than 100,000 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch using its "System 002" and announced the beginning of its transition to the new "System 03", purportedly 10 times as effective as its predecessor. System 03 uses long u-shaped barriers towed by boats, with a skirt.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The latest Jenny design uses a towed, floating structure. The structure acts as a containment boom. A permeable screen underneath the float catches subsurface debris. It incorporated an barrier and added active propulsion to allow the system to operate at higher speed. Crewed boats tow the U-shaped barrier through the water at 1.5 knots. The ship can also be steered to areas with higher waste densities. In July 2022, the floating system reached the milestone of 100,000 kg of plastic removed from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The Interceptor is a solar-powered, automated system designed to capture and extract waste. Along with an optimized water flow path, a barrier guides rubbish towards the opening of the Interceptor and onto the conveyor belt, which delivers waste to the shuttle. The shuttle deposits the waste equally into one of six bins according to sensors. When the bins are almost full, local operators are informed with an automated message, who then empty them and send the waste to local waste management facilities. The Interceptor project is similar to a smaller-scale local project called Mr. Trash Wheel developed in Maryland's Baltimore harbor. In 2021, The Ocean Cleanup announced they are expanding their portfolio of Interceptor technologies to be able to tackle a wider range of rivers.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In August 2015, The Ocean Cleanup conducted its so-called "Mega Expedition", in which a fleet of approximately 30 vessels, including lead ship R/V "Ocean Starr", crossed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and mapped an area of 3.5 million square kilometers. The expedition collected data on the size, concentration and total mass of the plastic in the patch. According to the organization, this expedition collected more data on oceanic plastic pollution than the last 40 years combined.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In September and October 2016, The Ocean Cleanup launched its "Aerial Expedition", in which a C-130 Hercules aircraft conducted the first ever series of aerial surveys to map the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The goal was specifically to quantify the amount of large debris, including ghosts nets in the patch. Slat stated that the crew saw a lot more debris than expected.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The project released an app called "The Ocean Cleanup Survey App", which enables others to survey the ocean for plastic, and report their observations to The Ocean Cleanup.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In February 2015, the research team published a study in "Biogeosciences" about the vertical distribution of plastic, based on samples collected in the North Atlantic Gyre. They found that the plastic concentration decreases exponentially with depth, with the highest concentration at the surface, and approaching zero just a few meters deeper. A follow-up paper was published in "Scientific Reports" in October 2016.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In June 2017, researchers published a paper in "Nature Communications", with a model of the river plastic input into the ocean. Their model estimates that between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tonnes of plastic enter the world's oceans every year, with 86% of the input stemming from rivers in Asia.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In December 2017, they published a paper in "Environmental Science & Technology" about pollutants in oceanic plastic, based upon data from the Mega Expedition. They found that 84% of their plastic samples had at least one persistent organic pollutant in them exceeding safe levels. Furthermore, they found 180 times more plastic than naturally occurring biomass on the surface in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: On March 22, 2018, The Ocean Cleanup published a paper in "Scientific Reports", summarizing the combined findings from the Mega- and Aerial Expedition. They estimate that the Patch contains 1.8 trillion pieces of floating plastic, with a total mass of 79,000 metric tonnes. Microplastics (< 0.5 cm) make up 94% of the pieces, accounting for 8% of the mass. The study suggests that the amount of plastic in the patch increased exponentially since 1970.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In September 2019, they published a paper in Scientific Reports looking into the explanation of why emissions into the ocean are higher than the debris accumulated at the surface layer of the ocean. They argue that debris circulation dynamics can offer an explanation for this missing plastic and suggest that there is a significant amount of time between the initial emissions and accumulation offshore. The study indicates that current microplastics are mostly a result of the degradations of plastic produced in the 1990s or before.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In October 2019, when research revealed most ocean plastic pollution comes from Chinese cargo ships, a spokesperson from The Ocean Cleanup said: "Everyone talks about saving the oceans by stopping using plastic bags, straws and single use packaging. That's important, but when we head out on the ocean, that's not necessarily what we find."


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In May 2020, they released a paper in Scientific Reports showing that part of the plastic at the surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is breaking down into microplastics and sinking to the deep sea. Most debris is still found at the surface, with 90% in the first 5 meters.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: The Ocean Cleanup is mainly funded by donations and in-kind sponsors, including Maersk, Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff, Julius Baer Foundation and Royal DSM. The Ocean Cleanup raised over 2 million USD with the help of a crowdfunding campaign in 2014.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: In October 2020, they unveiled their first product made from plastic certified from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, The Ocean Cleanup sunglasses, to help fund the continuation of the cleanup.


title: The Ocean Cleanup

text: Criticisms and doubts about method, feasibility, efficiency and return on investment have been raised in the scientific community about the project. These include:


title: Cabinet of Kenya

text: The Cabinet of the Republic of Kenya is made up of the President, Deputy President, Attorney General and Cabinet Secretaries. The 2010 Constitution of Kenya allows a maximum of 22 ministries under Article 152 and sets the minimum number to 14. A Cabinet Secretary is not a Member of the Kenyan Parliament and has to be vetted by a parliamentary committee before their appointment.


title: Frustum

text: In geometry, a (from the Latin for "morsel"; plural: "frusta" or "frustums") is the portion of a solid (normally a pyramid or a cone) that lies between two parallel planes cutting this solid. In the case of a pyramid, the base faces are polygonal, the side faces are trapezoidal. A right frustum is a right pyramid or a right cone truncated perpendicularly to its axis; otherwise it is an oblique frustum.


title: Frustum

text: If all its edges are forced to become of the same length, then a frustum becomes a prism (possibly oblique or/and with irregular bases).


title: Frustum

text: In computer graphics, the viewing frustum is the three-dimensional region which is visible on the screen. It is formed by a clipped pyramid; in particular, "frustum culling" is a method of hidden surface determination.


title: Frustum

text: In the aerospace industry, a frustum is the fairing between two stages of a multistage rocket (such as the Saturn V), which is shaped like a truncated cone.


title: Frustum

text: A frustum's axis is that of the original cone or pyramid. A frustum is circular if it has circular bases; it is right if the axis is perpendicular to both bases, and oblique otherwise.


title: Frustum

text: Cones and pyramids can be viewed as degenerate cases of frusta, where one of the cutting planes passes through the apex (so that the corresponding base reduces to a point). The pyramidal frusta are a subclass of prismatoids.


title: Frustum

text: The formula for the volume of a pyramidal square frustum was introduced by the ancient Egyptian mathematics in what is called the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, written in the 13th dynasty ():


title: Frustum

text: The Egyptians knew the correct formula for the volume of such a truncated square pyramid, but no proof of this equation is given in the Moscow papyrus.


title: Frustum

text: The volume of a conical or pyramidal frustum is the volume of the solid before slicing its "apex" off, minus the volume of this "apex":


title: Frustum

text: where and are the base and top areas, and and are the perpendicular heights from the apex to the base and top planes.


title: Frustum

text: the formula for the volume can be expressed as the third of the product of this proportionality, formula_4, and of the difference of the cubes of the heights and only:


title: Frustum

text: Distributing formula_4 and substituting from its definition, the Heronian mean of areas and is obtained:


title: Frustum

text: Heron of Alexandria is noted for deriving this formula, and with it, encountering the imaginary unit: the square root of negative one.


title: Frustum

text: where "r" and "r" are the base and top radii respectively, and "s" is the slant height of the frustum.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored "Stone Butch Blues" in 1993. writing, notably "Stone Butch Blues" and pioneering non-fiction book "Transgender Warriors" (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg was born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised in Buffalo, New York in a working-class, Jewish family. At fourteen years old, began work at a display sign shop at a local department store. Feinberg eventually dropped out of Bennett High School, though officially received a diploma. Feinberg began frequenting gay bars in Buffalo and primarily worked in low-wage and temporary jobs, including washing dishes, cleaning cargo ships, working as an ASL interpreter, inputting medical data, and working at a PVC pipe factory and a book bindery.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: When Feinberg was in twenties, met members of the Workers World Party at a demonstration for the land rights and self-determination of Palestinians and joined the Buffalo branch of the party. After moving to New York City, Feinberg took part in anti-war, anti-racist, and pro-labor demonstrations on behalf of the party for many years, including the March Against Racism (Boston, 1974), a national tour about HIV/AIDS (1983–84), and a mobilization against KKK members (Atlanta, 1988).


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg began writing in the 1970s. As a member of the Workers World Party, was the editor of the political prisoners page of the "Workers World" newspaper for fifteen years, and by 1995, had become the managing editor.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg's first novel, the 1993 "Stone Butch Blues", won the Lambda Literary Award and the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award. While there are parallels to Feinberg's experiences as a working-class dyke, the work is not an autobiography. second novel, "Drag King Dreams", was released in 2006.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: In "Transgender Warriors", Feinberg defines "transgender" as a very broad umbrella, including all "people who cross the cultural boundaries of gender"—including butch dykes, passing women (those who passed as men only in order to find work or survive during war), and drag queens.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red", frequently appeared in the "Workers World" newspaper. Feinberg was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: In June 2019 Feinberg was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: In 2008, Feinberg was diagnosed with Lyme disease, a tick-borne disease (multiple tick-borne infections). Feinberg wrote that the infections first came about in the 1970s, when there was limited knowledge related to such diseases and that felt hesitant to deal with medical professionals for many years due to transgender identity. For these reasons, only received treatment later in life. In the 2000s, Feinberg created art and blogged about illnesses with a focus on disability art and class consciousness.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg's widow wrote in statement regarding Feinberg's death that Feinberg did not really care which pronouns a person used to address : "She preferred to use the pronouns /zie and /hir for herself, but also said: 'I care which pronoun is used, but people have been respectful to me with the wrong pronoun and disrespectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg described herself as "an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist."


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: According to Julie Enszner, a friend of Feinberg's, Feinberg sometimes "passed" as a man for safety reasons.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg's spouse, Minnie Bruce Pratt, is a professor at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and Massachusetts in 2011. In the mid and late 1990s they attended Camp Trans together.


title: Leslie Feinberg

text: Feinberg died on November 15, 2014, of complications due to multiple tick-borne infections, including "Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica", which had suffered from since the 1970s. Feinberg's last words were reported to be, "Hasten the revolution! Remember me as a revolutionary communist."


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The 57th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 8, 2015, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The show was broadcast live by CBS at 5:00 p.m. PST (). Rapper LL Cool J hosted the show for the fourth consecutive time.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The Grammy nominations were open for recordings released between October 1, 2013, and September 30, 2014. Breaking from tradition of a prime-time concert approach, the Grammy nominees were announced during an all-day event on December 5, 2014, starting with initial announcements on the "CBS This Morning" telecast, followed by updates made through The Grammys' official Twitter account.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: Sam Smith won four awards, including Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year for "Stay with Me" and Best Pop Vocal Album for "In the Lonely Hour". Beck's album "Morning Phase" was named Album of the Year. This prompted Kanye West, who later said he thought Beyoncé should have won, to jokingly leap onstage to interrupt Beck in a re-enactment of his 2009 MTV VMA scandal, but West left the stage without saying anything. Both Pharrell Williams and Beyoncé took three honors; with her wins, Beyoncé became the second-most-honored female musician in Grammy history following Alison Krauss. Lifetime Achievement awards were given to the Bee Gees, George Harrison, Pierre Boulez, Buddy Guy, and Flaco Jiménez.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The show aired simultaneously on Fox8 in Australia, Sky TV in New Zealand, and on Channel O in South Africa.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: Not all Grammys were presented during the live telecast. As in previous years, most awards were handed out during the so-called "pre-telecast ceremony", held at the Nokia Theater next to the Staples Center, which takes place during the afternoon before the main show. From 2015 on, this ceremony has been known as the "Premiere Ceremony". Approximately 70 Grammys were presented at this ceremony, consisting of the "minor" categories.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: During the ceremony, United States President Barack Obama delivered a pre-recorded message in which he spoke about domestic violence against women. His message was followed by a plea from domestic violence advocate Brooke Axtell and singer Katy Perry performing her ballad "By the Grace of God" as a dedication to the victims of the crime.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The eligibility period for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards was October 1, 2013, to September 30, 2014. The nominees were announced on December 5, 2014. The Album of the Year nominees were announced during "A Very Grammy Christmas", which was broadcast on the same day.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: "Performers who are not eligible for an award (such as orchestras, soloists or choirs) are mentioned in parentheses"


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The Best American Roots Performance is a new category in the American Roots genre field. It was presented to the creators of the best performance in this genre field, which includes traditional Northern American (or "regional roots") musical styles such as cajun, zydeco, polka and others.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: Another new category is the Best Roots Gospel Album in the Gospel genre field, for gospel albums in the aforementioned musical styles, including traditional southern Gospel music.


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: The Gospel genre field was redefined to make a clearer distinction between the traditional gospel music and the style known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). As mentioned above, the Best Roots Gospel Album category is new. The categories in the Gospel field will now be known as "Best Gospel Performance/Song", "Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song", "Best Gospel Album", "Best Contemporary Christian Music Album" and "Best Roots Gospel Album".


title: 57th Annual Grammy Awards

text: For the first time, the use of samples and/or interpolations of other works in a new track was permitted in the various songwriters categories. Until now, samples were only allowed in the Best Rap Song category, but these are now also eligible in the Song of the Year, Best Rock Song, Best R&B Song, Best Country Song, Best Gospel Performance/Song, Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song, Best American Roots Song and Best Song Written For Visual Media categories.


title: UTC+07:00

text: UTC+07:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +07:00. In ISO 8601 the associated time would be written as . It is 7 hours ahead of UTC, meaning that when the time in UTC areas is midnight (00:00), the time in UTC+07:00 areas would be 7:00 in the morning.


title: UTC+07:00

text: Also known as Indochina Time (ICT) and Western Indonesian Time (, WIB) (in Indonesia), it is used in:


title: UTC+07:00

text: "Principal cities: Medan, Lhokseumawe, Langsa, Garut, Gunungsitoli, Karawang, Jepara, Lubuklinggau, Batam, Pangkal Pinang, Palangkaraya, Pagar Alam, Probolinggo, Pasuruan, Purwakarta, Purwokerto, Pekalongan, Prabumulih, Palembang, Pematangsiantar, Padangsidempuan, Pekanbaru, Padang, Padang Panjang, Pontianak, Pariaman, Payakumbuh, Dumai, Binjai, Bogor, Cimahi, Cirebon, Bukittinggi, Bandar Lampung, Palembang, Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surakarta, Surat Thani, Solok, Sawahlunto, Tanjungpinang, Singkawang, Tebing Tinggi, Sibolga, Sungai Penuh, Sukabumi, Sumedang, Salatiga, Tasikmalaya, Tegal, Udon Thani, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Bangkok, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk"


title: UTC+07:00

text: Since legal, political, and economic in addition to physical or geographical criteria are used in the drawing of time zones, it follows that official time zones do not precisely adhere to meridian lines. The UTC+07:00 time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of exactly the area between meridians 97°30′ E and 112°30′ E. As a result, there are places which, despite lying in an area with a "physical" UTC+07:00 time, actually use another time zone. Conversely, there are areas that have adopted UTC+07:00, even though their "physical" time zone is UTC+08:00, UTC+06:00, or even UTC+05:00.


title: UTC+07:00

text: The Republic of China's offset for this time zone was Kansu-Szechwan, and was used until 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party took control of Mainland China following the Chinese Civil War and made the standard time for all areas under its control. Formerly, from 1918 to 1949, this time offset was used in eastern Sikang and Tsinghai, central Outer Mongolia (1921–1924), and all of Yunnan, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Ningsia, Suiyuan, Kansu, and Shensi.


title: UTC+07:00

text: This time zone was also the standard used in Malaysia and Singapore from 1 June 1905 to 31 December 1932.


title: Lou Brock

text: Louis Clark Brock (June 18, 1939September 6, 2020) was an American professional baseball outfielder. He began his 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career with the 1961 Chicago Cubs but spent most of it as a left fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. An All-Star for six seasons, Brock was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1985 and was inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame in 2014.


title: Lou Brock

text: Best known for stealing bases, Brock once held the major league records for most bases stolen in a single season and in a career. He led the National League (NL) in stolen bases in eight seasons. A member of the 3,000-hit club, he led the NL in doubles and triples in 1968, and in singles in 1972. In 1974, he was the runner-up for the NL Most Valuable Player Award. After retiring as a player, he served as a special instructor coach for the Cardinals.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, to a family of sharecroppers. His family moved to Collinston, Louisiana, when he was two years old. While his family did not have much money, he said that he never felt poor because, "If you don't have something, you don't miss it." Brock grew up as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team that included Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe, and Roy Campanella. Although he did not play in organized baseball until he reached the 11th grade, he learned much about the sport from listening to Cardinals radio broadcaster Harry Caray describe the way major league hitters stood at the plate. After attending high school in Mer Rouge, Louisiana, he received academic assistance to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, but when a low grade in his first semester meant the possibility of losing his scholarship, he decided to try out for the school's baseball team in order to secure an athletic scholarship.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock hit for a .189 batting average in his first year of college baseball, but improved the following year to hit for a .500 average. Southern University won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics' baseball championship during his junior year, and Brock was selected for the United States baseball team in the 1959 Pan American Games. When Brock decided to try for a professional baseball career, he traveled to St. Louis to try out for the Cardinals, but the scout who had recommended him was in Seattle to sign Ray Washburn. He then decided to try out for the Chicago Cubs, who signed him as an amateur free agent in 1960. Assigned to play for the St. Cloud Rox, Brock won the 1961 Northern League batting championship with a .361 batting average.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock made his major league debut with the Cubs on September 10, 1961, at the age of 22. In his rookie season of 1962, Brock became one of four players to hit a home run into the center-field bleachers at the old Polo Grounds in New York City since its 1923 reconstruction. His blast came against Al Jackson in the first game of a June 17 doubleheader against the New York Mets and was one of two that cleared the wall in consecutive days, with Hank Aaron's coming the very next day. Joe Adcock was the first to hit a ball over that wall, in 1953. Babe Ruth reached the old bleachers (a comparable distance) before the reconstruction. Brock was not known as a power hitter, though he aspired to be one.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock had great speed and base running instincts, but the young right fielder failed to impress the Cubs management, hitting for only a combined .260 average over his first two seasons. In 1964 after losing patience with his development, the Cubs gave up on Brock and made him part of a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals. The June 15 deadline deal for pitcher Ernie Broglio saw Brock, Jack Spring, and Paul Toth head to St. Louis for Broglio, Bobby Shantz, and Doug Clemens. Cardinals general manager Bing Devine specifically sought Brock at the insistence of Cardinals' manager Johnny Keane to increase team speed and solidify the Cardinals' lineup, which was struggling after the retirement of left fielder Stan Musial in 1963. At the time, many thought the deal was a heist for the Cubs. Broglio had led the National League in wins four years earlier, and had won 18 games the season before the trade.


title: Lou Brock

text: After Brock was traded to the Cardinals, his career turned around significantly. He moved to left field and batted .348 and stole 33 bases for the remainder of the 1964 season. At the time of the trade, the Cardinals were 28–31, in eighth place in the National League, trailing even the Cubs, who were 27–27 and in sixth place. Brock helped the Cardinals storm from behind to capture the National League pennant on the last day of the season. Four months to the day after Brock's trade, the Cardinals won the 1964 World Series in seven games over the favored New York Yankees, who were appearing in their 14th World Series in 16 years (and their last until a dozen years later). Brock's contributions to the Cardinals' championship season were recognized when he finished in tenth place in voting for the 1964 National League Most Valuable Player Award. Meanwhile, Broglio won only seven games for the Chicago Cubs before retiring from baseball after the 1966 season. To this day, the trade of Brock for Broglio is considered one of the most lopsided deals in baseball history.


title: Lou Brock

text: In 1966, Brock ended Maury Wills' six-year reign as the National League's stolen base champion with 74 steals. In David Halberstam's book, "October 1964", the author stated manager Johnny Keane asked Brock to forgo hitting home runs in favor of stealing bases. Brock went on to lead the National League in stolen bases eight times within a nine-year span between 1966 and 1974 (former teammate Bobby Tolan led the league in steals in 1970).


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock began the 1967 season by hitting five home runs in the first four games of the season, becoming the first player to do so (Barry Bonds tied this record in 2002). He was hitting for a .328 average by mid-June to earn the role as the starting left fielder for the National League in the 1967 All-Star Game. After suffering through a mid-season slump, he recovered to finish the season with a career-high 206 hits and a .299 batting average while leading the league in stolen bases and runs scored as the Cardinals won the National League pennant by ten and a half games. Brock became the first player to steal 50 bases and hit 20 home runs in the same season. In the 1967 World Series, Brock hit for a .414 average, scored 8 runs, and set a World Series record with seven stolen bases as the Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox in seven games.


title: Lou Brock

text: The Cardinals won the National League pennant for a second consecutive year in 1968 as Brock once again led the league in stolen bases as well as in doubles and triples. In the 1968 World Series against the Detroit Tigers, Brock had three stolen bases in Game 3 and contributed a double, triple, home run, and four runs batted in during Game 4 to help the Cardinals build a three-games to one advantage over the Tigers. The Cardinals appeared to be on the verge of winning a second consecutive World Series, going into the fifth inning of Game 5 with a 3–2 lead. Although Brock's base running abilities had proven to be a factor in the previous four games, his carelessness may have cost the Cardinals a run. After Brock had hit a double, he tried to score standing up on Julián Javier's single to left, but Willie Horton threw him out with a strong throw to home plate. Detroit rallied for three runs in the seventh inning as Mickey Lolich shut out the Cardinals for the final eight innings to win the game for the Tigers. In Game 7, Brock had another crucial miscue when he was picked off base by Lolich, extinguishing a possible Cardinals rally. The Tigers rallied from being down three games to one behind the excellent pitching of Mickey Lolich to win the series. Brock once again stole seven bases and was the leading hitter in the series, posting a .464 batting average with 6 runs and 5 runs batted in.


title: Lou Brock

text: Beginning in 1969, Brock produced six consecutive seasons with 190 hits or better. He was named NL Player of the Month for the first of three times in his career in May 1971 with a .405 batting average and 8 stolen bases. In August 1973, he broke a record set by Ty Cobb when he stole his 50th base of the season, marking the ninth time he had stolen 50 or more bases in a season. Brock won his second NL Player of the Month Award in August 1974, marking one of only four times the award was given to a player who slugged below .500.


title: Lou Brock

text: In 1972, Brock improved on Maury Wills' method by, instead of trying to maximize lead off distance, focusing on starting with a little momentum. "Brock pioneered the rolling start," states a later "Sports Illustrated" article, which also maintains that base-stealing tends to be over-rated as a factor in team success.


title: Lou Brock

text: On September 10, 1974, Brock tied Wills' single-season stolen bases mark of 104 with a first-inning steal of second base, and then captured sole possession of the record with another swipe of second in the seventh inning. He ended the season with a new major league single-season record of 118 stolen bases. Brock finished second to Steve Garvey in the balloting for the 1974 National League Most Valuable Player Award.


title: Lou Brock

text: In a game against the San Diego Padres on August 29, 1977, at San Diego Stadium, Brock broke Ty Cobb's career record of 892 stolen bases and became the all-time major league stolen base leader. Cobb's record had been one of the most durable in baseball and, like Babe Ruth's record of 714 career home runs, had been considered unbreakable by some observers.  Brock held this record until May 31, 1991, when it was broken by Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics, who would go on to steal a total of 1,406 bases.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock remained best known for base-stealing and starting Cardinals rallies. He was said to have disliked Wills' method of base-stealing, instead shortening his leads and going hard. He was also an early student of game films. In 1964, Brock acquired a movie camera and filmed opposing pitchers from the dugout to study their windups and pickoff moves to detect weaknesses he could exploit.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock fell into a hitting slump early in the 1978 season and lost the left fielder's job. However, he fought back during spring training in 1979 with a .345 batting average to regain his starting job. Brock was named Player of the Month for the month of May 1979, when he produced a .433 batting average.


title: Lou Brock

text: On August 13, 1979, in a game against the team that traded him, the Chicago Cubs, Brock became the fourteenth Major League Baseball player to garner 3,000 hits. About one month later, Carl Yastrzemski reached the same plateau and was promptly invited to the White House by Massachusetts native and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Brock was reported to have felt slighted that he hadn't received a similar invitation. Brock originally said that he wouldn't go to the White House even if he was invited. However, after consideration, he decided that forgiveness was the best course and accepted a belated invitation to meet with the President. Brock retired at the end of the season, having posted a .304 batting average in his last season at the age of 40. At the end of the season, he was named the National League Comeback Player of the Year — the first player to be so named in his final Major League season.


title: Lou Brock

text: In his 19-year major league career, Brock played in 2,616 games and accumulated 3,023 hits in 10,332 at bats for a .293 career batting average along with 486 doubles, 141 triples, 149 home runs, 900 RBI, 1,610 runs, 938 stolen bases, 761 bases on balls, a .343 on-base percentage, and a .410 slugging percentage. A six-time All-Star, Brock hit over .300 eight times during his career. He ended his career with a .959 career fielding percentage.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock held the single-season stolen base record with 118 until it was broken by Rickey Henderson with 130 in 1982. He also held the major league record for a career stolen bases with 938 until it was also broken by Henderson in 1991. He led the National League in stolen bases for a record eight times and also had a record 12 consecutive seasons with 50 or more stolen bases. Brock is still the National League's leader in career stolen bases.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock's .391 World Series batting average is the highest for anyone who played over 20 series games. His 14 stolen bases in World Series play are also a series record. Brock's 13 hits in the 1968 World Series tied a single-series record previously made by Bobby Richardson in 1964 against his Cardinals' team, and was in turn later tied in 1986 by Marty Barrett.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock received numerous awards during his playing career. In January 1968 he was named the recipient of the Babe Ruth Award as the outstanding player in the 1967 World Series. Brock was honored with The Sporting News Player of the Year Award in 1974. In the wake of his record-setting 118 stolen bases during the 1974 season, Brock was named the winner of the Roberto Clemente Award in March 1975, for best exemplifying the game of baseball both on and off the field. In 1977 he was awarded the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award as the player who best exemplified Lou Gehrig's ability and character. In 1978, the National League announced that its annual stolen base leader would receive the Lou Brock Award, making Brock the first active player to have an award named after him.


title: Lou Brock

text: In October 1979, Brock was named the National League's Comeback Player of the Year. In December 1979, he was named as the recipient of the Hutch Award, given to the player who best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire of Fred Hutchinson. On September 9, 1979, the St. Louis Cardinals retired Brock's jersey number 20, an honor that had been bestowed upon only three other players; Stan Musial, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Gibson. In 1983, he was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985, his first year of eligibility. He was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1992. Brock was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in May 1994 and, in 1995 he was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. In 1999, he was ranked Number 58 on "The Sporting News"' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2014, Brock and 21 other former players and personnel were inducted into the new St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum.


title: Lou Brock

text: After retiring from baseball, Brock prospered as a businessman, especially as a florist in the St. Louis area. He briefly worked as a color analyst for "Monday Night Baseball" on ABC in 1980, and for Chicago White Sox telecasts the following year. Brock regularly appeared at Cardinals games. When he stepped onto the field he was always greeted by a loud, low-pitched cheer of "Loooouuuuuuuuuuuu". He also lent his name to a unique rainhat, shaped like a miniature umbrella, meant to be worn at games during showers in lieu of retreating to the concourse. The product was called the "Brockabrella".


title: Lou Brock

text: During the 1980s and 1990s, Brock was a spring training baserunning instructor with various MLB clubs, including the 1982 Cardinals, 1987 Minnesota Twins, 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers and 1993 Montreal Expos. The first three of those four teams won the World Series.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock and his wife, Jackie, were both ordained ministers serving at Abundant Life Fellowship Church in St. Louis, and he was a director on the board of YTB International. Brock's speed was referred to in the song "Check the Rhime" by the pioneering "jazz rap" hip-hop ensemble A Tribe Called Quest. On December 5, 2006 he was recognized for his accomplishments on and off of the field when he received the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation "Lifetime Achievement Award". Brock was the father of former University of Southern California Trojan and National Football League player Lou Brock Jr. He is also the granduncle of sports journalist and broadcaster Taylor Rooks.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock's left leg was amputated below the knee in October 2015, because of an infection related to a diabetic condition.


title: Lou Brock

text: Brock announced on April 13, 2017, that he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that starts in the bone marrow's plasma cells. On July 28, 2017, Brock and his wife said they had received word from Mercy Hospital's doctors that, according to their blood tests, the cancerous cells were gone. Brock said the cancer had been declining for some time. "We got reports that it was 25% gone, then 50%, then 75% gone," he said. "The doctors were absolute. [Cancer] is not there."


title: The Candy Man

text: "The Candy Man" (or alternatively, "The Candy Man Can") is a song that originally appeared in the 1971 film "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory". It was written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley specifically for the film. Although the original 1964 book by Roald Dahl ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") contains lyrics adapted for other songs in the film, the lyrics to "The Candy Man" do not appear in the book. The soundtrack version of the song was sung by Aubrey Woods, who played Bill the candy store owner in the film.


title: The Candy Man

text: Lyricist Anthony Newley has said in interviews that upon hearing Woods' rendition for the first time, he was appalled at the lack of commerciality in the performance – worrying that it would possibly be depriving the duo of not only a hit record, but an Oscar nomination as well.


title: The Candy Man

text: Newley's distaste for the performance became so intense that he was willing to forego his own performance fee if he were to be allowed to re-arrange and re-record the song himself as well as pay for the session. When denied by producer David Wolper due to contractual stipulations by film composer Walter Scharf, Newley tried another tactic: lobbying to be allowed to at least re-dub his own vocal, possibly becoming the ghost voice for Woods; however, Woods's contract forbade that as well. Anthony Newley recorded his own version for MGM Records in 1971 before Sammy Davis Jr.'s hit.


title: The Candy Man

text: Sammy Davis Jr.'s version appears on the "Sammy Davis Jr. Now" album. Although Davis admitted to disliking the song, finding it too saccharine, it became his only number-one hit, spending three weeks at the top of the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart starting 10 June 1972, and two weeks at the top of the easy-listening chart. "Billboard" ranked it as the No. 5 song for 1972. The track featured backing vocals by the Mike Curb Congregation, who earlier released an unsuccessful version of the song. It is recognized as one of Davis's signature songs, and "The Candy Man" came to be his moniker later in his career. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male at the 15th Annual Grammy Awards.


title: The Candy Man

text: In 2014, Sammy Davis Jr.'s lead vocals from the original 1972 recording were sampled to create a "virtual duet" with singer Barry Manilow, which appeared on Manilow's album "My Dream Duets".


title: The Candy Man

text: "Candyman" was covered by German-Russian producer Zedd featuring American singer Aloe Blacc and released as a single on February 26, 2016, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of M&M's.


title: The Candy Man

text: The track received generally positive reviews. Hugh McIntyre wrote that the song is catchy and fun. Aloe Blacc's vocals were praised by Ryan Middleton, who thought that they fit well with Zedd's music. The song was criticized by Diplo, saying that the song was a "rip-off" of Flume.


title: The Candy Man

text: "The Candy Man" has been featured in a number of radio, films and TV shows after its introduction in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory".


title: Under the Volcano

text: Under the Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in November 1939. The book takes its name from the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, that overshadow Quauhnahuac and the characters. "Under the Volcano" was Lowry's second and last complete novel.


title: Under the Volcano

text: The novel was adapted for radio on "Studio One" in 1947 but had gone out of print by the time Lowry died in 1957. Its popularity restored, in 1984 it served as the basis of a film of the same name. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Under the Volcano" at number 11 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


title: Under the Volcano

text: It was included in Modern Library's 100 Best English-Language Novels, Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, Time's All-Time 100 Novels, and Anthony Burgess' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Lowry had already published one novel, "Ultramarine" (1933), by the time he was working on "Under the Volcano", and in 1936 wrote a short story called "Under the Volcano" containing the kernel of the future novel. That story was not published until the 1960s; passages of it are found also in the account of Sigbjorn Wilderness, found in "Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend Is Laid", edited by Margerie Bonner (Lowry's second wife) and published in 1968. It contains what Conrad Aiken would later call "the horse theme," so important in "Under the Volcano". The story includes the horse branded with the number seven, the dying Indian encountered while on a bus trip, the "pelado" who steals the Indian's money to pay his bus fare, and the inability of the spectator (Wilderness in the short story, the Consul in the novel) to act. All this ended up in the novel's eighth chapter.


title: Under the Volcano

text: The first version of the novel was developed while Lowry lived in Mexico, frequently drunk and out of control while his first marriage was breaking up. In 1940, Lowry hired an agent, Harold Matson, to find a publisher for the manuscript but found nothing but rejection—this manuscript is referred to by scholars as the 1940 version, and differs in details of various significance from the published version. Between 1940 and 1944, Lowry revised the novel (with significant editorial assistance from Margerie Bonner), a process which occupied him completely: during those years Lowry, who had been wont to work on many projects at the same time, worked on nothing but the manuscript, a process documented exhaustively by Frederick Asals. One of the most significant changes involved Yvonne's character: In earlier versions she was the Consul's daughter, but, by 1940, she was his unfaithful wife. In that version (and a 1941 revision), chapter 11 ended with her and Hugh making love.


title: Under the Volcano

text: In 1944, the manuscript was nearly lost in a fire at the Lowrys' cabin in Dollarton, British Columbia. Margerie Bonner rescued the unfinished novel, but all of Lowry's other works in progress were lost in the blaze. The burned manuscript was called "In Ballast to the White Sea," and would have been the third book in a trilogy made up of "Under the Volcano," an expanded version of "Lunar Caustic", and "In Ballast." Like Dante's "Divine Comedy," these were to be infernal, purgatorial, and paradisal, respectively. Asals notes that the important 1944 revision evidences Lowry and Bonner paying extraordinary attention to references to fire in the novel, especially in Yvonne's dream before her death.


title: Under the Volcano

text: The novel was finished in 1945 and immediately sent to different publishers. In late winter, while travelling in Mexico, Lowry learned the novel had been accepted by two publishing companies: Reynal & Hitchcock in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. Following critical reports from two readers, Cape had reservations about publishing and wrote to Lowry on 29 November 1945 asking him to make drastic revisions, though he added that if Lowry didn't make the revisions "it does not necessarily mean I would say no". Lowry's lengthy reply, dated 2 January 1946, was a passionate defence of the book in which he sensed he had created a work of lasting greatness: "Whether it sells or not seems to me either way a risk. But there is something about the destiny of the creation of the book that seems to tell me it just might go "on" selling a very long time." The letter includes a detailed summary of the book's key themes and how the author intended each of the 12 chapters to work; in the end, Cape published the novel without further revision.


title: Under the Volcano

text: "Under the Volcano" and "Ultramarine" were both out of print by the time Lowry died of alcoholism (and possibly sleeping pills) in 1957, but the novel has since made a comeback. In 1998, it was rated as number 11 on the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century compiled by the Modern Library. "TIME" included the novel in its list of "100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present," calling it a "vertiginous picture of self-destruction, seen through the eyes of a man still lucid enough to report to us all the harrowing particulars."


title: Under the Volcano

text: The book consists of twelve chapters, the first of which introduces the narrative proper and which is set exactly a year after the events. The following eleven chapters happen in a single day and follow the Consul chronologically, starting early on the morning of the Day of the Dead with the return of his wife, Yvonne, who left him the year before, to his violent death at the end of the day. In contrast with the omniscient narrative mode of the 1940 version, the published novel "focus[es] each chapter through the mind of one central figure, no two sequential chapters employing the same character's consciousness".


title: Under the Volcano

text: The number of chapters was important numerologically, as Lowry explained in a letter to Jonathan Cape: there are twelve hours in a day (and most of the novel happens in a single day), twelve months in a year (one year elapses between chapter 1 and the end of chapter 12). Besides, the number 12 is of symbolic importance in the Kabbalah which, according to Lowry, represents "man's spiritual aspirations". Finally, "I have to have my 12", Lowry says, since he hears in it "a clock slowly striking midnight for Faust".


title: Under the Volcano

text: In the first chapter, set on 2 November 1939, Jacques Laruelle and Dr. Vigil drink anisette at the Hotel Casino de la Selva, on a hill above Quauhnahuac (an approximation of the Nahuatl name of Cuernavaca), and reminisce on the Consul's presence, exactly a year ago. His alcoholism is discussed and his unhappy marriage; that his wife came back to him is remarked upon as particularly striking. Their conversation over (they are to meet later again that night at a party), Laruelle walks down from the hotel into town through the ruins of a palace of Archduke Maximilian. Along the way he remembers spending a season with the Consul: Laruelle's family and the Consul's adopted family (the Taskersons, consisting of a poetic-minded patriarch and a set of hard-drinking sons) rented adjoining summer homes on the English Channel. Afterward Laruelle spent some time with the Taskersons in England but the friendship soon petered out.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Laruelle is scheduled to leave Quauhnahuac the next day, but has not yet packed and does not want to go home, spending his time instead at the Cervecería XX, a bar connected to the local cinema, run by Sr. Bustamente. At that bar, he is given a book he had borrowed a year and a half before from the Consul—an anthology of Elizabethan plays he had meant to use for a film on the Faustus myth. Playing a variation on Sortes virgilianae, his eyes fall on the closing words of the chorus in Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight...", then finds a desperate letter by the Consul to Yvonne, a final plea for her to return, interspersed with descriptions of alcoholic stupor and delirium tremens. Laruelle burns the letter. A bell outside sounds "dolente, delor" symbolising the closing of the chapter.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Chapter 2 finds the Consul sitting at the bar of the Bella Vista hotel in Quauhnahuac at 7:00am on 2 November 1938, drinking whisky the morning after the Red Cross ball, when Yvonne enters. The Consul has not been home yet and isn't wearing any socks (as is explained later, his alcoholism is so advanced he cannot put them on). Yvonne has returned to try and save their marriage, but the Consul appears stuck in the past and begins to talk about his visit to Oaxaca, where he went on a drinking binge after Yvonne left. In interior monologue Yvonne wonders if the Consul will be able to return from "this stupid darkness". The chapter had opened with an exclamation about a child's corpse being transported by train; the Consul explains that in such cases in Mexico the dead child always needs to be accompanied by an adult, leading to a reference to William Blackstone, "the man who went to live among the Indians", a reference the Consul will repeat later on in the day.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Yvonne and the Consul leave the hotel and walk through town, along the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca; they stop at a printer's shop window, their attention drawn by a photograph of a boulder split in two by the elements, an image Yvonne immediately recognises as emblematic of her marriage. On the way to their house in the "Calle Nicaragua" they stop at Jacques Laruelle's "bizarre" house, with the inscription "No se puede vivir sin amar" ("one cannot live without loving") on the wall, and Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl come into view. The Consul tells Yvonne that Hugh is staying with him as well and is expected back from a trip this very day. As they enter the garden of their house a pariah dog follows them in.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Yvonne inspects the garden, which has fallen into chaos while she was away, and the Consul is making an attempt to keep up the appearance that he is dealing with his drinking problem. Throughout the chapter, hallucinations, memories, and imaginary conversations interrupt his train of thought, and he hears voices that alternately tell him all is lost and that there is still hope. Dr. Vigil had prescribed him a strychnine concoction which the Consul sips from continuously, all the while trying to resist the temptation to drink whisky. While Yvonne is in the bathroom, however, he leaves the house to visit a "cantina" but falls facedown in the street, passed out, and is almost run over by an English driver in an MG Magna who offers him Burke's whisky from a flask. While unconscious, memories of Hugh return to him, particularly his having forced Yvonne on him. Back at the house, he enters Yvonne's bedroom but their conversation is halted, in part by the temptation of the bottle of Johnnie Walker he knows is on the patio and in part by hallucinations. An unsuccessful attempt at making love to her establishes his impotence and his despair; afterward, while Yvonne is crying in her room, he murmurs "I love you" to his bottle of whisky and falls asleep.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Much of the chapter takes Hugh's point of view. Hugh arrives at his brother's home and it's understood that he's not wearing any of his own clothes. Because his clothes have been impounded, he wears his brother's jacket, shirt, and bag. He stores his news dispatch in his brother's jacket. References to the Battle of the Ebro are found throughout the chapter, as are mentions of Hugh's friend Juan Cerillo, a Mexican who was in Spain with Hugh. Hugh sees Yvonne at the Consul's home; it's obvious that she has some hold on his heart. In fact, an affair between the two is alluded to in the chapter. While the Consul is sleeping, Hugh and Yvonne rent horses and ride through the countryside, stopping at a brewery and then at the country estate of Archduke Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, haunted by the memory of Maximilian and his consort Carlota, and of the Consul and Yvonne in happier times.


title: Under the Volcano

text: While Hugh and Yvonne are out, the Consul endures a "horripilating" hangover. The chapter begins with a vision of a man suffering unquenchable thirst; while the Consul inspects his garden (the Garden of Eden is referenced throughout, and a snake crosses his path) he finds a bottle of tequila he had hidden, and sees a newly placed sign: LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN? QUE ES SUYO? EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN! He mistranslates this as "You like this garden? Why is it yours? We evict those who destroy!" As he is getting more drunk he has visions of the "Farolito", a bar in Parian. He engages his American neighbour, Mr. Quincey, in conversation. Quincey obviously disdains the drunk Consul, who speaks of the Garden of Eden and proposes that perhaps Adam's punishment was to continue to live in the Garden of Eden, alone, "cut off from God". Vigil (also hungover from the Red Cross ball) visits Quincey; he carries a newspaper with headlines of the Battle of the Ebro and the sickness of Pope Pius XI. He then visits the Consul, telling him to stay away from mescal and tequila. Hugh and Yvonne return, and the Consul wakes up from a black-out in the bathroom, slowly remembering the strained conversation during which it is decided that rather than accept Vigil's offer of a day trip to Guanajuato they will go to Tomalin, near Parian.


title: Under the Volcano

text: Hugh ruminates upon his career as sailor, journalist, and musician, while smoking a cigar. He imagines himself to be a traitor to his "journalist friends", somehow responsible for the Ebro, and comparable to Adolf Hitler as "another frustrated artist" and anti-semite. It is revealed that Hugh's signing aboard the "S.S. Philoctetes" was intended as a publicity stunt to promote his songs, which are to be printed by a Jewish publisher named Bolowski. Doubting his choice, Hugh attempts to escape his journey to sea but is thwarted by the Consul, who wires words of support for Hugh's choice to their aunt. Hugh remembers his time aboard the "Philoctetes" and, later, the "Oedipus Tyrannus", revealing his naivete and bigotry. Back in England, Hugh finds that Bolowski has made "No effort [...] to distribute [Hugh's songs]". It is further revealed that Hugh cuckolds Bolowski, who raises charges of plagiarism against Hugh. Later, Bolowski drops the charges. Once again in the present, Hugh shaves the Consul, who is suffering from "delirium tremens". The two men discuss literature and the occult; their discussion is intermingled with Hugh's ongoing inner monologue. At the end of the chapter, Hugh, Yvonne, the Consul, and Laruelle make their way to Laruelle's home. On the way, the Consul receives a postcard from Yvonne, which she wrote the year before, days after she left him, and which has travelled around the world before reaching Quauhnahuac.