title: Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012

text: While there is general agreement about its provisions on maternal and child health, there is great debate on its mandate that the Philippine government and the private sector will fund and undertake widespread distribution of family planning devices such as condoms, birth control pills, and IUDs, as the government continues to disseminate information on their use through all health care centers.


text: Passage of the legislation was controversial and highly divisive, with academics, religious institutions, and major political figures declaring their support or opposition while it was pending in the legislature. Heated debates and rallies both supporting and opposing the RH Bill took place nationwide.


text: The Supreme Court of the Philippines delayed the implementation of the law in March 2013 in response to challenges. On April 3, 2014, the Court ruled that the law was "not unconstitutional" but struck down eight provisions partially or in full.


text: The history of reproductive health in the Philippines dates back to 1967 when Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was among the heads of state who signed the Declaration on Population. The 30 overall countries who participated in the signing of the declaration was acknowledged by U.N. Secretary-General U Thant during a United Nations ceremony on December 11, 1967, a day after Human Rights Day. The Philippines agreed that the population problem should be considered as the principal element for long-term economic development. Thus, the Population Commission was created to push for a lower family size norm and provide information and services to lower fertility rates.


text: Starting 1967, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) began shouldering 80% of the total family planning commodities (contraceptives) of the country, which amounted to $3 million annually. In 1975, the U.S. adopted as its policy the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200). The policy gives "paramount importance" to population control measures and the promotion of contraception among 13 populous countries, including the Philippines to control rapid population growth which they deem to be inimical to the sociopolitical national interests of the U.S., since the "U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad", and these countries can produce destabilizing opposition forces against the U.S. It recommends the U.S. leadership to "influence national leaders" and that "improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the UN, USIA, and USAID."


text: Different presidents had different points of emphasis. President Ferdinand Marcos pushed for a systematic distribution of contraceptives all over the country, a policy that was called "coercive", by its leading administrator. The Corazon Aquino administration focused on giving couples the right to have the number of children they prefer, while Fidel V. Ramos shifted from population control to population management. Joseph Estrada used mixed methods of reducing fertility rates, focusing on mainstreaming natural family planning.


text: In 1989, the Philippine Legislators' Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD) was established, "dedicated to the formulation of viable public policies requiring legislation on population management and socio-economic development". In 2000, the Philippines signed the Millennium Declaration and committed to attain the Millennium Declaration Goals by 2015, including promoting gender equality and health. In 2003, USAID started its phase out of a 33-year-old program by which free contraceptives were given to the country. Aid recipients such as the Philippines faced the challenge to fund its own contraception program. In 2004, the Department of Health (DOH) introduced the Philippines Contraceptive Self-Reliance Strategy, arranging for the replacement of these donations with domestically provided contraceptives.


text: In August 2010, the government announced a collaborative work with the USAID in implementing a comprehensive marketing and communications strategy in favor of family planning called "May Plano Sila" (They Have a Plan).


text: The basic content of the Consolidated Reproductive Health Bill is divided into the following sections.


text: SEC. 12. Integration of Family Planning and Responsible Parenthood Component in Anti-Poverty Programs


text: The bill mandates the government to "promote, without biases, all effective natural and modern methods of family planning that are medically safe and legal."


text: Although abortion is recognized as illegal and punishable by law, the bill states that "the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner".


text: The bill calls for a "multi-dimensional approach" integrates a component of family planning and responsible parenthood into all government anti-poverty programs. Age-appropriate reproductive health and sexuality education is required from grade five to fourth year high school using "life-skills and other approaches."


text: The bill also mandates the Department of Labor and Employment to guarantee the reproductive health rights of its female employees. Companies with fewer than 200 workers are required to enter into partnership with health care providers in their area for the delivery of reproductive health services.


text: Employers with more than 200 employees shall provide reproductive health services to all employees in their own respective health facilities. Those with fewer than 200 workers shall enter into partnerships with health professionals for the delivery of reproductive health services. Employers shall inform employees of the availability of family planning. They are also obliged to monitor pregnant working employees among their workforce and ensure they are provided paid half-day prenatal medical leaves for each month of the pregnancy period that they are employed.


text: The national government and local governments will ensure the availability of reproductive health care services like family planning and prenatal care.


text: Any person or public official who prohibits or restricts the delivery of legal and medically safe reproductive health care services will be meted penalty by imprisonment or a fine.


text: Free choice regarding reproductive health enables people, especially the poor, to have the number of children they want and can feasibly care and provide for. There are several studies cited by those who support the bill:


text: President Aquino stated he was not an author of the bill. He also stated that he gives full support to a firm population policy, educating parents to be responsible, providing contraceptives to those who ask for them, but he refuses to promote contraceptive use. He said that his position "is more aptly called responsible parenthood rather than reproductive health".


text: The Philippines is the 39th most densely populated country, with a density over 335 per square kilometer, and the population growth rate is 1.9% (2010 Census), 1.957% (2010 est. by CIA World Factbook), or 1.85% (2005–2010 high variant estimate by the UN Population Division, "World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision") coming from 3.1 in 1960.


text: The 2013 total fertility rate (TFR) is 3.20 births per woman, from a TFR of 7 in 1960. In addition, the total fertility rate for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, which is about one third the TFR of the poorest quintile (5.9 children per woman). The TFR for women with college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only an elementary education (4.5 children per woman).


text: Congressman Lagman states that the bill "recognizes the verifiable link between a huge population and poverty. Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty".


text: The University of the Philippines School of Economics presented two papers in support of the bill: "Population and Poverty: the Real Score" (2004), and "Population, Poverty, Politics and the Reproductive Health Bill" (2008). According to these economists, which include Solita Monsod, Gerardo Sicat, Cayetano Paderanga, Ernesto M. Pernia, and Stella Alabastro-Quimbo, "rapid population growth and high fertility rates, especially among the poor, do exacerbate poverty and make it harder for the government to address it", while at the same time clarifying that it would be "extreme" to view "population growth as the principal cause of poverty that would justify the government resorting to draconian and coercive measures to deal with the problem (e.g., denial of basic services and subsidies to families with more than two children)". They illustrate the connection between rapid population growth and poverty by comparing the economic growth and population growth rates of Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, wherein the first two grew more rapidly than the Philippines due to lower population growth rates. They stressed that "the experience from across Asia indicates that a population policy cum government-funded [family planning] program has been a critical complement to sound economic policy and poverty reduction".


text: In "Population and Poverty", Aniceto Orbeta, Jr., showed that poverty incidence is higher among big families: 57.3% of Filipino families with seven children are in poverty while only 23.8% of families who have two children live below the poverty threshold.


text: Proponents argue that smaller families and wider birth intervals resulting from the use of contraceptives allow families to invest more in each child's education, health, nutrition and eventually reduce poverty and hunger at the household level. At the national level, fertility reduction cuts the cost of social services with fewer people attending school or seeking medical care and as demand eases for housing, transportation, jobs, water, food, and other natural resources. The Asian Development Bank in 2004 also listed a large population as one of the major causes of poverty in the country, together with weak macroeconomic management, employment issues, an underperforming agricultural sector and an unfinished land reform agenda, governance issues including corruption.


text: Opponents refer to a 2003 study of Rand Corporation, which concluded that "there is little cross-country evidence that population growth impedes or promotes economic growth...population neutralism has in fact been the predominant school in thinking among academics about population growth for the last half-century". For example, the 1992 study of Ross Levine and David Renelt, which covered 119 countries over 30 years (versus a University of the Philippines study of 3 countries over a few years). The RAND study also said that a large population can promote growth given the right fundamentals. Thus, they refer to the HSBC 2012 projection for 2050 that the Philippines will be 16th largest economy due to its large growing population, and those whose populations are decreasing will suffer decline.


text: In a recent development, two authors of the Reproductive Health Bill changed their stand on the provisions of the bill regarding population and development. Reps. Emerciana de Jesus and Luzviminda Ilagan wanted to delete three provisions which state that "gender equality and women empowerment are central elements of reproductive health and population and development", which integrate responsible parenthood and family planning programs into anti-poverty initiatives, and which name the Commission on Population and Development or POPCOM as a coordinating body. The two party-list representatives strongly state that poverty is not due to over-population but because of inequality and corruption.


text: The "Wall Street Journal" in July 2012 said that Aquino's "promotion of a 'reproductive health' bill is jarring" since it could lead to "a demographic trap of too few workers. The Philippines doesn't have too many people, it has too few pro-growth policies".


text: Opposing the bill, Former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo wrote that it is "truly disingenuous for anyone to proceed on the premise that the poor are to blame for the nation's poverty:. He emphasized that the government should apply the principle of first things first and focus on the root causes of the poverty (e.g., poor governance, corruption) and apply many other alternatives to solve the problem (e.g., giving up pork barrel, raising tax collection efficiency).


text: Maternal deaths in the Philippines, according to the World Health Organization, is at 5.7 per day, not 10–11 deaths a day, as per the proponents who repeated these numbers "to drive home the point".


text: The Department of Health states that family planning can reduce maternal mortality by about 32%. The bill is "meant to prevent maternal deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth", said Clara Padilla of Engender Rights. She reported that every day, "there are 11 women dying while giving birth in the Philippines. These preventable deaths could have been avoided if more Filipino women have access to reproductive health information and healthcare."


text: The key to solving maternal deaths, according to the "Senate Policy Brief" on reproductive health, is the establishment of birthing centers.


text: The Philippine Medical Association (PMA) stated in their Position Paper that the goal of reducing the rise of maternal and child deaths "could be attained by improving maternal and child health care without the necessity of distributing contraceptives. The millions of funds intended for the contraceptive devices may just well be applied in improving the skills of our health workers in reducing maternal and child mortality in the Philippines".


text: Senator Majority Floor Leader Tito Sotto said that the RH Bill is redundant to a 2009 law referred to as the Magna Carta for Women, which contains reproductive health provisions, asking the Senate to drop the bill.


text: One of the main concerns of the proponents is the perceived lack of access to family planning devices such as contraceptives and sterilization. The bill intends to provide universal access through government funding, complementing thus private sector initiatives for family planning services, such as those offered by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) which supports the Family Planning Organizations of the Philippines and the 97 organizations of the Philippine NGO Council.


text: The UP School of Economics argues, in contrast, that there is lack of access especially for poor people, because contraceptive use is extremely low among them and "among the poorest families, 22% of married women of reproductive age express a desire to avoid pregnancies but are still not using any family planning method". They say that lack of access leads to a number of serious problems which demand attention: (1) "too many and too spaced children raises the risk of illness and premature deaths (for mother and child alike)," (2) "the health risks associated with mistimed and unwanted pregnancies are higher for adolescent mothers, as they are more likely to have complications during labor," (3) women who have mistimed pregnancies are "constrained to rely more on public education and health services and other publicly provided goods and services", further complicating limited public resources, (4) families are not able to achieve their desired family size. Thus the UP economists "strongly and unequivocally support" the thrust of the bill to enable "couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to carry out their decisions". Proponents argue that government-funded access is the key to breaking the inter-generational poverty that many people are trapped in.


text: Proponents of the bill contend that "natural family planning methods have not proven to be as reliable as artificial means of birth control".


text: According to the RH bill, one of its components is "prevention of abortion and management of post-abortion complications". It provides that "the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner". It also states that "abortion remains a crime and is punishable", as the Constitution declares that "the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception".


text: The position of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) "is founded strongly on the principle that 'life or conception begins at fertilization' at that moment where there is fusion or union of the sperm and the egg and thus a human person or human being already does exist at the moment of fertilization". The PMA condemns abortifacients that "destroys the fertilized egg or the embryo" and "abhors any procedure...or medication that will interrupt any stage of fertilization and prevents its normal, physiological, uninterrupted growth to adulthood".


text: Jo Imbong, founder of the Abay Pamilya Foundation, reported that "Lagman said in a House hearing that the bill would protect human life 'from implantation' ", and not from fertilization, noting at the same time that the Records of the Constitutional Commission state that "Human life begins at fertilization".


text: Proponents argue that research by the Guttmacher Institute, involved in advancing international reproductive health, reveals that the use of contraceptives can reduce abortion rates by 85%. Proponents such as 14 Ateneo de Manila University professors, argued thus: "Studies show that the majority of women who go for an abortion are married or in a consensual union (91%), the mother of three or more children (57%), and poor (68%) (Juarez, Cabigon, and Singh 2005). For these women, terminating a pregnancy is an anguished choice they make in the face of severe constraints. When women who had attempted an abortion were asked their reasons for doing so, their top three responses were: they could not afford the economic cost of raising another child (72%); their pregnancy occurred too soon after the last one (57%); and they already have enough children (54%). One in ten women (13%) who had attempted an abortion revealed that this was because her pregnancy resulted from forced sex (ibid.). Thus, for these women, abortion has become a family planning method, in the absence of information on and access to any reliable means to prevent an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy".


text: The bill, said Clara Padilla of EnGender Rights Inc, will "help reduce the number of abortions by providing increased access to information and services on modern contraceptive methods, that in turn will reduce the number of unwanted—and often aborted—pregnancies".


text: Both sides of the debate accuse the other side of deception and misleading the public. The pro-RH people accuse the anti-RH group of misleading the public by calling the bill an abortion bill, when the bill states that abortion remains a crime and is punishable. The anti-RH advocates accuse the RH supporters of hiding from the public the international population control agenda which includes abortion and they refer to U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton who said that RH includes abortion.


text: Fourteen professors from Ateneo de Manila University, a prominent Catholic University, considering the empirical evidence of the dire socioeconomic conditions of the Filipino poor, urged that the bill be passed to help them. They argued: "As Catholics and Filipinos, we share the hope and mission of building a Church of the Poor. We are thus deeply disturbed and saddened by calls made by some members of the Catholic Church to reject a proposed legislation that promises to improve the wellbeing of Filipino families, especially the lives of women, children, adolescents, and the poor". They announced that "Catholic social teachings recognize the primacy of the well-formed conscience over wooden compliance to directives from political and religious authorities", urging Catholic authorities to withdraw their opposition the bill. Citing Catholic documents and scientific studies, they reasoned that "the RH Bill is pro-life, pro-women, pro-poor, pro-youth, and pro-informed choice". They emphasized that the bill "promotes quality of life, by enabling couples, especially the poor, to bring into the world only the number of children they believe they can care for and nurture to become healthy and productive members of our society". Thus, they called their paper "Catholics Can Support the RH Bill in Good Conscience".


text: In response, the Ateneo administration announced its unity with Catholic teaching and that it had "serious objections to the present bill".


text: Proponents such as Lagman also stressed that official Catholic teaching itself, expressed in the Encyclical "Humanae Vitae" issued only forty years ago in 1964, is not infallible. He said that the Papal Commission on Birth Control, which included ranking prelates and theologians, recommended that the Church change its teaching on contraception as it concluded that "the regulation of conception appears necessary for many couples who wish to achieve a responsible, open and reasonable parenthood in today's circumstances". The editorial of the "Philippine Daily Inquirer", moreover, stated that Catholic teaching is "only" a religious teaching and should not be imposed with intolerance on a secular state.


text: Opponents argue that misery is not the result of the church which they say is the largest charitable organization in the world, but of a breakdown in moral sense that gives order to society, nor does misery come from parents who bring up children in faithfulness, discipline, love and respect for life, but from those who strip human beings of moral dignity and responsibility, by treating them as mere machines, which they believe contraception does.


text: Stating that contraception is a lie and "against the beginning of new life", the Philippine Medical Association also stressed that the "health risks of contraception to women are considerable; the list of side effects is long, and includes high blood pressure, strokes, increased incidence of some forms of cancer".


text: Proponents such as E. Ansioco of Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines argued that "The World Health Organization (WHO) includes contraceptives in its Model Lists of Essential Drugs" and thus are safe medicines. "Medical and scientific evidence," says the main proponent, "shows that all the possible medical risks connected with contraceptives are infinitely lower than the risks of an actual pregnancy and everyday activities...The risk of dying within a year of using pills is 1 in 200,000. The risk of dying from a vasectomy is 1 in 1 million and the risk of dying from using an IUD is 1 in 10 million...But the risk of dying from a pregnancy is 1 in 10,000."


text: The RH bill provides for "prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and other, STIs/STDs", especially since the number of HIV cases among the young nearly tripled from 41 in 2007 to 110 in 2008. Proponents emphasized that RH will help in stemming the AIDS epidemic that is worsening in the Philippines. Lagman explained that "Globally, the new number of reported cases of HIV infections and deaths has dropped by nearly 20 percent. It is therefore both ironic and tragic that the Philippines' trajectory is towards the other direction. Our country's HIV/AIDS statistics have increased by 30 percent!" Primary among the means is distribution of condoms. The proponents applauded government efforts last February 2010 when it distributed condoms in some areas of Manila.


text: Proponents refer to many surveys conducted by two prominent locally based organizations (SWS and Pulse Asia) which show majority support for the bill. A survey conducted in 2008 by the Social Weather Stations, commissioned by the Forum for Family Planning and Development (FFPD), a non-government advocacy group, showed that 68 percent of Filipinos agree that there should be a law requiring government to distribute legal contraceptives. SWS President and RH Bill proponent, "Mahar Mangahas" reported that the "survey found 71 percent in favor [of the RH Bill], 21 percent undecided, and a mere 8 percent opposed. Among those who originally knew of the bill, the score is 84 percent in favor, and 6 percent opposed. Among those who learned of the bill for the first time because of the survey, the score is 59 percent in favor, versus 11 percent opposed." Pulse Asia reported that in an October 2008 survey "most Filipinos are aware of the reproductive health bill pending at the House of Representatives (68%) and are in favor of the bill (63%)". In December 2010, Pulse Asia announced based on the results of an October 2010 survey, 69% of the Filipinos are in favor of the bill.


text: The President of Prolife Philippines, Lito Atienza, said that the surveys conducted by SWS and Pulse Asia were misleading, because the participants were not fully informed of the bill, were merely aware of it, and informed that it was about health and "modern methods". Instead he referred to the Filipino Family survey of December 2009 conducted by the HB&A International (an affiliate of Louis Harris & Associates) together with the personnel of Asia Research Organization (the Philippine affiliate of Gallup International). The survey concluded that 92% of people in metropolitan Manila rejected the bill, "85 percent are not aware that once passed the RH bill would allow teenagers to secure 'abortifacient devices and substances' without their parents' knowledge and consent...90 percent do not agree that Congress should appropriate P2 billion to the detriment of other essential medicines for free children's vaccinations, treatment of dreaded diseases and other more important health and medical concerns." Mangahas acknowledged that the SWS surveys did not include the penalties.


text: A TV Debate was also hosted by ABS-CBN in May 2011. Leaders of both sides, including Rep. Lagman and Rep. Golez, were present. According to the ABS-CBN news which reported on the results: "In the SMS poll, 69.58% of votes cast reject the RH bill while 30.42% support it." In the separate online poll held on the Harapan microsite that livestreamed the debate, majority voted against the bill at the very end of the debate.


text: On TV5's Debate "Hamon sa Pagbabago" on August 21, 2011, the studio audience voted 100% against the bill, while 58.7% of the viewers voted against the RH Bill via text messaging, versus 41.3% in favor.


text: The online poll conducted by the "Philippine Star" published on May 18, 2011, showed that 56% were against the RH Bill, while 44% were in favor.


text: There is mandatory sexuality education starting grade 5, and "malicious disinformation" is penalized. All health care service providers which provide reproductive health services, including faith-based hospital administrators, may be imprisoned or fined if they refuse to provide family planning services such as tubal ligation and vasectomy. The same may happen to employers who do not provide free services to employees. Imprisonment ranges from one to six months or a fine ranging from ten thousand pesos (P10,000.00) to fifty thousand pesos (P50,000.00). Former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo stated that these punitive provisions "are tantamount to an affront to civil liberties and smack of religious persecution".


text: Defending the bill, Felipe Medalla, former dean of the University of the Philippines School of Economics, said that "although the poor's access to family planning services can be improved even without the law, the absence of the law makes it easier to block the program".


text: One of the prelates the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle opposes the Reproductive Health Bill, along with abortion and contraception. Because 81% of Filipinos are Catholics, the Catholic Church exerts a strong influence in public and moral life. Its staunch opposition to the bill has drawn the controversy among non-Catholics and Catholics alike who support the bill whereby many invoke the principle of separation of church and state.


text: Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J, one of the drafters of the Philippine Constitution and a prominent lawyer and writer, explained that the concept of separation of church and state is directed towards the state, rather than the church, as it is a political concept. Technically it means "non-establishment of religion," as the Constitution states, "No law shall be passed respecting an establishment of religion." It means that the state should be guided by the principle that it should support no specific religion and so government funding should not be allocated for building churches or mosques and not favor any particular religion. It does not prevent the church, parents, supervisors, teachers and other moral educators from expressing their views and educating their wards on the morality of their personal and social actions. The Catholic Church also states that their stand is based on secular reasons and natural law that are both acceptable to non-Catholics as well. Proponents, on the other hand, state that the church should not meddle in matters of the state and should focus on religious matters, not political matters.


text: The national debate is seen as part of a wider culture war. Passing it or not passing it of the bill has negative implications depending on the views. Proponents state that the not passing the bill will make the Philippines no longer be a backward state and unable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, especially the points on poverty alleviation and maternal health. It will mean reneging on international commitments and will slow down modernization. Also, the poor will not have free access to family planning support that many have want, and thus will have more children than they can care for and will not have the money to invest in education to break the intergenerational poverty they are trapped in. Proponents also accuse the Catholic Church of holding the Philippines "hostage" and violating the separation of church and state. They argue that a decreased population growth will lead to improved quality of life and economic development.


text: Department of Health is proposing 13.7 billion pesos to be fund the RH Bill if it is passed in 2012, according to Senator Pia Cayetano.


text: Filipinos for Life, an anti-abortion organization, claimed that the bill was funded by foreign population control groups, a claim that Rep. Edcel Lagman denied as "an old yarn which is destitute of factual basis", saying that the lobby opposing the bill was the one which was backed by the "wealthy Catholic hierarchy with the aid of dozens of lay organizations".


text: Young Nine Legislators (Y9L)—including Aliah Dimaporo, Lucy Torres-Gomez, Karlo Alexei Nograles—said that "The proposed P3 billion appropriation for the RH bill, if put towards education, can help secure the future of young Filipinos. That amount can build 4,644 new classrooms…or it can subsidize the college education of 300,000 scholars—a chance for underprivileged student achievers to earn their diploma".


text: Lagman on the other hand said that both these priorities are important but with a burgeoning population the budget will become even tighter, thus population growth is a major issue.


text: European Union Ambassador to the Philippines Alistair MacDonald said "We have all seen the figures on illegal abortion a year in the Philippines and I very much hope that both Houses of Congress will take these issues into account in producing a reproductive health legislation which will really help people make their own choices and to provide for their families."


text: MacDonald said that lack of effective access to reproductive health services in the Philippines was "antithetical" to the country's struggle against poverty and "It seems to me extremely unlikely that the Philippines will be able to meet its commitment under the MDGs under the present policy." MacDonald noted that the total fertility rate for the richest quintile of the population is 2.0, while the total fertility rate of the poorest quintile is 5.9. The total fertility rate for women with a college education is 2.3, about half that of women with only elementary education (4.5). He mentioned that the lack of access to RH services is anti-women, citing the slow decline in the maternal mortality ratio in the Philippines. He also said surveys suggest that the total wanted fertility rate for the Philippines is 2.4 children, or below the actual TFR of 3.3 children.


text: On January 31, 2011, six different bills were consolidated into a single RH Bill which was then unanimously approved for plenary debate by the House Committee on Population and Family Relations. On February 7, 2011, the bill was scheduled to go before the House Appropriations Committee. On February 16, 2011, the bill was endorsed by the House Appropriations Committee with amendment and referred back to the Population Committee for finalizing the language.


text: President Noynoy Aquino during the presidential campaign said that it confounds him why he is always associated with the RH Bill and reiterated that he is neither an author nor a co-author and did not sign the committee report regarding the bill. He said that "he will fully support the crafting of a firm policy that will address the serious problem on population" At the same time, Aquino said that "artificial contraception was a matter of choice and conscience and that health professionals who fool people into using artificial contraceptives should be penalized. As a Catholic, Aquino said he himself was not promoting artificial contraception but believes that the government should be able to provide it to Filipinos who ask for it". Aquino stressed, "I'm a Catholic, I'm not promoting it. My position is more aptly called responsible parenthood rather than reproductive health."


text: According to Rina Jimenez David who is pro-RH, during the "Women Deliver Philippines" Conference held September 2010, Dinky Soliman, Aquino's Secretary of Social Welfare and Development, said that "choice and access" constituted the keystone of the Aquino government's policy, reiterating the administration's support for the pending reproductive health bills.


text: In December 2010, the Cabinet and the CBCP agreed to have a joint campaign providing full information on the advantages and risks of contraceptives, natural and artificial family planning and responsible parenthood. They have established a technical working group for this purpose. They also agreed that government will not be an "instrument to enforce or violate the conscience of the people about these issues."


text: However, by April 2011 Aquino has given his full support to the entire RH Bill in a speech at the University of the Philippines Diliman and promised to push for its passage even at the "risk of excommunication."


text: Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Congressman Roilo Golez and Buhay party-list separately filed bills that seek to restrict abortion and birth control use. These bills have been seen either as a nullification of the RH Bill, its alternative, or as a way of achieving unity among the populace, since the RH Bill proponents have stated their concern in preventing abortion.


text: Presidential candidate Gilbert Teodoro or Gibo suggested a cash transfer from the government to individuals wanting access to family planning methods, whether natural or artificial. The individuals can then make use of the cash they receive to purchase birth control devices they may choose, thus guaranteeing freedom of choice.


text: The Loyola School of Theology and the John J. Carroll Institute on State and Church Issues issued nine talking points on the RH Bill. Among other points, they proposed a study on the meaning of conception in the Constitution, and if it means fertilization, abortifacients "are to be banned even now and regardless of whether the RH Bill is passed". They also proposed "parallel programs for providing information and training, one for Natural Family Planning (NFP) and another for artificial methods of family planning". Columnist Jose Sison of the "Philippine Star" criticized that "a Catholic School of theology has actually proposed in public, the use of tax payers' money to train Filipinos to employ methods that are objectively and intrinsically evil" and cites "empirical evidence and scientific proofs confirming the harmful and evil effects of contraceptives to individuals and to society."


text: In September 2010, Aquino, during this visit to the U.S., reiterated his stand that he is in favor of responsible parenthood and respects the decision of each couple as to the number of children they want, and if they need the government support for contraception, the government will provide it. This statement has created a furor as Catholic church leaders say that Aquino has sold out the Filipino soul in exchange for some "measly" aid from the U.S. The President of the Catholic Bishops Conference said that there could be an excommunication of the President if he continues his stance. Pro-RH Bill senators encouraged the President to be steadfast to do his duties towards the state. The President's spokesperson Edwin Lacierda explained that the President "has not changed his stand" and is reaching out to the prelates and said that he has not made any decision in support of the Reproductive Health Bill as he was still studying the document. Lacierda said that the Executive Branch "is not involved in the passage of the RH bill, saying the measure's fate rests solely on the legislative branch."


text: Filipino Freethinkers, an association of agnostics, atheists, progressives, etc., very active in the fight in favor of the RH bill, stepped up the pressure, creating more controversy that fired up renewed interest in the bill on both sides. On September 30, 2010, one of the freethinkers, Carlos Celdran staged a protest action against the Catholic Church, holding a sign which read "DAMASO," a reference to the villainous, corrupt clergyman Father Dámaso of the novel "Noli Me Tangere" by Filipino revolutionary writer Jose Rizal, and shouting "stop getting involved in politics!" A fan page, Free Carlos Celdran was created in Facebook, which generated 23,808 fans in 24 hours. Francisco Montalvan of the "Inquirer" said that in the end the Damasos are the scheming, corrupt and deceptive people, implying that the "pro-death advocates" are these, while the Cardinal Rosales who started a nationwide fund for the poor is very far from Damaso. Meanwhile, the Imam Council of the Philippines, the top leaders of the Moslem population which at 4.5 million constitutes 5% of the Philippine population, declared that they are against contraceptives since using them "underestimates God" and "makes one lose morality in the process."


text: During the first public hearing on Nov 24, the chair of the Committee on Population handling the bill said that there is no instruction from the Speaker of the House to expedite the bill. Upon the call of anti-RH congressmen, the Committee Chair decided to refer the bill also to the Committee on Health since the bill is about Reproductive Health. Leader of the pro-RH group, Elizabeth Ansioco, said that the bill is doomed if it is referred to the Committee on Health. Anti-RH Deputy Speaker Congressman Pablo Garcia said the members of the Committee on Health knew of the WHO announcement on the carcinogenicity of combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives.


text: House Speaker Belmonte said that Congress is not likely to rush the legislation of the bill and will tackle it in plenary early next year. Belmonte said it is better that highly contentious bills be given more attention.


text: On December 3, the Senate cut the proposed budget of P 880M for contraceptives down to P 8M for condoms since other contraceptives violated the Constitution's ban on abortifacients, and Senator Tito Sotto III said that his constituents never asked for contraceptives.


text: On July 27, 2012, the Speaker of the House decided to put to a vote, by August 7, 2012, on whether the debates have to be terminated. Meanwhile, six co-authors of the bill withdrew support, with the head of the minority group of the house declaring that eight of their group are withdrawing their previous support for the bill.


text: At 3 in the morning on December 13, 2012, the House of Representatives voted on second reading in favor of the bill with 113–109 while five representatives abstained. In the upper house, the Senate voted, on December 18, 2012, to pass the bill on second reading with 13–8, while Senators Sergio Osmeña III and Lito Lapid were absent.


text: On the same day, both houses passed the bill on the third and final reading. Members of the House of Representatives voted 133–79, while seven representatives abstained. The Senate registered 13–8, the same result as the second reading.


text: On December 19, 2012, both versions of the bill were passed to the Bicameral Committee to produce a final version to be signed by the President Aquino. The committee quickly passed the bill in just one session. It was transmitted back to the House of Representatives and the Senate, which both ratified the bill, with the Senate voting 11–5 in favor of ratification, and the House of Representatives voting via voice vote


text: On December 21, 2012, President Aquino signed the bill into law, codifying the bill as Republic Act No. 10354, otherwise known as the "Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012". News of the signing was announced by House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II on December 28, 2012.


text: In response to petitions challenging the law's constitutionality, the Supreme Court voted 10–5 on March 19, 2013, to issue a status quo ante order halting the implementation of the law for four months.


text: Oral arguments were set for June 18 but postponed until July 9 after the Supreme Court received additional petitions and interventions.


text: During oral arguments, several justices indicated that the court "does not seem to be the right forum–at least for now." It could not settle medical issues, such as whether any contraceptives to be made available were actually abortifacients. Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said the court might have no choice but to exercise "judicial restraint" on the 15 petitions opposing the law.


text: On July 16, the justices voted 8–7 to extend the status quo ante order, which would have expired the next day "until further orders effective immediately."


text: Oral arguments concluded on August 27, with the petitioners against and for the law being instructed to submit memorandums within 60 days.


text: On April 8, 2014, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law. The justices, however, struck down eight provisions of the law partially or in full.


text: In 2015, the Supreme Court's issued a temporary restraining order on certain provisions of the law, forbidding the distribution of contraceptive implants.


text: Notwithstanding the restraining order on certain methods of contraception, in September 2018, President Duterte decided to ensure, within 2018, free contraception for 6 million women with unmet needs for modern family planning – in 2018, for 2 million women identified as poor, and later for further 4 million women.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Cytotoxicity is the quality of being toxic to cells. Examples of toxic agents are an immune cell or some types of venom, e.g. from the puff adder ("Bitis arietans") or brown recluse spider ("Loxosceles reclusa").


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Treating cells with the cytotoxic compound can result in a variety of cell fates. The cells may undergo necrosis, in which they lose membrane integrity and die rapidly as a result of cell lysis. The cells can stop actively growing and dividing (a decrease in cell viability), or the cells can activate a genetic program of controlled cell death (apoptosis).


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Cells undergoing necrosis typically exhibit rapid swelling, lose membrane integrity, shut down metabolism, and release their contents into the environment. Cells that undergo rapid necrosis in vitro do not have sufficient time or energy to activate apoptotic machinery and will not express apoptotic markers. Apoptosis is characterized by well defined cytological and molecular events including a change in the refractive index of the cell, cytoplasmic shrinkage, nuclear condensation and cleavage of DNA into regularly sized fragments. Cells in culture that are undergoing apoptosis eventually undergo secondary necrosis. They will shut down metabolism, lose membrane integrity and lyse.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Cytotoxicity assays are widely used by the pharmaceutical industry to screen for cytotoxicity in compound libraries. Researchers can either look for cytotoxic compounds, if they are interested in developing a therapeutic that targets rapidly dividing cancer cells, for instance; or they can screen "hits" from initial high-throughput drug screens for unwanted cytotoxic effects before investing in their development as a pharmaceutical.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Assessing cell membrane integrity is one of the most common ways to measure cell viability and cytotoxic effects. Compounds that have cytotoxic effects often compromise cell membrane integrity. Vital dyes, such as trypan blue or propidium iodide are normally excluded from the inside of healthy cells; however, if the cell membrane has been compromised, they freely cross the membrane and stain intracellular components. Alternatively, membrane integrity can be assessed by monitoring the passage of substances that are normally sequestered inside cells to the outside. One molecule, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), is commonly measured using LDH assay. LDH reduces NAD to NADH which elicits a colour change by interaction with a specific probe. Protease biomarkers have been identified that allow researchers to measure relative numbers of live and dead cells within the same cell population. The live-cell protease is only active in cells that have a healthy cell membrane, and loses activity once the cell is compromised and the protease is exposed to the external environment. The dead-cell protease cannot cross the cell membrane, and can only be measured in culture media after cells have lost their membrane integrity.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Cytotoxicity can also be monitored using the 3-(4, 5-Dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2, 5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) or with 2,3-bis-(2-methoxy-4-nitro-5-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium-5-carboxanilide (XTT), which yields a water-soluble product, or the MTS assay. This assay measures the reducing potential of the cell using a colorimetric reaction. Viable cells will reduce the MTS reagent to a colored formazan product. A similar redox-based assay has also been developed using the fluorescent dye, resazurin. In addition to using dyes to indicate the redox potential of cells in order to monitor their viability, researchers have developed assays that use ATP content as a marker of viability. Such ATP-based assays include bioluminescent assays in which ATP is the limiting reagent for the luciferase reaction.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Cytotoxicity can also be measured by the sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay, WST assay and clonogenic assay.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Suitable assays can be combined and performed sequentially on the same cells in order to reduce assay-specific false positive or false negative results. A possible combination is LDH-XTT-NR (Neutral red assay)-SRB which is also available in a kit format.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: A label-free approach to follow the cytotoxic response of adherent animal cells in real-time is based on electric impedance measurements when the cells are grown on gold-film electrodes. This technology is referred to as electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS). Label-free real-time techniques provide the kinetics of the cytotoxic response rather than just a snapshot like many colorimetric endpoint assays.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Some chemotherapies contain cytotoxic drugs, whose purpose is interfering with the cell division. These drugs cannot distinguish between normal and malignant cells, but they inhibit the overall process of cell division with the purpose to kill the cancers before the hosts.


title: Cytotoxicity

text: Antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) describes the cell-killing ability of certain lymphocytes, which requires the target cell being marked by an antibody. Lymphocyte-mediated cytotoxicity, on the other hand, does not have to be mediated by antibodies; nor does complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC), which is mediated by the complement system.


title: Women in Love

text: Women in Love (1920) is a novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his earlier novel "The Rainbow" (1915) and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula Brangwen and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships thus established are given further depth and tension by an intense psychological and physical attraction between Gerald and Rupert.


title: Women in Love

text: The novel ranges over the whole of British society before the time of the First World War and eventually concludes in the snows of the Tyrolean Alps. Ursula's character draws on Lawrence's wife Frieda and Gudrun's on Katherine Mansfield, while Rupert Birkin's has elements of Lawrence himself, and Gerald Crich is partly based on Mansfield's husband, John Middleton Murry.


title: Women in Love

text: Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are sisters living in The Midlands in England in the 1910s. Ursula is a schoolteacher, Gudrun a painter. They meet two men who live nearby, school inspector Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, heir to a coal mine, and the four become friends. Romantic relationships quickly develop as the novel progresses.


title: Women in Love

text: All four are deeply concerned with questions of society, politics, and the relationship between men and women. At a party at Shortlands, the Birkin's country manor home, Gerald's sister Diana drowns. Gudrun becomes the teacher and mentor of Gerald's youngest sister. Soon, Gerald's coal-mine-owning father dies as well, after a long illness. After the funeral, Gerald goes to Gudrun's house and spends the night with her while her parents sleep in another room.


title: Women in Love

text: Birkin asks Ursula to marry him, and she agrees. Gerald and Gudrun's relationship, however, becomes stormy.


title: Women in Love

text: The two couples take a holiday together in the Austrian Alps. Gudrun begins an intense friendship with Loerke, a physically puny but emotionally commanding artist from Dresden. Gerald, enraged by Loerke and most of all by Gudrun's verbal abuse and rejection of his manhood, and driven by his own internal violence, tries to strangle Gudrun. He suddenly becomes disgusted with his actions and lets her go, and he leaves Gudrun and Loerke to climb the mountain eventually slipping into a snowy valley where he falls asleep and freezes to death.


title: Women in Love

text: The impact of Gerald's death upon Birkin is profound. The novel ends a few weeks after Gerald's death with Birkin trying to explain to Ursula that, although he needed no other woman than Ursula, he valued a relationship with Gerald that is gone forever.


title: Women in Love

text: After years of misunderstandings, accusations of duplicity, and hurried letters, Thomas Seltzer finally published the first edition of "Women in Love" in New York City, on 9 November 1920. This had come after three drawn out years of delays and revisions. This first limited edition (1,250 books) was available only to subscribers, due to the controversy caused by Lawrence's previous work, "The Rainbow" (1915).


title: Women in Love

text: Originally, the two books were written as parts of a single novel, but the publisher had decided to publish them separately and in rapid succession. The first book's treatment of sexuality was frank for the mores of the time, and, after an obscenity trial, the book was banned in the UK for 11 years, although it was available in the US. The publisher then backed out of publishing the second book in the UK, so "Women in Love" first appeared in the US. Martin Secker published the first trade edition of "Women in Love" in London, on 10 June 1921.


title: Women in Love

text: As with most of Lawrence's works, "Women in Love"s sexual subject matter caused controversy. For example, W. Charles Pilley, an early reviewer wrote of it in "John Bull", "I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps—festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven." Lawrence was sued for libel by Lady Ottoline Morrell and others, who claimed their likenesses were unjustly drawn upon in "The Rainbow". The book also later stirred criticism for its portrayal of love, denounced as chauvinistic and centred upon the phallus by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in "The Second Sex" (1949).


title: Women in Love

text: In contrast, the critic Camille Paglia has praised "Women in Love", writing in "Vamps and Tramps" (1994) that while she initially reacted negatively to the book, it became a "profound influence" on her as she was working on "Sexual Personae" (1990). Paglia compared Lawrence's novel to the poet Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" (1590). Paglia observed that while "Women in Love" has "bisexual implications", she is skeptical that Lawrence would have endorsed "full sexual relations" between men. The critic Harold Bloom listed "Women in Love" in his "The Western Canon" (1994) as one of the books that have been important and influential in Western culture. Francis Spalding suggested that Lawrence's fascination with the theme of homosexuality is manifested in "Women in Love", and that this could be related to his own sexual orientation. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked "Women in Love" forty-ninth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.


title: Women in Love

text: Screenwriter and producer Larry Kramer and director Ken Russell adapted the novel into the film, "Women in Love" (1969), for which Glenda Jackson won the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was one of the first American theatrical films to show male genitals, in scenes when Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) wrestle in the nude in front of a roaring fireplace, in several early skinny dipping shots, and in an explicit sequence of Birkin running naked in the forest after being hit on the head by his spurned former mistress, Hermione Roddice (Eleanor Bron).


title: Women in Love

text: William Ivory combined "Women in Love" with Lawrence's earlier novel, "The Rainbow" (1915), in his two-part BBC Four television adaptation titled, "Women in Love" (first transmitted 24 and 31 March 2011), directed by Miranda Bowen. The cast is headed by Saskia Reeves as the mother, Anna Brangwen, with Rachael Stirling and Rosamund Pike as her daughters, Ursula and Gudrun. Other cast members include Rory Kinnear as Rupert Birkin, Joseph Mawle as Gerald Crich, and Ben Daniels as Will Brangwen. In this adaptation, Ivory sets the final scenes and Gerald's death not in the Tyrolean Alps, but in South African diamond mines and desert sands, where Gerald walks out in the dunes and meets his demise.


title: Women in Love

text: BBC Radio 4 broadcast "Women in Love" as a four-part serial in 1996, dramatised by Elaine Feinstein and starring Stella Gonet as Gudrun, Clare Holman as Ursula, Douglas Hodge as Gerald and Nicholas Farrell as Rupert. It has been repeated several times on BBC Radio 4 Extra, most recently in July 2022.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: A pellet is a non-spherical projectile designed to be shot from an air gun, and an airgun that shoots such pellets is commonly known as a pellet gun. Air gun pellets differ from bullets and shot used in firearms in terms of the pressures encountered; airguns operate at pressures as low as 50 atmospheres, while firearms operate at thousands of atmospheres. Airguns generally use a slightly undersized projectile that is designed to obturate upon shooting so as to seal the bore, and engage the rifling; firearms have sufficient pressure to force a slightly oversized bullet to fit the bore in order to form a tight seal. Since pellets may be shot through a smoothbore barrel, they are often designed to be inherently stable, much like the Foster slugs used in smoothbore shotguns.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: The diabolo pellet (or "wasp waist pellet") is the most common design traditionally found in airguns. It consists of a solid front portion called the "head", which can have a flat ("wadcutter"), hemispherical ("round nose"), hollow point or conical ("pointed") front end profile, and a thin-walled funnel-shaped hollow rear portion called the "skirt", joined by an hourglass-looking narrow mid-section known as the "waist", giving the whole pellet the shape of a diabolo. The head is usually sized to just touch the rifling, and this keeps the pellet centered in the bore while keeping the friction as low as possible. The effect of friction is used in order to keep the pellet stationary until the piston has reached the end of its travel, compressing as much air as is possible. The thin hollow skirt is made of a malleable material, usually lead, although non-toxic alternatives are available that use tin or even plastic. During shooting, the skirt flares out and obturates the bore when pressure builds up behind it to provide a good seal that allows efficient pellet acceleration, and engages the rifling whereby imparting spin. In a smoothbore barrel, the skirt will still flare to provide a tight seal, but since there is no rifling the pellet will not spin, and is less accurate.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Because the majority of the pellet's mass resides in the solid head in the front, and the hollow skirt in the back generates significant drag during flight, this creates "drag stability" that will counteract yawing and help to maintain consistent trajectories. However, such stability is limited, and if the pellet's speed exceeds what the aerodynamics allow it will become unstable and start tumbling in flight. When this happens, the pellet can hit the target sideways and leave behind a keyhole-shaped impact hole on the target paper, instead of a clean round hole as expected from a direct frontal hit. This phenomenon is known as keyholing.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Pellets are designed to travel at subsonic speeds. High velocities can cause light pellets to overly deform, or even break apart in flight. The transition from subsonic to supersonic velocities will cause almost all pellets to tumble. The closer a pellet gets to the speed of sound, the more unstable it becomes. This is a problem for high-powered "magnum" break-barrel and pre-charged pneumatic air rifles, which are capable of pushing lighter pellets beyond the sound barrier. A few companies have addressed this issue by manufacturing heavier-than-normal pellets for use in these high powered air guns. The heavier weight of these pellets ensures lower muzzle velocities, resulting in less chance of tumbling and more overall accuracy. Their weight also makes them sectionally denser and less susceptible to wind deviation and drag deceleration, and thus imparts better external and terminal ballistic performance.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Recently, some manufacturers also have introduced the more cylindro-conoidally shaped "slug" pellets for some of the more powerful modern PCP air rifles. Contrasted to the commonly used diabolo pellets, these slug pellets resemble Minié balls, with cannelures and a hollow base, and have more contact surface with the bore and hence need greater propelling force to overcome friction, but they have better ballistic coefficients and thus longer effective ranges due to the more aerodynamic shape. Because these slug pellets have no skirts to generate enough drag stability in flight, they rely on spin stabilization from a fully rifled barrel.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: There are many different kinds of lead-free pellets, utilizing non-lead alloys and/or plastics in their construction. Consequently, they are much lighter than lead pellets, with weights ranging from 5.1 to around 20 grains. Due to their lighter weight, they accelerate more quickly inside the barrel, and commonly reach supersonic velocities. This increases the effective feet per second (FPS) of an airgun, which can result in greater accuracy.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: However, lead-free pellets typically have a lower ballistic coefficient (BC), which results in more wind-drift, and reduced velocity at longer distances. As an example, H&N Sport's Baracuda Green pellet has a BC of 0.013, but the standard Baracuda pellet's BC is 0.024.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Although some airguns are equipped with moderators or other noise dampening chambers, lead-free pellets can break the sound-barrier, and produce a loud cracking noise. This can be misinterpreted as a malfunction of the suppressor, when in fact it results from using a supersonic pellet. Upon switching back to a lead pellet, the supersonic crack will cease.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: H&N Sport markets their lead-free pellets as part of their "GreenLine," and Gamo markets their lead-free pellets as a "Performance Ballistic Alloy" (PBA). Regardless of the terminology, the underlying technology involves a mix of non-lead materials, such as zinc, iron, tin, or copper. Lead-free pellets are offered by all major manufacturers, including RWS, Gamo, H&N Sport, Predator International, JSB, Crosman, Sig Sauer, and others.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: These metals are all lighter than lead, and significantly harder. As a result, they penetrate more deeply, and do not deform as greatly upon impact with the target. By contrast, lead pellets are often designed to fragment, expand, or mushroom, and can cause more damage. As a result, they are favored by hunters. However, many hunters are using non-lead pellets, to avoid lead contamination.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Match pellets are used for the 10 metre air rifle and 10 metre air pistol disciplines. These calibre pellets have wadcutter heads, meaning the front is (nearly) flat, that leave clean, hole punch-like round holes in paper targets for easy scoring. Match pellets are offered in tins and more elaborate packagings that avoid deformation and other damage that could impair their uniformity.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Most match pellets are made of soft lead (a lead alloy with low antimony content), but some companies offer lead-free versions. The antimony content is used to control the hardness of the soft lead alloy. It is a very soft alloy, which makes it easy to process. Since the soft lead alloy is prone to strongly deform when striking a bullet catcher, it rapidly loses its kinetic energy and will not easily bounce off. Lead is toxic and hazardous to the environment, so precautions should be taken if shooting with lead pellets. For this reason, many shooters use lead-free match pellets, produced by H&N Sport, Predator International, JSB, RWS, Olympia Shot, Gamo, or Daisy.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: Match air gun shooters are encouraged to perform shooting group tests with their gun clamped in a fixed rest in order to establish which particular pellet type performs best for their air gun.


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: To facilitate maximum performance out of various air guns the leading match pellet manufacturers produce pellets in graduated weight variants (the light/high speed variants are often marketed for air pistol use) and with graduated "head sizes", which means the pellets are offered with front diameters from up to .


title: Pellet (air gun)

text: However at higher and top competitive levels, even these variations are thought too coarse-grained and match pellets are "batch tested"; that is, the specific gun is mounted in a machine rest test rig and pellets from a specific production run on a specific machine with the same ingredients fed into the process (a "batch") are test-fired through the gun. Many different batches will be tested in this manner, and the pellets which give the smallest "consistent" group size without fliers (shots which fall outside of the main group) will be selected (small but inconsistent group sizes are not useful to a top competitor); and the shooter will then purchase several tens of thousands of pellets from that batch. Group sizes of diameter are theoretically possible, but practically shot groups of are considered highly competitive. Unbatched ammunition, especially if the air gun is not regularly cleaned, is generally thought to be capable of only diameter group sizes. Batch testing match pellets for a particular gun is not generally thought to be worthwhile until the shooter reaches a high proficiency level, around the 95% level (570 for men, 380 for women).


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Lawrence Sanders (born April 29, 1935) is an American-British academic, social worker, politician, and former Health and Social Care Spokesperson of the Green Party of England and Wales. He is the older brother of Bernie Sanders, United States Senator from Vermont, and two-time U.S. presidential candidate.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Larry Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York City to Dorothy (née Glassberg) and Eli Sanders. His father was a Polish-Jewish immigrant whose family was killed in the Holocaust, while his mother was born in New York City on October 2, 1912, to Jewish immigrant parents from Radzyń Podlaski, in eastern Poland and Russia. His father was born in Słopnice, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Poland), on September 19, 1904, immigrated to America in 1921 at age 17, and supported his family by selling paint. Sanders said that when he was a child, his family never lacked food or clothing, but major purchases "like curtains or a rug" were difficult to afford. His mother died on March 25, 1960 at age 47. His father died on August 4, 1962 at age 57. Both he and his brother attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Sanders has said they were young postwar Jewish radicals but part of the crowd, not yet leaders.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders attended Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and obtained a master's degree in social work from the University of Oxford. He also attended Harvard Law School in the 1950s, leaving after two years to care for his sick mother. He returned after 35 years and completed his J.D. degree there in 1994.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1968 or 1969. He became a university lecturer first at the University of West London and later at Oxford in the Department of Social Administration.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: His son, Jacob Edward "Jake" Sanders (born November 26, 1968), was elected to Oxford City Council in 2000 and was a Green Party parliamentary candidate in the Oxford East constituency at the 2005 general election.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders was active in the Labour Party in Oxford in the 1980s. He left the party in 2001 because he felt that it had moved too far to the right under Tony Blair, and defected to the Green Party.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: First elected in 2005, Sanders was a Green Party county councillor representing the East Oxford division in the Oxfordshire County Council until he retired from the Council in 2013. His main focuses in county politics were social and health care services. He resigned from the board of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust in October 2005 in a principled stand amid concerns that proposed cuts to services would leave vulnerable patients at greater risk.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: He became Chairman of the Oxford Community School's Board of Governors in September 2009, following the resignation of the previous chairman, Chris Ballinger, and six other board members. In December 2009, the Department for Children, Schools and Families approved Oxfordshire County Council's application to disband the Board of Governors and replace them with an interim executive board. On hearing the decision, Sanders said he was 'dreadfully disappointed'.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: In February 2016, Sanders was appointed Health Spokesperson of the Green Party of England and Wales. He served until May 2021.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders was elected as a pledged delegate for Bernie Sanders to the 2016 Democratic National Convention at the Democrats Abroad Global Convention in Berlin in May 2016. He tearfully spoke at the convention on July 26 of his intention to cast his vote for his brother. He was the 7th-placed candidate for the Greens in the South East England constituency in the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders was selected to contest the Oxford East constituency at the 2017 snap general election. He finished in fourth place with 1,785 votes (3.3%).


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders was selected as the Green Party candidate for the Witney by-election after Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation as an MP in September 2016. He finished in fourth place with 1,363 votes (3.54%).


title: Larry Sanders (politician)

text: Sanders ran as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon at the 2015 UK general election and finished in fifth place, receiving 2,497 votes, 4.4% of the total.


title: Widerøe

text: Widerøes Flyveselskap AS, trading as Widerøe, is a Norwegian airline, and is the largest regional airline operating in the Nordic countries. The airline's fleet of 40 Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft, and 3 Embraer E190-E2 aircraft, serves over 40 domestic and international destinations. Widerøe has a turnover of ; carries 2.8 million annual passengers; has 3,500 employees and performs 450 take-offs and landings each day. Public service obligation services to regional airports make up slightly less than half of Widerøe's operations. The remaining services are to primary airports in Northern Norway, and services from Sandefjord Airport, Torp and Bergen Airport, Flesland to other primary airports, and some international services from Oslo/Gardermoen, Sandefjord/Torp, Kristiansand/Kjevik, Stavanger/Sola, Bergen/Flesland and Trondheim/Værnes.


title: Widerøe

text: The company's head offices are in Bodø, although it retains a large administrative center in Lysaker, Oslo. The main bases are Sandefjord Airport, Torp, Bodø Airport, Tromsø Airport, Langnes, Bergen Airport, Flesland, Kirkenes Airport and Oslo Airport, Gardermoen. Widerøe's operations are focused on point-to-point transit, although the airline essentially feeds medium-haul and international airlines. Widerøe has interlining agreements and participates in EuroBonus for international flights.


title: Widerøe

text: The airline was established in 1934 by Viggo Widerøe, a notable Norwegian aviator, and was engaged in various general aviation activities in its early days. In 1936, Widerøe started scheduled seaplane flights and, from 1940, also ambulance flights. During the 1940s and 1950s, the airline increased its seaplane routes and established a fleet based on de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter and Noorduyn Norseman aircraft. From 1968, Widerøe started flying to STOLports in northern and western Norway using DHC-6 Twin Otters, and later also with Dash 7 aircraft. In 1989, Widerøe bought Norsk Air and started services from Sandefjord. During the 1990s, it replaced all its aircraft with Dash 8 aircraft; in the 2000s it was bought by the SAS Group and took over SAS Commuter's operations in northern Norway. In 2010, Widerøe took over regional SAS services in western Norway. In 2013, SAS Group sold 80% of the shares to WF Holding, an investment company controlled by Torghatten ASA, and in June 2016 the remaining 20% of the shares were transferred to WF Holding, ending SAS ownership of Widerøe, albeit still as a close regional partner of SAS.


title: Widerøe

text: Widerøe was established on the foundations of two small aircraft operators. The first was the company Lotsberg & Skappel. The other was Widerøe & Bjørneby, which was founded by Viggo Widerøe and Halvor Bjørneby. During the winter, they stationed aircraft at mountain resorts and made revenue from flying skiers into the wilderness. Aerial advertising flights were introduced, in which a company or product name was painted on an aircraft's fuselage, with a neon-light version underneath, and leaflets dropped mid-flight.


title: Widerøe

text: On 19 February 1934, Widerøe's Flyveselskap A/S was founded by Viggo Widerøe, Einar Isdahl, and Arild Widerøe. In 1935, the company started in the cartography business. In 1937, the company made 44 flights along the coast of Antarctica, covering of coast at least inland. These flights were ordered by Lars Christensen for cartography. During 1938, the company's Bogstad workshop and Birger Hønningstad started a joint venture in which Widerøe built Hønningstad Norge aircraft.


title: Widerøe

text: Following the outbreak of World War II, all pilots were conscripted into the military and there was a ban on civilian aviation. In 1940, the company started air ambulance flights for the military. Following the German invasion of Norway, many of Widerøe's pilots and aircraft were flown to Mjøsa where they served as part of the defence. All civilian aircraft were grounded during the occupation, and German authorities demanded that magnetos and propellers be handed in. The workshop at Bogstad was kept busy with the production of ambulance sleds for the German military. In secret, the company also started building the Hønningstad C-5 Polar ambulance aircraft at Bogstad.


title: Widerøe

text: After the liberation of Norway in 1945, there was still a flight ban, and the employees at Bogstad were hired by the Royal Norwegian Air Force at Oslo Airport, Fornebu. The company received permission to fly from 2 February 1946. In 1947, Forenede Industrier bought the majority of the company. Viggo Widerøe was again hired as managing director.


title: Widerøe

text: In 1948, the company merged with Narvik-based Polarfly, and changed its name to Widerøe's Flyveselskap & Polarfly A/S. The following year, the company began an aerial photography operation. In 1953, the company chose to differentiate and started production of emergency rafts; refrigerated garages in aluminium; and thermoelements for industry. In 1954, the company received a subcontract from Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), the successor of DNL, to operate a seaplane route from Tromsø via Alta, Hammerfest, and Kirkenes to Vadsø. For this route, the company bought its first de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter. On 1 July 1958, the company changed its name back to Widerøe's Flyveselskap A/S.


title: Widerøe

text: In 1969, Per Bergsland replaced Viggo Widerøe as CEO. In 1970, the company was split in two: the aerial photography division was sold to competitor Fjellanger, and the new company Fjellanger Widerøe was created. Scheduled services remained with Widerøe. The airline's last seaplane was decommissioned in 1971. In April 1980, Widerøe started an international service on behalf of SAS.


title: Widerøe

text: Widerøe has been awarded public service obligation contracts by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to connect regional airports to primary airports. Twenty-five such airports were served in a contract running from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2012, with the company having lost the bid for services to three. The services connect smaller communities and towns to regional centers and to primary airports that provide onwards service with jet aircraft.


title: Widerøe

text: Eight airports in Finnmark and one in Troms are connected to Tromsø Airport, with a limited number of services also connecting to two of the three primary airports in Finnmark—Alta and Kirkenes. Between Tromsø and Bodø, Widerøe serves six airports, of which two connect to Tromsø and all to Bodø. South of Bodø, there are six airports in Helgeland and Namdalen, which are all connected to Bodø and Trondheim Airport, Værnes. In Sogn og Fjordane and Sunnmøre, Widerøe connects four airports to Oslo Airport, Gardermoen and Bergen Airport, Flesland.


title: Widerøe

text: Widerøe's main domestic hauling between primary airports is from its base at Sandefjord Airport, Torp. Services are provided up to five times per day to Trondheim, Stavanger and Bergen, as well as seasonal services to Bodø and Tromsø. In Northern Norway, Widerøe operates some services connecting primary airports, including the links from Tromsø to Alta, Hammerfest, Kirkenes and Vadsø Airport, and connecting Harstad/Narvik Airport, Evenes to Tromsø, Bodø and Trondheim.


title: Widerøe

text: International services are provided to and from five Norwegian airports to seven foreign airports in Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. From Sandefjord and Trondheim, Widerøe connects to Scandinavian Airlines' hub at Copenhagen Airport. From Oslo, Widerøe operates four daily services to Göteborg Landvetter Airport, as well as summer routes to Visby Airport and Bornholm Airport. From Bergen and Stavanger, Widerøe serves Aberdeen Airport. From Bergen Widerøe fly to Liverpool John Lennon Airport and from Stavanger; Newcastle Airport.


title: Widerøe

text: In 2010, Widerøe took over the regional routes previously operated by SAS in Western Norway; these connect Kristiansand and Kristiansund Airport, Kvernberget to Stavanger and Bergen, and Haugesund and Molde to Bergen. These routes will replace the SAS Fokker 50 aircraft with -300 and Q400 aircraft.


title: Widerøe

text: In 2016 the airline was awarded a five-year contract by the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications to operate 13 of Norway's Public Service Obligation routes and will start operating the routes in April 2017.


title: Widerøe

text: Between 2000 and 2018, the airline operated exclusively of de Havilland Canada/Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft. As of 2018, Widerøe was the world's largest operator of the Dash series, after Piedmont Airlines retired their fleet . As of 2013, Widerøe is the first and only airline in the world to operate every single variant of the Dash 8 simultaneously, and is one of the few airlines to ever operate all variants of the Dash 8, as well as the older DHC-6 Twin Otter and Dash 7.


title: Widerøe

text: In January 2017, Widerøe announced it had signed a contract with Embraer for up to 15 new Embraer E2-E190 jets, with firm orders for three E190-E2 aircraft and purchase rights on 12 more jets from the Embraer E2 family. The airline is the first operator of the E190-E2 aircraft. The aircraft is Widerøe's first jet aircraft, after previously operating an all-turboprop fleet.


title: Widerøe

text: In April 2018, Wideroe received its first Embraer E190-E2. The delivery was the first E2 aircraft to be delivered to an airline. It was given to Wideroe by Embraer through a big ceremony of Embraer and Wideroe staff as well as media. Its first revenue flight occurred on 24 April 2018.


title: Widerøe

text: The Dash 8-100, Dash 8-200 and Dash 8-300 can operate on the many short runway airports in Norway, which Widerøe is the main operator on. Widerøe was the launch customer of Dash 8-100 extended service program. The program extends the economic life of the turboprop by 50% to 120,000 flight cycles. Widerøe plans to replace most of its Dash-8 by 2030.


title: Widerøe

text: EuroBonus frequent flyer points can be earned on all international routes and all commercial domestic routes. Points can be redeemed on international routes and domestic routes not part of the public service obligation.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: General Sir Patrick Nicholas Yardley Monrad Sanders, (born 6 April 1966) is a senior British Army officer serving as Chief of the General Staff since June 2022.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: Sanders was born on 6 April 1966 in Tidworth, Wiltshire, England. He was educated at Worth School, then an all-boys independent boarding school attached to the Benedictine Worth Abbey. He studied at the University of Exeter, and Cranfield University.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: Sanders was commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets on 23 September 1984. He served as a junior officer in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and then undertook tours in Kosovo in 1999 and in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2001. He became Chief of Staff of 1st Mechanised Brigade in 2002 and then became commanding officer of 2nd Battalion the Royal Green Jackets in 2005. In the latter role he managed the transition of his battalion to become 4th Battalion The Rifles and then saw action with his battalion at the siege of UK bases in Basra in 2007 during the Iraq War. On 25 July 2008, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Iraq during the period 1st October 2007 to 31st March 2008".


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: Sanders became commander of 20th Armoured Brigade in August 2009, in which role he was deployed to command Task Force Helmand in Afghanistan in October 2011. On 28 September 2012, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Afghanistan during the period 1 October 2011 to 31 March 2012". He served as Chief of the Defence Staff's Liaison Officer to the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2012 and Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) in March 2013. In 2014, he took part in the Prime Minister's Cobra meetings on the floods crisis.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: Sanders took over command of the 3rd (United Kingdom) Division in April 2015. In December 2016, he was appointed Commander Field Army and promoted to lieutenant general. Sanders was appointed Colonel Commandant and President of the Honourable Artillery Company on 31 January 2019, in succession to General Sir Richard Barrons. Sanders was promoted to full general on 6 May 2019 and appointed as Commander Joint Forces Command. Joint Forces Command was renamed as Strategic Command on 9 December 2019.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: Sanders was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2020 New Year Honours. He was the preferred candidate of the Ministry of Defence to succeed General Sir Nick Carter as Chief of the Defence Staff in 2021, due to his expertise in cyber capability, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson picked Admiral Sir Tony Radakin instead.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: On 7 June 2022, Sanders took the decision to cancel an overseas deployment by 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, after a number of incidents which demonstrated a poor standard of discipline in the battalion. The minister, James Heappey, was said to be "sorry and embarrassed" by the "disgraceful" behaviour.


title: Patrick Sanders (British Army officer)

text: On 16 June 2022, Sanders told British soldiers they are the generation that must prepare "to fight in Europe once again" as the conflict in Ukraine continues. He wrote how "There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle."


title: Luana Patten

text: Luana Patten (July 6, 1938 – May 1, 1996) was an American actress who appeared in films produced by Walt Disney Pictures, such as "Song of the South" (1946), "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947), and "Melody Time" (1948). Later in life, she played roles in television.


title: Luana Patten

text: Patten was born in Long Beach, California, to Harvey T. Patten and Alma (née Miller) Patten, natives of Enid, Oklahoma. She attended Burbank High School and Hollywood Professional School.


title: Luana Patten

text: At the age of three she was a model and later was hired by Walt Disney. Patten made her first film appearance in the 1946 musical "Song of the South" with Bobby Driscoll. They also appeared together in "Song of the South"'s sister film "So Dear to My Heart".


title: Luana Patten

text: In 1947, she appeared again with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and Mortimer Snerd during the live action scenes in "Fun and Fancy Free". She appeared with Bobby Driscoll in the "Pecos Bill" segment of Disney's "Melody Time". When she grew up, she played Jody Weaver in "Joe Dakota" and Priscilla Lapham in Disney's 1957 "Johnny Tremain". In 1958, Patten portrayed Elizabeth Buckley in the episode "Twelve Guns" of NBC's "Cimarron City" western television series. It was on "Cimarron City" that she met her future second husband, John Smith. They married on June 4, 1960, and divorced on December 4, 1964.


title: Luana Patten

text: In 1959, she played Abbie Fenton in the episode "Call Your Shot" of "", starring Steve McQueen. In that same year, she played Betty in "The Exploding Book", season 7, episode 21 of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" that aired on March 4, 1959; and she played Ruth in "The Ruth Marshall Story" season 3, episode 13 of "Wagon Train" that aired on December 30, 1959. In the 1960 Season 2, Episode 13 of "Rawhide" "Incident Of The Druid Curse", she played a dual role of sisters Maeve and Mona Lismore. In 1960, she played Libby Halstead in Vincente Minnelli's "Home from the Hill". In 1966, she played saloon girl Lorna Medford in the episode "Credit for a Kill" of "Bonanza". In 1966, she had a small part as Nora White, the new bride of Whitey in "Follow Me, Boys!". She also appeared in "A Thunder of Drums", and the "Rawhide" episode "Incident of the Druid Curse" on CBS. That year she also appeared on "Perry Mason" as defendant Cynthia Perkins in "The Case of the Scarlet Scandal". She also played Mindy McGurney in the television series "F Troop", as the daughter of a candidate for mayor, season 2, episode 8, "The Ballot of Corporal Agarn" that aired on October 27, 1966. She appeared as various characters in three episodes of "Dragnet" between 1967 and 1970. She appeared in the Adam-12 "Log 94: Vengeance" that aired March 7, 1970. She then retired from the film and television industry except for a brief cameo in the 1988 film "Grotesque".


title: Luana Patten

text: Patten died from respiratory failure at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, aged 57. She is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach, California.


title: Barber surgeon

text: The barber surgeon, one of the most common European medical practitioners of the Middle Ages, was generally charged with caring for soldiers during and after battle. In this era, surgery was seldom conducted by physicians, but instead by barbers, who, possessing razors and coordination indispensable to their trade, were called upon for numerous tasks ranging from cutting hair to amputating limbs.


title: Barber surgeon

text: In this period, surgical mortality was very high due to blood loss and infection. Yet, since doctors thought that blood letting treated illness, barbers also applied leeches. Meanwhile, physicians considered themselves to be above surgery. Physicians mostly observed surgical patients and offered consulting, but otherwise often chose academia or working in universities. Some chose to reside in castles, where they treated the wealthy.


title: Barber surgeon

text: Due to religious and sanitary monastic regulations, monks had to maintain their tonsure (the traditional baldness on the top of the head of Catholic monks). This created a market for barbers, because each monastery had to train or hire a barber. They would perform bloodletting and other minor surgeries like pulling teeth or creating ointments. The first barber surgeons to be recognized as such worked in monasteries around 1000 AD.


title: Barber surgeon

text: Because physicians performed surgery so rarely, the Middle Ages saw a proliferation of barbers, among other medical "paraprofessionals", including cataract couchers, herniotomists, lithotomists, midwives, and pig gelders. In 1254, Bruno da Longobucco, an Italian physician who wrote on surgery, was concerned about barbers performing phlebotomies and scarifications.


title: Barber surgeon

text: In Paris, disputes between doctors led to the widespread patronage of barbers. The College of St. Cosme had two levels of student doctors: doctors who were given a long academic robe were permitted to perform surgeries and doctors who were given a short robe and had to pass a special examination before being given that license. The short-robed doctors were bitter because the long-robed physicians behaved pretentiously.


title: Barber surgeon

text: The short-robed doctors of St. Cosme entered into an agreement with the barber surgeons of Paris that they would offer the barber surgeons secret lessons on human anatomy as long as they swore to be dependents and supporters of the short-robed physicians. This secret deal existed from around the time of the founding of St. Cosme in 1210 until 1499, when the group of surgeon barbers asked for their own cadaver to perform their anatomical demonstrations. From the 1540s in France, the translation into French of the works of ancient authors allowed progress in the transmission of knowledge: barber-surgeons could add to their manual skills, an ancient surgical knowledge confronted with their actual practice.


title: Barber surgeon

text: New problems appeared in war surgery, without equivalent in the past: wounds caused by firearms and mutilations caused by artillery, the barber-surgeon being required to treat all the affections appearing on the surface of the body, the doctor treating those on the inside.


title: Barber surgeon

text: There was already social mobility between surgeons and barber-surgeons. A surgeon's apprenticeship began with the practice of shaving. The young surgeon could thus have a source of income before mastering the surgery of his time. In the context of Renaissance humanism, this practical experience took place outside of academic scholasticism. The action is clearly sanctioned by the results, visible to all. For Michel de Montaigne, compared to medicine,


title: Barber surgeon

text: In Italy, barbers were not as common. The Salerno medical school trained physicians to be competent surgeons, as did the schools in Bologna and Padua. In Florence, physicians and surgeons were separated, but the Florentine Statute concerning the Art of Physicians and Pharmacists in 1349 gave barbers an inferior legal status compared to surgeons.


title: Barber surgeon

text: Formal recognition of their skills (in England at least) goes back to 1540, when the Fellowship of Surgeons (who existed as a distinct profession but were not "Doctors/Physicians" for reasons including that, as a trade, they were trained by apprenticeship rather than academically) merged with the Company of Barbers, a London livery company, to form the Company of Barber-Surgeons. However, the trade was gradually put under pressure by the medical profession and in 1745, the surgeons split from the Barbers' Company (which still exists) to form the Company of Surgeons. In 1800 a Royal Charter was granted to this company and the Royal College of Surgeons in London came into being (later it was renamed to cover all of England — equivalent colleges exist for Scotland and Ireland as well as many of the old UK colonies, e.g., Canada).


title: Barber surgeon

text: Few traces of barbers' links with the surgical side of the medical profession remain. One is the traditional red and white barber's pole, or a modified instrument from a blacksmith, which is said to represent the blood and bandages associated with their historical role.


title: Barber surgeon

text: Another vestige is the use of the title "Mr" (or Miss, Mrs or Ms) rather than "Dr" by doctors when they complete their surgery qualifications by, for example, the award of an MRCS or FRCS diploma. This tradition is almost exclusive to the United Kingdom, Ireland and to a lesser extent the Commonwealth countries of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This practice dates back to the days when surgeons did not require a university education in medicine and this link with the past is retained despite the fact that all surgeons in these countries now require a medical degree as well as several additional years of surgical training and certification. They no longer perform haircuts, a task the barbers have retained.


title: Barber surgeon

text: A barber surgeon was a person who could perform surgical procedures including bloodletting, cupping therapy, pulling teeth and amputation. Barbers could also bathe, cut hair, shave or trim facial hair and give enemas. During wartime, the barber surgeon served in the army but during peacetime he could practice among civilians.


title: Tidal range

text: Tidal range is the difference in height between high tide and low tide. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and Sun and the rotation of Earth. Tidal range depends on time and location.


title: Tidal range

text: Larger tidal range occur during spring tides (spring range), when the gravitational forces of both the Moon and Sun are aligned (at syzygy), reinforcing each other in the same direction (new moon) or in opposite directions (full moon). The largest annual tidal range can be expected around the time of the equinox if it coincides with a spring tide. Spring tides occur at the second and fourth (last) quarters of the lunar phases.


title: Tidal range

text: By contrast, during neap tides, when the Moon and Sun's gravitational force vectors act in quadrature (making a right angle to the Earth's orbit), the difference between high and low tides (neap range) is smallest. Neap tides occur at the first and third quarters of the lunar phases.


title: Tidal range

text: Tidal data for coastal areas is published by national hydrographic offices. The data is based on astronomical phenomena and is predictable. Sustained storm-force winds blowing from one direction combined with low barometric pressure can increase the tidal range, particularly in narrow bays. Such weather-related effects on the tide can cause ranges in excess of predicted values and can cause localized flooding. These weather-related effects are not calculable in advance.


title: Tidal range

text: "Mean tidal range" is calculated as the difference between mean high water (i.e., the average high tide level) and mean low water (the average low tide level).


title: Tidal range

text: The typical tidal range in the open ocean is about (blue and green on the map on the right). Closer to the coast, this range is much greater. Coastal tidal ranges vary globally and can differ anywhere from near zero to over . The exact range depends on the volume of water adjacent to the coast, and the geography of the basin the water sits in. Larger bodies of water have higher ranges, and the geography can act as a funnel amplifying or dispersing the tide. The world's largest tidal range of occurs in Bay of Fundy, Canada, a similar range is experienced at Ungava Bay also in Canada and the United Kingdom regularly experiences tidal ranges up to between England and Wales in the Bristol Channel.


title: Tidal range

text: The fifty coastal locations with the largest tidal ranges worldwide are listed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States.


title: Tidal range

text: Some of the smallest tidal ranges occur in the Mediterranean, Baltic, and Caribbean Seas. A point within a tidal system where the tidal range is almost zero is called an amphidromic point.


title: Black Skinhead

text: "Black Skinhead" (also stylized as "BLKKK SKKKN HEAD") is a song by American rapper Kanye West, from his sixth studio album "Yeezus" (2013). It was produced by West and Daft Punk. The song's lyrics center on racial tensions and the crumbling mental state of the character West portrays on the album. The song premiered on "Saturday Night Live" in May 2013, with West performing it in front of a projected backdrop. He has since performed the song live on various occasions, including at the Glastonbury Festival and the "Billboard" Music Awards in 2015. It was universally praised by music critics and ranked by numerous sites, including "Rolling Stone" and "NME", as one of the best tracks of 2013. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Nick Knight and features computer-generated imagery of West, with interactive options including "screen grabbing" and adjusting the speed of his vocals. The video was released in July 2013 and has received positive reviews from critics.


title: Black Skinhead

text: Although West initially said "Yeezus" would have no singles, "Black Skinhead" became the first single released from the album. It was serviced to contemporary hit radio stations in the United Kingdom one day after the album's release. On July 2, 2013, the single was sent to urban contemporary radio stations in the United States. The song charted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, France, Canada, Belgium and Australia in 2013 and 2014. It has since been certified platinum in the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark. American singer Jack White covered the song in June 2014. A remix featuring Miley Cyrus and Travis Scott, recorded shortly after the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, leaked online in January 2016.